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A Frevdian slip in Jericho

24/4/2022

No, not that Jericho. And not that Freud. But altogether splendid.

Where better for the Holy Spirit to reside once a church is deconsecrated than in a cocktail bar! This is the rather wonderful Freud's in what was once St Paul's parish church' on Walton Street, so in the Jericho district of North Oxford.

The building dates from the 1830s - very classical in design, much like a Roman temple. And the sandstone has been bashed about a bit over the decades, which makes you wonder at first glance if this really was once a Roman temple.

But a board inside the bar quickly puts you right ...

Actually this was the first church in Oxford (not England) to be built since the Reformation - and then only if you turn a blind eye to the rebuilding of one or two of the churches in the town centre.

The land was once part of the burial ground of the Radcliffe Infirmary. The church was built particularly to serve the Jericho area, which was being built in part to accommodate workers at the Oxford University Press. But in the 1860s, Jericho got another church - the wonderful Anglo-Catholic St Barnabas - which is still going strong. So Jericho was over-supplied with parish churches.

The two parishes combined in the 1960s, and St Paul's - in some disrepair - closed as a place of worship. The organ and statues were removed, but the stained glass and some of the memorial plaques are still there and give the building a real sense of distinction.

An attempt to revive the building as an arts centre was short-lived, and Freud's has been based here since the late 1980s and it's still a great place for a margarita.

And all this Frevd with a 'v' stuff? Well, that's just psevdo-classical bvllshit if yov ask me.

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The missing river at Job's Mill

11/4/2022

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Have you ever seen a bridge over a fast-running stream where water flows away from the bridge but there's nothing on the other side. It's the riverine equivalent of the one-hand clap.

Have a look at the video and you will see what I mean. This is Job's Mill at Sutton Veny outside Warminster in Wiltshire - a wonderful 17th century house with exceptional grounds and gardens.

This map shows the bridge where the river flows 'out' but not 'in'. And I think it also explains what's happened. It's all about the old mill.

The River Wylye here has two parallel routes. I suspect the one on the right is a mill race - a channel created to take some of the river water to power a water mill. Part of that slipstream has either been culverted or covered over since the mill went out of service to add to the elegance of the garden at Job's Mill. And hey presto, this part of the river comes up for air again underneath the bridge.

But it is a startling scene - one side of the bridge is all grass, and the other is a river, and a lively one, Not a pond but a flowing stream. Fancy that!

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Houndsditch: memorialising a triple police murder

7/4/2022

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This column of red granite at the City of London cemetery near Ilford pays tribute to three police officers shot dead while trying to stop an armed robbery of a jeweller's shop by Latvian political emigres.

The burial plots of Sergeant Charles Tucker and Sergeant Robert Bentley lie side-by-side. The third policeman, Constable Walter Choat, is buried at Byfleet.

The three police officers died late on the evening of 16 December 1910. Never before had three London police officers been killed in the same incident - and it has only happened once since.

Inscriptions on the column reveal that the wife and son of Sergeant Tucker are also buried here. So too is the three-year old son of Sergeant Bentley, who was born five days after his father died. Tragedy on top of tragedy.

On the centenary of the killings, the Corporation of the City of London placed a memorial plaque - rather anonymous and easily missed - close to the site of the shootings on Cutler Street.

The would-be robbers were revolutionary expropriators. They were seeking to burrow in to the back of a jewellery shop at 119 Houndsditch from what was then Exchange Buildings. As well as the three police officers who died, one of the robbers suffered fatal injuries when shot by accident by an associate.

In this 1913 map, Exchange Buildings is marked in pink.

Although all the buildings from that era have gone from the area around the scene of the shootings, the street lay-out hasn't changed, and nor has the numbering of buildings on Houndsditch. 119 Houndsditch is now part of a Starbucks!

While Exchange Buildings has long gone, there's a yard with an entrance from Cutler Street which marks the spot.

In the photo below, the full length window is at the back of Starbucks. This was also very probably the location of the back wall of the jeweller's shop in 1910.

Exchange Buildings - three storeys with a single room on each floor and a tiny back yard with a sink and an outside loo - would have stood on this small car park space.

When police tried to find out why there was banging and drilling late on as Friday night, the expropriators came out firing. Just here!

Two weeks later, two of the gunmen were tracked down to a room in Stepney and perished in what became known as the Siege of Sidney Street. But that's another story ...

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Highgate's other cemetery

1/4/2022

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At the heart of Highgate. there's a charming burial ground that hardly anyone knows about. It's a lot older than the much celebrated Highgate Cemetery nearby - a lot easier to get to - and while it's small, very small, it is peaceful and a place to commune with the past.

What more could you ask for!

This is the small graveyard adjoining Highgate School chapel. It's just by the more southerly of the two mini-roundabouts in Highgate village.

The photo below may help you get your bearings. It's taken from the top of Highgate High Street. On the left is the mock Tudor 'The Gatehouse', a well-regarded theatre-cum-pub - North Road runs between The Gatehouse and Highgate School; then there's the red brick flank wall and tiny spire of the school chapel; and on the right is Southwood Lane which runs towards Highgate tube and Muswell Hill.

HISTORY

So back in the day, there used to be a hermitage and small chapel close to where Highgate School now stands. These got clobbered when Henry VIII 'dissolved' the monasteries.

A little later, in 1565, Sir Roger Cholmeley - lawyer, Parliamentarian and Highgate resident - was granted the land for a school. This marked the foundation of what we now know as Highgate School.

The school chapel - from the website of St Michael's Highgate

The foundation stone of the school's chapel was laid in 1576; it opened two years later and served as Highgate's church. As the locality developed from a tiny hamlet into a thriving hill-top village, the chapel was repeatedly enlarged.

The school and chapel in 1819 - from the Highgate School website

In 1830, after a great deal of argument, an Act of Parliament was passed which required the demolition of the school chapel, and the building of a new church at the governors' expense.

Courtesy of Highgate School

This new church was the wonderful neo-Gothic St Michael's, Highgate, a five minute walk away, which opened in November 1832. It's still going strong and rejoices in standing higher than any other church in London. Whether that means it's closer to God, I'll let you decide.

The church took authority over the burial ground by the old school chapel which continued to be used as the new church's graveyard.

In 1866-7, a new school house and chapel were built and Highgate School took on the styish appearance it continues to display.

Highgate School and chapel in 1867

The chapel. by the way, is wonderful - snug and well proportioned and even nicer inside than its exterior suggests.

THE BURIAL GROUND

So, to get back to the burial ground - it was consecrated for burial in 1617 and closed in 1857, through even after that special application could be made to St Michael's. No one knows how many are buried here. Quite a few of the surviving gravestones are weathered and illegible. The burial records are held at the London Metropolitan Archive.

Julia Hudson, the archivist and records manager at Highgate School - and how marvellous that they have such a role! - has been hugely helpful as I prepared this post, and sent this plan of the graves dating from 1865.

Courtesy of Highgate School

The most eye-catching memorial is a twenty-feet-tall granite obelisk which towers over the other graves

The inscription on the obelisk reads in part -

'Sacred / to the memory of / Isabella / daughter of the late / Robert Langford Esq of Highgate / and wife of / Lieutenant General Robert Cannon / who departed this life / on the 12th of January 1854 / in the 27th year of her age ...'

- and also to the memory of their daughters: Helen, who died in infancy in 1850, and Amy Josette, who died in Constantinople in 1854, aged 3.

General Cannon served in the Crimean War of 1853-6, which perhaps explains why his young daughter was in Constantinople (in this conflict Britain and the Ottoman Empire were allies against Imperial Russia).

The graveyard continues to fall under the auspices of St Michael's but is looked after - and well looked after - by the gardening team of Highgate School. It is neither over-manicured nor an impenetrable wilderness.

With the help of pupils two-thousand bulbs have been planted. The plan is to rewild the area, with an annual cut-and-prune to stop the area becoming overgrown.

I asked if any descendants of those buried here ever visit. No, not in the last couple of years, according to the garening team. But Julia Hudson does recall showing round one or two people searching for their ancestors' graves during her time as archivist and records manager.

THE CRYPT

One of the pleasures and surprises of the burial ground is a crypt with natural light underneath the chapel. It's a bit of a clamber to get in there but worth the effort.

It is unusual to have a crypt with windows. I can only imagine that this was the crypt of the old chapel and when the new building was constructed in the 1860s, this was seen as the best way of preserving the graves below.

Again it's well maintained and generally dry - though when it does get wet, toads find the place particularly congenial.

This leads to the inevitable question: was anyone famous buried here? Well, yes - but they've moved.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge - author of 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and 'Kubla Khan' - moved to Highgate in 1816, living first on South Grove and then on The Grove. St Pancras Borough Council placed a memorial plaque to him at 3 The Grove, which also sports an English Heritage plaque for J.B. Priestley who lived there a century after Colerdige. (More recently this was the home of the model Kate Moss, but there's no plaque to her - yet.)

Coleridge was a worshipper at the newly built St Michael's and on his death in 1834 was buried in this graveyard. But the vault was apparently in some disrepair and in 1961 he was reburied in the crypt of St Michael's, which now has a stylish memorial stone set in the floor.

That is imho a bit of a pity. This is a great place for a poet's grave.

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A Frevdian slip in Jericho

The missing river at Job's Mill

Houndsditch: memorialising a triple police murder

Highgate's other cemetery

HISTORY

THE BURIAL GROUND

THE CRYPT

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​Andrew Whitehead'sBlog

A Frevdian slip in Jericho

The missing river at Job's Mill

Houndsditch: memorialising a triple police murder

Highgate's other cemetery

HISTORY​

THE BURIAL GROUND​

THE CRYPT​

Andrew Whitehead's blog

Archives

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Andrew Whitehead's
Blog

HISTORY

THE BURIAL GROUND

THE CRYPT