In and out The Eagle

Laurie thanks for reviving the memory – sticky fingers. I am referring of course to cakes and your last article and the Lyons Tea House at the Angel. Lots of sticky cakes, when I was a child my father was chef at Lyons at the Angel, and Gran lived round the corner but that’s incidental.


The Angel stands at one end of the City Road the other end is at Old Street, just round the corner from where I did my early training courses with Post Office Telecoms at Paul Street, a massive, then modern institution clad in glass and steel. One oddity I remember was that erected in the basement were short telegraph poles for the “Over Head” courses. Opposite the training school was another massive building, this time Victorian, from the architectural school of dark satanic mills, occupied by the firm of Blades and Blades East, a printing firm where Grandfather once worked, but that’s incidental. All have now gone and are just a memory.


The area is rich in history much beyond memory, in the 17th century the Fortune Theatre and the Red Lion Theatre provided theatre goers with entertainment outside the control of the City of London. The 1680s saw the new fad of drinking spring water. One of the springs was at Thomas Sadler’s music house. My mother and her sisters remember playing on this derelict site as children. They had no knowledge of the history of the their play ground until the well was rediscovered during redevelopment of the site, which is now occupied by Sadler’s Wells Theatre.


For the less discerning there was Stokes’s Amphitheatre offering bull and bear baiting, sword fighting and women’s wrestling. The New Red Lion offered cock-fighting. Slowly, however, the authorities exerted control and the area began to become gentrified, as can still be seen in the existing Georgian streets and squares, though the grim grip of London was not far away. In the 1740s the area had London’s first smallpox hospital before it moved further out of London, in 1794, to sunnier climes; the current site of King’s Cross Station. Then came industrialization, the Regents Canal and the Railways, followed by poor housing, slums and growing poverty. The local vestries, predecessors to the Borough Councils, were reluctant to use their enforcement powers against the slums, as often they were the landlords. Conditions were chronic and required political solutions – the formation of the borough councils and the London County Council.


The Regent’s Canal is still a notable feature of the area although much quieter than it once was. Once one of its great basins cut across the City Road, no doubt full of water borne traffic. Which recalls another memory associated with the City Road – the children’s poem:


Up and down the City Road,
in and out the Eagle.
That’s the way the money goes,
pop goes the weasel.


I can certainly remember a pub in the City Road named the Eagle, perhaps it’s still there, perhaps it’s the one referred to in the poem. I don’t know for sure, but the story is that, at one time the Landlord of the Eagle ran a pawn brokers business on the side. Those short of money would go to the pub to pawn their possessions and no doubt drink the proceeds. The weasel was an iron. Well that’s the way the story goes, according to my memory. Is it memory, an oral tradition handed down through generations as a cautionary tale against exacerbating poverty, or is it history – what do you reckon?

John Clark

Angel of the North?

When I was a child in the mid 60s I remember my two elder brothers putting their money together and buying a box of Monopoly. (You can imagine the arguments that caused!) Of course like most annoying younger brothers I wanted to play, and eventually through constant nagging, (I haven’t changed some would say) I got to play at the game; it was my first introduction to many of the famous streets of London.

As I got older I visited most of those streets, as they are fairly central to the capital and I’ve worked there for over 29 years. It was only recently however, that I ended up walking around the Angel, when my job moved to the Angel. So why is the area called the Angel?

Being interested in local history, (as some of you may have guessed from this series), I set out to find the answer, and in the process found that once again an area that has political, industrial and literal connections. First, however let us start where I did; Monopoly arrived in the UK in 1935 when Parker Brothers sent a copy to local games maker Waddingtons. Victor Watson, the head of the company, immediately liked the game but thought, to be a success here, that they would have to replace the American streets and dollars with British roads, stations and pounds. So he sent his secretary, Marjory Phillips, out to collect a list of names. After scouting London for suitable sites the couple met at the Angel’s Lyon Tea House, at One Islington High Street, to discuss the selection.

That tea house is commemorated on the board as The Angel Islington. The tea house was originally an inn near a tollgate on the Great North Road, the original building was rebuilt in 1819 and became a coaching inn; the first staging post outside the City of London. It became a local landmark and was mentioned by Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist: “The coach rattled away and, turning when it reached the Angel at Islington, stopped at length before a neat house in Pentonville”.

A new building, in pale terracotta stone with a corner cupola, replaced the old building in 1899 and from 1921 to 1959 the building was a Lyons Corner House. It is now a Co-operative Bank and stands opposite the Angel Centre. It is said Thomas Paine stayed at the inn after he returned from France in 1790, and it is believed that he wrote passages of the Rights of Man whilst staying there.

More recent famous residents of the Angel area include comic author Douglas Adams, of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame, and Joe Orton, who was murdered by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, just around the corner in Noel Road. Of course the area is mostly harmless, (“In joke” Ed), but does have a couple of other claims to fame for transport enthusiasts.

The modern but otherwise unremarkable, single line tube station opposite the site of the coaching inn does have the longest escalators of any station on the Underground, (with a vertical rise of 27.4m [90ft] and a length of 60m [197ft]).

Another is the longest canal tunnel in London which passes unnoticed beneath. It was from walking along Islington High St and spotting the Blue Insets in the pavement which today mark the tow path, that I found this out. Islington Tunnel is the major engineering work of the Regent’s Canal and is 886 meters, or 960 yards long; it opened in 1820. Dead straight, it certainly deserves its own story.

So once again those simple questions can lead to interesting trivia and give us a feeling of what parts of London were once like. Now metropolitan, perhaps once a country area just outside London where you could break your journey in a old inn, The Angel, (the original "Angel of the North"? - North of London of course) before heading into the City on business.

Laurie Smith

Kennington - common and the church.

There is a famous photo of the Grand Surrey Canal with a vessel in the foreground and St George’s church in the background. I mentioned it in my previous post on the Grand Surrey Canal. Now St George’s is one of a group of churches know collectively as the Waterloo churches. After Waterloo, an Act of Parliament was passed in 1818 to raise a million pounds as a national thank-offering for peace and as a memorial to the soldiers who had fallen. Seven of these churches were built in south London and all but one of them is in our branch area.

St George’s we have seen is in Camberwell. St Matthew with St Jude is the one in the middle of the one way system in Brixton. St John the Evangelist stands at the end of Waterloo Road opposite the IMAX at the bottom of Waterloo Bridge. St Luke’s (the only one not in our branch area) is at the bottom of Knight’s Hill opposite West Norwood cemetery. St Peter’s is just off Walworth Road and St James is just off Jamaica Road in Rotherhithe. Now I’m sure that they all have their own stories to tell, but it is the seventh one, St Mark’s, which stands opposite the Oval tube station in Kennington that I am writing about here. This is the one which I saw most often when, for ten years, I got on and off a bus at the Oval on my journey to and from work at Vauxhall Exchange from the late 70s to late 80s.

St Marks Church stands at the junction of two old Roman Roads, (today’s Brixton and Clapham Roads), and was along with nearby Kennington Park, part of the old Kennington common.

The Common was a favourite place for chariot racing and cricket, and for six months of the year cattle and sheep grazed the common. But it had a more sinister use too; until 1799 this was also the site of a public gallows where, in 1746, twenty-one members of the Jacobite Rebellion, captured at Culloden Moor, were executed.

Another use of the common was as a gathering place for preachers; in 1739 John Wesley preached on the common to an estimated 50,000 people. Fifty years later, an early black preacher, the radical Robert Wedderburn, (born to a West African slave woman in Jamaica), spoke here too. So it is no surprise that when looking for sites for the Waterloo churches, Kennington common was chosen. (A young pawnbroker’s assistant on Kennington Park Road, William Booth, continued this tradition of preaching on Kennington Common in the 1840’s. He and his wife Catherine went on to found the Salvation Army.)

St. Mark’s took two years to build and was opened by the Archbishop of Canterbury on June 30th 1824, the cost of £15,274 was paid as part of the million pounds raised for the purpose.

The great Reform Act of 1831 brought direct representation to Parliament for the first time with Lambeth becoming a parliamentary constituency on 7 June 1832.

Now voting in elections took place on Kennington Common, though only property owning men could vote. The country was seething with political agitation. The Chartists (‘Peace and Order is our Motto’) described themselves as ‘pining in misery, want and starvation’. They held a mass demonstration on the Common on 10 April 1848. Asking for fair wages and other human rights, the heavily policed event passed off peacefully. However, the Establishment, including the then vicar of St Marks, was frightened. The common was enclosed and cricket moved to the Oval.

The new park was run by the ‘Royals’, (the Prince of Wales having given £200 of the £1000 needed for fencing), until it was passed into the hands of what became the London County Council in 1887.

Another person with a connection to the area is Field Marshall Sir Bernard Montgomery of Alamein, his father, historian H.H. Montgomery, was vicar here when Bernard was born in 1887.

The church was restored in 1931 at which time the glass dome was installed. Bombed in September 1940, it was scheduled for demolition. However, Wallace Bird, a man of vision and faith, became vicar in 1947. The building was partially re-opened in 1949 and fully opened on 12th March 1960.

Laurie Smith

Connections ...

This was written, as were the rest of these early posts, for a Union Branch Magazine I edited. This was written by John Clark - my first guest contributor.

When walking round the Branch area the past is often very evident, famous buildings abound, but not all the history is quite so obvious, and there can be some odd, but interesting, obscure historical links. Neither should all the information you find be, necessarily, interpreted in terms of today’s values, or even language.

The Lion that now stands at the approach to Westminster Bridge has previously featured in an article in Crosstalk; originally it graced the Red Lion Brewery situated on Belvedere Road not far from Waterloo station. In Victorian times Lambeth was not a fashionable area.

The great landowners south of the Thames, the Duchy of Cornwall and the Archbishop of Canterbury left Lambeth to industrialisation, questionable entertainment and slums. The area often featured in stories from the likes of Dickens. But real people lived real lives there, one such was George Merrit. George lived at 24 Cornwall Cottages on Cornwall Road with his pregnant wife Eliza and their six children.

One Saturday morning in February 1872, shortly after two o’clock in the morning, he was on his way to work as a stoker at the Red Lion Brewery when, as he approached Belvedere Road, a number of gun shots rang out. On arrival at St Thomas’ Hospital it was found that two large-calibre bullets had severed George’s carotid artery and severed his spine, he did not survive in spite of the quick response of the police. On hearing the shots the beat officer, PC Henry Tarrent blew his whistle to summon help, two other constables heard the summons and rushed to assist Tarrent – the sort of response that one could hope for, but not expect, even in today’s age of radio.

This was an unusual crime even in the violent Victorian society, for guns had not become fashionable amongst criminals. Not until after the First World War when millions of soldiers returned to civilian life trained in their use did the prevalence of guns in crime begin to increase.

George’s murderer it turned out was mentally unstable. At his trial he was found “Not Guilty” due to his insanity, detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure and committed to an asylum.

The most famous asylum in London if not the country was St Mary’s of Bethlem founded in 1247. In 1815, after a number of moves Bethlam Hospital relocated from London Wall to the building that now houses the Imperial War Museum in what is now known as Geraldine Mary Hamsworth Gardens, though formally known as Bedlam Park. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines bedlam as a scene of uproar and confusion. It is often said Bedlam is a corruption of the name Bethlam, personally I think it has more to do with the building being built by James Bedlam between 1812 and 1821. (Sydney Smirke added the dome later in 1846.) By 1863 the building was no longer suitable and the criminally insane patients were transferred to Broadmoor. This is where the murderer of George Merrit was incarcerated. Bethlem now forms part of a NHS trust based near Croydon with a unit on Denmark Hill. Broadmoor is now considered to be a hospital rather than an asylum.

Other local examples of asylums in a traditional sense of the word from a time before the welfare state are: an asylum for the blind, which was situated just along from the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth Road. Today a brick wall surrounds much of the site, behind which is a large excavated pit, containing the sidings for the Bakerloo Line.

Towards the New Cross end of Old Kent Road is Asylum Road named for a large complex, a building built in the classical style.
This building used to house the Licensed Victualler’s Asylum. I have often wondered what the criteria were for admittance.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines asylum as sanctuary; protection – any of various kinds of institution offering shelter a place of refuge to distressed or destitute individuals. But language is not fixed and changes over time. When Shakespeare wrote for the theatres on the Southbank dictionaries had not been invented and he even spelt his name in various ways during his life. The tabloid press today often distorts the meaning of language, often not in a pleasant, useful way but to make political mischief. They have coupled the word asylum with the idea of people seeking economic advantage, and to perpetrate benefit fraud, rather than those seeking refuge from persecution.

What was to become the OED was first published in 1928. It took more than seventy years to complete and consisted of twelve large volumes. (The second edition was published in twenty volumes!)

The compilation of the OED was thorough and meticulous; volunteers were sought, sent reading lists and books. The volunteers were asked to read through the selected works compiling on slips of paper quotations that defined key words, words both new and obsolete, from living authors and from those long since dead.

One volunteer that contributed more than any other, both in terms of quantity and quality, to the dictionary over many years was Dr W C Minor of Crowthorne, Berkshire. The strange thing was that he never attended any meeting or dinner of the organisers of the dictionary, and depending upon which account you believe, Dr Minor’s circumstances were not known to them for some years.

It was not until the Editor of the dictionary arranged to call on Dr Minor after twenty years of correspondence that Dr Minor’s circumstances became more widely known. Crowthorne is the village where Broadmoor Asylum is located and Dr Minor was a long term resident there, a resident because of his murder of George Merrit.

Dr Minor was a surgeon who had served as such on the Northern side in the American Civil War. One account suggests that it was his experiences in that war that triggered his mental illness though another account suggests that his illness arose from the effects of a very promiscuous life style. Today he would probably described as schizophrenic and one of the few who are violent.

The OED, the American Civil War, a forgotten murder in our Branch’s area, a Minor connection? Absolutely, but an interesting one.

John Clarke

The LNC

This was written, as were the rest of these early posts, for Union Branch Magazine I edited. This was written by John Clark - my first guest contributor.

Not far from our Branch Office, at 121 Westminster Bridge Road stands an odd looking, narrow four story building, at ground level is a wide arch with a driveway, the exit was some streets away off Hercules Road. For many that passed through that portal it would be the start of their last journey. For this was the entrance to the station and terminus of the London Necropolis Company (LNC).

The early 19th century saw a massive increase in the population of London, and a corresponding increase number of deaths and burials. Normal internment took place in parish churchyards from which the church received an income, a monopoly position that the church wished to protect. This was at time before the construction of the great commercial and municipal cemeteries.

The churchyards had reached bursting point and had become unsanitary. With the cholera epidemic of 1848-9 resulting in 14,601 deaths something had to be done. A solution was to build a cemetery far beyond the reach of any possible expansion of London and convey the bodies there by train.

By an Act of Parliament of 1852 The London Necropolis and Mausoleum Company was incorporated, later to become LNC.

The cemetery is at Brookwood near Working and was intended to be of such a size as to meet London’s burial requirements for the foreseeable future. There were objections, not least the conveyance of bodies from different social classes on the same train.

The building and associated station of the LNC in Westminster Bridge Road opened on the 11th February 1902, it being the company’s second premises, the first being lost in the growth and redevelopment of Waterloo Station. Initially the LNC used outside firms of undertakers to assist in their business operations, but gradually the LNC took over these functions. The Westminster Bridge Road building contained its own mortuaries, workshops and waiting rooms; the coffins were taken to the platforms by lifts.

The LNC lines joined the main line of the London & South Western Railway (L&SWR) just out side the LNC station. In life both class and religion divided society, and so it was in death. There were two platforms, one for first class and the other for third class mourners and coffins; a glass screen separated the two tracks creating a further separation in deference to finer sensibilities of the first class travellers. The capacity of the hearse vans varied, up to twenty four coffins per van with internal segregation for class and denomination. Off the first class platform was highly decorated chapel for the more ostentatious funerals. The tickets were issued in first, second and third class for passengers and coffins (passenger tickets were return, coffins one way), until 1918 when the rail companies abolished 2nd class. Still today if you are travelling by rail if you don’t travel first class you’re travelling third. However post 1918 because of contractual arrangements coffins could still travel second class. Rates varied, not least if there was a contract from a local Parish workhouse or hospital for multiple funerals of paupers, eight being the minimum number for discount.

The L&SWR supplied the locomotives and so as not to offend the general rail travellers, the carriage stock was on permanent loan from them. The hearse vans were built to the specifications of the LNC and owned by them. Apart from specials there were normally two trains per day.

At Brookwood a branch line led into the cemetery for funeral trains. There were two stations, South Station was for Anglican funerals and North Station for nonconformists (the south side of a churchyard being considered more preferable for a number of historical reasons). There was a third station just outside the cemetery on the main line for day to day visitors. In the early days of the LNC there were inadequate marshalling facilities for locomotive entry to the cemetery branch line, therefore the funeral train was uncoupled from the locomotive and hauled into the cemetery by a team of black horses.

This railway funeral service continued until the night of 16th of April 1941, when during an air raid much of the LNC facilities were destroyed by enemy bombers. Reconstruction was not considered viable, not least because of declining demand for such services, in part due to the growing public acceptance of cremations.

John Clark