Lost London (17 page)

Borough

T
HIS PRISON STOOD ON THE SOUTH
-
WEST CORNER
of Blackman Street and Borough High Street from the time of Richard
II
(1377–99).

Originally used to incarcerate those convicted at the travelling court of King’s Bench, it became the debtors’ prison for South London in the 1600s. In 1633 it held
nearly 400 inmates with a collective debt of £900,000. Known for its cruelty, extortion, promiscuity and drunkenness, it was closed and moved to new premises in 1758.

The new prison, built in St George’s Fields, Southwark, had 224 rooms (including eight state apartments) and a high surrounding wall. The regime there was considerably more
relaxed, if one had the money to afford it. There were two pubs, a coffee house, thirty gin shops (selling 120 gallons of the spirit a week) and stalls offering meat, vegetables and
pretty much anything else that might be wanted. It was described in 1828 as ‘the most desirable place of incarceration in London’. Author Tobias Smollett wrote that the prison:

...
appears like a neat little regular town, consisting of one street, surrounded by a very high wall, including an open piece of ground, which may be termed a garden, where the prisoners
take the air, and amuse themselves with a variety of diversions. There are butchers’ stands, chandlers’ shops, a surgery, a tap-house, well frequented, and a public kitchen, in which
provisions are dressed for all the prisoners gratis, at the expense of the publican.

A freedom of sorts could be purchased on a daily or yearly basis, on a promise to the governor not to travel outside of ‘the rules’ – a-three-mile area surrounding the prison.
Income from ‘the rules’ in the early part of the 19th century was earning the governor £2823 each year, to say nothing of his slice of the beer sales – almost another
£1000.

One of the prison’s darkest days occurred when the radical MP John Wilkes was imprisoned here after his trial for seditious libel on 10 May 1768. His supporters massed at the gates, crying
‘no justice, no peace’. Troops opened fire, killing seven and wounding fifteen in what became known as the St George’s Fields Massacre. Imprisonment for debt was abolished in 1869
and afterwards King’s Bench became a military prison until it was demolished in 1880.

Blackfriars

A 14
TH
-
CENTURY HOUSE GIFTED TO
E
DWARD III
(1327–77) and used to hold all the ceremonial clothes of
the king, which had previously been stored at the Tower of London.

In addition, the Wardrobe contained all the clothes used by the royal family for weddings and coronations, along with state robes for ambassadors, the Prince of Wales, the Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland, the King’s Ministers and Knights of the Garter. It was a veritable museum of royal fashions over a 400-year period.

The building was extended and eventually became so large that it was restricting the income of St Andrew’s-by-the-Wardrobe, so 40 shillings (£2.00) was granted to the rector of St
Andrew’s to cover the loss of tithes. When the house was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, a new location for the royal wardrobe was found on Buckingham Street, although by the mid-17th
century its significance had declined. James
I
had allowed the Earl of Dunbar to sell some of the contents and he ‘sold, re-sold, and re-re-re-sold ... gaining vast
estates thereby’.

The last ‘Master of the Great Wardrobe’ was appointed in 1775, but by then the role was merely a sinecure. Wardrobe Place carries the memory of the building into the modern era.

Holborn

O
PENING IN
1882
ON
G
REAT
Q
UEEN
S
TREET AS
the Novelty
Theatre, this institution changed hands and names with disconcerting frequency.

In March 1883 it was known as the Folies-Dramatiques; by 1888 it was the Jodrell; in 1889 it was once again the Novelty; before being renamed as the New Queen’s Theatre
in 1890; the Eden Palace of Theatre in 1894; the Great Queen Street Theatre in 1907 and, later the same year, as the Kingsway.

Intended as a comedy venue, it famously staged the first English production of Ibsen’s (largely laugh-free)
A Doll’s House.
A notorious event occurred in August 1896 during a
performance of Frank Harvey’s
Sins of the Night
, when Wilfred Moritz Franks accidentally stabbed Temple E. Crozier while on stage, with fatal consequences.

Having garnered something of a reputation for being unlucky, the theatre was badly damaged on the night of 10/11 May 1941, the very last night of the Blitz. It never reopened and was demolished
in 1956. Much of the site is now occupied by an office block and an extension of Newton Street.

Leicester Square

B
UILT IN THE
1630
S IN WHAT WAS THEN KNOWN
as Leicester Fields, this was for a time one of the biggest houses in London.

Grand though relatively plain on the outside, it had a magnificent interior and was expensively furnished at the behest of Robert Sidney, second Earl of Leicester.

The diarists Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn were both entertained here, Pepys with the French Ambassador, and Evelyn by Anne, Countess of Sunderland. One of the entertainments that night was
Richardson ‘the famous fire-eater, who before us devour’d brimstone on glowing coals, chewing and swallowing them downe’.

After George, Prince of Wales, fought with his father, George
I
, at the baptismal font during the christening of his son, Frederick, the heir to the
throne moved into Leicester House and ran a second court from here for ten years. Indeed, he was proclaimed king in front of its gate when the old king died. Later, the foppish and foolish
Frederick would die in the house after being struck in the throat with a cricket ball in 1751.

The property subsequently came into the possession of the naturalist Aston Lever, who housed his vast accumulation of fossils within, and it opened to the public for fourteen years until it was
moved to Blackfriars Rotunda in 1788. A keen archer, Lever formed the Toxophilite Society here in 1780.

Earl’s Court

O
N THE SITE OF WHAT IS NOW THE
E
ARL’S
C
OURT
Exhibition Centre and a London Underground maintenance depot,
there once stood a 120,000-capacity sports stadium.

Opened in 1867, it was home to the Amateur Athletic Club, which was founded to organize the national athletics championships. A number of world records were set here, including
a 4-min. 12¾-sec. mile by Goodall George in August 1886 (a mark that stood for twenty-eight years) and a high jump of 1.89 metres by Marshall Brooks in 1876.

The second ever FA Cup Final was held at the stadium in 1873, with Wanderers beating Oxford University 2-0. The event, though, was badly attended, attracting a crowd of only
3,000 as it clashed with the Oxford vs Cambridge boat race. The Middlesex County Cricket Club was also based at the ground until 1872 but left because of the poor quality of the turf. Other sports
hosted here included wrestling, cycling and boxing, including the very first amateur bouts with prizes presented by John Douglas, the Marquis of Queensberry (author of the sport’s defining
Queensberry Rules and bête noire of Oscar Wilde).

Though famed for its support of amateur sports, the stadium came to a sad end as a result of professionalism. A sprint race between Harry Gent and Harry Hutchens in 1887 had attracted
large-scale betting but when the runners’ promoters failed to agree on who should lose, the race was cancelled and the crowd rioted, burning down the grandstand. Falling into ruins, it was
closed in 1888.

This was the first modern theatre in England with both a proscenium arch and moveable scenery. Samuel Pepys recounted a visit on 20 November 1660: