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London History At Home, London (2024)

02/06/2023

Today’s family heirloom is a canal bridge plaque* (pic 1). The history of canals in London is vast but here’s a tiny slice of it.
It could be said that London’s first canal was the Fleet river (pic 3) which was canalised by Wren in the 1670s to stop it being used as a sewer and get rid of the unholy stench. Londoners still used it as as sewer and the canal was culverted by the 1760s.
London’s first proper canal was the Limehouse Cut which opened in 1770 and created a shortcut from the River Lea to the Thames (pic 4).
By the early 19th century London had many canals connecting it to other cities around the UK but by the mid-1800s canals were being replaced by railways. Quite literally in some parts of built up London where the best place to build your brand new railway line and station was on a canal and its basin. The last commercial canal in London was the Grosvenor Canal in Victoria which closed in the late 1990s (pic 5). Excursions and tour boats had always been a small feature of London’s canals and that continues on the surviving canals.
The people of the canals would probably not have considered themselves Londoners. Whole families lived on their boats and often travelled up and down the country to wherever there was work. Canal families tended to be recorded only in tragic or criminal circumstances but I found a few that didn’t include death or courtrooms.
In 1926 a bargeman, David Lee, rescued a policeman who was trying to rescue two children from a burning canal barge in Southall. The PC had leapt heroically on to the barge then slipped on the icy deck and fallen in the canal. Lee rescued him and together they rescued the boys and their dog.
In 1929 London’s last legger retired at the age of 78. William ‘Old Iron’ Higbid had legged barges through Maida Hill Tunnel (pic 6) since he was a lad (legging is moving a barge through a tunnel by walking your legs along the wall or roof).
The often overlooked and much maligned people of the canals who fuelled London are remembered by statues near the City Road lock (pic 7).
*not really an heirloom but I bought it from my cousin’s shop so I’m counting it (thanks, Menzies Marineware!)

22/05/2023

Today’s heirloom is two tiny ladies razors from the 1930s.
Until the 20th century it was uncommon for the majority of women to shave their legs or armpits mainly because they generally wore long skirts so, honestly, why bother? Then a razor manufacturer in the 1910s successfully convinced everyone that female body hair was unhygienic and at around the same time women’s fashions were tending towards shorter skirts.
Although even in Roman times women and men removed their body hair and a medieval compendium written by Gilbert of England has several ways for women to remove body hair. Hairlessness was associated with innocence and purity which was a standard women were expected to live up to for most of history so removing body hair might have been more common in the past but not recorded. Most of the medieval epilation methods were time-consuming, expensive or poisonous so it’s likely that only upper class women bothered and, perhaps, artists’ models (there is rarely a hairy leg in a renaissance painting!).
In the late medieval and some of the Tudor period it was fashionable for women to completely pluck their eyebrows and even their hairline because large foreheads were de rigeur. That might have been achievable even for working women if they had an eye to fashion.
In the 17th century women in London, and the rest of England, would very probably not have shaved their body hair. One of the indignities of a witch trial was that the accused woman would have their body hair shaved off to find a ‘witch mark’. If any blemish was found she would be found guilty and very likely executed. Even if she wasn’t found guilty her hairlessness would have been greeted with suspicion until it all grew back.
Any sort of cosmetics was frowned on by the puritans in the 17th century, particularly in puritan strongholds like London so women wouldn’t have been expected to wear make-up or shave (although there was an annoying loophole that a woman should make herself attractive to her husband but nobody else so smooth legs might have been a way to do that but, again, it’s not recorded). The reluctance to wear make-up, certainly by working women, continued well into the 18th century, a visitor to London in 1750 noted that ‘the women use no paint’.
As usual with women’s history information is hard to come by, you can probably tell I’ve guessed at what women would have done and we’ll probably never really know how the medieval London woman felt about her hairy legs.

14/05/2023

Today’s family heirloom is a guide book from the late 1940s.
The history of guide books is short and recent but it got me wondering what did visitors to London do before the early 19th century when proper guide books started popping up? Well, if you were rich you just hired someone to take you around and point out the sights. For everyone else until relatively recently people didn’t usually go on holiday just to go on holiday there would be some other purpose for travel, visiting family or for work or to deal with some other business so you’d probably be meeting someone who would give you directions and maybe tell you how to get to a famous sight like the Tower of London or London Bridge. If you didn’t know London a medieval Londoner might have got a vague idea from Matthew Paris’ depiction of London. Paris’ guide was an itinerary of a route from London to Jerusalem and there were other guides of holy pilgrimages around at the time but London was, at best, a starting point so you couldn’t use it to get around. From 1598 you might have consulted Stow’s Survey of London and its numerous reprints but that was more of a history book. Given the lack of literacy that was around for much of history it’s maybe more likely that you might have had a look at a panorama of London, maybe Wynnegarde’s 1540s version, or one of the maps of London that started being made from the Tudor period. By 1670s John Ogilby had made the first road map of Britain so you could get to and from London with his handy guide. In the early 19th century things Mogg’s Guides to London and John Tallis’s London Street Views made things a bit easier for those who could read and/or afford to buy a book. Things could be confusing even for the literate though. In 1848 the Brontes visited London to prove they were really three women and not one bloke but got lost walking from St Paul’s Cathedral to Cornhill (a fairly short walk as shown in the 1848 map). London guide books came thick and fast as the 19th century (and literacy levels) progressed and as more people arrived as visitors on the railways. My guide book is from the late 1940s and is a charming depiction of post-war London.

Photo 1 – Matthew Paris’ image of 13th century London (c/o British Museum)
Photo 2 – Wynnegarde’s 1540s panorama of London
Photo 3 – A crop from a 1677 John Ogilby map showing the approach to London
Photo 4 – John Tallis’s View of Cheapside from 1838
Photo 5 – 1848 visitors’ map of London showing where the Brontes got lost
Photos 6 and 7 – a couple of pages from my 1940s guidebook

09/05/2023

My last coronation related heirloom is the spoon given to my Mum for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation.
Elizabeth became queen when her father died in 1952 and her coronation was planned for 2nd June 1953. Street parties were planned around London, and around the country, with the Ministry of Food approving more than 80 licenses to roast oxen. With meat still on ration in 1953 the licenses must have been precious. Coronation chicken was invented for an official coronation banquet for visiting dignitaries and quickly became popular.
Three million people went to the coronation procession, my Mum and her family among them, and many would have watched a fireworks display over the Thames that evening and perhaps even a river pageant the following month. They used so many coaches for the coronation that the royal family didn’t have enough and had to borrow some from Elstree Studios. Among the journalists covering the coronation was a journalist for the Washington Times Herald who, after she married, would go on to become a household name herself - Jackie Kennedy.
For those who couldn’t make it to central London it was the first coronation to be filmed and broadcast live with families who could afford it buying their first TV for the occasion. It’s estimated that around 27 million people in the UK watched it live, with an average of 17 people crowded round each television set. The coronation was also filmed in 3D but the footage wasn’t used.
For anyone who was working that day and didn’t catch the live coverage, a film was made about the coronation and narrated by Laurence Olivier, it was nominated for an Oscar and was the first Golden Globe winner for a documentary.

08/05/2023

Today’s family heirloom is a souvenir beaker for George VI’s coronation in 1937.
George became king when his older brother, King Edward VIII, abdicated the throne in December 1936. Edward’s coronation had been planned for 12th May 1937. Edward hadn’t really wanted a coronation but was told he had to so he agreed but managed to shorten it and cancel the parades. He also wanted to include the colonies and dominions in some way. When Edward abdicated the date of the coronation wasn’t changed and George VI was convinced to reinstate the parade but he did still manage to re-write the oath for the first time since the 17th century so it would include the colonies and dominions.
Makers of souvenirs, banners and bunting as well as the Royal Mint and the Royal Mail had only five months to change all the Edwards to Georges but there were huge celebrations across London. The coronation parade was the longest to date, it covered six miles and the fledgling BBC filmed it using 8 miles of cable through the London streets and three cameras (they only had six at the time). There were additional royal progresses through largely residential parts of London later in May.
It was the first time the coronation was to be broadcast on the radio so people didn’t have to wait for the newsreels to hit the cinemas and, for the first time, people other than posh folk, royals and politicians had a chance to attend, among the guests at Westminster Abbey were representatives of trade unions and co-operative societies.
With street parties galore many of those in London were attended by Pearly Kings and Queens staging their own coronations and mimicking the royal family.

05/05/2023

Today’s family heirloom* is a postcard for George V’s coronation in 1911.
George became king when his father, Edward VII, died in 1910. His coronation was planned for 22nd June 1911. The usual round of street parties, concerts and celebrations were planned alongside the main coronation at Westminster Abbey and the parades and royal progresses.
It was the first coronation to be photographed by photographer Sir John Benjamin Stone so as well as seeing the newsreels of the parades in the cinemas people could see images from the coronation itself for the first time.
The week before the coronation women campaigning for votes for women had held a Women’s Coronation Procession through London. The march was attended by most of the suffrage organisations and included women on horseback and dressed up as famous women from history as well as women in national dress, including groups from Wales and India.
Londoners could attend the parade on the day itself or a second royal progress to the City of London the following day. Many of London’s buildings were lit by strings of electric lights until just after midnight on the day of the coronation, an unusual sight in the days when buildings were rarely lit at night and even street lighting was still a bit patchy.
In Crystal Palace a festival was held with exhibits from around the world and reconstructions of parliament buildings from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. It was more than a tad imperialistic, not the proudest moment in British history, but it must have been a spectacle for Londoners when international travel was only for the rich.
*technically I didn’t inherit this I found it in a second hand shop so it’s my addition to the collection to be inherited by the next generation.

04/05/2023

Today’s family heirloom is a coronation spoon from the coronation of King Edward VII and his wife Queen Alexandra.
Edward became king when his mother, Queen Victoria, died in 1901. His coronation was planned for 26th June 1902. London, and the rest of the country, planned local celebrations and street parties but unfortunately the king became ill and instead of being crowned he underwent surgery on a table in Buckingham Palace. He insisted that the local celebrations go ahead as planned and that the coronation banquet be distributed to 500,000 poor Londoners. The coronation was rescheduled for 9th August with some of the processions pushed back to October.
Londoners might have been amused to see a strange contraption outside the Abbey before the coronation. It was Hubert Cecil Booth’s vacuum cleaner, the first of its kind. Westminster Abbey was the first public building to be vacuumed and it started quite the trend among middle class Londoners who had parties as they watched Booth’s horse-drawn machine suck the dust from their homes just as it had for the new king’s coronation.
For those who hadn’t made it to central London they could see a film which became a huge box office smash, it incorporated newsreel of the parade and a recreation of what had happened inside.
Even the music halls had special coronation shows. Marie Lloyd performed in her one and only r***e for a coronation special at the Tivoli Theatre on the Strand and a music hall song was written called The Coronation Dude which was first performed by drag king Vesta Tilley.

03/05/2023

This month I’d like to explore London history through the nicknacks I’ve inherited through my Mum’s family who have been Londoners for centuries and I’m starting with a coronation special with the family souvenirs from the 20th century coronations. Over the next few posts I’d like to share a few random facts about the coronations.
More generally, I’m not saying it’s the main reason the British still hang on to the royal family but for big royal occasions we all get an extra day off and we do love a bank holiday. Although because coronations take place in London a lot of working Londoners work on the day feeding and watering and transporting and caring for and selling tacky souvenirs to the hundreds of thousands of extra people descending on the capital.
But those Londoners who didn’t have to work might have watched the coronation parades. In different parts of London for all four 20th century coronations there would have been street parties, concerts, parades, firework displays and all manner of festivities.
I’m sure there’ll be plenty of shows and posts and everything doing the rounds just now about the history of coronations through the years so I was interested not so much in what went on inside the Abbey but what people like me and my family might have seen.
In the next post I’ll talk a bit more about King Edward VII’s coronation and how Londoners might have experienced it.
The photos are the state coach of King Edward VII going over Hyde Park Corner in 1902; a view from the crowds of King George V on the Buckingham Palace balcony in 1911; a policeman sheltering two young girls from the rain during a full dress rehearsal for King George VI’s coronation in 1937 and decorations on the Mall for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 (photo c/o Harold Dilworth Crewdson).

31/03/2023

My final week of knitting historic Londoners for a charity knit-a-thon.
This last group is entrepreneur Sake Dean Mahomed; mixologist Ada Coleman; baker and street food seller Tiddy Dol; bus driver Jill Viner; rescue dog Rip; martial arts instructor Sadakazu Uyenishi; former mayor Sam Beaver King; SOE agent Violette Szabo, yogi Baba Lachman Dass; suffragette Rosa May Billinghurst.
As well as three ordinary Londoners because I wanted to celebrate Londoners who haven't done famous things and you won't find on wikipedia but they have done good things. I only did three in the end because I just can't knit any more.

21/03/2023

Week three of knitting historic Londoners.
This week we've got electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire; philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham; cookery book writer Hannah Glasse; Lord Mayor of London and philanthropist Richard Whittington; sailor and street performer Billy Waters; boogie-woogie pianist Winifred Atwell; and notorious thief Elizabeth Lyon.

14/03/2023

My second week of knitting dolls for a charity challenge. I've chosen to knit little-known Londoners and I'd thought I'd share their brief bios with you.
This week we have suffragette Sophia Duleep Singh; scientist and architect Robert Hooke; co-founder of the Salvation Army and campaigner for women's rights Catherine Booth; writer, spy and libertarian Aphra Behn; street sweeper and Pearly King Henry Croft; three medieval and early Tudor businesswomen; and (probably) Britain's first Drag Queen Princess Seraphina

07/03/2023

I've been knitting up dolls based on little-known Londoners for a charity challenge and thought I'd share with you the seven Londoners I chose for the first week.
We've got Pre-Raphaelite model F***y Eaton, theatre manager Lilian Baylis, disability campaigner Oswald Denly, Georgian boxing superstar Bill Richmond, Samaritans founder and Eagle comic co-founder Chad Varah, eccentric bookseller and language teacher John De Verdion, and scientist and author Margaret Cavendish.
I've got 31 dolls to knit, the hardest part is choosing who to knit and who to not knit!

03/03/2023

I'm knitting dolls based on little known Londoners for a charity challenge so I thought I'd share a few with you throughout March.
Today we have Oswald Arthur Denly. Born in Croydon he lost the use of his legs while serving with the Royal Navy during WWII and was living in a naval hospital in East London when he decided he wanted to visit the Alps. A railway guard in France wouldn't let him travel in the guards van with his wheelchair so Denly decided to take to the road in his 1930s powered wheelchair and go on his own. He travelled 1500 miles, climbed to 8,000 feet and got to Berne before heading back home. He campaigned for accessible transport and was awarded an MBE for services to disabled people in 1959.

28/02/2023

Apologies for the long absence. Being a full time carer is a whole thing and can be a bit overwhelming but calm is slowly being restored.
I'm currently knitting little dolls for a charity event, each of them based on a little known Londoner and it seems a shame to let that research go to waste so I'll share a few of those little known Londoners here during March.
For today here's a 17th century map of London for no particular reason, just because I love old maps.

25/11/2022

in 1937 Lilian Baylis died at home while Macbeth was being performed at her theatre, the Old Vic.
Baylis had come from a musical family, she had performed with her family's troupe, the Gypsy Revellers, from 5 years old. They got a dream gig in South Africa but she fell ill and returned to London for an operation staying with her aunt Emma Cons who gave her a job at her theatre while she recovered.
It may have been a result of the illness or the operation but Baylis had a facial paralysis (which she offered several explanations for at different times of her life) and had mobility problems.
Baylis became manager of the Old Vic in 1912 when Cons died. She was determined to continue her aunt's commitment to providing affordable theatre and education, staging penny lectures, ballets and operas. She wasn't a fan of Shakespeare's plays but one night dreamed of the bard who demanded to know why she wasn't staging his plays and insist that she start. She took her dream as an omen and the Old Vic became the first theatre to stage every single Shakespeare play between 1913 and 1923. The Old Vic gained a marvellous reputation and was a wonderful place to launch a career by playing a good role. Bigger stars wouldn't act there because Baylis kept the wages low so she could keep the ticket price low. Legend has it she trained her dogs to bite the ankles of any actor who asked for a raise.
Baylis was often reported as rude and stubborn but a female reporter described her as funny and vivacious.
Baylis not only helped launch the careers of numerous actors including Gielgud, Olivier, Thorndike, Guiness, Vivien Leigh, Edith Evans etc etc but she established the reputation of the Old Vic, helped to found Sadlers Wells and laid the foundation for the National Theatre and the ENO.
Before she died she said that if the standards at the Old Vic ever fell she would come back and haunt the place. A rare incidence of a theatre ghost being an ill omen.

21/11/2022

in 1691 a museum was advertised at John Conyers' house on Shoe Lane. The map shows London before the Great Fire of London with Shoe Lane in the centre.
John Conyers' was born in London in 1633 and worked as an apothecary (image of a 17th century apothecary c/o Wellcome Collection). He risked infection to stay and help people during the Great Plague of 1665 when many doctors and apothecaries left.
He was also a keen archaeologist, often described as London's first archaeologist. After the Great Fire of London (when he lost his shop and his home) he used the opportunity to discover ancient artefacts in the ruins including a roman kiln below the old St Paul's Cathedral. Some years later in the 1670s he had invented a pump to divert the Fleet river and was helping install it. He took the opportunity to do a bit of excavating and discovered an object which everyone believed was a mammoth tooth but he insisted was a manmade human axe proving that humans had been on the planet for longer than the bible suggested (image of the Grays Inn Lane Round Hand Axe c/o Trustees of the British Museum). He was among the first to suggest this and he was roundly scoffed at by scientists, academics and the church. Since then the axe has been dated to 350,000 years old and was one of the first exhibits at the British Museum. The site where it was found is now called Hand Axe Yard.
Image one - map of London by Hollar of pre-fire London
Image two - a 17th century apothecary shop c/o Wellcome Collection
Image three - the Grays Inn Round Hand Axe c/o Trustees of the British Museum

06/11/2022

visits (video in comments)
Another area of London we could rattle on about at length so here’s a few .
The statue of King Charles I was made during the king’s lifetime. After Charles I’s ex*****on in 1649 all royal statues were ordered destroyed, this one was given to a blacksmith called John Rivett who said he’d destroyed it, sold souvenirs made from the melted down statue and, when the monarchy was restored revealed that he’d hidden it, the souvenirs had been made of scrap metal and sold it to King Charles II. It’s stood at the top of Whitehall since the late 17th century, it’s featured in the oldest photo of London in 1839 and is now where distances from London are measured.
Nelson’s Column was created as a memorial to the naval commander in the 1840s. When the column was finished but before the statue was installed a very breezy dinner party was held at the top of the column for 14 stonemasons including Railton and Baily (the sculptors of the column and statue).
The statue of Nelson is 17 feet tall, Nelson himself was 5 foot 4 so that’s a horatio of about 4 to 1 (sorry, ).
Trafalgar Square has been known for its protests since the 19th century and in 2016 protestors climbed the column to attach a gas mask to Nelson raising awareness of London’s polluted air.
Trafalgar Square was laid out in the 1830s on the site of the royal stables where 4,500 cavaliers were imprisoned after their capture at the Battle of Naseby, including Roger Gellybrand, the king’s confectioner.
Trafalgar Square is said to be home to the smallest police station in the world. The tiny structure, topped with a lamp said to be from HMS Victory, was installed in the 1920s as a police box and lock up and was never technically a proper police station but it’s still a good story.
The National Gallery was built in the 1830s and the portico was recycled from the Prince Regent’s place Carlton House when it was demolished to pay off his bills.
Legend has it that Lucien Freud had a secret key to the National Gallery so he could visit whenever he wanted.
It’s free entry and if you tried to look at every painting in the collection without food or rest it would take more than 3 days.

02/11/2022

visits (video in the comments)
During our sponsored walk ( ) we passed Horse Guards. Horse Guards was one of my favourite places to take tourists so here's a few
The current building was built in 1751, designed by William Kent on the site of an earlier guardhouse built in 1649 to be the gate to Whitehall Palace and the home of King Charles I's bodyguards, the Household Cavalry.
There is a black dot on the 2 of the clock at Horse Guards (photo 2 c/o Cristian Bortes) to commemorate the time their founder, King Charles I, was executed on 30th Jan 1649 outside Banqueting House across the road (there's a bust of Charles I over the door of Banqueting House, Rebecca takes a photo of it in the video!).
Horse Guards is now the ceremonial entrance to Buckingham and St James Palaces and is still guarded by the Household Cavalry (picture 3 c/o Ozeye) who, in real life, are an armoured reconnaissance regiment. They're made up of the historic regiments the Life Guard (who wear red tunics and white plumes in their helmets) and the Blues and Royals (who wear blue tunics and red plumes).
The horses are known as Cavalry Black or Irish Black horses and are very well behaved. The horses are on guard between 10am and 4pm but Horse Guards is guarded by soldiers on foot outside of this time. The nickname for one of the guard posts is the 'chick sergeant' (pointed out in picture 4) it's said that just beside him is the window to an old cockpit that was used by the soldiers for gambling and drinking and the chick sergeant's job was to bang on the window if he saw an officer coming.
Picture 4 shows a 4pm inspection. Legend has it that in 1894 Queen Victoria was passing through Horse Guards and was not amused when she found the soldiers not at their posts because they were getting drunk (you had one job, chick sergeant). She demanded an inspection at 4pm every day for 100 years to make sure there was no more bad behaviour. The 100 years has passed but the ceremony continues.
A former commander of the Household Cavalry has his statue outside Horse Guards. Some years ago the soldiers felt sorry for the horse out there in the cold on Christmas Day so each December they decorate the statue with straw and give it a bale of hay (picture 5).
There are said to be tunnels linking most of the buildings on Whitehall and rumour has it that the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office (aka Larry, the Downing Street cat) occasionally pops up in the stables at Horse Guards, apparently having snuck in using the secret tunnels.
Horse Guards Parade is behind Horse Guards but that's a whole other lengthy post.
If you're in London you can visit Horse Guards to see the horses and soldiers, to see their Changing of the Guard or Dismounting Ceremony and visit the excellent Household Cavalry Museum where there's a window into the stables and if you time it right you can see the soldiers looking after their horses after they've come off duty (they change horses every hour on the hour).