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 evening to you from London! It’s September 2nd, 2024.
Today’s pin… Wish I’d been there. But it’s nice to know about it even if I had other fish to fry yesterday. Yes, speaking of frying – or at least baking, after a fashion – not so far from here, something beyond extraordinary happened in Highgate Wood yesterday. An ancient Roman kiln that’s lain dormant – been cooling down – for 2,000 years got fired up again on Sunday. Okay, the one they fired up was a replica. But the real Mccoy – the genuine article – was unveiled to the public. Discovered back in 1968, it’s the only pottery kiln of its kind to be exhibited anywhere in the country. The kiln is believed to be the last one built by potters who worked in Highgate Wood between the years 50 and 160 CE. Yes, near enough to 2,000 years ago. When it was last fired up it was supplying Londinium, the capital of Roman Britain, with distinctive “Highgate Ware” pottery. Let that sink in. The last time the kiln was burning Rome was burning and Nero was fiddling. And yes, it’s deeply satisfying to be regaling you with this tale on the 358th anniversary of that spark flying out of the king’s baker Thomas Farriner’s oven, latching on to a tiny piece of something combustible and starting its feeding frenzy, getting the Great Fire of London underway. Burn baby burn.—————————-
As for a Random… Strap it in. Here comes an amazing London statistic. You ready? There are over 60 music performances a day in London. That’s the daily average. Zoom out from a day in London to a year it comes to over 22,000 music performances annually. And where’s all that going down? There are over 300 London venues playing host to all that music. Do the biblical thing of resting on the seventh day it’s going to take you over a year to visit all those music venues. And you run those numbers there you have why one of the big tents in the London Walks circus has a sign over the door that says London Music Tours. As most of you know – if you don’t know you should – superstar London Walks guide Adam is the Master of Ceremonies of that Big Show, London Music Tours. I’m going to mix my metaphors now. If that cut of London action – London Music Tours – were a garden, it’d be Kew Gardens. There’s that much music, that much music history in London. It’s rich pickings.
Ok, today’s Ongoing.
I have a soft spot for those London wags who affix a blue plaque to their house that reads: Nothing important happened in this house. Or, Nobody famous lived in this house. Always puts me in mind of those class photos that are so many “faces in the crowd”. The standard operating procedure with those photos is they get dredged up and one youthful face will be highlighted and it’s the face of 15-year-old Tom Cruise or 16-year-old Donald Trump and everybody else in that photo is a nobody. They’re so many faces in the crowd. But with my perverse turn of mind, I often wonder about those faces in the crowd. Who were those people? Tom Cruise’s – or Donald Trump’s – classmates, what happened to them, what were their lives like, where are they today?
So, yes, that’s where we’re going today. We’re going to do a face in the crowd. Somebody nobody’s heard of. A face in the London crowd. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce George Payne. And I’ve put the spotlight on him because today, September 2nd, is the anniversary of his death. George Payne breathed his last on September 2nd, 1878. He died, unmarried, at his London home. 16 Queen Street in Mayfair. Those of you who were on our Mayfair Walk last Thursday, when Richard took you along Charles Street, if you’d looked down Queen Street there where it makes a T junction with Charles Street, you would have noticed lots of straw in front of 16 Queen Street. That straw would have told you that someone in that house was dying. Ok, I’m asking you to exercise your historical imagination. See the straw in your mind’s eye. It wasn’t there on August 29th, 2024 when our Mayfair walk passed by there. But it would have been there on August 29th, 1878. They’d put straw on the street in front of a house where someone was very ill to alert passersby – hawkers, etc. – to tone it down when they went by. And to deaden the noisy clip clop clip clop racket of the horses’ hooves. A seriously unwell person – perhaps in a lot of pain – it’s a mercy if they drift off, fall asleep – do what you can not to disturb them, let them sleep. These days – our times – we do most of our dying in hospitals. Back then, that straw on the street in front of a house, everybody would have understood that sombre visual. Would have known a life was coming to its close.
Anyway, yes, our face in the crowd, George Payne. In the words of his biographer, “Payne lived a useless life. But was honourable and without malice.”
And why do we know anything at all about him? Because he was a world-class gambler, that’s why. A breathtakingly unsuccessful gambler.
Let’s get him into focus.
George Payne was born in 1803 in Northamptonshire. Very wealthy family but star-crossed. When George Payne was seven years old his father was gunned down in a duel on Wimbledon Common. He, the father, had allegedly seduced the sister of the man he fought the duel with.
George Payne went to Eton and subsequently to Christ Church, Oxford, where he indulged his sporting tastes so avidly the college authorities expelled him. Bad influence and all that. When he turned 21 he came into his inheritance. And it was a fortune. The readies in the piggy bank was worth 41 million pounds in today’s money. The rent roll provided a nice little top-up of nearly two and a half million pounds a year in today’s money. And there were two other large fortunes inherited from relatives. And of course he gambled it all away. Including Sulby Hall, the country estate. Gambled it away at the card table and the race track. He had an unerring eye for third-rate horseflesh.
If you were placing a bet on the horse that would finish last the sure thing was to bet on George Payne’s nag. He owned and raced horses for 54 years and in that time his stable only won two races. Neither of them chart toppers. He’d regularly back as many as 20 horses in a race for a big handicap and still miss the winner.
So, bears repeating, Payne lived a useless life but was honourable and without malice. And to be sure he wasn’t without friends, especially from the racing world. Many of them – including the Prince of Wales, attended his funeral at Kensal Green Cemetery. What a mischief of wastrels that must have been. Ever at pains to lose his shirt, George Payne must have been the making of many of them so the prevailing sentiment must have been, “gosh, we’re on our own now. What’s going to happen to us?”
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.