Victoria embankment

One of my earliest memories of having, what you might call, a more adult conversation with my father was on a sunny late morning walking along the Victoria Embankment. It would have been the mid 60s and I don’t have a clue where we had been and I can’t even guess why we were walking along the north side of the river between Blackfriars and Westminster when we lived in Peckham but I clearly remember we were and that it was a warm, sunny, halcyon day.

There are some interesting, (well at least I think so), stories to tell based around this area not the least of which is that the place I was walking on that sunny morning so many years ago is a man made construction completed in 1870 to carry both the underground, and the sewers to
clean the river; however I don’t intend to go into that story as we could fill the magazine with it. Suffice to say that if you go into Embankment Gardens beside Villiers Street to can see where the riverside once was from the position of the river gate entrance of the Duke of Buckingham. In doing this 37 acres of new land was reclaimed from the River.

Oddly however there is a much older construction on the “new” riverside than Buckingham's Gate, in fact it is the oldest man-made construction in London. From further back in history, even than the woman for who it is named, Cleopatra’s Needle was originally built and stood in Egypt, around 1500BC. (If you remember Cleopatra was a consult to Julius Caesar who landed in Kent in a mere 55bc).

It was erected on the Victoria Embankment in 1878 following a long sea voyage and the loss of a crew which had been bringing it to London as a “gift” to the British people in recognition of Nelson’s victory over the French fleet, at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. It is made of granite and the obelisk is 68 feet high and 180 tons in weight.

A couple of odd facts about the pink-granite monolith that it stands on a pedestal, supposedly guarded by two sphinxes, I say supposedly ‘cos the Victorian designers got it wrong, in order to guard the Needle they should face out; instead they face in towards it. Under the Needle buried in the pedestal are two earthenware pots, containing various objects. This very early version of a time capsule holds a portrait of Queen Victoria, iron ropes and cables, a hydraulic jack, copies of an engineering magazine, and portraits of 12 of the most beautiful Englishwomen of the time!

Just as Cleopatra’s Needle forms a centrepiece between Waterloo and Hungerford Bridges, (where because of it’s presence the embankment has been given an Egyptian theme with the benches made with sphinxes and camels for arms), another monument also stands on the embankment forming the centrepiece between Hungerford and Westminster.

Completed in 1923 the Royal Air Force Memorial is a simple monument in Portland stone surmounted by a gilded eagle. The original intention was for the eagle to face inwards to the embankment but the design was altered at the last moment so the eagle faced across the river, symbolically to France. The position was not the first choice, discarding a proposal to join the Army and the Navy in building a memorial opposite Buckingham Palace, the Royal Air Force Memorial Fund had hoped to raise a Cross on the ground between Westminster Abbey and St Margaret’s Church; a hope that the Dean of Westminster was unable to approve because he preferred not to consider a memorial for the Royal Air Force alone. So offered a site at the head of the Whitehall Stairs, that’s where the memorial went.

Currently a new monument is being built, the Battle of Britain Monument which is being sited on an existing panelled granite structure 25 metres long. This structure was originally designed as a smoke outlet for underground trains when they were powered by steam engines. It has been filled up and blocked for many years.

A walkway will be cut obliquely through the middle of the structure, and bronze reliefs, depicting aspects of the Battle in the air and the back-up on the ground, will be placed along either side.

I feel this is quite appropriate as both the RAF Memorial and Cleopatra’s Needle were damaged by enemy bombs in the last war, which I remember my father showing me – along with the remains of a pavement artist’s work which had been abandoned there from the day before.

Whenever I walk down the embankment today, especially in the sun, I think of him – not much has changed there since that day. I only wish I knew why we were there – and where we’d been.

Laurie Smith

The Wandering Obelisk

Situated at the south end of Blackfriars Road, I first became familiar with St George’s Circus when I started work for the South Centre Area of Post Office Telecommunications, the General Manager’s Office of which was situated there in Erlang House. It was also at this time that I first saw the Obelisk standing in the grounds of the Imperial War Museum, not far away, where it had been moved from St George’s Circus in 1905 to make way for a clock tower. The clock tower too, however, had long vacated the circus by the time I was travelling through the junction, leaving a bland traffic island.

The Obelisk had been erected at St George’s Circus in 1771 following the construction of Blackfriars Bridge and approach road in the 1760s. The Blackfriars Bridge committee had ordered that, “an Obelisk should be placed in the middle of the circus at the road junction in the fields”.

The area, once known as St George’s Fields was naturally swampy ground and had been used mainly for pasture, and cloth dyeing and bleaching. This can be seen on old maps of the area, which show the “Tenter Grounds” as taking up huge areas around what is now Blackfriars Road. (Tenter grounds were where the tenters stood, frames upon which cloth was stretched and dried after treatment. Attached by means of Tenter Hooks – which we have all, proverbially, been on from time to time)

Some sources say that the Obelisk was put up in the Mayoralty of Brass Crosby to his honour, though I have found no original source which states this. The inscription on the obelisk only says who was King and Lord Mayor, which was certainly Crosby, at the time.

However it is interesting to relate Brass Crosby’s claims to fame, as prior to researching this article I, for one, was unaware of who he was, yet he was instrumental in improving our civil liberties.

Born in Stockton-on Tees in 1725 he qualified in law and came to London to practice. He was elected to the City Council in 1758 and then held the offices of Sheriff, Alderman and MP until, in 1770, he was elected Lord Mayor of London. As Chief Magistrate one of his first acts was to refuse the issuing of warrants for press gangs, and subsequently ordered constables to prevent the seizure of men.

His biggest battle however was with the House of Commons, when in 1771 he released a printer who was brought before him for daring to publish reports of Parliamentary proceedings. Crosby was subsequently ordered to appear before the House to explain his actions and was committed to the Tower of London. Following several public rallies in support of his stand however, Crosby was released six weeks later. A jubilant procession accompanied him from the Tower to the Mansion House. It is from this event that we got the phrase “Bold as Brass” to mean somebody who is forthright and stands up for themselves. No further attempts have ever been made to prevent the publication of Parliamentary debates.

Brass retired to Chelsfield in Kent where he lived until he death in 1793, today a Blue Plaque marks where he lived, though that is little more revealing than the inscription on our Obelisk.

Milestone or Memorial today the Obelisk stands again in St George's Circus, where it was returned in 1998 having been cleaned up and repaired. Disregarded by many on their way to work it is older than anything around it, and acts as a reminder of our history.

Laurie Smith

The Big Wheel

In writing this series I have up to now, had some connection or personal interest in the subject prior to deciding to write the article but with this one it was finding a picture that intrigued me. Though I have worked in and around Earls Court at various odd times in my career, my earliest visits were at the beginning in 1975 when I had to get off at Earls Court tube station and exit the Warwick Road end in order to walk up to Charles House, where the Post Office then had a training school.

As you leave the station the Earls Court exhibition centre opposite is quite a sight. As a working class south London lad this was my first sight of the famous exhibition centre. The land it occupies was once an awkward triangle of railway tracks, sidings and depots owned by the Earl of Zetland from who it gets its name. Opened in September 1937, the exhibition centre cost £1.5m and was designed by Chicago architect, C Howard. At the time it was the largest reinforced concrete structure in existence.

Exhibitions on the site predate the building however and if I had been there at the turn of the last century I probably would have been even more impressed with the view of the area, as I would have seen the “Gigantic wheel”. Originally built as part of the Empire of India Exhibition in 1895, it stayed there 11 years.

Looking reminiscent of the “London Eye” on the South Bank, the “Gigantic wheel” was also an observation wheel, one of a series of such wheels, the first of which was the “Ferris wheel” at the Chicago Exhibition of 1893. It was this wheel which gives all such “big wheels” their America name and provides another, earlier, connection for the Earls Court site to Chicago. The name came from its designer, George Washington Gale Ferris, whose idea was for an “observation wheel 250 feet high”.

Construction work began on the larger Earls Court wheel in March 1894 when massive concrete footings were put in and it was opened to passengers in July 1895. It had a diameter of 300ft, (larger than the original American one), weighed 1,100 tons and completed one revolution in about 25 minutes. Originally there were to be ‘recreation towers’ on either side with lifts carrying visitors up to the axle, through which it would have been possible to walk, but this was not carried through. The wheel was rotated by means of two 50HP steam engines. Each of the forty cars could accommodate forty passengers so that up to 1,600 could ride the on the wheel together, when it was said that from the top you could see Windsor Castle.

In 1896 another wheel was opened in Blackpool. That big wheel was 214 feet high, and rotated every 15 minutes compared with the 25 minutes of its London rival. It was not tremendously successful however, perhaps because the tower at 519 feet, over twice the wheel’s height, overshadowed it, and it closed relatively quickly.

The final one was built in Vienna; that wheel lasted ‘til it was bombed during the war but it was rebuilt after the war and still exists today. You may remember it in films like “The Third Man” and “The Living Daylights”

Our Earls Court “Gigantic Wheel” suffered an embarrassment in May 1896 when it got stuck for four and half hours. The passengers were handsomely compensated for their ordeal though and this increased its popularity for a while as people hoped they could get a ride and make a profit into the bargain. It was reported that the following day there was a queue of approximately 11,000 people all hoping to get stuck in the wheel and claim their five pounds compensation! Despite this the Earls Court “Gigantic wheel” survived until 1906 when it was demolished because it was no longer profitable. In its life it had conveyed two and a half million passengers.

It was said that it was “a pity that all the ability and cost expended in its construction should not have been devoted to some more useful end than carrying coach loads of fools round a vertical circle’’.

However in spite of such views, (and if you pardon the pun), if it had been in a more central location then, judging by the London Eye, perhaps it would still have been here today. I’ll never look at the London Eye or Earls court in quite the same way again.

Laurie Smith