London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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And a very good morning to you. Here’s your London fix for August 26th, 2024.
Today’s pin… Well, this item is by no means solely and entirely a London fix. It’s from every which way. I’ve gathered it together here in London and am onpassing it from London… but this one’s got universality written all over it. And I’ve landed on it because my sole aim is to put out stuff that’s got that Gotcha! factor – is brimful of that, “Oh, I didn’t know that, that’s nice to know” factor. It couldn’t be more basic, really. I want people to stop by here because they know we’ll be serving up something interesting, something fun to know. Mostly London grounded, London oriented, London based stuff…but not always. So for today, here’s one to go with your morning coffee. Over at New Scientist they’ve done a pull together on the latest research into coffee. The effect it has on us. And whether it’s good for us. And it’s all pretty heartening. The research confirms what we all knew: caffeine, the kicker ingredient in coffee, gives people shorter reaction times and makes them more alert, focused and cognitively sharp. And there are physical effects as well. According to a recent study coffee lit a spark under amateur cyclists: improved their performance by just under 2 percent. But the findings weren’t just confirmatory, they were also new. Stuff we didn’t know. Good stuff. Turns out, coffee’s an anti-depressant. Coffee drinkers – in moderation, two to three cups a day – are less likely to experience depression and have a lower risk of suicide. And a lower risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. And a lower risk of diabetes, obesity and allergies. And who would have known – a significantly lower risk – a 25 percent reduction – of heart disease and a reduction in all-cause mortality. Drink three cups of coffee a day and live longer. Thank you New Scientist. And thank you Ethiopian goat herder Kaldi who noticed – this was over 1,000 years ago – Ethiopian goat herder Kaldi noticed his goats got very frisky after eating berries from the arabica plant. Kaldi gave some of the berries to a local monk. The monk brewed the world’s first cup of coffee. And it was off to the races. There oughta be a statue to that lot, Kali the goat herder, some of his frisky goats, and that unknown priest. A statue with a few coffee plants in the background.
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Moving on, today’s Random – this one’s London through and through. And it’s rather grimmer. According to a new study over 75,000 London homeowners will bale on the capital this year. The culprit: high mortgage rates. Well over four percent during the fixed period and then shooting to nearly seven percent – well, it’s fuelling an exodus from the capital. And in case you’re wondering, the average cost of a London house is £523,000. Way over the figure of £305,000 for the rest of England. But of course an average cost is pretty well meaningless. Has no bearing at all on any given London pile of bricks and mortar. At no little risk of belabouring the obvious, you’re shopping around for a London property you have to take it on a case by case basis: you have to look at individual neighbourhoods, what their amenities and downsides are, at the size and condition of an individual property, at the length of the lease if you’re going to be a leaseholder rather than a freeholder, who the neighbours are, etc. etc. No wonder moving house is one of life’s most stressful events.
And that brings us to today’s Ongoing. Let’s do a fourth installment on the environs of Tottenham Court Road Underground Station. Why – if you’re going on either of the walks that start at Tottenham Court Road Underground Station – Adam’s Rock ’n’ Roll West End walk and/or Richard’s Beatles Magical Mystery Tour – why there’s a lot to be said for getting there an hour early and exploring the immediate neighbourhood of Tottenham Court Road Underground Station. Let’s do the history today. It’s a deep and rich seam, the history in that little acre. Goes back hundreds of years.
You can start with the church, which is well worth a visit, by the way. Both the interior of the church and the very pleasant and surprisingly big but also a little bit secretive garden that surrounds it. The church is St Giles-in-the-Fields. As is so often the case in London, the name is an X-ray of the past. Now smack dab in the centre of London, St Giles was originally well outside of London. It was “in the fields.”
We need to “fast back” to 1101.
In that year, Maud-Matilda – what a name – Queen Maud-Matilda, she was the wife of Henry I –Queen Maud-Matildafounds a leper hospital here. She dedicates it to St Giles, the patron Saint of lepers. Now, let’s start by trying on the word hospital. Get the right fit. 920 years ago hospital didn’t mean what it means today. It was just a humble little house, a place of refuge. A place of hospitality for the archetypal outcasts of the London of those days. Leprosy was disfiguring. And more importantly, they mistakenly thought it was contagious. So you didn’t want lepers in your midst, in amongst you in the city. You wanted them well outside of town. Out in the fields. Anyway, next to the leper shelter they erected a chantry. Again, you can hear it, can’t you. The history is preserved in the word. A chantry was a chapel where priests would celebrate masses – they’d sing or chant – celebrate masses for the soul of the founder. It wasn’t so much a life insurance policy for Matilda as a death insurance policy. An after-life insurance policy for Matilda. And in time that chantry became the church and the parish of St Giles in the Fields.
Now in the previous installment that centred on that great Thomas Hardy poem Coming up Oxford Street, Evening, I mentioned that that was the route of the condemned. They were on their way from Newgate in the City to be hanged at Tyburn Tree, a mile west of Tottenham Court Road Tube Stop. In other words, out at the western end of Oxford Street. Part of the accepted practice of the execution day procession was for the entourage to stop at the hospital gates and for the condemned to be given a bowl of ale there. That was their last drink, their send-off as it were. It came to be known as the St Giles Bowl. But in fact, what’s not widely known at all was St Giles itself – well, the immediate neighbourhood – was for a time, an execution site itself. We learn from an ancient record – I’m quoting – on the removal of the gallows from the elms in Smithfield – this was about a hundred years before Columbus discovered the new world – the gallows were erected at the north end of the garden wall belonging to this hospital. Opposite the place where the pound afterwards stood. Between the end of St Giles High Street and Hog Lane, on which spot it continued until its removal to Tyburn. Let’s track down exactly where that gallows stood.
When you come out of exit 1 of Tottenham Court Road Underground Station – exit 1 is the meeting point for the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour and the Rock ’n’ Roll London Walk – when you come out of exit 1 you’ll be at the junction of Oxford Street, New Oxford Street, Tottenham Court Road and Charing Cross Road. Oxford Street will be on your left. Charing Cross Road on your right. Charing Cross Road today is book store street. Couldn’t be more civilised. But let’s have a soak in those old place names – place names, remember, are an X-ray of the past. Today about the only animal life you’ll catch a glimpse of at Tottenham Court Road Underground Station is perhaps a dog on a leash and maybe a couple of our feathered friends.
But that stretch of Charing Cross Road – the top end, the Oxford Street end of Charing Cross Road, hundreds of years ago it wasn’t Charing Cross Road, it was Hog Lane. The name gives the game away, doesn’t it. I think we know what we would have seen and smelt there hundreds of years ago. And that word “pound.” That was pound as in animal pound. It was an enclosure where stray animals – beasts – cows, pigs, horses, whatever – would have been kept until they were claimed. You come out of exit 1 of Tottenham Court Road Underground Station and use your x-ray past vision, you’re not just seeing the intersection, right in the middle of that intersection was the pound. And just there, across the street from you, across Hog Lane as it was then and Charing Cross Road as it is today, is Centre Point. It’s an extremely important building in the London story. And it’s got a great poem attached to it. It’s going to be a further installment in this series. Anyway, right there, where Centre Point stands today, that’s where the gallows was. The pound with all those stray animals in it, Hog Lane, the gallows…you get the history into play, into view, exit 1 of Tottenham Court Road Underground Station affords one of the richest repasts in all of London.
Anything else? Well, yes, there are three or four more installments coming in this series. And one of them is going to be a close look at the church itself.
But inasmuch as I said this one was going to roll out the history of the area, here comes the big one. The Great Plague of London kicked off here. Here in St Giles’ parish. In 1665. In one month there were 1391 burials in and around the church. That’s 46 burials a day. That brought about an unforeseen consequence. But we’ll save that one for another day.
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from www.walks.com –
home of London Walks,
London’s signature
walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size
walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it,
London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £20 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science:
you get what you pay for.
And just as surely,
you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started
we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question:
Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world
you do whatever you have to do
to attract and keep
the best guides in London –
you want them guiding for you,
not for somebody else.
Bears repeating:
the way we’re structured –
a guides’ cooperative –
is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following,
a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases
distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor
(and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated –
Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa –
both of them CBEs –
are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z,“internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star team of guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former Museum of London archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes
criminal defence lawyers,
Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors,
a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)…
well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament,
every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar
and the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note…
come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning
one and all. See ya next time.