London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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Good morning, London Walkers. Wherever you are. It’s Monday, November 4th, 2024.
Let’s get the week underway by letting you in on a London secret.
Every clock in London is a cuckoo clock.
The cuckoo is the story the clock has to tell. They’re stories that are fun. Or eye-opening. Or quirky. Or just plain good to know. They add to the sum total of human happiness. And of course they’re meat and drink for London Walks guides. Because clocks are highly visible, they’re there to be seen. And when you tell the story, you’re lighting the clock up for your walkers. In effect, when you tell the story it’s a top of the hour moment for the clock – the story is the cuckoo call and cuckoo-bird-that-pops-out moment for any given London clock.
So like clockwork, let’s bring on some London cuckoo birds. Let’s hear the stories behind a few London clocks.
Naturally, we’re going to start with Big Ben. It’s the jaw-dropping facts of Big Ben that are the cuckoo bird moment. That the clock faces are 23 feet in diameter. How long is 23 feet? A two-storey house is about 23 feet high. The minute hands are 14 feet long. How long is 14 feet. A black London taxi is 14 feet long. The minute hands weigh 220 pounds. They’re made out of hollow copper. They travel 25 miles a year. The clock mechanism weighs five tonnes. There are 312 pieces of glass in each clock dial. Seven Big Ben factoids – that’s what, seven bongs of the clock. There are quite a few more but time’s getting on. We need to hear from some other London clocks.
Like the Fortnum and Mason clock that faces Piccadilly. It’s certainly London’s prettiest clock. On the hour it plays the Eton boating song, four-foot-high doors open and out pop Mr. Fortnum and Mr Mason, decked out in their eighteenth-century finery. Mr Fortnum’s red coat indicates that he was a footman in the royal household. He’s carrying a candleabra. Your guide on our Old Palace Quarter walk will tell you why that’s appropriate. Mr Mason was a grocer and he’s come with a pot of tea. And today is for sure the day to pay tribute to the Fortnum and Mason clock because it’s 60 years old this very day.
And here’s one that always catches people off guard. Big Ben is not the largest clock face in the UK. That distinction belongs to the clock that rides high up on the Shell Mex building, there on the Strand. It’s best seen from the other side of the river.
Then there’s the clock that projects from the tower of St Magnus the Martyr. It originally hung over the roadway of old London Bridge. Its story – its cuckoo clock moment – is that back in the 17th century an apprentice boy was late to work. He was crossing London Bridge and there was no clock to warn him that time was getting on. He was given a frightful beating. He vowed that when he grew up he would put a clock there at the north end of the bridge so that never again would a little apprentice boy get a beating because he hadn’t known what time it was.
And from London Bridge we go to Horse Guards parade. The big clock there was the public clock – the most important clock in London – until Big Ben came along. It’s replete with great stories. Uniquely, its hours are displayed in Roman numerals and its minutes in Arabic numerals. And notice the dark stain above the Roman number two on the clock face, it’s there to mark the time of the execution of Charles I.
But let’s end with the killer clock. We couldn’t really do otherwise because tomorrow’s the 70th anniversary of the day the Killer Clock did its frightful deed.
The Killer Clock is the huge clock on the front of the Royal Courts of Justice. I’m afraid it’s a grim story.
Clocky – as 52-year-old Thomas Manners was known because his job was to wind the clocks at the Royal Courts of Justice – went up the bell tower on November 5th, 1954. He was high above London – the clock hangs 120 feet above the Strand. The ill-fated Mr Manners went up the bell tower to switch on the electric motor which winds up the weights. His tie got caught in the machinery and the poor fellow was strangled.
Now here’s a perfect instance of how a bit of guiding changes the way you see a bit of London. Or actually makes you see it. The clock never looks the same once you know the story of how it did for Clocky and that in consequence to those who know their London history it’s known as the Killer Clock. And that indeed, looking up at it, up above it, there on the roof of the Royal Courts of Justice is a statue of Jesus. The RCJ building is the only secular building in the country that is topped up with a statue of Jesus. If ever there was a time for our Lord and Saviour to not just look on but to intervene, to have mercy on somebody, it was November 5th, 1954 when Clocky’s tie got caught in the machinery there. “Oh Jesus,” he must have called out. To no avail.
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.