Walking London

Had a great day today - I went on one of those organised walks that they do round bits of London. Actually, I did the wrong one, not that it mattered as I will do the intended one in a week or so. But it was excellent, based on Dickens, and full of little snippets and facts, and I learnt heaps. And this has nothing to do with the Capital ring either - that is more of an all day walk that I'm planning on doing maybe once a week.

I was a bit early though, so I had a wander down by old Billingsgate and the river, which was very cold and uninviting. The Shard was shrouded in low cloud too - so glad I hadn't forked out to go up it
( and I won't be at £25.00 a pop)

 But its reflection was cool once the cloud cleared a bit.

The fish on top of the old fish market are really creepy just like those old Victorian monster films. They used to freak me out when I was little and I've never really been able to look at them in any other way. Nasty.

 But Tower and London bridges were still good to look at in the snowy murk.

I always love it when you learn things about places you know, and today was no exception. I used to work not far from Southwark back in the 1980s, and although its been somewhat poshed up now from what it was back then, there are still many fascinating places to surprise.And the guides are excellent and really know their stuff.

So a quick nip over London bridge from Monument tube station to some steps on the south side. The station is right opposite the 202ft monument that marks the starting point of the Great Fire of London in 1666 that wiped out many thousand houses and put paid to the Plague that raged at the time. However, and older station stood nearby.

The bridge dates from the 1970s although there has been a bridge there for about 2000 years. The top edge of the bridge is metal and made some cool melted snow patterns.

The former (Victorian) bridge is the one that got sold to an American businessman and was rebuilt in Arizona. The steps in question are on the right hand side of the bridge as you go towards London Bridge station, and lead down to Southwark Cathedral.

These are the steps that Dickens featured in Oliver Twist, where Nancy was overheard grassing up her criminal mates in order to help Oliver, and later paid for the deed with her life when she was beaten to death by Bill Sykes. I used to nip up and down these steps at least three times a week when I worked nearby and spent my lunchtimes wandering instead of sitting in the office. Yet I never knew their significance. And this is where the end of the Victorian bridge can be seen; and its the only bit that remains because it was so woven into the structure of surrounding buildings that it wasn't practical to remove it.

Just along from this bit of the bridge is Southwark Cathedral, surprisingly small on the cathedral-ometer. But it turns out - according to Rex the guide who was full of interesting facts about everything along this walk - that it only became a cathedral in the early 1900s, having been a mere church before that - St Mary Overy. And what's more, when it was still a church the river actually  went right up to its gates. Now its about 100 metres away, thanks to Victorian engineering wizardry when the river was canalised by Bazalgette and his sewerage system which runs parallel to it but under the pedestrianised bit.

Behind Southwark Cathedral is Borough Market, a fruit and veg market which still operates as such although not in the same way as it did. Its now mostly artisan outlets and foody places, albeit with some suspicious offerings.

But its nice though, and the architecture is the same.

I used to go in this pub years ago. Its one of those with market hours, meaning it opened during the  night. We used to go in there after a night duty, and it had sawdust on the floor and knock off from the market being touted.

A bit further on, Rex took us down some side roads and pointed out brickwork of all things. Because London is built on clay, it has no real local building materials except sand and clay which used to be made into bricks, which were actually quite inferior and weathered quickly. They now put something in the mix which makes them more hardy, but back in Victorian times, it soaked up smells and soot and weather. Its a yellow brick called London yellow and its seen everywhere.

Then there are the schools. Ragged schools were the first generation of education which poor kids got for free. Then they were superseded by Board schools, and one stipulation that the latter had was that a play area had to be provided for pupils. But space was   at a premium and already in use.....so they put them on the school roof. Ingenious!

With such a dense population and complete lack of planning, fire was always a danger. A bloke in Edinburgh developed the world's first ever metropolitan fire brigade and when  it proved a real success, he was invited to London, where he did the same, and invented the LFB - London Fire Brigade. Ironically, he later died in a fire.

The LFB was mostly made up of volunteer crew, recruited from local pubs, the latter being a place where men always gathered. After the fire was out, the `LFB would go back to the pub and buy all helpers a drink.

But there were some men who always volunteered....and again, according to Rex, one of them was the Prince of Wales, later King Edward 7th, who regularly volunteered in Southwark from the fire station with this tower; towers were important spotting aids.

 The wild geese of Southwark were something that I already knew about., and actually referred to wild women rather than wild birds. The Bishop of Winchester under whose jurisdiction Southwark came was quite liberal and allowed brothels and things to flourish, and also allowed dead prostitutes to be buried. However, they could not be buried in consecrated ground ( nor could criminals or those who killed themselves) so they usually ended up in the Cross bones grave yard in Redcross Way. The piece of land is still there and is now owned by TFL which has agreed not to build on it. When nearby rail related construction work is finished, the site will apparently be turned into a local park/garden like many former burial yards already have been.

This whole area is the area which many of Dickens' novels are set in, or at least, elements of what was going on at the time in the immediate vicinity are incorporated into his writing. Little Dorritt is of particular significance as it is centred on the Marshalsea Prison, a debtors prison. It no longer exists although the site of the gates are marked by modern gates at the rear of St George's Churchyard, just off Tabard Street, at Borough tube station end.

Dickens used his own experiences of his own family getting banged up in the place when his father got into debt in the early 1800s to write the story. He lodged with a woman just along the street, and where Charles Dickens Primary School now stands when he was earning money to pay for their food and paying off his family debt ( he worked in a blacking factory at the bottom of Villiers Street, just up from Embankment tube station.)

And finally, and probably the biggest surprise of all were the little Octavia Hill cottages that I have walked past hundreds of times. I never knew what they were although I thought they were nice. But it turns out that she (she was a also a founding member of The National Trust) was a great social reformer and philanthropist, and she started the cottages as a form of social housing, encouraging the tenants to keep gardens and grow food. She also pioneered military training for boys living there - something which later became the Army Cadet force.

These walks are so good and the guides are really knowledgeable. Coupled with a few facts of my own and a (rather paltry) degree of my home research, it really brought the place to life and was well worn the effort of going out in biting cold and snow when I could have stayed home.