The Cheddar Man of Naked Boy Court

London calling.

London Walks connecting.

This… is London.

This is London Walks.

Streets ahead.

Story time. History time.

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Good morning one and all. It’s Saturday, October 19th, 2024.

Friday’s our big day here. The other six days of the week are warm-up acts. So, yes, this is one of our London appetiser podcasts.

Let’s start with a couple of fundamental London Walks building blocks.  Fundamental building block Numero Uno: Drum roll… Jane Austen lead-in…

It is a truth universally acknowledged that to look at a thing is quite different from seeing a thing.

And fundamental building block Numero Dos is: To see London you have to hear it.

So let’s hear a bit of London and see what we can see.

Consider The Strand. That hugely important street that links Trafalgar Square with Fleet Street. And I have a sneaking suspicion there’ll be more on that Fleet Street-Strand connection in a future podcast.

But we’ll content ourselves – confine ourselves – this morning to the Strand. The street the great Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli dubbed “the first street in Europe.” Well, he meant ‘first’ in the sense foremost or paramount. But it’s also an extremely old street. Age-wise it’s clearly not the first street in Europe but it is hoary with age. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us it pitched up as a street name in 1246. So almost eight centuries, that’s a grand old age. And let’s touch down on that earliest mention. It’s in what’s called a Chancery Roll, a legal document. And it’s in Latin. It reads: Domos..extra muros Ciuitatis nostre London, in vico qui vocatur le Straunde.

It’s not hard to translate that into English: it’s “Houses outside the walls of our City of London, in a street called le Straunde.”

But 1246 is just a way station. We’ve got to go a lot further back than 1246. Because the word, not the name, is even older. The word – it’s Old English, Anglo-Saxon – goes back well over a thousand years.

But here’s the fascinating thing about the Strand as a place name: it’s, well, misplaced. It means bank or shore. The bank or shore in question is the north bank of the Thames. But the Strand is a fair old distance from the Thames.

But it didn’t used to be. The Thames used to be fifty percent wider than it is today. That was the case until it was embanked in the second half of the 19th century. So if you grandstand on the Strand – forgive me – if you stand right by Charing Cross Station there and look down Villiers Street, down there where Embankment Gardens begin – that’s not very far – that was the north bank of the Thames. So the strand really was the Strand.

Now the Embankment is another story in itself. That’ll get its own podcast. Suffice it to say here that it was – until a few years ago – the single largest civil engineering project to ever come London’s way. A hugely important – utterly transformative – civil engineering project.

But I’m in a words mood this morning. To see London you have to hear it. And the instances of those words – we’re talking the Oxford English Dictionary here – they’re like buoys in the wondrous sea of the magical waters of a headline act London name like Strand. Let’s set our course by those buoys. Let’s all go down the Strand.

Sure enough, the Strand gets a mention in Shakespeare. This is in Act 5 of Henry VIII. Here’s the passage.

[She] cryed out Clubbes, when I might see from farre, some forty Truncheoners draw to her succour, which were the hope o’ th’ Strond where she was quartered.

A century later the great Augustan poet Alexander Pope weighs in. In his mock-heroic narrative poem The Dunciad, Pope  trots out the line, Where the tall May-pole once o’er-look’d the Strand.

Forward another century and it’s the great Romantic poet Lord Byron’s turn. His line is: But less grand, Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand

For me, though, the most interesting literary connection is The Strand triggering Yeats’ great poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfree. Which could hardly be farther from the Strand. The Lake Isle of Innisfree is in County Sligo, in western Ireland. But the Strand struck the spark that turned into that great poem. Well, that’s another tapas on the tray, another podcast for another time.

We can add a couple more pieces to the puzzle. Starting with Strand Lane. You find it, you’re well off the beaten London path.

Wasn’t a strand the way the Strand’s a strand because it led down to the Thames. The fragment of it that has survived is pretty much what it was originally, a narrow and rather winding thoroughfare. You go there you’re going to find one of London’s hidden gems, the so-called Roman baths.

And then there was Strand Bridge. It’s one of those London place names that requires some unpacking. Turns out Strand Bridge was the original name for Waterloo Bridge. That was master bridge builder John Rennie’s Waterloo Bridge. Completed in 1817, it was London’s fourth bridge, after London Bridge, Westminster Bridge, and Blackfriars Bridge.

Rennie’s masterpiece, it was some bridge. The Italian sculptor Antonio Canova described it as  “the noblest bridge in the world”…he said it was worth going to England solely to see Rennie’s bridge.

Rennie’s Strand Bridge – the name didn’t last – was the end result of the efforts of a group of promoters called the Strand Bridge Company. And as for the name change to Waterloo Bridge, it was always on the cards after what happened just to the south of a Belgian village called Waterloo on June 18th, 1815. Yes, that’s right. The Battle of Waterloo. The decisive battle of that era, it concluded a war that had raged for 23 years. It ended French attempts to dominate Europe. It destroyed Napoleon’s imperial power forever. That battle was always going to be commemorated big time – and no better way to do that than to name the most beautiful bridge in the world after it.

But with London there’s always more. You drill down you just keep unearthing historical gems.

Back to Strand Lane we go. Turns out there was a brook running down Strand Lane. And sure enough there was a little bridge that crossed that brook. And it was called Strand Bridge. We learn from John Stow that it was pulled down in 1549. But it must have made a comeback.

London names, you can riff with them.

And for our last riff, I thought I’d unearth something that nobody has seen for centuries. And into the bargain we’re going to meet a long-lost Londoner. In its own way, this is sort of like finding Cheddar Man. Well, a more recent Cheddar Man. But every bit as lost as Cheddar Man was. And unlike Cheddar Man, we know our long-lost Londoners real name. Meet Rowland Pepin, ladies and gentlemen.

I found Rowland on the front page of a very old newspaper. A newspaper calling itself News Published for Satisfaction and Information of the People. And there’s Rowland Pepin, waving to us from June 1, 1665. Waving to us from Naked Boy Court near Strand Bridge, without Temple Bar London.

And we’ll put to Rowland the question the Queen put to everybody she met: What do you do?

Rowland’s spokesperson is the News. It says, Rowland Pepin, famous for Cure of the Rupture, or Broken-belly these 50 years, makes easie trusses of all kinds: and lives in Naked Boy Court near Strand Bridge, without Temple Bar, London, where the poor may be relieved for charity.

Well, you can take that ball and run, can’t you. First of all, Stow tells us that Strand Bridge was pulled down in 1549. But clearly it made a comeback because 116 years later Rowland Pepin and his trusses were right there to be found, near Strand Bridge.

Secondly, how delightful it is to learn that rupture in those days was also known as broken-belly. And broken-belly must have been a fairly regular occurrence in the 17th century, because Rowland’s been making his trusses – his easy trusses – these 50 years. And be sure to clock that date and Rowland’s age. He must be at least 60. Rowland doesn’t know it, but he and the rest of London are about to be clobbered. The Great Plague is just starting to take hold in London. It’ll take off in a matter of weeks. Did it do for Rowland the truss maker? Or was he one of the lucky ones?

I think best of all, though, Rowland’s address: Naked Boy Court. Doesn’t exist anymore. Lost London street names. They’re a joy. And a study in their own right.

Londoners were hardier in those days. Less fastidious.

And here’s your rude word alert. The rude words equivalent of a spoiler alert. Strong language coming up. If you’re opposed to or sensitive about these matters you better check out now. Or at least cover your ears.

London still has an alley called Passing Lane. But it wasn’t originally Passing Lane. It was the uptight, proper Victorians who said, we can’t possibly have a London Street called Pissing Lane. We’re changing that right now to Passing Lane. And there was Dunghill Lane. And in the middle ages there was Gropecunt lane. And Stew Lane. Stew Lane. it’d be called Brothel Row today. Well, you get the idea.

Final thought, if in 1665 you’d said to Rowland Pepin, the broken-belly healer in Naked Boy Court, “in 360 years an American’s going to be talking about you and your line of work and your address” he would have thought he was being talked to by a mad man. For starters, he wouldn’t have known what an American was. Not American in our sense of the word. It doesn’t come along until 1691. Rowland would have thought you were saying “in 360 years a a native American’s going to be talking about you, Rowland.” The very idea would have been unfathomable to Rowland. The equivalent would be somebody saying to us “you know, London Walkers, people in 2384 are going to be talking about you and that American who cranks out the London Calling podcast.” I suppose we’d be inclined to say, “and what are you smoking?”

But there you go. One London street name. One well-known London street name. See where it’s taken us. London will do that for you every time. You see a whole lot more of London if you hear it.

    

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.

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