Cromwell's Independent Traders and Commonwealth Custard Creams
I've been trying to find out about Greenwich during Cromwell's time. I mean, I know that he took over the place and tried to sell it, without much real luck. I know that he and his cronies stripped the old palace of Placentia of all its trimmings and generally bashed it about so much that by the time the Restoration took place it was only fit to be pulled down. But I've been having difficulty finding much detail.Perhaps most of the records got lost in the Restoration...
Mostly it seems to have been run over by roundheads, kicking out 'malignant and disaffected persons' (read "the king's hangers-on and servants")and swiping as much stuff as possible to flog off. They bundled it all up into a yellow Reliant Regal van, and took themselves off to Peckham for the nearest boot sale.
The Kings's paintings were the first for the chop (after himself, of course...) and the whole of Europe bowled up for the party. Cardinal Mazarin was at the front of the queue, in his sheepskin car coat and slip-on shoes, eager to get his paws on some knocked-off furniture for his Paris gaff. His shopping list included some nice secondhand beds, a couple of carpets and a hanging or two for his walls.
Queen Christina of Sweden was more interested in the jewellery stall. She fancied some jewels and medals, though once she was there, she couldn't resist a few paintings either. She'd had to elbow the King of Spain out of the way, clearly the type that starts trying to handle the goods before they're even out of the boot of the hatchback.
"Honest" Archduke Leopold was into buying in bulk and made an offer for a job lot, before getting a white van to cart them off to Belgium and Germany. It's not clear how some of the paintings ended up in Wilton House in Wiltshire, but I'd put money on the van driver being slipped a few groats...
I'm not sure who would have wanted to be seen by Mr Cromwell buying a giant marble statue of the ex-king, but someone did. Other sculptures of The Headless One had been bundled up into a big cardboard box by accident and sold by mistake. One, which had stood in Covent Garden, was later the subject of an inquiry, where it turned out that the individual, who could only have been called Trotter, who had bought it "to melt down," had really buried it, to sell later when times got better. "This time in ten years we'll be milyonnaires..." In the meanwhile he made a tidy sum selling trashy souvenirs supposedly made out of the molten king...
But back to the palace. The innards had been well and truly dispersed, but they didn't know what to do with the bricks and mortar. Some people suggested that's exactly what they should be used as - second-hand building materials. The Lord Protector looks as though he had his eye on the place for himself, though, and although they trashed it, they didn't actually pull it down, temporarily using it for storage instead.
Every so often I find little allusions, always in a single sentence, that the palace was turned into a biscuit factory.
A Biscuit Factory? You can't just leave it at that. What kind of biscuits? Pink Wafers? Digestive? Rich Tea? Iced Gems, perhaps, to stand for the lost jewels of Placentia?
I'm voting for Jammie Dodgers. After all, Greenwich was one of the last strongholds of Charles I before they cut off his head. Maybe the face-shaped biscuits represent the old king, and the jam his oozing gore. I daresay the flowing locks and the goatee got lost in the baking process during the Victorian times.
The truth is, as boringly-usual, much more prosaic. Ship's Biscuit, of course, which as every schoolkid knows, made up the protein part of a sailor's diet in the form of maggots and weevils, the forerunner of today's Garibaldi. During the Armada, everyone got a pound of biscuits and a gallon of beer a day to live on. I'm surprised that on that diet Sir Francis Drake could actually bowl straight...
Here's a recipe for Ships Biscuit, though apparently none of the flour you can get now is nearly as rank as the original stuff would have been:
Ingredients:
1lb Flour, the roughest you can find. Grind your own out of roots or something.
1/4 oz salt. The nice gritty variety.
Water to bind. Preferably stagnant
Weevils (optional) A generous handful per sailor.
Method:
Mix all ingredients together to form a paste and roll into a thick slab. Cut out biscuits. Stars are a nice shape. Bake in a hot oven for half an hour then leave to get really hard.
Best before: 10 years after being cooked.
Use By: no special time.
According to the Royal Naval Museum the MOD still buys ships biscuits to pop in operational packs (lunch boxes to you and me) but doesn't give them out 'for general messing.' Phew.
So. The question for today. If Greenwich had a National Biscuit, what would it be?
Mostly it seems to have been run over by roundheads, kicking out 'malignant and disaffected persons' (read "the king's hangers-on and servants")and swiping as much stuff as possible to flog off. They bundled it all up into a yellow Reliant Regal van, and took themselves off to Peckham for the nearest boot sale.
The Kings's paintings were the first for the chop (after himself, of course...) and the whole of Europe bowled up for the party. Cardinal Mazarin was at the front of the queue, in his sheepskin car coat and slip-on shoes, eager to get his paws on some knocked-off furniture for his Paris gaff. His shopping list included some nice secondhand beds, a couple of carpets and a hanging or two for his walls.
Queen Christina of Sweden was more interested in the jewellery stall. She fancied some jewels and medals, though once she was there, she couldn't resist a few paintings either. She'd had to elbow the King of Spain out of the way, clearly the type that starts trying to handle the goods before they're even out of the boot of the hatchback.
"Honest" Archduke Leopold was into buying in bulk and made an offer for a job lot, before getting a white van to cart them off to Belgium and Germany. It's not clear how some of the paintings ended up in Wilton House in Wiltshire, but I'd put money on the van driver being slipped a few groats...
I'm not sure who would have wanted to be seen by Mr Cromwell buying a giant marble statue of the ex-king, but someone did. Other sculptures of The Headless One had been bundled up into a big cardboard box by accident and sold by mistake. One, which had stood in Covent Garden, was later the subject of an inquiry, where it turned out that the individual, who could only have been called Trotter, who had bought it "to melt down," had really buried it, to sell later when times got better. "This time in ten years we'll be milyonnaires..." In the meanwhile he made a tidy sum selling trashy souvenirs supposedly made out of the molten king...
But back to the palace. The innards had been well and truly dispersed, but they didn't know what to do with the bricks and mortar. Some people suggested that's exactly what they should be used as - second-hand building materials. The Lord Protector looks as though he had his eye on the place for himself, though, and although they trashed it, they didn't actually pull it down, temporarily using it for storage instead.
Every so often I find little allusions, always in a single sentence, that the palace was turned into a biscuit factory.
A Biscuit Factory? You can't just leave it at that. What kind of biscuits? Pink Wafers? Digestive? Rich Tea? Iced Gems, perhaps, to stand for the lost jewels of Placentia?
I'm voting for Jammie Dodgers. After all, Greenwich was one of the last strongholds of Charles I before they cut off his head. Maybe the face-shaped biscuits represent the old king, and the jam his oozing gore. I daresay the flowing locks and the goatee got lost in the baking process during the Victorian times.
The truth is, as boringly-usual, much more prosaic. Ship's Biscuit, of course, which as every schoolkid knows, made up the protein part of a sailor's diet in the form of maggots and weevils, the forerunner of today's Garibaldi. During the Armada, everyone got a pound of biscuits and a gallon of beer a day to live on. I'm surprised that on that diet Sir Francis Drake could actually bowl straight...
Here's a recipe for Ships Biscuit, though apparently none of the flour you can get now is nearly as rank as the original stuff would have been:
Ingredients:
1lb Flour, the roughest you can find. Grind your own out of roots or something.
1/4 oz salt. The nice gritty variety.
Water to bind. Preferably stagnant
Weevils (optional) A generous handful per sailor.
Method:
Mix all ingredients together to form a paste and roll into a thick slab. Cut out biscuits. Stars are a nice shape. Bake in a hot oven for half an hour then leave to get really hard.
Best before: 10 years after being cooked.
Use By: no special time.
According to the Royal Naval Museum the MOD still buys ships biscuits to pop in operational packs (lunch boxes to you and me) but doesn't give them out 'for general messing.' Phew.
So. The question for today. If Greenwich had a National Biscuit, what would it be?
Labels: Mostly-Accurate History, Not at all Accurate history
posted by The Greenwich Phantom at
09:31
11 Comments:
Two things - one is that if you really want to find out about what happened under Cromwell there is a little booklet about the history of the Armoury Mill in Lewisham - where during the Commonwealth - all the tools and anvils and stuff seem to have disappeared under the Commonwealth to sort of - well - turn up again later!
BUT - ships' biscuits - you should have come to the Greenwich Industrial History Society meeting on Tuesday where Janet Macdonald talked at length about navy food supplies from Deptford including biscuits (she said the weevils were a myth!). She has written a book about it 'Feeding Nelson's Navy'
What! No Weevils? It's an outrage!
Thanks for the tips though...
I think she said it was about putting lobsters down rabbit holes - but perhaps I misheard
Sorry but this new fangled comment system has just lost what I put in, a bit like biscuits with no weavils.
Apparently it's a big improvement, according to Blogger, who would say that, wouldn't they, but I can only see the first comment here. Something's a bit awry.
We have biscuits for general messing most days at work. And in my opinion, Fruit Shortcakes are extremely underrated.
Tuesday was the anniversary of Nelson's death...but not from eating too many biscuits. Perhaps a large weevil killed him.
Only just noticed the new thingy at the bottom......oooooeeer misus.
As for biscuit, how about a Jaffa cake? Biscuit or Cake?
Maybe we need a specially-designated Greenwich Biscuit. Perhaps I should create a special 'Phantom Cookie.' I'll do a cut-out shape for stencilling round. Though, thinking about it, in silhouettte I might end up looking like the Sandeman Port guy.
But what ingredients should a Greenwich Biscuit include? Whitebait ain't going to cut it...
I think the Greenwich Biscuit should be called "The Cris(p) Roberts" It would be half-baked, comtain weevil scrapings (and bowings) and, of course, quite a lot of alcohol.
A few days ago in the Greenwich Union, I was enjoying a pint when in came a middle-aged lady with what was obviously her three-year-old grandson.
"Oh", she said, "I'm glad of a sit down and a cup of coffee"
"And a biscuit!" said the little boy, obviously hoping that he'd get one too.
Grandad arrived with the cup of coffee (and his pint, of course), but, this being a London pub, and not a Belgian cafe, there was no biscuit....
The little boy became somewhat concerned - "Biscuit, biscuit!" he squeaked.
"Oh" said Grandma, "They don't do biscuits here"
This clearly wasn't going to work, so Grandad was despatched to the paper shop up Royal Hill, and came back with a KitKat.
"Biscuit, biscuit.." said the little boy contentedly.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home