London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time.
History time.
And yesterday we started with a word.
Tawdry.
Cheap.
Flashy.
Showy.
And we followed that word all the way back to a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon princess.
Æthelthryth.
Etheldreda.
Audrey.
Saint Audrey.
Today, Part Two.
Because Audrey has left us something in London.
Something wonderful.
Something hidden.
Something that really shouldn’t be there.
A little piece of medieval Ely.
Dropped into Holborn.
And to find it, you go to one of those places where London performs one of its favourite tricks.
You’re walking along a busy street.
Traffic.
Buses.
Offices.
Hatton Garden.
Diamonds.
Money.
Noise.
And then you turn.
And suddenly London changes century.
Welcome to Ely Place.
A gated little street.
Quiet.
Georgian houses.
A gatehouse.
And part way along it, almost hiding from you, one of the great survivors of medieval London.
St Etheldreda’s Church.
St Audrey’s church.
The connection with yesterday’s podcast suddenly clicks into place.
Because Ely Place was once exactly what its name says.
Ely’s place in London.
The London home of the Bishops of Ely.
They needed somewhere to stay when ecclesiastical business, royal business, parliamentary business brought them down from Cambridgeshire.
And eventually this wasn’t just a house.
It was a palace.
A great medieval complex.
Palace.
Chapel.
Orchards.
Gardens.
Vineyards.
Fields.
Something like 58 acres of it.
Right here in Holborn.
And the chapel survives.
Built around 1290.
St Etheldreda’s.
Pause outside it for a second.
Because medieval London has almost completely vanished.
Fire.
Rebuilding.
Road widening.
Developers.
Bombs.
Centuries of London doing what London does.
And yet there it is.
The chapel standing there today is substantially the medieval chapel built around 1290, in the reign of Edward I.
You go through that door and you’re stepping back more than 700 years.
But it’s what was outside the chapel that gives us one of the loveliest London connections in Shakespeare.
Strawberries.
The Bishops of Ely had famous gardens here.
And their strawberries apparently had quite a reputation.
So much so that Ely Place gets a walk-on part in Shakespeare’s Richard III.
Richard is sitting in council.
Things are becoming dangerous.
Very dangerous.
And suddenly he turns to the Bishop of Ely and says:
“I saw good strawberries in your garden there.”
Would the bishop kindly send for some?
Off goes the Bishop of Ely to fetch the strawberries.
Which is wonderfully sinister when you know what’s coming next.
Because while he’s out of the room, Richard gets down to business.
And before long Lord Hastings is heading towards the chopping block.
There’s something so Shakespearean about it.
Death.
Power.
Treason.
Murder.
And strawberries.
Only London could give you all four on the same plate.
And there are still strawberries in the story today.
St Etheldreda’s holds a Strawberry Fayre.
More than five centuries later those Holborn strawberries are still refusing to leave the stage.
But now we move forward another century or so.
Enter Christopher Hatton.
Sir Christopher Hatton.
Courtier.
Politician.
Favourite of Elizabeth I.
And, crucially, a very good dancer.
That mattered.
Elizabeth loved dancing.
Hatton was handsome, elegant, athletic, and tradition has it that she first noticed him because of the way he danced.
Now there’s a career strategy.
Forget LinkedIn.
Learn the galliard.
Hatton rises.
And rises.
Eventually he becomes Lord Chancellor of England.
And he wants a nice London residence.
Very nice.
And he takes a fancy to part of the Bishop of Ely’s property.
The Bishop of Ely at this point is Richard Cox.
And Bishop Cox doesn’t particularly want to hand over his land.
Fair enough.
It is, after all, his land.
Unfortunately for Bishop Cox, Christopher Hatton has something rather more powerful than a good solicitor.
He has Elizabeth I.
And according to the wonderful old story, Elizabeth writes to Cox.
The message, boiled right down, is:
“I who made you what you are can unmake you.”
That is Queen Elizabeth I’s version of customer relations.
And Bishop Cox gets the message.
Hatton gets his lease.
The rent?
Ten pounds.
Ten loads of hay.
And a midsummer’s rose.
Not bad for central London.
And Hatton builds himself a splendid house.
Hatton House.
With gardens.
And his name sticks.
Hatton Garden.
Yes.
That Hatton Garden.
London’s jewellery quarter.
Diamonds in the windows.
Gold.
Silver.
Engagement rings.
Vaults.
Dealers.
All of it carrying the name of a Tudor courtier who danced his way into the good books of Elizabeth I.
And that brings us to one of my favourite London pub stories.
Because tucked away just off Ely Place is Ye Olde Mitre.
You have to know it’s there.
Another disappearing act.
Down a tiny passage.
And inside, according to tradition, there’s the remnant of an old cherry tree.
The story is that it marked the boundary between the Bishop’s garden and Hatton’s property.
And tradition goes one better.
Elizabeth herself danced around that cherry tree with Christopher Hatton.
Did she?
Well.
Maybe.
I certainly wouldn’t put my house on it.
But I wouldn’t take an axe to the story either.
Some London stories are too good to evict.
And anyway, the solid history is extraordinary enough.
The Mitre really does belong to this strange little world created by the Bishops of Ely and Christopher Hatton.
And the Ely connection hung on for centuries.
Which brings us to the really peculiar bit.
Ely Place wasn’t quite like the streets around it.
Historically, this was the Bishop of Ely’s patch.
His jurisdiction.
His London enclave.
There’s our Word of the Day.
Enclave.
Today it means a little territory or community enclosed within a larger one.
But go back into the word and there’s something lovely waiting for us.
It comes through French from a Late Latin word meaning to shut in.
To lock up.
And sitting inside it is the Latin clavis.
A key.
An enclave is, etymologically, something locked in.
Something enclosed as if behind a key.
Perfect for Ely Place.
Because even today there’s a gate.
Even today it is privately managed.
Even today it has its own commissioners.
And historically it had its own beadles keeping watch.
A little locked-in world inside London.
And now we get to one of those London stories I desperately want to be true.
You’ll sometimes hear that Ely Place was actually a little patch of Cambridgeshire in London.
And that the Metropolitan Police couldn’t simply march in.
If they were pursuing a villain who ducked through the gates, the story goes, they had to stop and ask the beadle’s permission to enter.
Magnificent.
Copper in pursuit.
Villain legging it.
Through the gate.
Copper screeches to a halt.
“Excuse me, Beadle, may I come in?”
I love it.
Unfortunately, I’m putting the police bit in the drawer marked wonderful London story, handle with care.
What we can say confidently is strange enough.
The estate belonged to the Bishops of Ely.
It enjoyed unusual liberties.
It was outside the jurisdiction of the City of London.
And Ely Place remained privately governed under its own commissioners, with its own beadles and gatehouse.
There are even old examples of letters addressed to Ely Place, Holborn, Cambridgeshire.
Think about that.
Holborn.
Cambridgeshire.
London apparently having mislaid a little bit of another county in the middle of itself.
And that, I think, is why Ely Place is such pure London.
It’s not grand in the obvious way.
You could hurry straight past it.
Thousands of people do every day.
But open the door.
Go through the gate.
And suddenly the layers start appearing.
A seventh-century saint.
A medieval bishop’s palace.
Richard III.
Strawberries.
Shakespeare.
Elizabeth I.
A handsome dancing courtier.
A furious bishop.
A midsummer’s rose for rent.
A cherry tree.
A hidden pub.
A beadle.
And a little piece of Cambridgeshire apparently marooned in Holborn.
Yesterday we started with Audrey.
Today we followed her to Ely.
And Ely brought us straight back to London.
Which is how London works.
Pull one thread.
And half the city comes with it.
And perhaps there’s only one proper place to finish this story.
We started Part One with a saint.
We finish Part Two in a pub.
Ye Olde Mitre.
Hidden down its little passage.
Still keeping company with St Etheldreda’s.
Still tucked into that extraordinary little enclave.
Still there.
Yes, let it ring out loud and clear.
London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time.
History time.
See you tomorrow.