The mighty St. Paul’s Cathedral stood tall over the City of London. Yet at the start of the 17^th century its fabric was in poor condition so major work began that significantly changed its appearance. Before the transformation was complete it was interrupted by the maelstrom of national religious and political events.

In the early 17^th century British Protestants were increasingly divided between those who followed the Anglican Church and Dissenters of various denominations. At St. Paul’s Cathedral there had been since the late 16^th century a tendency towards ‘ceremonialism’, which supporters believed to be “reverence” and critics to be “idolatrous” and “popish”. During the reign of King James the move to ceremonialism was confirmed with the appointment of John Overall, one of its supporters and an anti-Calvinist, as dean.

In January 1606 eight of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, were hanged, drawn and quartered in the churchyard at St. Paul’s. The event was popular with London’s anti-Catholic majority and stands were erected for those willing to pay for a better view. In May of that year the same fate befell England’s leading Jesuit priest, Father Henry Garnet. The assembled crowd were more sympathetic in his case and pulled at his legs while he was hanging so that he died quickly, ensuring that he would not be drawn and quartered while still alive.

The old medieval cathedral was in a poor state by the 17^th century. The building had long been used as a place to meet and shelter and had degenerated into as much of a market as a place of worship, complete with traders, pick-pockets and others. In 1561 its spire had been destroyed by a lightning strike and the central tower patched up with a flat roof. A structural survey was undertaken in 1608 but no action taken. King James visited in 1620 to make his own inspection of “the Ruines” and a fund was created to carry out work. Some Portland stone was acquired but otherwise nothing further was undertaken. Instead, the Duke of Buckingham, a favourite of both James and Charles I, ‘borrowed’ the stone to create a watergate at his York House.

In 1628 the more determined William Laud was appointed Bishop of London. King Charles attended a sermon at Paul’s Cross in the cathedral churchyard in 1630 and was persuaded to form a commission to consider the problem of the deteriorating fabric of the building. It concluded that St. Paul’s was the “most eminent Church of our whole Dominions” and that action should be taken to preserve it. A new fund was created, to be managed by the City of London, and Laud was tenacious in persuading the King, wealthy individuals, and local parishioners from far and wide to contribute. That money gradually arrived from dioceses and parishes across the whole country, from many who had probably never seen the building, indicates that St. Paul’s was widely seen as an institution of national significance and not simply the mother church of London. In order to restore some of the cathedral’s prestige and not jeopardise contributions, efforts were made to limit the misuses of the building that had been occurring for many years. More than a £100,000, a considerable sum in those days, was raised in just five years.

The artist and architect Inigo Jones was appointed as the cathedral’s surveyor in February 1633 with a mission to improve the building. Jones was an early devotee of neo-classical architecture, who had designed the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace and the Queen’s House at Greenwich. His changes were radically different to the Romanesque style of the medieval building.

In April 1634 King Charles informed Archbishop Laud that he wished for a new west front to the cathedral, for which he would contribute £500 for the following 10 years. Jones designed a grand new front in the classical style, faced in Portland stone with black marble steps. The vast portico of this new entrance, with eight giant fluted Corinthian columns of 45 feet in height, was said to be the tallest north of the Alps. The exterior walls of the nave and transepts were remodelled in classical style with pilasters and bulls-eye windows, replacing the Norman buttresses.

In the first four years of restoration Edmund Kinsman and a team of 70 masons, carvers and masons worked on the south side of the choir. From April 1634 they were joined by two further teams, working at the east end and the north side of the choir. From 1635 a team spent up to four years of internal painting.

When St. Paul’s had been expanded in the 12^th century it overwhelmed part of the adjoining parish of St. Gregory, requiring the local parish church to be incorporated onto the side of the cathedral building. Jones’s plan was to sweep away the ancient St. Gregory’s. When demolition work started, however, the parishioners protested so vociferously that plans had to be changed and he rebuilt the small church.

Construction of Jones’s designs began in 1633 and continued for several years but ceased in September 1642 before it could be completed. The central tower, which was propped up with timbers, was due to be demolished and replaced but work halted, with scaffolding still in place, as additional funds dried up, workmen went unpaid, and national events interrupted the work.

Religious divisions in France and persecution of Protestants led to waves of foreign immigrants to London. The Huguenots who made England their new home introduced the word ‘refugee’ (from the French réfugié) into the English language.

From the second half of the 15^th century there was a growing movement across Europe that questioned the theology, wealth and power of the established Catholic church. In England, Henry VIII’s break from the Pope, the suppression of monasteries, and the formation of the Church of England, was more to do with his desire for divorce, but the country gradually drifted in the direction of Protestantism.

Calvinist Protestantism gradually spread across France, particularly amongst better-educated professionals, merchants and artisans, especially city-dwellers, and increasingly even noble families. They became known as Huguenots. King Francis I of France was initially tolerant towards them. From 1534, however, he turned against Protestants, brutally persecuting those who could not flee abroad. Individuals were burned at the stake and Huguenot villages destroyed. France descended into a period of sporadic civil wars between Catholics and Protestants lasting more than thirty years, known as the Eight Wars of Religion.

Some Huguenots left their country and arrived in London. In 1550 Edward VI granted a royal charter to establish a Protestant church at Austin Friars in the City for Dutch and French immigrants. (Now known as the Dutch Church, it is the world’s oldest Dutch Protestant church). That same year the chapel of the former St. Anthony’s Hospital in Threadneedle Street was licenced for services and it became the primary place of worship in London for Huguenot immigrants. (In 1841 the building was demolished to make way for the Royal Exchange and the church eventually re-sited in Soho Square where the French Protestant Church remains today). As the number of French Protestants increased, a subsidiary congregation was established to the west of the City on the Strand at the Savoy.

A significant event during the civil wars was the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in August 1572 when Protestant leaders in Paris were brutally murdered, triggering further massacres across the country. News of the events reached England and had a profound effect on the sympathies of the English people. Huguenots were thereafter welcomed to settle in this country. Importantly, Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, William Cecil, was a great supporter, knowing their reputation for hard work. Many of the early refugees settled in Canterbury, hoping one day return to France, and a local weaving industry thrived there. When it later became clear there was no option to return, many left for London. By the mid-1630s there were Huguenot workshops in Southwark and Westminster employing several hundred people.

The early 17^th century was a period of relative calm in France under the rule of Henri IV. In April 1598 he passed a series of laws known as the Edict of Nantes in which Huguenots were guaranteed a great deal of freedom to practice their form of religion. Persecution of Protestants resumed during the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV, however. Huguenots were excluded from public office and various trades, and forbidden from practicing law or medicine, or from leaving the country. Many of their places of worship were suppressed, Bibles and record books destroyed, and schools closed. From around 1681 French soldiers, or ‘dragoons’, were forcibly billeted within Huguenot homes, terrorising Protestant families. Huguenots began to flee in large numbers as dragoons took over their homes, secretly and illegally leaving France. It was a dangerous thing to attempt. They escaped across borders to the nearest country, whether that was the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland or Italy. Those on the west side of France mostly escaped by sea, via the ports of La Rochelle, Bordeaux or Nantes to Falmouth, Dover, Southampton or the Channel Islands. Some even made it onward as far as the English colonies in America. Those crossing the Channel did so in dangerous conditions, often in small rowing boats to avoid French naval frigates, or hidden in barrels on ships.

In 1681 King Charles II of England, petitioned by the congregation of the French church on the Strand, formally offered Huguenots his royal protection. Describing them in a document that was read out in churches around the country as “distressed strangers”, he ordered a national relief fund be set up. One Huguenot who arrived during that time was the young Elizabeth St. Michel who in 1655 married Samuel Pepys, and Pepys regularly attended the Threadneedle Street church. Henry Compton, Bishop of London was a great supporter of the Huguenots and helped in raising aid for arriving refugees. In April 1686 a public collection was sanctioned to help relieve newly arrived silk-weavers who had settled at Spitalfields. Annual royal grants were provided to Huguenots from 1686 through to the reign of George III.

The Huguenot church at Threadneedle Street, which had been destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 but rebuilt, became too small for the large congregation. James II was a Catholic and less sympathetic to this influx of new Protestants, but nevertheless in 1687 granted a charter for the building of a new French church at Spitalfields, between Black Eagle Street and Grey Eagle Street.

In October 1685 Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, formally putting into law much of the persecution that was already taking place. Hundreds of Protestant men who remained in France were put into slavery as rowers aboard galley ships, a practice that continued well into the 18^th century. Three quarters died within three years of sentencing. Women were incarcerated, in some cases for life. The remaining Protestant places of worship around the country were destroyed. Charles II wrote to his cousin Louis offering asylum to French Protestants. Fifty thousand left for England. By the end of the century Huguenots possibly formed five percent of the population of this country.

Huguenots, like their 17^th century contemporaries the Quakers, were industrious people. These puritanical Calvinists believed that wealth, created by honest work, was godly. The Huguenots were on the whole mostly skilled artisans, craftsmen, farmers, and professional people. Those who came to England included doctors, schoolmasters, merchants, mariners, shipwrights, and even some aristocrats. They were generally welcomed by many wherever they settled and there was greater tolerance towards them than the more socially-extreme Quakers. Persecuted for generations in their former homeland, they formed close-knit communities. Some joined the forces of William of Orange and were part of the army that accompanied him during the Glorious Revolution that ousted James II from the English throne in 1688. Several highly-skilled gun-makers also settled in London.

The strangers were, however, not welcomed by everyone. Some London citizens blamed them for an outbreak of plague in 1593 and attacked their homes. In the 1680s English weavers and metal-workers in London, who had to compete with the highly-skilled newcomers, threatened violence against French immigrants. Charles II ordered troops to be stationed in nearby locations as a deterrent.

Many products that had previously been imported from France were from then manufactured in London or elsewhere in England. The departure of Huguenots from France led to economic hardship there whereas in England their hard work and inventiveness became one of the pillars of the industrial revolution of the 18^th century. As an example of France’s loss, glass-making was revolutionised in England by the Huguenots but died off as an industry in France. Louis had demanded that all gold plate be handed over to finance his wars in Holland, forcing many goldsmiths to leave France. There had been a major Huguenot silk weaving industry that decamped to London, wiping out much of the French cloth industry. Other Huguenots were clock-makers and silversmiths. One weaver named Mongeorge brought with him from Lyon the secret of making silk lustring, then very fashionable, and the product became known as English taffeta. An Act of Parliament thereafter banned its importation on the grounds that the English-produced product was of such high quality.

An estimated 25,000 Huguenots arrived between 1685 and 1700, many in need of work and shelter. About one third of those arriving in England settled in areas around London but outside of the jurisdiction of the City and the Livery Companies. The largest concentration was at Spitalfields and Bethnal Green to the north-east of the City.

During the Middle Ages many wealthy citizens of London provided endowments to create the numerous religious institutions in and around London. On the eastern side of London, both within and outside of the city wall, large monasteries and convents were established. Although long gone, their locations are still remembered in names such as Spitalfields, the St. Katharine Docks, and several street names.

In the early 3^rd century, about 150 years after the founding of Londinium, the Romans built a defensive wall around the city. Outside of it they left a strip of land known as the ‘pomerium’ on which, for defensive purposes, building was forbidden. In Saxon times thirteen acres of this area east of the wall, down to the Thames, was granted to a guild of knights known as the Cnihtengild, thirteen in number according to the Tudor historian John Stowe, and they used it for jousting. Little is known of them but they may have been a military and religious society formed during the reign of Edgar the Peaceable. The Cnihtengild erected their own church outside of Aldgate, dedicated to St. Botolph, the Anglo-Saxon patron saint of wayfairers.

In the early 7^th century King Ethelbert of Kent endowed Mellitus, the Bishop of London, with a large amount of land to the east of the city, forming the extensive manor of Stepney. The former pomerium remained, separating the city from Stepney. It became known by the Saxon name of the Portsoken, meaning ‘Liberty without the Gate’, with Hog Lane, later named Petticoat Lane and then Middlesex Street, forming its border with Stepney.

The Cnihtengild most probably had responsibility for defence of the City from attack from the east and thus William of Normandy’s conquest in 1066 made them redundant in that regard, although their rights were re-confirmed in a charter from King William II, son of the Conqueror. Following the building of the Tower of London in the latter decades of the 11^th century the original defensive need for the Portsoken also became obsolete. It thereafter continued as a suburb immediately outside of the City where several religious foundations were located.

Dunstan, Bishop of London during the reign of King Edgar, and later Archbishop of Canterbury, founded several Benedictine monasteries, including Westminster Abbey and (possibly) the Convent of Bromley-by-Bow. In the following centuries there was a reaction against Benedictine rule in which monks and nuns took a vow of poverty, and orders of canons were established in their place. Followers of St. Augustine were known as ‘Canons Regular’ or ‘Austin Canons’. The first house of Austin Canons to be established in England was the Priory of Holy Trinity in 1109, with the encouragement of Queen Matilda, wife of Henry I. It was situated on a formerly empty plot of land just inside the City wall, beside Aldgate, and became the most splendid of London’s religious houses.

The Augustinian Order was named after the early Phoenician Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo, who died in 430 and was canonised in 1298. Canons and nuns of the order lived a semi-monastic life, dedicated to pastoral care of the communities in which they lived. They also had a high regard for the spiritual benefits of beauty in architecture, painting and music.

In 1125 the Cnihtengild’s former manorial rights of the Portsoken were transferred to Holy Trinity, most probably under pressure from Henry I:

Henrie, king of England, to Richard Bishop of London, to the shireffes and provost, and to all his barons and faithfull people, French and English, of London and Middlesex, greeting: Know ye mee to have graunted and confirmed to the church and canons of the Holy Trinitie of London, the soke of the English Knighten Guilde, and the land which pertaineth thereunto, and the church of St. Buttolph, as the men of the same guilde have given and granted unto them…

The canons of Holy Trinity continued to appoint a vicar or curate at St. Botolph’s until the 16^th century.

The Portsoken became a ward of the City of London, outside of the wall but “within the liberties of the City”. Each prior of Holy Trinity was an unelected alderman representing Portsoken ward, which continued until the priory was dissolved in the 16^th century. Thereafter Portsoken was represented by a lay alderman elected by the citizens.

It was not long before disputes occurred between the priory and the Constable of the Tower of London who wished to encroach into their Portsoken land. These disputes continued over several centuries as the Tower was gradually expanded.

As the population of London increased in the 12^th century there was a growing need for places to tend to the sick and elderly. The Augustinian monk Rahere founded the priory of St. Bartholomew at West Smithfield in 1123, London’s earliest hospital. The word ‘hospital’ derives from the Latin hospes, meaning stranger or guest. A quarter century later, the Hospital of St. Katharine was founded in 1148 by Matilda, wife of King Stephen, immediately to the east of the Tower of London, in the south of the Portsoken. She established it in memory of her two children who died in infancy and were buried at Holy Trinity, and the hospital initially remained within their custody. St. Katharine of Alexandria, who lived in the 4^th century, was a popular saint at that time. The primary purpose of the hospital and its small religious community was to celebrate mass for the souls of Matilda’s family, to care for the poor and infirm, and provide a resting place for travellers. Matilda provided an endowment to maintain a chapter of four brethren, three sisters, and various other staff.

In the mid-13^th century there were serious disagreements between Holy Trinity and the brethren of St. Katharine’s, with accusations back and forth, an enquiry by the Mayor of London, and letters to the Bishop of London and the Pope. Matters were finally settled when Queen Eleanor, dowager of the late Henry III, granted the hospital a new charter and decreed that only she could appoint new Masters, brethren and sisters. The Foundation of St. Katharine then ceased to be under the control of Holy Trinity and thereafter remained under the patronage of the queen consorts, queen dowager, or reigning queen.

St. Katharine’s was further endowed by Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III, and over time an impressive church was created for the hospital, with a college attached. By the late 14^th century the area was referred to as the Liberty or Precinct of St. Katharine’s. A new charter from Henry VI allowed the Precinct to carry out commerce, independent of the regulations of the City of London, and a dock and wharf was subsequently created. The parochial tie with St. Botolph’s was also severed and the hospital church became the parish church of the Precinct.

During the Middle Ages a brew-house was located on the riverside just to the east of St. Katharine’s. It was a public establishment, where Londoners could brew their malt into ale on payment of a fee to the government. In 1492 John Merchaut was licenced by Henry VII to export beer from there. The site was later occupied by the Red Lion brewery, which stood on the same site until the 1930s.

A French visitor to London in the 1570s, L.Grenade, commented:

As for the suburb called St.Katharine, it is one of the largest and most populated [districts around London] of them all. It is inhabited by a large number of sailors and of craftsmen of varying trades such as hatters, makers of harquebuses [a 16^th century rifle], shoemakers, brewers and many others like these. This suburb is also the destination point for a vast quantity of wood, which is brought there by boat to supply the city.

Just a few years later, Stow described the Precinct as:

…being now of late years inclosed about… with small tenements and homely cottages, having inhabitants, English and strangers, more in number than in some city in England.

The Precinct of St. Katharine finally succumbed to progress in the mid-19^th century when the suburb made way for the creation of the St. Katharine Docks. The foundation itself still exists in East London, although on a different site, with Queen Elizabeth II as patron.

When Richard I was in Palestine for the third Crusade at the end of the 12^th century his Chancellor, William de Longchamp, set about enlarging the Tower of London. To do so, he appropriated a piece of the Portsoken from Holy Trinity, a garden and a mill from St. Katharine’s, as well as part of the City. The consequence was an alliance between the City of London and Richard’s brother, Prince John, against Longchamp.

During the Middle Ages what we now call the East End of London was entirely rural, with a small scattering of cottages and several mansions. The largest part consisted of the Manor of Stepney, held by the Bishops of London.

From ancient times, before London existed, a chariot track ran east-west, through what would later become East London. It passed across the River Lea at Old Ford, the River Brent at Brentford, and continued to what we now call Colchester, the capital of the Trinovantes tribe. When the Romans arrived, they initially made Colchester the capital of their new territory of Britannia, naming it Camulodunum. The track became a major paved road from there back to their newly-established town of Londinium, following the line of the present Roman Road and Bethnal Green Road. The number of Roman artefacts discovered indicates there was a Roman settlement east of Londinium at Old Ford. A large piece of Roman-style herring-bone pavement has been found in the Lea indicating a paved ford.

In the early 3^rd century the Romans built a protective wall around Londinium. East End historian Sir Hubert Llewellyn Smith has convincingly argued that the route of the Roman road was then diverted southwards in order to pass through the wall’s eastern entrance of Aldgate, along what became known as Mile End Road.

To the south of Mile End Road the land suddenly descended down a steep bank, running parallel with the Thames, known as the Linches until the 12^th century. This bluff was of a reddish colour, known as the ‘red cliff’ (the name later evolving to Ratcliff). A pathway at the top of the bank became the route of Ratcliff Highway. This more southerly east-west road possibly entered London through a gate that went out of use with the later creation of the Tower of London. The low land between the road and the Thames remained marshy and underwater at high tides until embankment of the river began in the Middle Ages. The surviving street names of Stepney Causeway and Limehouse Causeway hark back to the time when they were raised paths through marshy land.

On the higher, solid ground, between the marshes and the old road further north the Saxons established the settlement of Stebunhithe. The name evolved over many centuries: in around 1000 it was known as Stybbanhythe, later Stebunheath, and still later as Stepney.

In 597AD Pope Gregory sent Augustine to Britain to preach Christianity to the Saxons. Augustine appointed Mellitus as Bishop of London, and King Ethelbert endowed the bishop and his church of St. Paul’s in London with gifts of thirteen manors, including Stepney. At that time the area of the manor stretched eastwards to the River Lea, and from the Thames northwards to Stamford Hill, including the Isle of Dogs to the south. Keeping it divided from the City was a narrow strip of land called the Portsoken that would always remain separate from Stepney Manor and on which several religious houses, including St. Katharine’s, would be established.

In the second half of the 9^th century control of the area around London alternated between Saxons and Vikings. In 878 King Alfred of Wessex made a peace treaty with the Viking leader Guthrun. The River Lea became the border between their two kingdoms, with Stepney inside the Saxon kingdom. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written during Alfred’s reign, talked of Londoners reaping their harvest under the protection of his army.

At some point, a small church dedicated to All Saints, built of wood and wattle, was established at Stepney and the main centre of population of the manor grew around the church. The rectors of Stepney parish were appointed by the Lords of the Manor, the Bishops of London. Between 959 and 961, during the reign of King Edgar, Dunstan served as Bishop of London and Lord of Stepney Manor, prior to his translation to Archbishop of Canterbury. In his time as bishop the church was rebuilt in stone. Dunstan was canonised in 1029 and the church rededicated to the new saint, becoming the church of St. Dunstan and All Saints, but often known simply as Stepney church. The parishioners of Stepney made an annual procession to St. Paul’s Cathedral to acknowledge the dependence of their church on the Bishop of London.

The Bishops of London tended to keep most of Stepney for themselves, with some parts held by various Canons of St. Paul’s, or others, as tenants of the bishop. Pieces of land were sub-let to various classes of peasant-cultivators in return for payment in services or kind. The daily management of Stepney manor was undertaken by the Bishop’s steward, the bailiff, and the reeve. In the Middle Ages there were two types of Court session: the Court Baron, which dealt with issues between individual tenants; and the Court Leet at which officials were appointed and government of the manor took place. The bishops held the manorial court of Stepney at Bethnal Green, at what was known as Bishop’s Hall. It was located to the south of what is now Victoria Park and still commemorated in the names Bishops Way and Bonner Road. (Edmund Bonner was the last episcopal Lord of the Manor of Stepney). Manorial business was conducted in the hall. Some of the bishops resided at the Bishop’s Hall, or spent much of their time there.

Stepney church was connected to the Bishop’s Hall by a track that ran north-south approximately along the route of the current Globe Road (formerly Theeving Lane), White Horse Lane, across Ratcliff Highway at Ratcliff Cross, and down to the Thames at Ratcliff Stairs. From there a ferry crossed the river to Globe Stairs at Rotherhithe. The track may also have continued north to form a pilgrim’s way to Waltham Abbey via the spring at Well Street, Hackney church, Upper Clapton Road, and Stamford Hill.

The Colchester road crossed the River Lea by ford, which in later times was replaced by Bow Bridge, and continued on to the important monastery of Stratford Langthorne. The Benedictine convent of Bromley that was founded on the west side of the ford perhaps also dated back to the time of King Edgar and Dunstan. The prioress exercised manorial rights in Bromley, so it was never part of Stepney Manor.

The small hamlet of Poplar grew across the northern edge of Stepney Marsh, with a main street running from east to west between what would later be Limehouse and Blackwall. At some time before the mid-14^th century small parts of the area, including mills, houses and meadows, came into the possession of nobles. During the 14^th century there are records of ownership variously by Sir John Pulteney and Sir Nicholas de Loveyn. In around 1350, during the reign of Edward III, the convent of St. Mary of Graces was founded near the Tower of London and the ‘Manor of Poplar’ was granted to that institution. The ‘manor’ appears to have consisted of various houses on Poplar High Street, several mills, as well as meadows and arable fields. There was an obligation to “preserve the marsh” from flooding, which would indicate that some of the meadows were on Stepney Marsh.

The Tudor period, during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, was one of great convulsions in religious worship, known as the Reformation. England lurched from Catholic to Protestant, briefly back to Catholic during the reign of Queen Mary, and finally returning to Protestant under Queen Elizabeth. St. Paul’s Cathedral in London was at the centre of these great changes.

Queen Mary died in November 1558 but little changed at St. Paul’s until well into the following year. Edmund Grindal, a Protestant, had previously been nominated as Bishop of London under Edward VI, but Mary’s succession forced him into exile. He returned to England in January 1559 on the day of Elizabeth’s coronation, and in May of that year at Paul’s Cross, the pulpit in the cathedral’s churchyard, announced the restoration of ‘King Edward’s Prayer Book’. Two weeks later the Catholic Edmund Bonner was deprived as Bishop of London after he refused to take the Oath of Supremacy and was succeeded by Grindal. William May was restored as Dean of St. Paul’s, with his predecessor Henry Cole imprisoned in the Tower, eventually dying in Fleet Prison. Some items of Catholic worship were stripped from London’s parish churches and in August 1559 burnt in the cathedral precinct.

The cathedral’s mighty steeple had dominated the skyline of London for centuries and provided a landmark for ships navigating the river. In June 1561 it was struck by lightning during a violent storm and the steeple destroyed by the subsequent fire. (The steeple of the nearby church of St. Martin’s Ludgate was also destroyed during the same storm). The bells that hung in the steeple came crashing down to the floor below. It proved impossible to raise enough funds to replace the steeple but £6,000 was forthcoming by means of a tax on Londoners, from clergy of the diocese, and gifts from Queen Elizabeth and others. The Queen also supplied timber and the remaining square tower was re-roofed. It remained a stump until the old cathedral was rebuilt in the 17^th century after the Great Fire of London.

In May 1570 a papal bull from Pope Pius V was fixed to the door of the Bishop’s palace at St.Paul’s during the night. In a country still divided over the question of religious worship it was a serious matter. Its intent was to excommunicate Queen Elizabeth, to relieve her subjects of their allegiance, and to induce Catholics to rise up against the Protestant government. The homes of London’s known Catholics were searched and a second copy of the bull was found in the home of William Mellowes at Lincoln’s Inn. Under torture on the rack he gave the name of John Felton as the person who fixed the bull to the door. On the rack Felton also implicated the Spanish Ambassador in the plot before being hanged, then quartered alive in St. Paul’s churchyard.

In August 1588 Londoners learnt of the failure of the Spanish Armada when Dean Nowell preached a sermon of thanksgiving at Paul’s Cross, just as the enemy fleet were still attempting to navigate back to Spain around the north of Scotland. That November large crowds gathered for Elizabeth’s only visit to the cathedral.

The Reformation generally reduced the importance and necessity of cathedrals. In the following decades St. Paul’s descended somewhat into a market, selling food and ale, inhabited by all-comers including businessmen doing deals, and becoming a hang-out for thieves, tricksters, beggars and prostitutes. Clergymen advertised their services. Parts of the building and cloisters were leased out to carpenters, trunk-makers and glaziers. The nave became a public throughway and a shortcut between Carter Lane and Paternoster Row, even during services. Smoke from sheds that had been erected in the churchyard was polluting the inside space and windows were broken by schoolchildren’s games, with sections left unglazed. The steeple-less tower was used by tourists to gaze across the city, whooping as they dropped stones down the side. Rubbish remained where it was left, and drunks slept in the stalls. The discipline of cathedral clergymen had declined, disrupting the daily order of services.

During the late 16^th century a division was taking place in Protestant theology. Reforms had created Anglicanism, but there were Calvinists – followers of the teachings of John Calvin – who believed that changes should go much further, eliminating details of the service they saw as idolatrous. As reaction against that, there was already an anti-Calvinist movement taking place among the clergy of St. Paul’s who argued for more ceremonialism, which they believed to show greater reverence. It was a debate that would split the country during the 17^th century, culminating in the Civil War and the temporary overthrow of the monarchy.

Sources include: Various – St. Paul’s – The Cathedral Church of London; Liza Picard ‘Elizabeth’s London’. Illustration courtesy of the collection of Hawk Norton.

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For centuries, the quickest and most convenient way to travel within the City, or cross the river, or east or west from London, was by water. London Bridge was the only dry crossing over the River Thames in the immediate London area until the early 18^th century but it was narrow and congested. The roads into and out of the capital were in a poor state. It was easier to take a ferry, or a wherry rowed by a waterman. The Thames was London’s highway.

After the old Roman roads decayed, goods were thereafter transported by pack-horse. Personal travel was undertaken on horseback or on foot until the mid-18^th century. Carriages only began to appear on London’s streets from the mid-16^th century but were soon causing congestion. Heavy goods, such as grain or coal, reached the capital by barge or ship.

In his A Survey of London, published in 1598, John Stow stated:

there pertaineth to the cities of London, Westminster, and borough of Southwark, above the number, as is supposed, of 2000 wherries and other small boats, whereby 3000 poor men, at the least, be set on work and maintained.

That was at a time when London’s population stood at around two-hundred thousand.

Wherries could be hired at many stairs that led down to the Thames. Watermen gathered at each, jostling for custom, crying “oars oars sculls oars oars”. ‘Long ferries’ transported passengers along the river, such as from Billingsgate to Greenwich. Working a passenger wherry, ferry, or barge on the Thames in all weathers and tides required knowledge and skill, with tides used to achieve remarkably quick journeys up and down river. The men who operated such craft, as well as those who transported goods by barge or lighter, were a special breed, whose families undertook the same work for generations.

By the Tudor period there were royal palaces along the river at Windsor, Sheen, Hampton, Westminster, Bridewell (on the west side of London), the Tower of London, and Greenwich. They were sited on or close to the riverside because royal barges could quickly and relatively easily transport the monarchs and their servants between them. Similarly, many of the nobility and senior clerics kept palaces fronting onto the river. All these wealthy people, as well as many of London’s Livery Company’s, owned extravagant barges and employed a retinue of watermen to steer them.

There were regular ferry services at various points, which could transport horses and wagons as well as pedestrians across the river. An example was the Lambeth Horseferry between the Palace of Westminster and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth Palace. The Woolwich Ferry was mentioned in a document of 1308. It became increasingly important with the establishment of Henry VIII’s dockyards at Woolwich and the Royal Arsenal ordnance depot. The Tilbury to Gravesend ferry that links Essex to Kent has ancient origins. When the Prince of Wales (later King Charles I) crossed on it incognito with the Duke of Buckingham in 1623 they lacked small change for the fare. They attempted to pay with a gold piece but the ferryman had them arrested as spies. Ferries were a lucrative and valuable business usually owned by the Crown or an aristocrat and were part of an inheritance. The ferry owner then leased the right to operate the ferry to a ferryman. Occasionally the rights to a ferry service were sold on, each time for large sums of money.

Whenever a bridge was proposed there was a petition against it from watermen and the ferry-owner and that was one of the reasons London Bridge remained the only crossing until the early 18^th century. If a bridge was built, large amounts of compensation were paid by the bridge owner to the Watermen’s Company to be distributed to its members, and perhaps to a ferry owner. The opposite was the case at Chelsea. The ferry there required considerable skill from the ferrymen due to the river current. In 1766 the local inhabitants of the growing villages of Chelsea and Battersea petitioned the House of Commons complaining of the danger and inconvenience of the ferry. The owner, Earl Spencer, decided he could make more money from a toll-bridge, leading to the construction of Battersea Bridge.

A ferry service between the City and Southwark dated back before the building of the medieval London Bridge. One of London’s many legends is that the ferry was inherited by Mary Overs on the death of her ferry-operator father John. It is said she was so overcome with grief when her lover died that she used the income from the ferry to establish a convent. She was canonised, and the convent became known as St. Mary Overy, which is today’s Southwark Cathedral.

The narrow arches and piers of the medieval London Bridge held the river back, acting as a weir. It was dangerous to take a boat under the bridge when the tide was flowing but it was the speciality of some watermen to ‘shoot the bridge’, resulting in regular drownings. Those wishing to travel along the river normally disembarked at a stairs, travelled past the bridge on foot, and took a new wherry or barge on the far side. Typically, the stairs at Three Cranes Wharf (above the bridge) and Billingsgate (below) were used for that purpose.

For over a century Tower Bridge, along with Big Ben, has been one of London’s great icons, its popularity due to the unique neo-Gothic design. It is so familiar as a symbol of the capital that many people not familiar with the city confuse it with its older neighbour London Bridge.

In 1819 Southwark Bridge was completed, so at that time there were five bridges over the Thames to the convenience of those in the City and Westminster and districts to the south. During the 19^th century a series of new docks were opened east of the Tower of London, and at Rotherhithe on the south bank of the Thames. That resulted in new industrial and residential suburbs in those areas. In 1871 a report was submitted to the Bridge House Estates Committee, the charitable trust with responsibility for the City bridges. It pointed out that by then a million inhabitants, or a third of the total living in the metropolis, lived to the east of the City. Many had to make a journey of several miles in order to make a dry crossing over the river at London Bridge, or otherwise take a ferry. London Bridge itself was very congested and a new bridge to the east was at that time the most pressing requirement as a metropolitan improvement. Between 1874 and 1885 about thirty petitions were submitted to the City urging them to either widen London Bridge to relieve congestion or provide a new public crossing.

The most difficult issue in providing a bridge to the east was that the Thames was busy with ships all the way up the river into the Upper Pool as far as London Bridge. Vessels coming upriver would need to pass under or through such a crossing. There was also much opposition from those with a vested interest, such as ferry operators and wharfingers.

In fact, a toll-tunnel had been opened in 1870 by a private company that conveyed passengers in a cable-hauled wooden carriage running on narrow-gauge rails under the river from Tower Hill to Pickle Herring Stairs in Southwark. It was uneconomic however; the company went bankrupt, and the tunnel reopened as a toll-paying foot-tunnel, with almost a million pedestrians per year.

A report was made by a City Corporation sub-committee. It included research regarding traffic flow from the City’s architect Horace Jones, as well as a study of the number of vessels passing upriver west of the St. Katharine Docks and the height of their masts. In 1876 the sub-committee laid out details of ten schemes and designs that had been submitted but rejected, each of which allowed for the passage of high-masted ships. Some were for a low-level bridge with a movable section allowing ships to pass and others were for a high-level structure under which ships could sail. The sub-committee recommended that adverts should be placed for new proposals. Jones considered the options of high-level and low-level bridges or a subway. He concluded that a low-level bridge would be the cheapest and most practical option. The committee therefore concluded that such a crossing should be made from Little Tower Hill and Irongate Stairs on the north bank to Horselydown Lane on the south side. This was accepted by the City’s Common Council who then discussed the matter with the government and Metropolitan Board of Works.

In the meantime, the MBW put forward their own proposal from their architect Sir Joseph Bazalgette for a high-level crossing to be known as ‘the Tower Bridge’. It would have required a long spiral ramp on the south bank to bring traffic to the necessary level. Jones pointed out the shortcomings of Bazalgette’s plan. It was successfully opposed by both the City, who did not want a bridge in their territory controlled by the MBW, and the Thames Conservancy Board, the latter being responsible for the river itself. Furthermore, Jones made recommendations for a low-level bridge with a central section that could be raised with counter-weights, using the ‘bascule’ (or see-saw) principle.

The City Corporation accepted Jones’s idea but there the matter rested for several years. In the meantime, the Bridge House Committee spent months considering three options: to provide a free passage across the river by means of the existing steam ferry; the erection of a floating chain bridge at Greenwich; or a low-level bridge. Thames Conservancy rejected the floating chain bridge in 1883. New solutions were presented, none of which were feasible.

By 1883 there was enough public interest in the issue that the London Chamber of Commerce held an exhibition at which eleven designs of bridges and tunnels were shown. That June the Thames Conservancy pointed out the urgency of a crossing downriver of London Bridge, observing that East London had grown to 39 percent of the entire population of London, almost as large as Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds combined. They recommended maintaining two or three steam ferries.

It was from the following month that the final solution began to take shape. The City’s Common Council instructed the Bridge House Estates to obtain designs and estimates for a mechanical bridge. A deputation visited Holland, Belgium, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow to study examples, which included the Jan Kulten Bridge at Rotterdam and Entrepôt Bridge at Konigshaven, both of the bascule type.

Following consultation with the engineer John Wolfe Barry, Horace Jones submitted three designs for consideration at the end of 1884, two with a swing opening. The third was of the bascule type with a low-level road, together with a high-level walkway to be used by pedestrians when the bridge was open to ships. The Bridge House Estates Committee, with a recommendation from Barry, adopted the latter, to be erected between Little Tower Hill and Tooley Street, within a cost of £750,000.

Until the great wave of Jewish immigrants, the largest group of foreigners in London during the 19^th century were Germans. It was estimated that at a certain point they accounted for six-sevenths of foreigners in the metropolis. They ranged from the very wealthy to the destitute, with many of them carrying out the toughest of manual labour. The German community grew over many decades, reaching a peak in the early 20th century.

When the Elector of Hanover arrived as King George I of Great Britain and Ireland in 1714 he brought with him German bureaucrats, bankers, merchants, scholars, artists and doctors. The majority who followed during the 19^th century were economic migrants, with many from an agricultural background, leaving their homeland due to poverty. At the other end of the scale there were businessmen, such as Karl Wilhelm Siemens who established a London branch of the Berlin firm, and those who founded the Schröders and Kleinwort banks. Britain was then a more liberal country than Germany, with greater freedom of speech, so there were amongst them some political refugees, such as Karl Marx.

Steamers from Bremen and Hamburg docked at the St. Katharine docks or at Thames wharves, bringing new arrivals. Some hoped to make an onward journey to America to where three million Germans emigrated between 1855 and 1890. They needed to transfer to larger ships for the Atlantic crossing than those that crossed the North Sea. Some took temporary work to pay for their onward voyage and others remained in London.

Middle-class men came to find work or to advance their business interests. They usually arrived equipped with a German-English conversation book, as well as a map to find their way around. Germany had a strong tradition of technical schools for professionals, so waiters and clerks could easily find employment in London. Some came to study the British way of life and increase their knowledge and skills. They would no doubt head for Fitzrovia, where middle class and professional Germans resided, or to Kentish Town, Camden or Islington. Young women, covered in woollen shawls, came seeking employment as domestic servants, nurses and governesses.

The poorer sort of Germans remained in East London, close to the docks. Whitechapel, St. George-in-the-East, and Mile End Old Town were the main districts where they settled. This area, roughly rectangular in shape and bounded approximately by Whitechapel Road, Leman Street, the Highway (formerly St. George Street) and New Road/Cannon Street Road, was sometimes known as ‘Little Germany’. In that area they mixed with Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. German and Jewish names were over the doors of shops selling all kinds of merchandise and services: butchers, grocers, fruiterers, confectioners, boot-makers, tailors, publicans, drapers and cigar-makers. Thousands of German working men and women crowded into tenements. Poor workers unable to rent their own accommodation could take a bed in a Handwerker Heim. As well as somewhere to sleep, these hostels offered meals, lectures and religious teaching, books and periodicals.

Throughout London, German restaurants offered Kraftiger Mittag- und Abend-tish (a full lunch or dinner) for a modest price, as low as four pence (less than two modern pence). Well-patronised German public houses offered skittles. For those who could afford it, there were German clubs and societies, particularly around Charlotte Street and Fitzroy Street, for sports and gymnastics, cycling, dancing, concerts, drama, dining, games, English lessons and technical training. A survivor of that era is the German Gymnasium at Kings Cross, now a smart restaurant and bar. At regular dinners at their clubs, which were decorated with flags and garlands and a bust of their king, patriotic Germans raised a toast to Kaiser Wilhelm.

There was a strong religious element amongst the community, with the majority of them being Lutheran. There were three German churches, all located within a few hundred yards of each other. The St. Georgeskirche (St. George’s church) was opened in 1763 in Little Alie Street, off Leman Street, and remains on the same site today. St. Paul’s Evangelical Reformed Church was founded in the City during the late 17^th century by a congregation that had fled religious persecution in the Palatinate. Baron Schröder laid the foundation stone when the church was rebuilt on a new site at Whitechapel. Similarly, St. Bonifatius Roman Catholic church was founded in the City before moving to Whitechapel. Ironically, the latter two churches were destroyed by German bombing during the Second World War although St. Bonifatius was rebuilt and reopened in 1960.

The King of Prussia, the Austrian Emperor, Queen Victoria and her German husband Albert, and other wealthy Germans financed a German hospital at Dalston, which opened in 1845. The area was still quite rural at that time, with a reputation as a healthy place. It became a well-respected institution and by the end of the century contained over 120 beds. The hospital also operated dispensaries in East and West London, as well as orphanages and old peoples’ homes. The building remains on the same site, although no longer a hospital.

The Napoleonic Wars were a time of uncertainty. Yet, as always in times of war, there were some businessmen who were making good profits from the conflict and wished to invest their finances into safe ventures. To them toll bridges over the Thames seemed a safe bet, whatever the outcome of the war. The result was three new bridges over the river in quick succession between 1811 and 1819, each incorporated under private Acts of Parliament. The second of these was Waterloo Bridge.

The concept of private toll crossings over the Thames was not new, with Putney Bridge in existence since 1729. The Strand Bridge Company was formed in 1809 to build a new toll bridge from the Strand on the north bank with an approach alongside Somerset House, then across to Lambeth on the other bank. It was led by Ralph Dodd, the energetic promoter of engineering projects. The company planned to build a level crossing, which involved creating long approach roads, with a total length of nearly a mile, of which the bridge itself occupied about a quarter. That proved expensive to acquire so the Acts of Parliament in 1809, 1813 and 1816 authorized the company to raise £500,000 in shares and borrow a further three hundred thousand pounds.

The young George Dodd, Ralph’s son, was initially commissioned to create the design. The company then had doubts about his submission and instead turned to John Rennie who provided two ideas. The cheaper option of nine spans was chosen, a simple but stylish structure, based on Rennie’s bridge at Kelso over the River Tweed in Scotland. Dodd continued to work on the project as Rennie’s assistant.

At the same time, Rennie was working on Vauxhall Bridge, a little further upstream. He was one of the most gifted engineers of his time. A builder of canals, harbours, viaducts, tunnels, bridges, and drainage systems, he was a pioneer of the country’s transportation system that enabled the Industrial Revolution. He was a mathematician and technician, making designs in his own hand and calculating the costs of each project.

Rennie appointed Jolliffe & Banks as the contractor. The company was part-owned by the engineer Edward Banks, who had been working with Rennie in the construction of canals since 1793. The Jolliffe family were quarry-owners. Hylton Jolliffe met Banks when the latter was working on an extension of the horse-drawn Surrey Iron Railway that ran from Wandsworth, and the two formed Jolliffe & Banks. In 1803 Jolliffe handed his part of the business to his younger brother, the Reverend William Jolliffe. Jolliffe & Banks rapidly expanded to become one of the principal construction companies of the time, working on canals, docks, bridges and lighthouses. Their other work in London included the West India and London Docks. In the 1820s they formed the General Steam Navigation Company, operating passenger services between the Thames and the Continent. Together with Rennie and his sons they were responsible for both Waterloo and Southwark Bridges and the rebuilt London Bridge. Banks was knighted for his work.

Work on the new Strand bridge began in March 1811, with the first stone laid that October. Three years later the Allied Sovereigns were in Britain during the Napoleonic War. The work must have particularly interested Emperor Alexander I of Russia because he visited several times and declared it to be the finest masonry in the world.

Acquiring land for the approaches on each side of the crossing was both costly and time-consuming but the bridge was completed in 1817. It consisted of nine elliptical arches of 120 feet span, faced in Cornish granite from Penryn. Each pier was decorated with a pair of Grecian Doric columns covered by an entablature. The bridge was topped by a balustrade of grey Aberdeen granite, with an alcove for pedestrians above each pier. The crossing was level with the Strand on the north bank and a gentle ascent on the Surrey bank, thus making it easy for horse-drawn carriages. Tollhouses at each end contained turnstiles through which pedestrians had to pass.

The final Act of Parliament allowed it to be renamed Waterloo Bridge in honour of the defeat of Napoleon the previous year. Large crowds arrived to see the opening by the Prince Regent in June 1817, crossing the bridge accompanied by the Duke of York and Duke of Wellington. The ceremony took place on the second anniversary of the battle and the bridge was lined by veterans of the conflict. The Prince expressed his desire to knight Rennie but it was declined. John Constable was probably present at the ceremony and he later produced several paintings and sketches featuring the bridge. The bridge was later famously depicted by Whistler and Claude Monet. The Italian sculptor Antonio Canova described Waterloo Bridge as the noblest in the world and worth visiting London from Rome for that alone. He was struck that so magnificent a structure could have been built by private enterprise and not the work of the government.

The final cost was in excess of a million pounds, including the purchase of land and buildings and the construction of the approaches. The company never made a profit because the relatively small number of prospective customers instead used the toll-free bridges either side at Westminster and Blackfriars to reach the sparsely-populated Lambeth side. Waterloo Station was opened as the terminus of the London & South Western Railway at the southern end of the bridge in 1848, providing much-need traffic. When omnibuses came into operation in the 1860s, however, they instead carried passengers from the station to the Strand over the toll-free bridges.

Waterloo Bridge gained a reputation for deaths of various kinds. An American entertainer, famed for making dramatic dives, made an elaborate attempt off the bridge in 1841, watched by a large crowd, but died in the process. One night in 1857 an unknown person lowered a carpet bag from the bridge into the river but it ended up on one of the piers. Two watermen found it in the morning, to discover it contained body parts.

Waterloo Bridge was purchased by the Metropolitan Board of Works for £475,000 in 1878, after which it was opened free of charge at the same time as the footbridges at Cannon Street and Charing Cross. Traffic across it doubled thereafter. It was in 1878 one of the earliest London thoroughfares to be lit by electric lighting, although the scheme was abandoned due to the high cost. It was permanently reinstated in 1897.

When Rennie’s new London Bridge was opened in 1831 the river began to flow faster. That had a gradual effect on Waterloo Bridge and the MBW spent a considerable sum reinforcing the piers in the 1880s. Serious movement was observed in 1923 and in 1926 the London County Council decided to replace the original Waterloo Bridge. It was demolished in 1934 and eventually replaced by the current crossing.

Sources include: Peter Matthews ‘London’s Bridges’; John Summerson ‘Georgian London’; John Pudney ‘Crossing London’s Rivers’; James Elmes, ‘Metropolitan Improvements’ (1827); W.W. Hutchings, ‘London Town Past and Present’ (1909); http://chipsteadvillage.com/19th-century-chipstead-surrey.html

< Bridges and Tunnels

During the years of religious turmoil that led to the Reformation in England, Paul’s Cross in the churchyard of St. Paul’s Cathedral became a focus of national theological debate. Sermons were given by both those who sought reform and their conservative opponents. Like all other religious institutions in the country, the cathedral went through a long period of change.

In the first decades of the 16^th century a challenge to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and papal supremacy spread across Europe. A key figure in the rejection of the orthodoxy was the German theologian Martin Luther. His ideas eventually led to a schism in European Christianity and the establishment of the Protestant movement. This process began with what is known as the Reformation.

In May 1521 Cardinal Wolsey, Lord Chancellor and the leading advisor to Henry VIII, together with the Pope’s representative, the Archbishop of Canterbury, bishops, ambassadors, and nobility rode in procession to St. Paul’s Cathedral. From a high platform in the churchyard an estimated 30,000 Londoners listened as they denounced Martin Luther, who had been excommunicated by the Pope and outlawed by the Holy Roman Emperor. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, gave a two-hour sermon, stating “The spirit of Christ is not in Martin Luther” and that the King, Henry VIII, had condemned Luther in his manuscript Assertio Septem Sacramentorum. A papal bull against Luther was posted on the door of the cathedral. But by the next morning an unknown hand had scrawled a message – “Bulla bullae ambae amicullae” and “Araine ante tubam” – above each of the two pages of the document, mocking the Pope. The cardinal was outraged. A decade someone fixed a broadsheet to the cathedral doors attacking the veneration of saints, fasting, and pilgrimage.

As the Reformation was gathering pace on the Continent, Henry VIII had his own, quite different, quarrel with the Pope. In the early part of his reign Henry VIII was a dedicated supporter of the Catholic doctrine. However, the Pope’s refusal to accept the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon led in 1534 to him declaring himself head of the Church in England, separate from Rome. Across the whole of Europe the Catholic Church had over many centuries become immensely wealthy. Declaring himself head of the Church allowed Henry to seize its vast assets, and to extinguish the only body powerful enough to question his will.

In London thousands of women rioted in 1531 and unsuccessfully attempted to seize Henry’s future wife, Anne Boleyn. The following year a woman interrupted a sermon at St. Paul’s in favour of the divorce, crying: “[it] would be the destruction of the laws of matrimony”.

St. Paul’s Cathedral had lacked a strong, leadership for a generation. Unlike many other ecclesiastic institutions, in 1534 the canons and priests of St. Paul’s acknowledged Henry as head of the Church in England. From 1535 the cathedral functioned under the auspices of the Royal Supremacy, in the person of Thomas Cromwell, the King’s vice-gerent, a proponent of religious reform. That October Cromwell granted the cathedral a licence to continue spiritual jurisdiction. The Bishop of London, John Stokesley, maintained his conservative preaching, however, so Cromwell instead licenced the more compliant Bishop of Rochester to appoint preachers at Paul’s Cross. In 1536 Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and Bishop Hugh Latimer gave sermons denouncing the Pope and affirming the royal supremacy.

The transition from Catholic worship to what became the Anglican tradition gradually evolved over several decades and with great debate and fluctuation, causing much confusion and uncertainty during the latter years of King Henry. It would take many years before the old ways were completely abandoned by the people.

In the spirit of reform, in October 1535 a holy relic of Our Lady’s milk, that was being used “in deceiving people”, was taken from the cathedral and in 1538 Dean Richard Sampson removed various pilgrimage attractions. Yet the pace of reform in the country was too great for Henry. In November 1538 a proclamation was issued ordering any Anabaptists, the radical puritan movement, to leave the country. Several weeks later over 20 Dutch Anabaptists were rounded up and sent for trial at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Having been found guilty of doctrinal heresy they were sentenced to be burnt at the stake. In June 1539 Henry issued the Act of Six Articles that reaffirmed the ‘old religion’. Cromwell’s political enemies and those against religious reform plotted against him and he was executed in July 1540.

Within St. Paul’s the forces of reform and conservatism pulled in opposite directions. Bishop Stokesley died in September 1530 and was given a magnificent Catholic funeral in the cathedral. He was buried behind the shrine to St. Erkenwald. At his death, according to the Tudor historian John Foxe, Stokesley boasted “that he had sent 31 heretics unto the eternal fire”. But the shrine of Erkenwald, patron saint of London, which had been located in St. Paul’s since the 7^th century, was demolished during 1540-1 and his relics disappeared. Edmund Bonner, Stokesley’s successor, supported Henry’s claim as head of the church but was a conservative in many of his actions. To the dismay of reformers he installed new images to replace those previously discarded.

Henry died at Whitehall Palace in January 1547 and was succeeded by his nine-year-old son. On the day before his coronation Edward went in procession from Westminster Abbey to St. Paul’s. There he witnessed a high-wire artist slide down a cable stretching from the cathedral’s steeple to the deanery.

Edward VI had been educated by evangelical custodians according to the Protestant theology. His guardians quickly gained the upper hand over the orthodox conservatives. Reformists in exile returned to England, as well as refugees from persecution. In September images were removed from St. Paul’s and the Epistle and Gospel began to be read in English during mass. In November the revered rood (or crucifix) at the north door was taken down, the work undertaken during the night to prevent riots. At least one workman was killed and others injured during the process, which was a sign from God of His displeasure according to papists. During 1548, under Dean William May, Catholic practices were discontinued and various new forms of Protestant worship introduced, with readings from the Holy Scripture given four times each week.

At the same time, various changes were made to the organisation of the cathedral and its community. Most colleges, chantries and fraternities were dissolved. The charnel house and its chapel were leased out to booksellers and the bones of those buried there transferred by cart and dispersed outside the city wall at Moorfields and Finsbury. In 1549 Protector Somerset, the young King’s guardian, ordered the demolition of the Pardon churchyard cloister, where the parents of St. Thomas had been buried, as had many of London’s leading citizens. He used the stonework, including tombs, in the building of his Somerset Palace, the predecessor of the current Somerset House on the Strand.

Revolts against the religious changes broke out in various parts of the country and in July Cranmer gave a sermon at St. Paul’s to denounce them. Despite his early compliance, Bishop Bonner continued to allow Catholic worship in the cathedral, resenting the reforms carried out Dean May. Following his failure to prohibit such practices he was put on trial and committed to Marshalsea gaol in September 1549.

Bonner was succeeded by Nicholas Ridley in 1550 – uniquely as Bishop of London and Westminster – and the pace of change increased. The cathedral’s high altar was demolished overnight in June that year, although it provoked a fight and a man was killed. The use of the organ was discontinued in 1552, and subsidiary altars demolished. Ridley himself officiated at the introduction of the revised, evangelical Book of Common Prayer in November of that year. In May 1553 all religious items no longer used in the new doctrine were removed from the building on the orders of the government.

Yet the wind was about to change. The young King Edward’s Protector, the Duke of Somerset, was imprisoned in October 1549, giving conservatives false hope of returning to the old religion. That was not to be for a few more years, until the young Edward died in July 1553. In a sermon from Paul’s Cross Bishop Ridley declared to Londoners that Henry VIII’s daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, were debarred from the succession by their illegitimacy. But that was not a view universally shared by the congregation, many of whom resented the religious reforms. Several days later in Cheapside the Catholic Mary was proclaimed the rightful queen. The mayor then led a procession into St. Paul’s, where the choir sang a solemn Te Deum and the organ was played once again. Mary arrived in London on 3^rd August and Bonner was released from Marshalsea, going directly to the cathedral to pray on the steps.

Catholic practice was reintroduced during the following weeks. The high altar was rapidly rebuilt in the cathedral, but in too much haste because it collapsed on the first attempt and had to be restarted. A ceremonial procession passed through the cathedral’s precinct in September on the eve of Mary’s coronation. Bishop Ridley, who had opposed the succession of Mary, was arrested and sent to the Tower of London, and Dean May and all the married clergy replaced. Now it was the turn of Catholic exiles to return to the country. Feast days were once again remembered, including that of St. Erkenwald in November. Processions took place again, with that of St. Katharine around the cathedral’s steeple in the same month.

Mary planned to marry Prince Philip of Spain to produce a Catholic heir. An uprising led by Thomas Wyatt against Mary’s wish was successfully put down and some of the participants hanged in the cathedral churchyard in February 1554.

In December 1554 a public ceremony in commemoration of papal supremacy was held at St. Paul’s, attended by Cardinal Pole, Bishop of London Bonner, the Bishop of Winchester, and the mayor and aldermen of London. Mary’s new husband Philip arrived with a guard of 400. A crowd of 15,000 gathered outside at Paul’s Cross for a sermon confirming the restoration of papal supremacy.

Cardinal Pole issued instructions for the arrest of those accused of heresy, many of the trials taking place in the Consistency Court of St. Paul’s. One hundred and thirteen were condemned to death by Bishop Bonner. The first of almost 300 ‘Protestant Martyrs’ to be executed during the reign of ‘Bloody Mary’, between February 1555 and November 1558, was John Rogers, a clergyman and lecturer of St. Paul’s, who was burnt at the stake at Smithfield in February 1555. Several months later the same fate befell another of the cathedral’s clergymen, John Bradford. Bishop Ridley was sent for trial in Oxford and burnt at the stake there in October 1555, along with Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester. Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer perished the following year. Those executed in November 1558 were particularly unfortunate because Mary died that month during an influenza epidemic, on the same day as Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury. Queen Elizabeth then ascended the throne and England’s religious clocks were turned back to the time of Edward VI.

Sources include: Various – ‘St. Paul’s – The Cathedral Church of London’; Susan Brigden ‘London and the Reformation’; ‘Luther’s Correspondence and Other Contemporary Letters: Vol. 2 1521-1530’, ed. Preserved Smith and Charles M. Jacobs.

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This article was published in The Wooden Canal Craft Society Autumn/Winter 2018 newsletter and reprinted in the Historic Narrow Boat Club 2018/4 magazine.

Claire and I took ownership of Hazel in 1975 and lived aboard for the next twelve years. Our final two years were spent based at Battlebridge Basin, behind Kings Cross station in London. Prior to that we had been semi-itinerant. We both worked in London so, when not cruising, we had always moored within commuting distance of the city. Over time, we became friendly with the British Waterways staff who lived in the former lock-keepers’ houses on the Grand Union in the Uxbridge area and they were each happy for us to moor above or below their lock for a time.

During those years we got to know, and become part of, the boating community around London. Whenever we could, we attended rallies within striking distance. A highlight of each year was the Christmas and New Year gatherings arranged by what was then the Narrow Boat Owners Club (since renamed Historic Narrow Boat Club), usually held at Stoke Bruene or somewhere in the Midlands.

Today the towpath through London is lined with boats of different shapes and sizes but back in our time BWB would soon move you on if you attempted to moor on a London towpath for any length of time. Official moorings were few and far between and BWB had no interest in creating new ones despite the obvious demand.

Battlebridge Basin is a large expanse of water adjoining the Regent’s Canal. When the canal was being constructed in 1815 William Horsefall made an agreement with the canal company that when they dug out the nearby Islington Tunnel they could dump the spoil on his land to form the basin. He ensured supply of water from the canal to fill the basin by way of an Act of Parliament. By 1822 the basin was surrounded by industrial buildings.

Battlebridge was never in the ownership of the canal company. Basins, such as City Road on the other side of the tunnel, eventually came under the control of British Waterways Board. Battlebridge, on the other hand, always remained private. In the mid-1970s, when commercial traffic on the Regent’s had only recently ceased, Battlebridge lay empty apart from one or two sunken cars just below the surface. Being so close to the centre of London, it was a prime piece of property. In the 1970s developers had plans to fill it in but fortunately that never came to pass. I am unclear as to the history of the ownership of the basin but in the 1970s the overall landlord was the Greater London Council and perhaps that is what saved it.

It was in 1978 that a group of boat-owners had the idea of setting up a mooring. They approached a factory on the side of the basin who agreed to allow their boats to be moored against the building. The mooring was created as a non-profit organisation under the name of the London Narrow Boat Association. Membership was limited to just enough resident boats to fill the length of the factory wall when moored side by side. Each time a boat moved elsewhere a vote was held to choose a new member from a waiting list. Many of the residents owned ex-working boats, some converted with living space and others still in their original condition of back-cabin and empty hold. The factory was at the entrance to the basin and the boats moored end-on to the wharf, across the basin. Perhaps the description ‘wharf’ is a slight exaggeration: it was barely more than a narrow ledge with mooring rings on the water side of the factory wall, along which the residents had to carefully walk to exit the mooring. In the beginning there were no facilities and a rowing boat was used to transport the boats’ Elsan toilets to the nearest pump-out station at St Pancras Lock. Over time an agreement was made to obtain mains water and electricity. By the time Claire and I arrived, a room had been knocked through into the adjoining premises to house a bath and washing machine: absolute luxuries for those of us who had long done without such facilities.

Fate was kind to us. Claire was pregnant with our first daughter when a space became available at Battlebridge. We knew several owners of the resident boats and the LNBA voted us in. Despite the small luxuries, life at Battlebridge was fairly basic and Kings Cross in those days had, shall we say, a certain reputation. Nevertheless, it was a wonderful community at Battlebridge and I have some very fond memories. We stayed there for two years until 1987 when we saw some new houses being built just along the canal. We decided it was time, after twelve years aboard Hazel, to move onto dry land and we bought one of the houses. Hazel then became part of the Wooden Canal Boat Society.

Since then, the area around Kings Cross has changed considerably. Smart new apartments, office blocks, gardens, and ornamental fountains have replaced the old, run-down industrial buildings. Across the basin from the mooring was a printing works, which has been replaced by the Guardian newspaper offices and state-of-the-art Kings Place concert hall. Beside the mooring was a piece of waste-ground we employed as a car park (and ladies of the night used for other purposes) and that is now occupied by a terrace of townhouses. During our time, the far end of the basin was occupied by an ancient factory with the words “JAMS AND MARMALADES” blazoned across the top of it in white lettering. That was later replaced by apartments, with a second, private, mooring created across that end of the basin.

After the abolition of the GLC by Margaret Thatcher in 1986 the moorings had a new landlord. That prompted the two sets of Battlebridge moorings to merge into one to form the London Narrowboat Company, with each of the boat residents being a shareholder. That is how things remain today.

In 1992 the London Canal Museum was created in one corner of Battlebridge Basin. It is housed in the former warehouse built by Carlo Gatti in about 1860 to store ice imported from Norway in the days before refrigeration. The ice came to London by ship, then to Kings Cross via the Regent’s Canal Dock and along the canal. Gatti was an Italian-Swiss immigrant who was one of the earliest to sell ice-cream to ordinary Londoners. Below the museum are two large wells in which the ice was stored, and it is still possible to climb down into one of them, which is quite an earie experience. The museum itself is quite small but well worth a visit.

In August of this year a party was organised to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the founding of the mooring at Battlebridge. Held in the museum, it brought together many of the boatowners from those early pioneering days of the moorings, as well as current residents. The Mayor of Islington came along to cut a cake, made in the shape of the basin, complete with narrowboats. Most of us are now in our sixties and seventies and some have sadly passed away. John Yates, a prime instigator of the original LNBA mooring, quipped that we all sound the same yet look very different. It certainly took me some time to match the grey (or bald in some cases) individuals with the youthful thirty-somethings from when I last saw them thirty years ago. It was a splendid affair and brought back many good memories of our time living aboard Hazel. I hope enough of us survive for there to be a fiftieth anniversary party.

By the end of the 18^th century there were three crossings over the Thames in the London and Westminster area. London Bridge, Westminster and Blackfriars had all been built as public works. It is therefore remarkable that in the second decade of the 19^th century three new bridges were constructed in quick succession between 1816 and 1819, by private companies incorporated under private Acts of Parliament. Furthermore, the three projects were conceived during a time of war.

The initial Acts of Parliament for the building of Regent’s Bridge and Strand Bridge were both passed in the summer of 1809, each to be financed, constructed, and tolls charged, by individual companies. Both operators commissioned John Rennie as their engineer, who by then had enjoyed a successful career as a designer of docks, canals, harbour and bridges.

Regent’s Bridge, to be named after the Prince Regent, was conceived as part of a scheme to create new suburbs to the south of the Thames, an area that was little more than fields and market gardens until the early 19^th century. The hope was that new suburbs would be formed along an unbroken route, from Hyde Park Corner to Greenwich via Kennington and the Old Kent Road, creating new vehicle and pedestrian traffic to generate tolls. The bridge was planned to cross the Thames between Pimlico on the Middlesex bank and Vauxhall on the Surrey side. It included the creation of a road through Pimlico, which was still largely under-developed at that time. Vauxhall, on the far side of the river, was famous for its pleasure gardens that had been popular as a resort for Londoners since the Restoration period in the mid-17^th century.

Rennie’s design for Regent’s Bridge was for an elegant seven-span structure of Dundee blue limestone costing over £200,000. Construction began in May 1811, when the first stone was laid on the Middlesex side by Lord Dundas representing the Prince Regent. However, after work had begun the company ran short of funds. Rennie was obliged to produce a substantially cheaper design of an eleven-span iron bridge, with an estimated cost of £100,000. The company rejected his new design as still too expensive and work was halted. A third version was commissioned from Samuel Bentham, brother of philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The Thames Conservators had doubts about the design of the piers and ordered an inspection by the eminent civil engineer James Walker. Bentham’s design was discarded, and Walker was asked to produce a fourth version. Prince Charles of Brunswick laid the first stone on the Surrey side, over two years after Lord Dundas had laid the first on the Middlesex bank. (Charles’s father, the Duke of Brunswick was to die fighting Napoleon’s army at the Battle of Quatre Bras before the bridge was completed).

The bridge was the first cast-iron crossing over the Thames. The final design consisted of nine equal arches of 78 feet span, on eight rusticated stone and brick piers of 13 feet in width. The length of the crossing was 806 feet, with a carriageway of 25 feet and two footpaths of five and a half feet. The gradient of the bridge was said at the time to be excessive.

Cast-iron bridge-building had been developed during the latter decades of the 18^th century. The first of these, Abraham Darby’s famous Iron Bridge over the River Severn at Coalbrookdale, was constructed in 1779. In 1788 Thomas Paine took out a patent on the design of an iron bridge. It was exhibited at Paddington, parts of which were used in the high-level bridge over the Wear at Sunderland. (Paine died in America, having been found guilty and condemned to be executed in Britain following publication of his anti-monarchy book Rights of Man).

Walker’s crossing over the Thames was completed in June 1816, five years after construction commenced. The final cost was £300,000, far in excess of Rennie’s designs. Shortly after its opening it was renamed Vauxhall Bridge due to its proximity to the famous pleasure gardens, and the road leading to it Vauxhall Bridge Road.

In its early days there were few buildings on either side of the crossing other than Millbank Prison on the Middlesex bank, which opened in the same month as the bridge. (The original impetus for the prison was the studies of the aforementioned Jeremy Bentham, begun 20 years earlier, although his ideas were not implemented in the final building). The toll for pedestrians was one penny and up to one shilling and sixpence (18 old pence) for a heavy wagon. The bridge was not patronized as much as had been hoped. There were individual days when crowds flocked to special events at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, although some anyway chose to be carried there by the many available watermen. Vauxhall Gardens promoted the bridge in advertisements, greatly exaggerating the reduction in distance from the West End by using it. They also pointed out it was open all night for pedestrians and coaches, useful for late night revellers.

Income increased from 1838 when the London & South Western Railway created a new line, with its terminus nearby. A decade later, however, the railway was extended to its new terminus at Waterloo and the older station at Vauxhall closed.

The bridge was acquired by the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1879 for £255,000 and became toll-free. The flow of the river had by then weakened the structure. The two central piers were removed, creating a larger central arch. In the following years further strengthening of the foundations was required but the London County Council, successors to the MBW, decided it would be better to completely replace the old structure. Walker’s original bridge was demolished in 1898 and a temporary structure erected while a new crossing was constructed.

Sources include: Peter Matthews ‘London’s Bridges’; John Pudney ‘Crossing London’s River’; John Summerson ‘Georgian London’. David Coke & Alan Borg ‘Vauxhall Gardens, A History’; Walter Thornbury ‘Old and New London (1897); James Elmes ‘Metropolitan Improvements’ (1827).