Archaeology (3) How It Will Be Done

Back to Greenwich archaeology today, folks. I guess one positive thing coming out of the turmoil surrounding the area just now means that we're getting more opportunities for excavation than we've had since the end of WWII - though of course, at the end of the war, people were more interested in just getting somewhere to live, somewhere to work and something to eat than finding out what previous Greenwichians had been up to.

How we deal with those opportunities is both exciting and a grave responsibility.

As you've probably guessed from the photo at the top, I'm back to the Stockwell Street site today, as I've been given a preview copy of of the Historical Summary by Alan Baxter & Associates that the work will be based on.

The photo (by Alan Baxter & Associates - as are all the drawings) was taken from the roof of St Alfege's and is one of the best views I've seen of the site - an area that's quite hard to get one's head around without plans. It's actually pretty damn huge and when the post-war buildings are gone it will be even bigger.

Much of the report itself contains basic history that we've covered many times before, so I'll cut to the bits I didn't know myself.

Something that amused me was that after going of for several hundred words about the seriousness of Greenwich as a historical site, the report suddenly changes tack right at the end of page five to robustly state that however important the rest of Greenwich might be, this little bit of the town "has not played a role in the significant aspects of Greenwich's history". Read: "Potential busybodies - object everywhere else but here, okay..."

Personally, if I were going to deter potential objectors, I'd point to the amount of disruption and damage already done on the site and suggest that it can't get much worse - that we might as well find out what's there and preserve what we can, then move on.
Dunno about you but I'd always assumed that the name Stockwell came from it being the town's water supplies - the Stock Well. Apparently that's just plain wrong - 'stoc' is Anglo-Saxon for tree trunk or post.

However much the report says that it played no significant role, Stockwell Street was part of the major east-west route through the town by medieval times, and at some point became known as The Broadway. It had two coaching inns - as well as the Spread Eagle there was also The White Hart and, (especially interesting to the Phantom Brewmaster, Rod) there were considerable maltings set behind, run by Frederick John Corder and Alfred Conyers Haycroft, but acquired around 1906 by Hugh Bairds &; Sons.

I get the feeling that the archaeologists are hoping to find some remains of those, though they haven't actually said yet. They've promised to let me know.

You'll see in Alan Baxter's next drawing, a charming tea garden (it's on a map of 1885), presumably for all the teetotallers from the Bible Christian Chapel that was also there. I've been looking to find something about the chapel and not found any mention in my 1901 copy of Life and Labour in London, which lists and describes (often in less than glowing terms) the funny little churches that dotted Victorian Greenwich like a holy rash, though Charles Booth does admit that that particular area of the town was "overdone with religious effort."

There was also a roasting house in 1894. Roasting what? Hops? Coffee? Chickens? I'm sure someone will tell me. It's possible they'll find some remains of that.

The first big thing that really affected the area, which will have got rid of most of the medieval remains, was the coming of the railways - with the extension of the London to Greenwich railway in 1878 and the ill-fated Greenwich Park Railway, which I really must write about sometime (I confess I'm a bit scared of doing so - there are so many rivet-counter railway enthusiasts who'd point out all the bits I'd most certainly get wrong.) Suffice to say that some bright spark thought that what Greenwich really needed was a line between the town and, er, Nunhead. Perhaps the cemetery was a big draw (it is now, btw, absolutely fantastic...), perhaps it was just that railways were THE thing to do and that bit of land was free.

It lasted until WWI, and bits of the station hung around as a timber yard until the 60s (and, of course, there is a small part of the line still in existence, as the delightful and much sought-after Prior St allotments.)

Nevertheless, Stockwell Street was still essentially cute. Here's a picture from Greenwich Heritage Centre, showing the street in the 1930s:

If there was one single thing that really did for Stockwell Street as a site, it was the Second World War. Alan Baxter's drawing shows exactly where it suffered a direct hit:
It's unlikely that the Nazis were actually aiming for the Stockwell Engineering Company - a little factory that was making radar parts at the time, which after the war made kitchen utensils known as Westware (anyone still got any?); more that they were aiming for the railway, or, even nothing at all, just dumping-off bombs, a favourite South London hobby of theirs.

There wasn't much coming back from a V2 rocket. The Post Office was completely obliterated but the maltings, and several houses, both on Stockwell St and King William Walk were badly damaged.

As a by-product, though, it did mean that, when the ghastly John Humphries House was built in the 1960s, there was finally an excavation of the old well. Don't you just love this old picture, courtesy of Greenwich Heritage Centre, where they've discovered the (or at least AN) old well. The antiquarian John Stone, who first called for it, would have been in ecstasies - sadly The Phantom Webmaster discovered he died in the early 1930s.

I've asked if they'll be digging out the well again when JHH bites the dust; I don't know yet. But wouldn't it be great if Hengham Peng (named from the Irish Roisin Heneghan and American Shih-Fu Peng, BTW) incorporated the well into the foundations; perhaps with a glass floor, or visitable cellars, like the charnel house at Spitalfields?

Archaeology (2) How It COULD Be Done

It's an ill wind that blows no one any good, isn't it. Or in this case, ill rain. While the rest of us were cursing that bloomin' awful weather last August, over in a secret location in Greenwich Park, Rosie was getting rather excited.

The soil is so thin up on the hills there, that given a bit of footfall - or, in this case, rainfall, stuff starts to appear. Greenwich has been occupied at least since Roman times, probably before that, and you just never know when - or where - curiosities will turn up. In this case, it was a double line of what looks like medieval bricks.

Rosie started photographing them when she realised that these weren't just random - that they, along with hundreds of shards of broken tiles, formed a sort of zig-zag pattern and extended for about 50 feet. She's kindly sent me a few pictures - it's worth clicking on a couple of them to see a bit more closely.)

Now. At this point I confess I would have just assumed that it was already recorded and that "someone" had done proper excavations and all the history stuff. Happily, Rosie wasn't as complacent as I would have been (a lesson for us all.) She asked around, and realised that no experts she knew had any idea about it. She read whatever she could but found nothing mentioned. No map records anything at all there, and since the earliest plan is from 1676, it looks as though whatever was built there must be earlier (or too unimportant to be recorded, of course.)

Last week, a friend of hers suggested she ask an independent brick expert about the probable age of the shards. He said that in his judgement they are "in all probability Tudor." BTW I read the other day that Tudor bricks are so small because they used to be sold per brick, as opposed to per square yard. The smaller the bricks, the more you had to buy.

"It's been suggested that they might have come from the Tudor palace by the river after it was demolished," says Rosie, "but this didn't happen till after 1676 so is unlikely. It's odds on that we are looking at the remains of a Tudor structure of some kind, in which case it will be the only one in the Park - apart from some underground conduits."

If this is the case, it's extremely exciting stuff. I don't know where exactly the remains are - the site's already in a very fragile state and Rosie's keen not to have too much human (or equine) trampling with all the terrible weather we've been having. "Bits of tile are already getting kicked around so it needs some protection urgently," she says.

But if nothing's ever been found there before it just goes to show how historically fecund the park is - anything could turn up anywhere at any time.

So - what's going to happen to it? Well - you can probably imagine that there's nothing in the way of any cash to actually excavate the site, though English Heritage would like to see a community volunteer project supervised by a professional archaeologist to examine the site more closely, record it and then either cover it over or perhaps leave it fenced. It would then be available for proper excavation if/when the money became available.

That sounds like a plan to me - I'm pretty sure there are Phantomites out there who'd be interested in joining a project like that (especially if it was weekend-based, rather than weekday when so many people are at work...)

The Park is owned and managed by Royal Parks which are a sub-set of the DCMS but, perhaps surprisingly for such a very historic site, they have no-one specifically responsible for the archaeology as far as Rosie knows. English Heritage have no jurisdiction over it, their role is purely advisory. So - it seems that it's up to the new Greenwich Park Manager, Graham Dear, to use his discretion over what to do about this new site. Let's hope he does the right thing during his watch.

The obvious question is whether it's in immediate danger from the Olympic plans. "It's not on the route of the cross country as currently published," says Rosie, "so shouldn't be affected by the grass enhancement measures they plan to begin on as soon as they've got planning permission. There might be an issue over whether it should be surrounded by a spectator exclusion zone like the one promised for the Saxon barrows but that can wait until it's been decided how best to protect the site."

There's more, apparently, to be read about the find in next Sunday's Independent. What's really important to remember though, is that this isn't just a random event. Greenwich Park teems with history and we have no idea what's lying just under the surface. It's up to us, now, to make sure that there's something left for future generations to discover...

Archaeology (1) How It SHOULD Be Done

I'm excited today, folks. I've just heard that the University of Greenwich is to begin a proper archaeological excavation of the Stockwell Street site. After so much heartache last year with the death of the village market, at last something good is happening - something that has been hotly anticipated ever since John Stone called for a dig in his seminal 1914 lecture to the Greenwich Antiquarian Society.

The university is currently waiting for the bizarrely-monikered Heneghan Peng architects to come up with a plan for the new building - which, if it isn't truly innovative, exciting and architecturally meritorious, will not only be an embarrassment to Greenwich but a really bad advert for the Architectural School, so I'm holding out great hope.

But before they do anything that means getting out the buckets and spades, they're going to be doing some pretty exhaustive surveys -geological, ecological, and the one that interests me, archaeological.

Obviously, the current buildings will have to go. Though to lose some of 'scruffy Greenwich' tugs at my heart strings - for me over-smartening the area will lose its character - we really can't save everything. Besides, I'm desperate to know what's underneath...

So bye-bye to those grungily-fab warehouses, seedily secretive stores and the uber-groovy Bee Gee garage. I didn't know that was its name - I just thought it was an Esso job - but there it is in the 1976 pic below, courtesy, as above (from 1937) of Greenwich Heritage Centre. I'm not entirely sure what the little arrows are for.) Can't you just see Barry tossing his layered, golden curls around the collar of his grease-spotted designer overalls before offering you a fill-up, whilst Maurice gives your big end a quick polish and Robin sells you a Magic Tree? Oooh-er, Missus. Sorry. Saturday Morning Fever seems to have struck at Phantom Towers...

They're not sure if the old petrol tanks are still underneath the forecourt of the seventies supergroup's day job, but if necessary, an expert team will carry out the clean up.

I'm told that "in order to preserve the streetscape for as long as possible, two large blocks on the frontage of Stockwell Street, John Humphries House and the disused storage unit at number 18-19, will remain standing for the time being." Now, I have to say that John Humphries House has never really been part of the streetscape that I've ever thought worth preserving. If it was up to me, I'd rather look at hoardings than that ghastly, merit-free structure. I mean - it's not as if we're not used to hoardings round here at the moment.

Before they can start the fun bit of digging holes comes the boring stuff, like rubbish-clearing buildings surveys, sorting out services such as water, gas and electricity and detailed studies of the area (take one guess as to why the Phantom didn't become an archaeologist...) They've already done much of the really tedious stuff, apparently, and are very nearly ready to start the exciting test pits to look at the archaeology of the site, which has been in use since at least the medieval period. They tell me

"Initial research indicates that building work over the centuries, and war-time bombs, have destroyed evidence from early periods, but the university will pay special attention to what remains of the 19th century maltings, which once supplied ale to the Spread Eagle Tavern."

Coo-er. I've been promised a copy of the initial appraisal of the project, which will include some idea of what they think they might find, with some records of previous digs and some historical maps (they asked if I "might be interested?" Derrr!) They're also going to be keeping us updated of anything they find - so watch this space.

Five Foot Walk

This has to be one of the first examples of a pre-Section 106 forcing of institutions or companies to make provision of access to all, and, in many ways set a precedent that continues with the Thames Path (albeit shakily sometimes, with some of the large developments quietly just locking the gates of some parts when the initial fuss has died down. Must do something about that...)

When Christopher Wren designed Greenwich Hospital, finishing the development at the shoreside seemed like a great idea to improve security around the area, but the townsfolk didn't share his opinion. They used that way all the time and they weren't happy having any of their routes closed off to them. Hell - even the Queen had had to build her palace with a bridge going over the road a little further south. The people weren't going to let this valuable communications corridor stop them getting to places.

The authorities can't have been happy about it. It meant extra work, extra cost and the loss of land. What was worse, whenever the sovereign arrived, there'd be hobbledy-hoi loitering around the King's Steps.

I often find myself wondering what kind of pressure the people must have put on the Navy to get what they wanted - I mean in those days developers were no more happy to listen to locals than they are now. Whatever it was I'd like a piece of it now. They succeeded, albeit by a squeak.

The authorities gave in in 1731, creating an embankment exactly wide enough to walk down, and nothing else. A little lane, five feet wide, beach one side, the iron railings of the ORNC the other, that in the summer, tourists still shuffle down towards the Trafalgar Tavern, though passage is much easier now that cyclists are redirected through the ORNC (my favourite bit of Greenwich for cycling, smooth and open - and yet I still see idiots crashing their way through the Five Foot Walk on bikes. What gives?)

It's not very long - just skirting round the ORNC, but it has a real charm, with a great view both sides of it, lovely old railings and weathered stone slab paving. Fabulous worn steps still allow you to get onto Greenwich Beach, though not many people go there these days. Shame, really.

It widens out at each end - east, where of a warm summer's evening people spill out from the Trafalgar pub to enjoy a pint, as in Benedict's picture above, or west, sit by Bellot's Obelisk with a M&S sandwich. It tends to get flooded if there's rain at Spring Tide (Sarah captured this at an Autumn one). Happily as I look out of the window it's sunny just now. Phew.

Tudor Judo

A couple of people have been asking me recently if I know any quirky stuff about Shooters Hill. To be honest, it's not my manor, but I always keep an eye out, and yesterday, whilst looking for something totally different, I found this tiny snippet.

Pretty much everything I read about the area tends to be about people travelling through it - it was the main road to Dover (immortalised in the opening of A Tale of Two Cities, as the Dover mail coach lumbers over the hill.) It often turns up as a notorious haunt of highwaymen and footpads, but in the past I've really only read about 18th and 19th Century villains.

But yesterday, whilst looking up the history of Britain's penal system (it's a long story) I found a strange little (uncredited) paragraph that describes a much earlier attack - and one where some weird sort of martial art seems to have been applied for the purpose of relieving an Elizabethan gentleman of his cash...

"Faith, I have had a foolish, odd mischance that angers me. Coming over Shooter's Hill, there came a fellow to me like a sailor and asked me for money. Whilst I stayed my horse to draw out my purse, he takes advantage of a little bank and leaps behind me, whips my horse away and - with a sudden jerk, I know not how - threw me at least three yards out of my saddle. I never was so robbed in all my life."

Sadly I know no more about the incident - the book in question does not tell us where the quote comes from and after that just goes on to talk about 'eight idle wandering poor' who stole a cartload of cheese, which, if there was ever a woodcut of the event, would just invite a caption competition.

But the idea of some weird technique that the 'sailor' used is curious. Perhaps a move he picked up on his travels? Who knows...

Remarkable Occurrences of Greenwich (1)

If I'm ever bored (which is, frankly, rare these days, damn Real Life) then a quick leaf through Hasted's History of Kent can be guaranteed to come up with some extraordinary fact or other.

The best bits are usually in the notes, added by Henry Drake in 1886, and which are only bettered for sheer exuberance by Sir Thomas Urquhart's 17th translation of Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel. Sometimes there are only four lines of Hasted's original to a (very large) page, the rest being taken up by Drake's notes.

In a section marked "Remarkable Occurrences" I found this little entry:

"In 1273 a whale, 12 toises long, 5 toises in girth, was captured in Greenwich and taken to London Bridge to be cut up."

My first thought was was 'well - that's not so remarkable - we still occasionally get lost sea mammals up the Thames - like this poor chap, which John found not so long ago whilst walking his dog. I wouldn't click on the pic if I were you - it'll give you nightmares, but it's a stranded porpoise - very sad.

My second thought was 'what the hell is a 'toise?'

In finding out the answer to the second question, the first was answered.

A toise is a unit of measurement that dates back to pre-revolutionary France, or so Wikipedia tells me. It doesn't help that the actual size of it changed over the centuries - exactly six pieds (feet)until 1812; exactly two metres between 1812 and 1840. (BTW I was tragic enough to check out the etymology of 'tortoise' at the same time - no relation...) But whatever measurement Hasted means, it was a big bugger.

Twelve toises long? That makes it TWENTY FOUR METRES. Okay - I'd call that remarkable.

Deptford And The Founding Of The National Trust

I don't normally put two Old-Photo Days so close to each other, but I was reading in bed last night and was astonished to see this picture of Sayes Court in a book from the 1920s.

I'd always assumed that John Evelyn's house was demolished in antiquity, but here was a photo of it, in glorious Sepia-Vision. To be honest it wasn't what I'd imagined, but hey - Wonderful London told me it was his old gaff, and who was I to disagree?

Turns out that it's only part of the place Czar Peter the Great trashed on his gap-year visit to Deptford. The main mansion where Evelyn wrote his diary, tended his beloved garden and entertained Sir Christopher Wren and Sam Pepys was demolished in 1728 for no good reason that I can see. What was left suffered the ignoble fate of being turned into St Nicholas Parish Workhouse.

Things got worse - by 1852 it was an emigration depot, by 1853 a clothing factory and by 1856 just part of a bundle of land sold to the Admiralty, who promptly started demolishing it under the Metropolitan Building Act. They can't have got very far. The picture above is undated but there is no mention in the book that it's an old photo of something that's been demolished.

Things started to look up for the old place in 1869, when William John Evelyn, a descendant of the diarist, bought back as much of the old estate as he could. He made a nice park for the Deptford people, and brought plants for it from Wotton in Surrey, Evelyn's other house, which was, presumably, still in the family. He turned the house itself into almshouses - a bit nicer than a workhouse, n'est ce pas?

It all sounds rather charming - the 10-acre park had a bandstand, and a neo-classical building that had once been the dockyard's model-house, which would be a museum and library.

It was all going rather well. In 1884 Evelyn had a brainwave. Chatting to Octavia Hill, a well-known preservationist, he suggested that Sayes Court, with its eminent connections both from an intellectual and (slightly dodgy) royal standpoint should be saved for the nation in perpetuity. Trouble was, there was no organisation that could do it legally.

Nevertheless, Hill contacted her friend Robert Hunter ( a localish boy, from Camberwell), to try to thrash out a way it could be done. Several suggestions were made for a new Commons and Gardens Trust that could take stewardship of important buildings.

It took ten years of wrangling for the new, snappily re-named National Trust to emerge, far too late for poor old Sayes Court. Like the doomed Euston Arch, which died whilst the modern preservation movement built up a head of steam (read about the plans to rebuild it using the stones found whilst dredging the waterways for the Olympic site here,) it was to be a sacrificial lamb on the altar of Progress.

By 1886 only six acres remained, and Evelyn could only afford to dedicate an acre and a half to the public without the help of the fledgling NT.

I'm still having a few problems working out exactly when the house keeled over. I've found records of hits to the Victorian terrace nearby during WWII, but nothing to the house. I'm sure someone can put me right.

Whatever, by the 50s it wasn't there any more. A 'modern' park was built, and Convoys Wharf sprawled across the rest. Heaven only knows what will happen to it next...

Park Row Police Station

Did you know there used to be a nick at Park Row? No, nor did I. Steve's been sniffing around the Greenwich Heritage Centre at Woolwich Arsenal (something I wish I had more time to do; the b&w photos are from the wonderful collection there) and has discovered this short-lived little piece of penal history - erected too late to have been a star in Conrad's The Secret Agent, and lost too early to have been useful in dealing with those town-centre problems we all grumble about on a regular basis.

Rather sweet, isn't it? This picture's from 1908 - not long after it opened - at a time of great boom for East Greenwich. It reflects the huge increase in house building around that time, and a great excitement in the possibilities that the east end of Greenwich promised. Unlike today when most of the building is just housing rather than infrastructure, there was a whole load of public buildings going up - three schools (Meridian, Halstow and Annandale) a library, a fire station and two police stations (the other one's still in Combedale Road) just for starters - and I'm sure I've forgotten stuff.

Sadly, it didn't last. The 8th July 1944 saw a direct V1 hit to the not-even-fifty year-old building:

Steve tells me the ARP log of the incident reports that no one was killed, but three police officers and five 'others' were injured. It's not recorded as to whether these 'others' were overnight 'guests' of the constabulary or not...

In case you're trying to place exactly where the station was, here's a picture of the site today (still looks like a bomb's just hit it...) Bernard Angell House is on the corner of Trafalgar Road and Park Row, just opposite the NMM.

The Most Unpopular Job In Greenwich

Well - maybe not the most unpopular job in medieval Greenwich. That prize goes, without a doubt, to the Greenwich gong-farmers - a euphemism for the poor sods who had to clean out the town's cess pits.

But you'd have thought the job of Beer Taster would be sought-after, rather than avoided at all costs. And you'd be wrong.

In fact it was so unappreciated that in 1318, one Henry Boyn was dragged up before the beak at Greenwich Manor Court, and fined twelvepence for not performing his duties as tastitor cerevisie . A few years later, in 1327, the same court had to force Walter Wyntercoker to even take up the post.

The reasons seem twofold. Firstly, the beer was ghastly. I'm sure Phantom Brewmaster Rod could tell you more, but from what I can tell, it wasn't made with hops until the end of the 14th C, just malt, yeast and water, so it was, apparently, very strong, but also sickly-sweet. Added to that it had no keeping qualities whatsoever, so it had to be drunk very young - or it went off. Because it couldn't be moved, it had to be brewed on site at every inn.

The law was quite clear. The 1266 Assize of Bread and Ale said "Brewers in cities ought and may well afford to sell two gallons of ale for a peny and, out of the cities, to sell three gallons for a peny." No added ingredients were permitted, and certainly no bulking agents.

Whoever had to go around checking the beer was going to be highly unpopular with anyone who was trying to palm-off old stuff on their customers, especially if they'd tried adding 'extras' to make it go further.

Which brings me to the second reason why the job wasn't enjoyable. It was damn hard work. In 1327-28, it took two guys just to cover Greenwich - one for the Westende, the other for the Eastende - and over 50 people were fined for breaking the rules. So that no one had to do it for too long, the post was rotated, but it made no difference. No one likes a snitch.

Walter Wyntercoker was on the rota, as was another family member, I guess it could have been his wife, Christine. It was all a bit embarrassing, as they'd both been fined at various times for breaking the assize themselves.

This makes me think that it was the actual brewers who were expected to take it in turns to police other brewers, which just doesn't sound good to me. It would be like asking banks to regulate themselves, which we'd never dream of, would we...

Things got a bit better with the introduction of hops. It meant the beer kept longer, and didn't need to be brewed 'in-house' at every pub any more. The job of brewer began to be a much more of a profession in itself, instead of brewers having to be publicans too. It wasn't the end of the ale-tasters - and over the years the pensioners especially found much to complain about, but at least it never got to such ridiculous levels again.

I daresay we'll have no such problems with the lovely new brewery coming our way soon. More beer another day.

A Woman In Love

Since the whole world seems to be gearing up to celebrate all things romantic, I thought today I'd tell you a romantic - well, romantic-ish - tale of the knights of old...

In 1512, Henry VIII was still young, excited and delighted with his first queen, Catherine of Aragon. They were trying for a baby, but not overly concerned at the time it was taking to get around to it. They spent much of their time doing fun stuff, like jousts and tournaments, pageants and strange devices.

At one particular jousting festival, the Royal Pageant Master had had a bit of a Laurence Llewellyn Bowen moment and created a 'fountain' out of russet satin, covered with fretted gold with eight gargoyles spouting water, while a glamorous knight stood in the centre, fully-armed and looking butch. Behind him came a retinue of coursers, raring for the fight, and ladies, looking for love.

The butch knight in the middle of the satin fountain was Sir Charles Brandon, the burliest of the king's retinue and Henry's best mate. He was handsome, charming, a war hero from Flodden and, some might say 'a bit of a goer.' At 28 he'd already deserted one wife, married another, divorced her, re-married the first one, had somehow got himself betrothed to someone else entirely and now had his eye on Margaret of Savoy.

Through all this, though, he was still on the lookout and, whilst skilfully jousting away in the Greenwich tilt yards, he kept exchanging little meaningful glances with Henry's sister, Mary, widely acknowledged to be the most beautiful princess of her day, smitten with the handsome young knight - and inconveniently betrothed to the elderly, gouty Louis XII of France. Henry had used his sister as a bargaining chip with the vain old man in a political deal that involved a million crowns in hard cash.

Mary, as you can imagine, wasn't wild about the deal, especially since she'd almost certainly seen Louis. She told Henry she'd do her duty, but her next husband was to be her choice, okay? It was fairly clear to all who her choice would be.

The marriage went ahead - by proxy, since the king was too infirm to do much more than sit on a throne back in France. The Duc de Longueville spoke the vows for Louis - and then 'consummated' the marriage for him too, by lying down on a bed with her and touching her body with his naked leg. Oooh err....

As arranged, political marriages go, it wasn't such a bad deal for Mary. She got a brand new outfit, loads of jewels sent over from France, celebrations in her honour - and it was quite clear that Louis wasn't going to outlive the year.

It may well have been the excitement that did for him. By all accounts he did his best to service his young queen when she finally arrived in France (a little green around the gills from a choppy Channel crossing) - the old stager claimed that on the 'proper' wedding night he'd 'crossed the river' three times with his bride.

Sir Charles Brandon probably wasn't the most diplomatic person Henry could have sent on a diplomatic mission to check everything was going okay, but apparently both Mary and Brandon behaved themselves, to the king's relief.

Louis died three months after the marriage, and Henry started looking around for a new husband for his sister. Mary was livid. She coughed rather less than discreetly and told him in no uncertain terms that if she wasn't allowed to choose her next husband she'd become a nun, so there.

Henry, in another one of his not-so-brilliant moments, chose the dashing Charles Brandon to go and fetch her back from France. Mary told him straight - marry me now, or never.

Brandon, who, to be honest, could probably have taken or left this stunningly beautiful, madly-in-love-with-him princess who just happened to be next in line to the throne and richer than Croesus, somehow allowed himself to be cajoled into marrying Louis XII's widow secretly in Cluny. Strange, that...

The king, of course, went berserk when he found out about it, though it's impossible he didn't see it coming. He insisted they paid back her dowry and marriage portion and beg him for forgiveness lots, which they did.

Mary blamed herself, and Brandon was happy to let her take the blame. Henry, for his part, though, found his heart just wasn't into being angry. He couldn't stay cross with his best pal and his favourite sister for long and as soon as he'd got his cash back and they'd grovelled enough, he allowed them to marry properly at Greenwich Palace.

And to give them their romantic dues, they stayed happily married - until Mary's death, when, I'm afraid to say, Brandon found himself someone else very quickly indeed.

It's entirely possible you won't have heard of these two Tudor lovers. But I'm willing to bet you've come across their granddaughter.

Lady Jane Grey.

The Shrew's Tale

I am currently wading my way through Peter Ackroyd's prose 'translation' of the Canterbury Tales. I haven't got very far, mainly because stuff keeps happening in Real Life, but also because it is not a work to be rushed, but sipped and savoured in small doses. It may not be 'verse' but it is still poetry.

Because I want to enjoy every moment of it, I started with the introduction (I'm normally very bad for skipping introductions)and I was very surprised to discover that it's likely that a good part of Chaucer's masterwork was written in Greenwich or Deptford.

Though the Tabard Inn, where the pilgrims set out on their journey, is in Southwark, the merry band passes through Deptford on their way to Beckett's shrine, and Chaucer's own hostelry is mentioned by the host - as 'an inne of shrews.'

Looks like we're back to the Greenwich Birds again - I'm beginning to get quite an image of the female population of Greenwich in medieval times. Or maybe it was the entire population, full stop - apparently, Chaucer was mugged twice in the same day (though other accounts I've read have placed him in Westminster and Hatcham for his total of three robberies) Being mugged seems a bit ironic since he was a Justice of the Peace at the time(annoyingly all the books I can find just say 'in Kent' so I don't know if it was actually at Greenwich.)

One of the reasons he was living in Greenwich seems to have been financial. When his wife died, he was sued for debt - the days when he was granted a daily pitcher of wine by the king must have seemed very distant - and presumably innes of shrews in Greenwich were cheaper than nice houses in the City of London.

In 1390, while he was writing the Canterbury Tales (though he never really actively 'started' them - or indeed, finished them - they were more organic than that - he wrote short stories that he later assigned to sundry pilgrims when he had the portmanteau-volume idea for bringing them together. Some were specifically written for characters; others were just doled out to the boring characters that were left, which is why some really suit the teller and others really don't...) he was doing all manner of odd jobs.

He arranged for scaffolding to be built for jousts at Smithfield, and landed himself the job of Commissioner of Walls and Ditches - with special responsibility for the Thames wall between Woolwich and Greenwich.

But Chaucer's real job was entertaining - in English. I didn't know that the Tales were written here, but I'm delighted that they were, even if Chaucer had a bit of a rough time with the Greenwich shrews whilst composing them. So we can claim the father of the English Novel for our own, too (sort of...)

Now all I have to do is work out why there used to be a banner with a picture of Sir Walter Scott hanging in the old Visitor Centre. As far as I can see, the most we can boast of him is a couple of brief mentions in The Adventures of Nigel, one of the minor Waverley Novels and the worst book I have ever read by a long chalk...

The Royal Road To Greenwich

Since we're about to become a Royal Borough, I thought it might be a good time to chivvy up calls for the old Royal Road to Greenwich to be upgraded. Of course, as far as I know it was only actually ridden along by royalty once, but there's a good excuse for that - it's the river Thames.

No one much fancied the trudge on land between Whitehall, the City of London, the Tower and the palace at Greenwich - The Thames was fast, easy and exciting, the road muddy, dangerous and slow. They left that route to the proles with their carts and waggons. In other words, the situation was much the same as it is today.

I'd wager the river's still faster. It would be an interesting test to see if someone in a car could beat a Thames Clipper to London Bridge (I think the Top Gear team may have done something similar once - probably Clarkson on a state of the art speedboat, May in some vintage motor and Hammond on a unicycle.) I'm guessing that at the moment with all the sodding roadworks, the Clipper would win hands down.

The river is constantly in the history books. When Henry VII commanded his wife Elizabeth to be crowned, she arrived by a royal barge "freshly furnished with banners and streamers of silk."

Henry VIII kicked up quite a hornets' nest when he paraded his new wife Anne along the river. Tongues wagged at the inappropriateness of Henry's insisting she be brought "by all the crafts of London" (I'm not sure whether that means all the seaworthy vessels of London, or the barges owned by the various 'crafts' or livery companies.) More was definitely more with Henry and he ordered her to be accompanied by "trumpets, shawms and divers instruments all the way playing and making great melody." I suspect there was a lot of gold involved. If memory serves she made a slightly less ostentatious trip three years later, ready to have her head cut off.

Henry always had his barge waiting outside his palace - much as we might keep a car outside our houses. The equivalent of taxi drivers frequently crop up in the palace accounts - often for trivial stuff - to collect some books from town or a forgotten hat. But it wasn't just the toffs that used the royal road - servants, goods and provisions plied their way up the river (it's no coincidence that all the major palaces are on the river - Greenwich, the Tower of London, Westminster, Hampton Court...)

The greatest non-monarch to be taken along the river was of course, Admiral Nelson, though he was in no fit state to enjoy it himself. His funeral procession from Greenwich to St Paul's Cathedral was re-enacted on the bicentenary of his death back in 2005.

I was part of the crowd for that one, standing, freezing outside, watching poor, sweating rowers in 19th century costume freeze too, while dignitaries took their time indoors. It was a lovely event, marred by the inconsideration of the bigwigs (a party of schoolchildren in front of me froze too - then missed the main event entirely as their teacher gave up and took them home just half an hour before it all actually happened), but I can't help feeling that exactly the same thoughtlessness would have happened 200 years ago too, so maybe they were being 'authentic.'

The river now is quieter than it's ever been - but that doesn't mean it's empty. There's always something going along there - but given the congestion on the rest of the roads, it could be better used.

Of course the inconvenient bend around the Isle of Dogs slows it down, but it's still a fast and comfy way into town - you always get a seat, even in rush hour - and a view - unless the river mist/spray is particularly skanky that day.

One of the few things that Greenwich Council have done in the past few years that I have wholeheartedly supported was their Clipper Campaign, which lobbied for more frequent services, a guarantee to continue the boat onto Woolwich and Oyster Cards to be usable on the river buses.

I notice that since Oyster cards HAVE been allowed on the Clippers, and subsidy is in place for Woolwich until the year after the Olympics (curious, that one, eh...) the council is so busy boasting about how successful they've been, they've quietly forgotten the third part of the campaign, the 10-minute service. Still, I guess two out of three isn't bad. Maybe we'll get it for two weeks in 2012.

Oh, I forgot to mention the one time a monarch actually rode up the Thames. In 1536 (the same year that had earlier seen Anne Boleyn hauled up the river to the Tower) the river froze so hard that Hall's Chronicle tells us "the king's majesty, with his beautiful spouse, Queen Jane, rode throughout the City of London to Greenwich."

Puts our recently little cold snaps into some kind of perspective, eh...

A Window Through Time

First view of the things to go in the new visitor centre, folks, and if everything's going to be as pretty as this, then I can't wait.

It's a window recreated out of some of the bits of the original Placentia palace during the 1970s excavations, including a specially-commissioned stained glass insert with two coats of arms - those of Henry VIII and his current squeeze at the time, Anne Boleyn.

Henry was besotted with his new queen, and since there was a whiff of scandal, to say the least, about how she got the position, he was keen to assert her place by his side. So when he had a new coat of arms created for her, he went overboard - her device is one of the busiest ever designed. It's got everything the court heralds could throw at it - the badges of every noble family (both sides of the Channel) he could possibly shoehorn in and, like some lovestruck teenager carving into tree trunks, Henry had the letters 'A' and 'H' intertwined in it too, for good measure.

He ordered the entire palace re-glazed to celebrate Anne's arrival on the scene. Shame he didn't have a crystal ball installed at the same time, since the whole thing had to be done again three years later when he had Anne's head cut off and Jane Seymour's coat of arms was hurriedly inserted instead. He kept the court decorators in employment with a succession of new wives after that, though perhaps he just went for something neutral after his third attempt (not, I suspect, that very much was 'neutral' in the Tudor court - everything seemed to have some kind of significance in those days and be on someone or other's coat of arms...)

Ultimately, all that coloured glass shenanigans was in vain. The palace was pretty successfully demolished a century or so later, first damaged by Cromwell's men then finished off by Charles II to create his new palace on the Restoration, but for the restorers who painstakingly trawled through boxes of old rubble from the site, there seem to have been enough broken windows that were identical to piece together one decent example.

The guy who did the stained glass, Alfred Fisher, is a specialist in 16th Century techniques, and he used the original methods - abrasion, etching, painting, silver staining and firing - to create his new work. It was particularly tricky as the glass of the 1530s was much thinner than we make today, and if he wanted it to fit into the original stone grooves, he had to be very picky about the depth and tint of the glass he worked with.

Apparently the most difficult bit was the expressions on the Royal Beasts' faces. Tudor lions, especially, are a pig (so to speak.) They range from happy, smiley, cuddly kitties, to snarling, scowling kings of the plains, and it's hard to know which to choose in any one circumstance. Fisher hedged his bets by having a few of each variety...

Will, who works for the new Discover Greenwich Centre, and who sent me this pic, tells me that there will be all kinds of exciting stuff coming up over the next few weeks as the place gets ready for its grand opening - he's promised to keep me up to date.

In the meanwhile, I've been reading about the sturdy fellows who did original building work at Placentia - but that's for another day.

More On Gloucester Circus

I don't normally like to return to a subject as quickly as this, but Stephen had some really interesting extras to go with yesterday's Faded Greenwich post (he also has a better pic of the sign - see above.)

He used to live at Number 21 and tells me that the naming of the whole of the oddly-shaped ovalish street as 'Circus' is only relatively recent. If you take a peek at this 1908 map you'll see that only the rounded, south side was originally the Circus; the flatter, northern side, which was hastily finished with any-old buildings after the cash ran out, rather than continuing the elegant, sweeping curve of Searles's vision, was known slightly more prosaically as Gloucester 'Place.'

Stephen tells me his brother remembers a pediment stretching between the two sides, that said 'Circus', but if there was one there, it's long since bombed to buggery in WWII, which destroyed most of the less-pretty north side and more-than-ideal of the south side too. Maybe there are some old photos knocking around. I keep meaning to try and find some pictures of bomb damage in the area.

Nineteenth Century Red Tape

I was entertaining myself yesterday evening with an 1804 copy of the London Gazette. Most of it isn't really news at all - it's more a notices sort of paper, with the odd snippet of what His Majesty was up to (officially, of course, not the mad stuff, which would have been much more interesting.)

I find myself completely fascinated by such things and although a lot of it's skimmable, it's a window into another world that I can never resist. Among the notices were:

• Enough commissions of new officers to delight an entire lost novel's worth of Jane Austen heroines
• A frightening amount of bankrupts
• A request for any remaining subscribers to the City of Dublin Tontine (the world's most ridiculous get-rich-slow idea) to make themselves known
• The average price of muscovado sugar (44 shillings, ten pence and three farthings per hundreweight, in case you're interested)

There were a lot of naval notices too, ranging from the dull-but-lucrative-for-someone "The Principal Officers and Commissioners of His Majesty's Navy do hereby give Notice that on Thursday 19th of this month at One o' Clock, they will ready to treat with such persons as may be willing to contract for supplying His Majesty's Yards at Deptford and Woolwich with Birch Brooms"...

...to a long list of vessels captured and detained by the Squadron under the command of Commodore Hood, along with their contents - from cotton and cocoa to an entire shipment of slaves, who were clearly having an even worse time of it than usual.

If you were lucky enough to have been the Captain, Officers or Crew of His Majesty's gun-brig Monkey "who were actually on board at the Recapture of the Snow Orforva and the Brig William, on the 26th November 1803," you'd hit paydirt - part of the loot. Official announcement was given that they would "be paid their respective Shares of the salvage of the said Recaptures on the 21st January 1804." And the remuneration wasn't bad, either - ranging from First Class officers in line for a £107, 10s and a halfpence windfall, to £2 16s 4d for fifth class.

But the one that really caught my attention was from the Chest Office at Greenwich, which doled out pensions to retired sailors. The 'chest' was the Chatham Chest - literally a big box full of sixpences stopped out of sailors' wages to provide money for illness. It had been horribly defrauded over the years, but it did still provide some cash for worn-out seamen.

The notice was classic red tape that any of us would recognise today, which was why I loved it. It began

"Notice is hereby given to the Greenwich Chest Pensioners, that each of them as were admitted Pensioners by the governors of the late Chest at Chatham, on Account of total Blindness, or for the Loss of a Limb, will not be required to appear before the Directors at the Expiration of the Term expressed in their Tickets."

Fair enough - it's unlikely any of them was about to grow a leg back or suddenly regain their sight. But it goes on to make it quite clear that everyone else will have to jump through hoops a-go-go. What I love about this (the random upper case letters are original, BTW) is the specificity of it all. The following is all one sentence:

"Persons allowed Pension Money by the said late Governor for Hurts of any other Description, will not be paid beyond the Term for which their several Pensions were granted, unless they have been examined at this Office, any Tuesday most convenient to themselves near the Time appointed for them to be reviewed, except those transmitting Certificates from their Captains or Commanders that they cannot be spared from Duty in His Majesty's Fleet, to whom Payment will be extended Two Years; and also Pensioners who, from ill Health or Infirmities, are unable to appear, from whom a Certificate of the Cause of Inability will be required, Signed by Two Surgeons, and the Minister and Churchwardens of the Parish in which such Pensioners Respectively reside."

Plus ca change...

Greenwich Bird

"Thou art an arrante whore and came from Greenwiche!"

In early 17th Century Petworth, it would seem, that was about the worst thing you could say to anyone. In fact, it was so offensive in the fair Sussex town to imply that a woman came from Greenwich that it was considered worth going to court over.

I don't know. First it was Greenwich geese, then barbers, and now, thanks to the marvellous Julian Watson and his friend Peter Jerrome from the Petworth Society, I have a new insult to add to the Greenwich cannon of execrable terms - "Greenwich Bird."

The court case 0f 1603 centres around an innkeeper's wife, Margaret Goodman, (presumably quite used to some choice language in her line of work) who was so offended by one Thomas Westdeane accusing her, in the open streets of Petworth, of coming from Greenwich that she took the trouble to gussy up a case against the bounder.

Actually, as Jerrome points out, this would have been a church court, and it was, in those days a bit of a case of 'accuse or be accused' - if you didn't do something public about a slur on your character, it was not only assumed that the remark was apt, but it might mean a case against you from the very bishop to whom you should have gone to complain in the first case.

Goodman prepared for the case, by lining herself up three stellar witnesses who had heard Westdeane call her a "Greenwich Birde" outside the mercer John Bywimble's shop.

Before we go any further I guess I should explain the insult - though I doubt it takes much imagination to work it out. Greenwich at the time was a busy port, full of sailors - and ladies who enjoyed entertaining them. Margaret had been accused of whoring.

Joanna Curtyes was inside the shop at the time, "buying of wares," and heard the plaintiff and the accused coming along the street. They were clearly having a right old ding-dong, and Joanna heard "angrie words betwixt them."

Westdeane told Goodman that she was not honest. "Oh yeah?" she said (or words to that effect.) "How's that then?" He replied she was a whore.

The storm in this particular teacup getting splashier by the moment, Margaret Goodman called over the good mercer, Joanna and William Mose, a yeoman who just happened to be around at the time, and dared Westdeane to repeat what he'd just said. Which he did. "Thou art an arrante whore and came from Greenwiche."

A bit later on Westdeane made things worse for himself when he asked Joanna if she was going to bear witness at the court and what she would say. She told him she'd tell what she heard, and he replied that he would teach a whore to spit in a man's face. Joanna reckoned that, in her view, the slander would mean that Margaret "amongste grave men within the parishe of Petworth...is of lesse estimacon than before she was."

William Mose agreed that the barney between the accuser and accused took place, and he thought the original argument had been about Margaret's brother, but he know hear any more details. He also heard Westdeane call Margaret a whore and a Greenwich bird, and what's more, John Bywimble had heard it too.

Bywimble himself (don't you just love that name?) didn't appear, but a tailor, Mark Upfield, confirmed that the pair had been "walkinge togeather verye discontentedlye and brawlinge one with another."

Oddly, there doesn't seem to be an outcome recorded from this suit, though given the weight of witness evidence and the lack of anything coming from Westdeane himself, it's probable that Margaret won her case and he would have faced a fine or possibly paid public penance in white sheets for his "incontinence".

So there we go - an example of someone else's local history having a direct message about our own. The image, by the way, is part of the testimony of William Mose. In the middle of the fourth line down, if you're sharp-eyed, you'll see the insult that started it all, still, outrageous today in some parts of Sussex, I understand...

John Townsend. MP. Actor. Auctioneer. Radical. Emigrant

While the snow has been falling and I've not wanted to venture out for more than a pint of milk, I've been amusing myself with the shamefully-out-of-print Greenwich and Blackheath Past by Felix Barker, and found myself fascinated by a chameleon-like character of the sort you just don't get to see these days. John Major famously ran away from the circus to join another one but he was such a grey character that he was probably a changeling anyway. John Townsend, on the other hand, ran away from the theatre to become an MP but was a character so full of life and colour that the House was never going to keep him completely amused.

Townsend may not have been born in a trunk in 1819 but I'll wager his dad sold a few. If my experiences down at Greenwich Auctions are anything to go by, you need to be a bit of an actor to do that kind of work and although barking out prices on secondhand furniture wasn't for Townsend Jr, he would have learned projection from his old dad, if nothing else.

The lure of the greasepaint touched him even as a lad, and he appeared on stage from a very early age. He went on to lease the Theatre Royal Richmond straight after Edmund Kean had vacated the premises, then went on the road with his own company. His forte was Shakespearean tragedies, which somehow makes his brush with politics even more surreal.

Perhaps seeing Britain with a jobbing actor's eye gave him his compassion because when his father died and the 33 year-old had to give up acting to take over the family business, Townsend became a Poor Law Guardian and the next thing he knew he was fighting for dockers' rights. I get the feeling that he was elected MP for Greenwich almost by accident.

But once the limelight is in your blood, it's hard to give it up, and John Towsnend MP, even whilst sitting at Westminster, couldn't resist treading the boards. He played Shylock at Marylebone Theatre "to deafening applause" and received "long and prolonged cheers" when he gave his Richard III at Rochester. Ever the showman, he went one better at Astley's Royal Amphitheatre by being the last actor ever to play the doomed king on horseback (presumably not whilst speaking the line about being willing to part with his kingdom for a steed...)

Can you even imagine Nick Raynsford as a Shakespearean character? I'll look forward to hearing your suggestions for parts he might be suitable for. I guess today we're not completely without parliamentary clowns appearing on inappropriate media vehicles - witness George Galloway making an arse of himself on Celebrity Big Brother for that one - but actors?

Trouble was, poor old Townsend was a dreadful businessman and I can't imagine he'd made himself very popular with the local businesses he wanted to make pay their workers decent wages. He was forced into bankruptcy and had to give up his seat. He went back to acting full time and seems to have been much better loved as an actor than an MP, which, I suppose, is hardly surprising.

When he was 40, his health started to deteriorate, and he decided to emigrate. In order to get enough cash to make the crossing, he announced that he would give one last performance, at the Royal Hill Lecture Hall in 1866.

All 900 seats for the evening of "Dramatic Entertainment" had been snapped up faster than a Julie Andrews night at the O2, landing Townsend the princely sum of £200. He, along with his wife and fourteen year-old son ('unanimously pronounced the most accomplished junior swordsman of the day'), performed for his ex-constituents one last time, then boarded a boat for Canada.

Of course, once he was there, he couldn't resist acting any more than he could here. He continued until he retired in 1877, and I'm sure he stayed performing for family friends until his death in 1892. If it's in your blood...

Molly Dancing

Today is Plough Monday. No - I didn't know, either. It's traditionally a way of blowing off steam for bored ploughboys, stuck in the depths of ennui (I doubt they actually called it that) in the dull period between the jollities of Christmas and the time when they could start ploughing.

It was effectively an unholy blend of Morris Dancing and Trick-or-Treat, where burly lads would go around the town offering to dance for money. Anyone who refused had nasty tricks played on them - including having interesting furrows ploughed across their lawns. Of course, the young rascals were demanding money with menaces from the very people they were reliant on giving them employment as soon as the ground defrosted, so they didn't want to be recognised. They disguised themselves with soot and wore coloured scarves and jolly hats.

Like Morris Dance, they were originally all men, though instead of an Obby Oss or that bloke with the ribbons and hat, they had a Molly - a guy dressed up as a woman (and thus taking us straight back to panto - as usual everything's connected). Although clearly they have nothing directly to do with the Molly Houses (gay brothels) of 18th century London, I'm sure the cross-dressing element in the name can't be a coincidence.

The last 'classic-period' Molly Dance, was, according to Wikipedia, which knows everything, in Little Downham, Cambridgeshire, in 1933, and, in all truth, it's mainly an East Anglian/Essex tradition.

So what's it doing in Greenwich tonight? Well, Fowlers Molly Dancers can't think 0f a good reason for Greenwich NOT to have a nice dose of Mollying on a miserable, snowy, Monday in January. I mean - let's face it - no one's going to be able to plough anything round here at the moment...

The Fowler Mollys are both male and female, but there's still a healthy amount of cross-dressing involved, according to Sarah, who's part of the team. Apparently they have a beautiful bearded lady called Margaret. She admits "we're fairly guerilla-style" so they don't have a website (though I did find this fascinating site about the Jack in the Green, which mentions them) "we just pop up in December and January and then go to ground again."

The video at the top of the post is the Fowlers Mollys (named after an early 20th Century troop) dancing outside the John Evelyn in Deptford a couple of years ago, but if you fancy seeing a little piece of English tradition reinterpreted, they will be doing the classic Plough Monday tour of local hostelries tonight between several West Greenwich pubs.

They start from the Ashburnham Arms, where they'll dance at 8pm and finish at the Richard I (the Tolly), in Royal Hill at 9.30pm. There will be a pub in the middle in the 8.45pm slot. Traditionally, this is usually the Prince Albert just up the road from the Tolly, but the pub is in the process of changing hands and Sarah wasn't sure of the exact arrangments when we were talking last week.

Greenwich Barbers

I was given a copy of Brewers Dictionary of London Phrase and Fable for Christmas, after seeing and not-very-subtly coveting it in Waterstones. It's a great book - one of those lovely 'dipper' volumes that you don't read from cover to cover but return to every so often for a new nugget of curious knowledge.

I didn't expect to find much about Greenwich that I hadn't heard of before in a book that was London-wide; but I hadn't come across the term "Greenwich Barber" before. Greenwich Geese, yes, Barbers, no.

According to the book, it's "an 18th and 19th Century slang term applied to the people who obtained and sold sand from the Greenwich sandpits." It would seem that it derived from the idea of their 'shaving' the sand away from the seams.

I confess the etymology of this feels a bit weird. I tried googling it and found very few references to the term among all the adverts for hairdressers in Connecticut. Most of the references I did find come from people referencing Brewers; Websters claims the original source to be the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. I have no doubt it actually was a phrase then, but how widespread it would have been, I have no idea.

If memory serves, the Greenwich sand pits focused around the Diamond Terrace area (I'm still waiting for my invite to one of those fabled cocktail parties in a back garden 'grotto' made from an old sandmine, hint, hint...) though I'm sure the splendid fellows at Subterranean Greenwich will be tacking the subject of sand mines soon.

The sand went to make Greenwich Glass - which, depending on which account you read, was very fine or absolutely awful. Since I have never seen a single example of Greenwich Glass, I have no opinion on the matter, but I did discover that the Duke of Buckingham, who was Charles I's favourite, was a bit of a science-buff (they called them 'chymists' in those days) and got into glass making. His nice-little-earner monopoly ran out when Oliver Cromwell came to power, but Buckingham managed to persuade the Lord Protector to ban foreign imports, which had much the same effect. The duke's glassworks in Vauxhall and Greenwich thrived.

The death-knell for Greenwich Glass sounded with the invention of lead crystal (or 'flint glass') in the 1670s by George Ravenscroft (not that I can find any link with today's Ravenscroft Glass company.) Suddenly no one wanted boring old normal glass any more, they wanted the funky new stuff made with lead oxide instead of potash, and Buckingham's Greenwich glassworks had to close (although he continued to make mirrors in Vauxhall.)

Perhaps from the point of view of Greenwich's health, the closure wasn't such a bad thing. Apparently glassmaking is a very nasty business - creating toxic black fumes and lots of pollution. In fact I'm surprised that it was allowed at all near a Royal palace - though I guess the smoke could have been a contributing factor to the royals moving out for good around that time...

Certainly Buckingham himself wasn't daft enough to live anywhere near either of his factories. He lived at York House, on the Strand, and although his son sold it off to developers in the 1670s, the main Water Gate entrance (designed by none other than Inigo Jones) survives. Thanks to Victorian engineering (the Embankment) it's now nowhere near any water - but if you fancy a little trip, take a right out of Embankment tube into Embankment Gardens. Just past the concert stage and deckchairs, the Water Gate still sits, somewhat stranded (no pun intended) but surrounded by some rather pretty flower beds...

Hmm. I appear to have waffled a bit this morning. That's what comes from dipping into a book of curious facts about London. Somehow, everything eventually connects.

Masquerade

What does a Phantom write about on a snowy January morning when celebrating a the 1500th post of a blog? I can't help feeling that it should be something frivolous and fun, and what could be more fanciful on a freezing day than a court masque?

Inigo Jones is mainly celebrated for having designed the Queen's House - first Palladian house in Britain, set the template for all the others, groundbreaking architecture, yada, yada. But what I love about him is that when it came to the theatre he was an utter luvvie, designing OTT sets and really rather saucy costumes for featherlight dramas mainly put on by courtiers for each others' amusement.

Like so many others in the arts, he wasn't born wealthy - he was the son of a Smithfield clothworker. Just how he clawed his way up the slippery slope isn't known, but he managed to get himself a job on the staff of the Earl of Rutland (an interesting chap I will return to at some point...) and from there it took just a couple of years, via a trip to Italy to check out Palladio's work (again, how he managed to get himself out there with no cash is a mystery, but it does prove that where there's a will there's a way) to design his first theatre set for Anne of Denmark (the queen who later got him to build that house for her.)

There was nothing Anne liked better than a nice masque, which was probably a good thing since she didn't get to see much of her husband James I (he much preferred the company of his male favourites.) He'd clearly worked out the best way to have a quiet life was to indulge her - and he had to bail her out financially by selling Queen Elizabeth's jewels and furniture at least once after she overspent on fancy frippery and fabulous nonsense.

So what did a Renaissance masque actually consist of? I'm still not entirely sure. It seems to have mainly revolved around people wafting around in beautiful costumes of great symbolism, usually pertaining to some obscure piece of Classical mythology that made whoever had commissioned the piece look good in front of the monarch of the day.

The sets were incredibly ornate too, specially created with all kinds of technical geejaws so that 'magical' transformations could take place to the amazement of all the guests. None of it was particularly heavy on plot. I suppose the closest thing we have to anything like it today is panto, though possibly without the slop-scene.

There was a script, often written by Jones's exact contemporary and best mate Ben Jonson until a punch up in 1631 over which was more important, the words or the look of the thing. Sadly for poor old Jonson, always the purist, the words were really just a by-the-by in court masquery, even playing second fiddle to the dancing, where the 'actors' would come over all Brechtian and reveal the artifice by taking partners from the audience.

Before I leave poor old Jonson seething at the injustice of it all, I should point out that he may have the last laugh this year - I notice Greenwich Theatre, in another one of their welcome forays into home-produced shows, will be presenting Volpone this season.

Not that the general public would have ever got so much as a peek at one of Jonson & Jones's original masques - wonders such as Pan's Anniversary, or the Shepherd's Holiday were strictly for the nobs only.

But what the masques did create was a platform for Jones to show off the new designs that were all the rage in Italy. While the Brits were still clodhopping around with half-timbered gables, over on the continent Andrea Palladio was creating the clean lines of the Renaissance, based, like those masques, on the Classical world of Ancient Greece and Rome.

Inigo Jones, who had marvelled at all this in Rome, found masques the perfect way to infiltrate Palladio's ideas into temporary showcases for the new style. After a while, it seemed like merely the next step to create a permanent building.

Anne didn't need a new house. Greenwich Palace was still in fine nick (more than could be said for it half a century later...) But then she didn't need to put on masques. They were fun. And so would be the new palace. Jones was completely liberated - to create a novelty, a 'curious devise,' purely for pleasure.

But that's a whole other post. Or ten...

Jesters, Welshmen and Cole-Eting Felows...

Today I whisk you back to the Merrie Courts of Olde Greenwich, a time when they knew how to have fun. Henry VIII, especially, had a veritable Blackadder-worthy list of entertainments, from a 'Walshman that maketh rymes' and a chap who 'joculed before the king,' 'popyngais' and 'one that tumbled before the king' to 'a felow eting of coles,' which, yickky as it might be, probably didn't divert the king for very long...

Of course, the Christmas season didn't start until midnight on the 24th - and Christmas day itself was very solemn - it was the twelve days afterwards that brought the fun and games - and it wasn't until Twelfth Night when the presents were handed out. By the time Epiphany Eve came round everyone was ready for a bit of a kneesup.

Henry loved a comely dancing wench. He often had them at his feasts and rewarded them handsomely. One 'young damoysell that daunceth' got £30 for her efforts. Another litelle mayden' who clearly wasn't quite so agile only received £12 - but compare that with the poor old Welsh poet or the bloke that ate the coal, who got just 6s 8d each for their (probably literal) pains.

Among the racket made by all the sackbutts, bagpipes, organs, trumpets, tabors, harps, lutes - name the instrument, Henry had it - the most famous of all his entertainments has to have been the fools.

There were two different kinds. The 'natural fool' was either physically deformed (and therefore assumed to be mentally deficient too) mentally handicapped or otherwise 'insane.' They were usually sold off by their families, who couldn't afford the extra mouths to feed, and were bought and sold among posh people as chattels. Dwarfs were particularly popular as palace pets, but some 'giants' were also allowed, and they were dressed up, primped and preened like the human equivalent of lap-dogs.

The 'artificial fool' wasn't 'mad' (though they often looked a bit odd.) Their USP was acrobatics or clowning around, comedy routines or joke telling - more the sort of thing we think of when conjuring a medieval jester in our minds. Both varieties were indulged to make the kind of rude remarks that no one else at court would be allowed to do.

There are lots of records of fools at Greenwich (I'm talking medieval here, though I can think of a few prize clowns nowadays...) Sexton, Dick, and 'Dego, the Spanish Fole' all passed through the town. Patch, a natural fool, had belonged to Cardinal Wolsey but the cardinal gave him to Henry as a gift after his fall from favour. I suspect Patch himself wasn't best pleased at being carted about like that, but at least he would have had enough to eat - fools always enjoyed a prominent place at their masters' tables...

Greenwich's most famous Tudor fool was Will Somers, the king's favourite jester. Despite his pronounced stoop, which he played up to make people laugh even more, Somers was an artificial fool (he's in the picture below, trying to think of something clever to say about the king's harp playing) and he took an active part in the politics of the day as well as capering about, dancing, improvising rhymes, telling gags, making terrible puns and having riddle-contests with the king - which he didn't always let Henry win.

Somers was, apparently, the only guy who could cheer up the old king when his gouty leg hurt but his jokes sometimes put other people's feet right in it, - like the time he got Cardinal Wolsey into trouble by making a joke about the cardinal's 'unnecessary' extravagance. He had a bit of a cruel streak too. He upstaged other jesters, making them look bad, if he thought they might be making people laugh too much - but on the other hand, I understand he had an almost Robin-Hood like generosity, which made him a local hero. Not that I can find any evidence of this, save allusions to it in my rather romantic mate, the Rev LeStrange's, book.

The one fool for whom I've tried really hard to find a link to Greenwich and singularly failed is Sir Jeffrey Hudson, AKA Lord Minimus, Queen Henrietta Maria's proportionate dwarf, who had an incredible life - not least because he was always fed up with being only known for his height.

He found himself joining up in the army, wandering round Europe, and duelling, for which he was dismissed from court. He was captured by Barberry pirates, became a slave and ended up as labourer for 25 years. But in all this, and despite Henrietta Maria being a resident of Greenwich, I can't see that he ever even visited the town - he would have been in his 'wandering' years when she was here.


But, as the jesters of old would have said, hey, nonny. We have plenty of our own fools. And remember - they're not just for Christmas...

John Julius Angerstein - Monster Hunter

What do we remember John Julius Angerstein for? A railway? A pub? A grubby industrial estate on Greenwich Peninsula? Starting the National Gallery? Some curious theories on interior ventilation? A faux-naive 'accidental' encroachment on Blackheath? As Catherine the Great's illegitimate son? Being a Lloyds Name? Abolitionist slave owner?

I'm willing to bet that whichever of the above - or the many other curious things about his life stick in the mind, the one that hasn't occurred to you so far, but will do forever more is as The Man Who Wrote The Monster Hunter's Handbook.

Of course it didn't have a title anywhere near as snappy as that. He named it An Authentic Account of the Barbarities lately Practised by the Monsters! Being an Unprecedented and Unnatural Species of Cruelty, Exercised by a Set of Men Upon Defenceless and Generally Handsome Women.

Now, those last three words will be important, as will the plural on the word 'monster' - but I think I'm getting ahead of myself. "Monsters, Phantom? What the bloomin' hell are you talking about?"

Well, THE Monster, actually. The London Monster, to be completely accurate (which the rest of this post almost certainly won't be...) A chillingly bizarre 18th Century precursor to all the other perverts, murderers and bugaboos that have stalked the streets of the capital ever since - and a direct link with Jack the Ripper a century later.

But more than that, he was a phenomenon - a classic example of mass hysteria that created its own monster between 1788 and 1790 - and, like all such things, with results that were ridiculous, comic and, ultimately rather tragic.

And in the middle of all this, John Julius Angerstein, a successful merchant living, at the time, in the heart of London's fashionable St James, who volunteered to be the Van Helsing of the story and, in doing so, probably fanned the flames of panic rather than saving the world.

The Monster's speciality was in stabbing women in the thigh or buttocks (naturally the papers and cartoonists of the day seized upon the buttocks-part) as they walked along the street. He'd follow them, muttering obscenities, then quickly plunge his knife into their skirts and disappear.

Sometimes he changed his tactics and carried a nosegay that he would invite girls to sniff. It contained a knife that would cut their faces. Personally I find it a bit odd that any girl would sniff a stranger's posy (and that sounds much ruder than I intended) when all the town talked about was of a monster who got his kicks through such an act but hey - we're not talking sense here, we're talking the Mob.

The newspapers and coffee houses were full of it. Poems were written, ballads sung and lurid caricatures scribbled. Some women became so panicky about walking the same streets as the Monster that they started wearing specially-fashioned copper petticoats. Those who couldn't afford armour contented themselves with cork-rumps (no, I'm not entirely sure what one of those is either) or even giant porridge pots placed over their posteriors - thankfully the fashion for massive skirts meant that the porridge pots probably didn't show much.

Monster Mania only began to take crazy proportions, however, when John Julius Angerstein took it upon himself to start collating all the evidence (despite the handful of John Fielding's Bow Street Runners, the police force was still a bumbling mixture of elderly beadles, useless night watchmen and part time constables, though apparently the Chelsea Pensioners weren't to be crossed...) and create a reward for the capture of the Monster.

The grand sum of one hundred pounds was offered for the capture of the monster, and Angerstein created a series of posters declaring the reward.

Suddenly everyone went berserk. People were accused left, right and centre and it only took someone to point a finger for a mob to form out of nowhere and attack some poor guy for no reason whatsoever.

This had the unfortunate side effect that pickpockets who had been caught by their quarry, merely shouted "Ooh - look! There's the Monster! Quick! He's getting away!" and the poor gent would be chased and beaten up by a crowd of mad people while the pickpocket got away with the loot.

It got to a point where some doughty fellows formed their own group called The No Monster Club and wore badges to prove they weren't the Big Bad, which of course worked really, really well and was completely unfakeable.

Angerstein did his own 'investigations,' which involved him interviewing each of the 'victims' (not all turned out to be - some lied or even cut themselves, for various sordid reasons, the most common being that the monster was only supposed to attack beautiful women, so being attacked by the Monster was a declaration that you were a gorgeous creature...) and making notes, much of which seemed to focus around how attractive he found each one.

His notes got more detailed the prettier the girl, but the annoying thing was that no real picture of the Monster appeared. He was tall, short, thin, fat, big-nosed, small-featured - in short, he could be anyone.

Eventually, just as Angerstein was creating his Monster Handbook, a guy was arrested, and charges (very probably) trumped up. Enough of the women agreed that artificial-flower maker Rhynwick Williams was their man to get him convicted. Despite his cast-iron alibis for several of the attacks and good character witness statements, in the eyes of the mob, he was the Monster.

Williams wasn't actually hanged, which was what I was fearing as I read Jan Bondeson's The London Monster - Terror on the Streets in 1790, (heartily recommended.) He was imprisoned, and people used to go to gawp at him in gaol - using the excuse that they were going to buy his fake flowers - and commented on how weedy and insignificant the Monster looked, unsurprising, since he probably wasn't the Monster.

Reading Bondeson's book, it occurs to me that the Monster was probably many-headed - that the hysteria provoked copycat attacks and there wasn't actually any one Monster but a whole bunch of weirdos who got their kicks from poking women with sharp objects. Angerstein says as much in the title of his pamphlet. The attacks lessened when Williams was banged up, but they didn't stop entirely.

For me this is as much the product of the times as one guy in particular. There was revolution and mass hysteria oing on in Europe; we had our own, almost Carry-On panic. And John Julius Angerstein, however well-intentioned, probably didn't really help matters with his posters, leaflets -and that massive reward...

The Duellists

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good pistol must be in want of a duel.

It was a sunny September afternoon of 1806 and the dashing Mr Richardson walked along one of London's more fashionable streets, near Temple Bar, with two of his sisters, one on each arm. As they promenaded, pointing out Mr D- ("Ten thousand a year, my dear!") or Miss W- ("I got it from Mrs P- she attempted a reckless elopement with Colonel S- from the Tenth Regiment...") and admiring the latest fashions in hat shop windows, a burly, arrogant fellow approached the merry group, and tried to pass them without leaving the footpath.

The ladies stepped back a little in surprise at such effrontery, but Mr Richardson's eyes narrowed. "Egad!" he exclaimed to himself, under his breath, so as not to alarm the ladies. "If it isn't that popinjay Baron Hompesch! A dastardly character, well-known in the seedier gaming circles of the City." Richardson, you understand, recognised the man from various acquaintances' descriptions, rather than from ever having met him in such a den of vice. Obviously.

Richardson was determined to make the fellow wait and stood firm, while the ladies shrank modestly behind their brother. The Baron, determined to pass at any cost, jostled Mr Richardson in a provocative fashion. The ladies gasped, but Mr Richardson stood his ground.

With a 'muttered imprecaution,' the Baron was forced to step off the pavement and into the road, but as he did so, he knocked the gallant gentleman's hat clean from his head. The ladies squealed.

Mr Richardson broke free from his sisters and stepped towards the saucy chap. As he did so, he struck out and knocked the blighter down.

The Baron was red with fury and shock. "I demand satisfaction Sir," he exclaimed, as he picked himself up from the mire.

"I do not see why," replied Richardson, readjusting his kid gloves. "I am perfectly satisfied with the result."

The pair met the following Sunday morning, among the misty, murky, gorse-covered hollows of Blackheath, two hundred yards from the Green Man Inn. It was a favourite spot for such affairs. Their choice of weapons - pistol.

The distance between them was short, but on first firing, both men missed.

Ever the gallant, Richardson suggested a compromise, whereupon the Baron would lay a cane across his shoulders in token satisfaction for any discomposure. The Baron refused with a sneer.

Once again the distance was paced. Once again the pair fired. Once again both missed. It must be the fault of the pistols, they declared, nothing to do with any lack of gentlemanly prowess at the noble art. Fresh weaponry was sent for.

On the third firing, Mr Richardson's shot missed again, but the Baron's aim was, at last, true. The ball passed through Richardson's body, a little above the hip.

My old friend the Reverend le Strange, who told me this story, fails to finish the tale and say whether or not the shot was fatal, but I'm guessing with Regency medical attention being as about accurate as Regency pistols the outcome wasn't particularly positive for the rash young Richardson.

And there was me complaining about the odd pothole yesterday. In Regency times, people would rather die than get off the pavement...

Sailor Billy

He's the one everyone forgets - the last of the Hanoverian kings, in between George IV (who is forever engraved on my heart as played by Hugh Laurie) and Victoria (Judi Dench). And he was, frankly, a bit forgotten in his own time too. William IV wasn't ever really meant to be king - he was a third son and he managed to slip through life to the age of 64 as merely a slight embarrassment to the Royal family.

The family did what they always do with younger sons - stuck him in the services - he joined the navy, where he had a marvellous time, doing all the things that sailors traditionally did, bar much in the way of fighting. He did his share of the cooking, a lot of drinking and a little brawling. He was a great pal of Nelson - he insisted on giving the bride away when Nelson married.

He wanted to be a Duke, but the king wasn't having any of it, so William threatened to enter the House of Commons (this was still in the days of rotten boroughs - he was going to buy Totnes) and the king acquiesced at the thought of William on the hustings. He became the Duke of Clarence and the Earl of Munster was thrown in for good measure. He was a bit of a loose cannon - he said he was a Whig, but he really just did random stuff - such as opposing the abolition of slavery, saying it wouldn't do the slaves any good to be freed, which on reflection probably wasn't the strongest argument for the case.

A whole load of stuff happened during his seven year reign between 1830 and 1837 - not least the end of those pesky rotten boroughs - but he himself wasn't a particularly exciting king (though I guess after George IV anything must have seemed a breath of fresh air...) There were good and bad things about his reign - he was the last king to install a prime minister against the will of Parliament, for example - but on the plus side he gave most of George IV's paintings to the nation.

I guess what most people remember him for is his relationship with the actress/courtesan Mrs Jordan, with whom he had a staggering ten children. Since none of them were legitimate, when he died the throne went to his niece Victoria though it's possible that the illegitimate kids will have the last laugh - Wikipedia tells me that Tory leader David Cameron is a descendant of one of them...

So why am I writing about Sailor Billy today? Well - because something seems to be happening to him in Greenwich. Our statue of him originally stood in King William Street in the City - here's an old pic:

It was moved to Greenwich in 1936 to fill the gap left by the demolition of St Mary's Church just by the main gate to Greenwich Park, where he's quietly stood ever since, surrounded by a beech hedge and, if memory serves, low stones marking the perimeters of the old church.

I was walking past last week and I saw the hedge had gone, replaced by builders' hoardings. Poor old Billy stood alone in a sea of mud. I can only assume it's part of the new Sammy Ofer wing.

But - can they do this? I have heard rumour that no one actually knows who owns that land - and that underneath the grass still lie vaults with graves and bodies in.

I don't know anything at all about this - but would be very interested to hear if the rumours are true - and if so, how the NMM has managed to sneakily disturb Billy's peace...