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APTG GOES TO THE TOWER On 4 March over three dozen members of twenty different travel trade organisations came to see the Ceremony of the Keys as guests of APTG. They were hosted by a dozen guides, allowing us to share a very fine evening at the Tower and giving us a chance to show our special relationship with HRP and the Yeoman Warders. We funded drinks in the Yeoman Warders’ Club and each guide was given an up to date briefing before the event. This meant we could take the opportunity to explain the breadth of our knowledge, skills and languages combined with the ease of booking via the GuideLondon website. This is one of the ways your Branch Council is bringing work opportunities to APTG members.

The evening was an uplifting experience and Yeoman Warder John Donald was a witty and knowledgeable host. The Ceremony was carried out by Gurkhas, commanded there for the first time by a female officer. The final, perfect ending came when the salute was taken by the Constable of the APTG Chair Nick Hancock and Yeoman Warder John Donald Tower General Sir Nicholas Houghton who, in his final words, made specific mention of guides being guests that night. Truly we have friends in high places! Over £300 was raised by the THE TOWER COMES TO APTG raffle for YW chosen charities and Nick Hancock gave an Yeoman Warder and Tower extra £250 from the Guild and APTG. Ravenmaster Chris Skaife (left) gave an entertaining presentation to APTG members MEMBERS OPEN MEETINGS before the March Members’ The next Members Open Meeting will be on Tuesday 9 Open Meeting at the Unite April at 6:30 pm in the Unite Office, WC1X 8TN. Office. Wearing a fetching red cravat and a waiscoat, he There will be a pre-meeting talk from speaker Matt Brown, described his working life, editor of the Londonist website. introduced us to the birds in his care and warned that ravens could be dangerous and should FUTURE MEETING DATES be treated with respect. This years meetings will be held on the following dates; 14 May, 9 July, 10 September and 8 October. Chris explained that a group of ravens is a ‘conspiracy’ (or an The Annual General Meeting will be on 10 December ‘unkindness’ - a phrase he avoids). He also claimed that the ravens picked him rather than the other way around. As a new yeoman warder he was sent to stand next to them and, as he did not collapse in fear, he soon found himself looking after the birds. He showed us the Ravenmaster badge (below) which he proudly wears on his Also in this issue: uniform and told us of some of the amusing events which have COLIN STREET OBITUARY - PAGE 3 happened to him, which can be read about in his book Ravenmaster. He also LANCASTER & MARLBOROUGH said that, like most Yeoman Warders, he HOUSES - PAGES 4 and 5 specialises in good stories and that, if you want to hear anything true about the JEWISH WALK - PAGE 7 you should always ask a blue badge guide! BAZALGETTE 200 - PAGE 8

ASSOCIATION OF PROFESSIONAL TOURIST GUIDES www.guidelondon.org.uk April 2019 Union News

LETTERLETTER FROM FROM THE THE CHAIR CHAIR Earlier this week I began to Chair our Members Open Meeting. The Diskus Suite was packed with scarcely a free seat to be had. Naturally I thought everyone had come to hear the minutes being read, hanging on my every word of thrilling amendments and corrections. I soon realised that the crowd had been drawn to hear the Ravenmaster tell of his life and very special role at the Tower. Sadly, no indoor flying raven display was possible but it was still a spellbinding talk. We have more lined up for the rest of the year - the editor of the Londonist (on Tuesday 9 April), a Mudlarker and many others. This is something we are offering to APTG members as part of our Thirtieth Anniversary. We are the association that is focussed on supporting London Blue Badge Guides and we want to offer a wide variety of events to appeal to everyone. After excellent cookies and biscuits provided by Lottie Thurlow, the meeting resumed. Blue Badge Guiding in Parliament came to an abrupt stop recently as Visitor Services decided to change the way they offered tours. Believing jaw-jaw is always better than war-war we have continued our dialogue, keeping the door open to future work for blue badge guides. It is a tribute to our thirty year history that we can gather to hear each other’s views and thoughts, being challenging but always dignified and respectful. The meeting ran on to let everyone have their say and be listened to attentively. We should be proud that we can do this, to hold a constructive discussion sharing information and views. Perhaps we could even act as a role model for Parliament? There are no easy answers and we must keep our eyes focussed on the future as we cannot rewrite the past, much as we would like to. Finally, please update your availability on GuideMatch. We are getting record numbers of work enquiries - all of them looking for an APTG Guide. We need to meet that demand so log on, fill in your diary and, if you need any help, just ask. Lastly, come to the next MOM on Tuesday 9 April and enjoy another free CPD. Nick Hancock

GUIDE LONDON REPORT YOUR BRANCH COUNCIL There were 25 ,613 unique visitors In February, the fifth consecutive month with over 20,000. 26% are from the USA, our top country for leads. 241 leads were Nick Hancock (Chair) generated with most via individual tour pages. This is thirty fewer than in January but Ruth Polling (Secretary) I am not concerned as we had three days less and are not yet in peak season. Alfie Talman (Treasurer) Sue Hadley (CPD) Top tours requested via GuideMatch : Tower of London Tour (19 leads); Alex Hetherington (Marketing/FEG) Abbey Tour (10); Classic London (10); (5); Edwin Lerner (Guidelines) Charles Dickens (4); (4) and (4). Danny Parlour (Site Liaison) New blog posts: Liz Rubenstein (Debt Recovery) Seven Sites in London Connected to David Bowie by Edwin Lerner Steve Szymanski (Vice Chair) A Tale of Three Paintings – Where to Start at the National Gallery by Anna Targett. Charlotte Thurlow (Social Events) Anne-Marie Walker (Membership) Anne Pollak has taken up the mantle of Blog Editor and will also do blog post Katie Wignall (Social Events) outreach. New blog posts are essential to increasing the website traffic and leads, and so I hope we can increase the number of new posts added each month. Anne-Marie Walker An Important message for foreign language guides! As we approach the tourist is responsible for season and also begin to work on the foreign language website project, we would membership matters encourage those foreign language guides who have not yet enabled their profiles to and hosted APTG’s do so! This will ensure that you are in the mix for foreign language GuideMatch leads reception for new and be discovered via Find A Guide searches. The website needs a majority of guides recently. guides to register to deliver accurate results via both search methods. CORRECTION Moving forward, I will be using the [email protected] email address for Apologies to Muriel Carre who was called communication about the Guide London /APTG website. Melanie in the article she wrote on David Thompson’s city walk in the March issue. Ursula Petula Barzey

2 Union News COLIN STREET My first meeting with Colin was NEW GUIDES RECEPTION when we both worked at We welcomed the year of Shakespeare’s Globe in the late 2019 trainees to our New ‘90s. Colin had just taken early Guides Reception on 13 retirement from teaching and was March. After a great walk ready for new challenges. His with Alfie Talman on ‘101 background as an English ways to do the Guard Literature teacher made him an Listening intently Change’ they then had an ideal guide for the Globe and, hour of ‘How to plan my soon after starting, he was first pano’ presented by Ruth Polling and Mike persuaded by those of us who Whalley, followed by an hour and a half of all sorts of had taken the City and Blue useful info. Badge courses to expand his guiding activities. Colin was Thank goodness we a popular group member on both guiding courses gaining rounded it all off with a his Blue Badge in 2004. Subsequently he was in demand good reception in true as a guide and became a respected examiner and lecturer APTG fashion with plenty on literature for the London Blue Badge course. of food and drink. Thanks to all those Our shared love of all things literary and theatrical meant involved, too many to that I worked with Colin on many occasions for groups mention, but especially to requesting Shakespeare, Dickens, Wilde and the Isabel Wrench for Owen Joseph socialising Bloomsbury Set walking tours. The groups loved him and organising the food and several requested I invited him back to co-lead future tours. drink side of things and to Anne-Marie Walker for They appreciated his knowledge, enthusiasm and good pulling it all together. We look forward to welcoming humour. Colin and his wife Louise became good friends the new guides to APTG once they get those results! and we often met socially away from the guiding environment. It was therefore a great shock when Louise Saran Reynolds contacted me with the very sad news of his death.

One only has to look at the tributes on the Blue Badge A WELSH HOLIDAY COTTAGE Colleagues Facebook page to see how Colin’s colleagues If you are looking for a break from the digital world my admired him. “Lovely”, “Friendly”, “Kind”, “Helpful”, brother has a lovely cottage to let near Abersytwyth. The “Generous”, “Gentleman” are the words that recur but Tim Greenhouse Cottage is small, sleeps two with a kitchen Hudson gave the best tribute by quoting Shakespeare: and wet room with shower, private parking and garden. He was a man, take him for all in all. I shall not look upon £70 per night, seven nights for the price of six. Contact his like again. (Hamlet, Act one, Scene two.) Cate at [email protected] (Tel: 01970 828435). Diane Burstein Jo Hoad

FEES - A PROPOSED CHANGE TO THE HOLIDAY SUPPLEMENT

A lot of good work has gone in to restructuring the Fees Sheet and to gathering consensus for its contents. I would like to make one change: to take out the supplement for public holidays.

To work in the holiday industry and to require extra payment on public holidays creates the impression that we are avaricious. How we present ourselves as individual professionals and as an organisation is important. I am aware that the price we are paying in the minds of some within the Briish tourism sector is higher than the money we stand to lose by dropping the holiday supplements.

There is an odd selection of public holidays where we charge the supplement. May is not included yet Easter is. That makes me uncomfortable. I would prefer consistency. I also know that the changing dates for Easter, while entirely predictable, still occasionally catch people out. I think there is a particularly strong case for dropping the 50% supplement required at Easter

Our Member’s Open Meeting on 9 April at the Unite office will be the occasion where proposals to change elements of the Fees Sheet can be made. I hope that any members who have sympathy for my suggestion will make a point of joining the discussion. Indeed, I will be pleased to explain myself to all. I know that some will be wary of making this change.

Alex Hetherington

ASSOCIATION OF PROFESSIONAL TOURIST GUIDES 3 www.guidelondon.org.uk April 2019 CPD Reports

NEAR NEIGHBOURS CPD visits for guides to Marlborough House...

Marlborough House

Guides visited Marlborough House, home of the , last winter

At times the London home of five Dukes of Marlborough, three We saw the net curtains; not in fact curtains but nets designed Princes of Wales, three Dowager Queens and one foreign to catch any flying glass or debris in the event of a terrorist Prince, Marlborough House is one of the few remaining attack. A couple of us were also lucky enough to sit at the same London mansions and notoriously difficult to access. Volunteer spot where the Queen retires if she feels the need when in-house guide Irene Kirby, who was clear, informative and well visiting on each year. versed in her subject, explained that as a working building it is One who survived: FDR (Bond St used frequently for conferences and meetings and that we We learned of the momentous events that have taken place were lucky to be able to visit all rooms as it was a quiet day. here: the time when Queen Mary was informed that her son Edward VIII was not only going to marry his American lover Irene took us around the ground floor of the house explaining Wallis Simpson but was also going to abdicate. Another its original plan when built by Sarah Churchill as the London occasion was when a delegation arrived from Belgium to home of the Duke of Marlborough. She also explained the request Leopold, husband of the late Princess Charlotte, changes to the layout and size over time when the lease become their king, even crowning him King of the Belgians in expired and the Royal Family reclaimed it. a ceremony inside Marlborough House.

Whilst the decoration has changed over the centuries, it was We were able to choose our seat at the conference table in restored in the early 1990s, mainly to the period style of the State Dining Room where delegates from the Edward VII and his wife Alexandra before he acceded to the Commonwealth countries are arranged alphabetically around throne on the death . The style of the original the oval table with their country flag in front of them. We also house is that of , having probably been saw the glory of the battles of the Duke of Marlborough in designed by his son. In Victorian times it was extended by Sir paintings by , which adorn the two main with two floors added above and adjacent staircases inside the house. buildings joined to the main house. Original furnishings were stripped out and sent to royal palaces when it was decided to The highlight was kept until last: the magnificent ceiling by give the house to the Commonwealth who have used it since Gentilleschi was removed by Queen Anne from the Queen’s 1965. House in Greeenwich and given to Sarah Churchill. It is quite magnificent, and we stared upwards trying to work out which We delighted in a few interesting quirks: the fact that Sarah sections were painted by father Orazio and which by daughter Churchill failed to lease enough land from her friend Queen Artemisia: apparently this depends on the size and quality of Anne to build an imposing entrance. , who the breasts! hated her, noticed this and bought land on Pall Mall to ensure that Sarah would have to enter from the side like a servant. Anna Targett

4 CPD Reports

Today, is the Foreign and Commonwealth

...and Lancaster House Office’s show-off location where diplomats can use its opulence to impress. French President Mitterrand stood in awe and amazement as he entered the Great Hall and “I come from my house to your Principal Staircase, keeping Margaret Thatcher waiting as palace.” he took it all in. I was struck by the black marble caryatids that appear high up in the large lantern space. How many of us have used this line when guiding outside Lancaster House on the Mall ? We know it was referring to An incongruous looking TV monitor at the base of the Queen Victoria’s comments as she went to visit her friend staircase played a loop of films and programmes that have Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, but how opulent is this used Lancaster House as a posh regal backdrop. These palatial town house inside? Think over the top gold leaf, gold include The King’s Speech, Downton Abbey and . fronds and more fronds, classical design, beautifully carved interiors are easily recreated in stone fireplaces and add a bit more and you are approaching Lancaster House and we found out that The Crown film the level of opulence. crews have been back for series three. The FCO charges £25,000 per day for filming which pays for repairs when the A group of CPD enthusiasts were met by James Yorke, our crews have left. After all Lancaster House is only a lease guide, retired V&A Curator and author of a lovely coffee table holder as the real Crown itself owns the freehold! book on the house. The building’s first name was York Sue Hyde House as it was initially commissioned in 1825 by the ‘grand old ’, second son of George III, but when he died in massive debt (he had banked on his debts being wiped clean on becoming king one day), the lease was purchased by the then Marquess of Stafford.

The name changed to Stafford House and it was a family home between 1829 and 1913 becomingProfessor one of the few survivingArcadi townhouses Monastery in London as the landStampolidis became more valuable than the houses themselves. Under the Stafford family the décor design went into overdrive. Benjamin Wyatt (and several other Wyatts), Charles Barry and Robert Smirke are amongst those who made their contributions and it is safe to say none of them were shy in the use of gold leaf. Even leather was gilded to create the fronds of palm A scene from The Crown trees high up in the gallery overlooking the Long Gallery where Teresa May would go on to declare “Brexit means Brexit” in January 2017. These are interiors King Louis IX would have recognised as familiar.

In 1913, Sir William Lever, who became Lord Leverhulme, bought the lease for the nation and the man who made his money in Unilever’s Sunlight Soap in the northwest changed the name to Lancaster House. It was also considered an apt regal name given the fact the monarch is always the Duke of Lancaster. However, we learned that the Duke never actually lived here. He did open up the space as a home to London Museum until after World War Two when a new home for the museum was found at . Here too was the venue for the Coronation Banquet of the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth where Winston Churchill proposed a toast.

... and the real staircase

Still to come: Britain, Two Temple Place, Mind and Body - and more!

ASSOCIATION OF PROFESSIONAL TOURIST GUIDES 5 www.guidelondon.org.uk April 2019 Guiding News

A LUTHERAN CHURCH IN LONDON THE ULEZ CHARGE ARRIVES Researching my Jack the Ripper From Monday 8 April older vehicles driving into central Piano Tour, I came upon an old London will be subject to a charge of £12:50 on top of the German Lutheran church near the congestion charge of £11:50. The Ultra Low Emission Zone site where Elizabeth Stride was charge will operate at all times while the congestion charge murdered on 30 September 1888: applies only from 7am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. St George's German Lutheran The ULEZ charge will apply to most diesel cars built before Chapel, Alie Street, E1. As a Swede, Stride was a Lutheran 2015 and to most petrol cars built before 2006. Vehicle and received charitable assistance from the church and it owners can enter their registration number into the tfl.gov.uk was the churchwarden who formally identified her corpse. website to see if they will be liable to pay. The chapel is unchanged since it was built in 1762 and yet virtually unknown as a visitable site and no longer open for In October 2021 the ULEZ zone will be expanded to cover services. It is however the venue for a monthly series of the entire area between the North and South Circular roads lectures including The History of Pork Butchers in Britain on creating what Mayor Sadiq Khan says will be the toughest Tuesday 9 April. It is also the penultimate stop on my weekly emission standards of any city in the world. Jack the Ripper tour which starts by the piano in Devonshire Court, EC2, at 3.30 pm on Fridays (and by arrangement). A MOVING STORY AT STONEHENGE Richard Jones

BOB MARLEY PLAQUE The singer Bob Marley is to be honoured with a blue plaque at 42 Oakley Street, Chelsea, the house where he lived with his band The Wailers and from which they would go across the river to play football in Wandsworth Park. Marley said that he regarded London as ‘his second home’ and moved here after an attempted assassination in Jamaica in 1976. Blue plaques are placed on the houses of famous people twenty years aftter their death. intends to honour more women and people of colour with plaques. Recent research by Mike Parker Pearson and others has

LONDON THEATRE UPDATE shown that the bluestones of Stonhenge were probably Last year West End theatres attracted a record fifteen moved overland from where they were quarried in Wales, and a half million people, who spent £765 million on rather than by both sea and land as had previously been tickets. Despite London already having 241 theatres, supposed. Archaeologists believe they have found where seven more are in the pipeline. With one exception none the stones were quarried - Carn Goedog at the northern end of these are in the West End. Nor, again with one of the Prescelli hills. This location means they were almost exception, are they publicly funded, primarily because certainly taken across land for 230 kilometres (143 miles) to they are offshoots of residential or retail developments. the Salisbury Plain where they were erected. Or possibly The emphasis will be on hooking people who do not go re-erected, having been in an earlier Welsh stone circle. to the theatre much. Why they were moved remains a mystery. Troubador, the company of pop up theatre specialists Oliver Royd and Tristan Baker, is masterminding venues at Wembley Park and in the former BBC Media Village at DI FACED TENNER COMES TO BM White City and a 600-seat theatre is planned by the Argent for Kings Cross. The only West End project is in the new development above Tottenham Court Road The Crossrail station, where that much-missed music venue, Famous the Astoria was demolished. Meanwhile the Fake redevelopment of the Stratford East area will spawn Sadler's Wells East, a 550-seat dance venue with a hip hop academy. Two subterranean spaces could also host theatres, one on Islington Green underneath luxury apartments built a decade ago. The other in Guides taking groups through the will soon is the real Elizabethan thing - the remains of the 1577 be able to show them a famous fake note in the Money Curtain Theatre which will soon be open for public Gallery. A Di Faced Tenner was created by the artist viewing and perhaps small-scale stagings located below Banksy and has been acquired by the Museum via his a thirty seven storey apartment block called The Stage. supplier Pest Control. Banksy’s Diana £10 notes can be purchased on the internet for £1000 to £1500. Victoria Herriot

6 CPD Reports DON’T SHOOT THE MESSENGER! Christine Hoodith reports on a walk through Mark interpreted the layout for us: twelve pillars representing the Jewish East End of London with Mark King the Twelve Tribes of Israel, ten candlesticks for the Ten Commandments, prominently displayed on either side of the Mark King did his best to keep us moving as he recounted the Ark where the Torah scrolls are kept. Men sit downstairs in tale of the Jews in London, and showed us some of the many facing, pew-like seats each with a hinged lid for storing prayer- visible reminders of their sojourn in the East End. shawl and book. This was an essentially Orthodox community, so carrying anything was forbidden on the Sabbath. In this We began in Hope Square on community the custom is that men do the praying, while Liverpool Street, at the touching women participate, if they wish, from the gallery above. “Don’t memorial to the 10,000 children of shoot the messenger!” cried our guide in response to the Kindertransport who arrived murmurings from his female colleagues. here on chartered trains. They carried small suitcases and Nazi- Then it was back out and along to Spitalfields, where most of issued passports stamped with a the later waves of Ashkenazi immigrants settled outside the city prominent red “J”. Mark showed us walls, many fleeing pogroms in Russia and Poland in the late his mother’s and the immigration nineteenth century. They arrived in great numbers, some in a card she was given on arrival. state of such poverty as to create problems of assimilation and Although many were welcomed immense pressure on housing and places of worship. Sandys into Jewish and non-Jewish Row Synagogue began life as a Huguenot church and was families, including Clement Attlee’s, converted for Jewish worship in 1854 for those working in the the Thatchers and Attenboroughs, local cigarette, cigar and jewellery workshops. Social welfare Kindertransport statue their status was uncertain and systems, including soup kitchens in Brune Street, had to be set controversial. The fiction was that they would move on once up. Supported by members of the Rothschild banking dynasty, hostilities ceased. There was little effort to offer a haven to their the Jews Free School became established in Bell Lane before parents, who might have taken jobs. its latest transposition to suburban Kenton. It was once the largest school in Europe: by 1900 it had some 4,000 pupils and At Bevis Marks Synagogue we heard of the historic arc of between 1880 and 1900, one third of all London's Jewish Jewish settlement in London. Allowed official status in William children passed through its doors. the Conqueror’s Britain – although it is likely there had been Jewish traders here during Roman times – they were under the Of the sixty five synagogues that once flourished in this part of protection of the king and essentially his property, their role the East End only four now function, as the community has being to make money that could be lent out at interest. Expelled prospered and moved to leafier parts of London. The present in 1290, they were permitted to settle here during Cromwell’s immigrant community, largely Bangladeshi (if you discount the Commonwealth, mainly from Amsterdam at a time when the hipsters) work mostly in the ‘schmutter’ business, as did the Low Countries were part of the Spanish Hapsburg empire. So Jews and Huguenots before them. The I – Goat statue in the the community for which Bevis Marks was built in 1701, making market plaza on Brushfield Street stands as a symbol of a it the oldest operational synagogue in the country, were universal migrant: roaming, surviving and taking the blame for Sephardim, essentially Spanish and Portugese Jews. their host country’s ills. Plus ca change.

MONEY MATTERS If you stack a line of £5 notes back-to-back from London to I was particularly pleased that flags were used as Top Visual Hong Kong, that will cost you about one trillion pounds. Priorities as we were updated on Russian, Chinese and Make another stack back for another trillion and that is other foreign activities. Tim rightly emphasized how roughly equal to the value of foreign currency exchanged important financial services is to the UK economy and the and traded in London on an average day. This was just one extent to which jobs are spread around the country to of several jaw-dropping statistics provided by Tim Kidd on places like Birmingham and Cardiff, not just London. our CPD walk on the Financial City from Bank to Tower. From the plaques of the coffee houses to the milliseconds of There was also a timely reminder of the extent to which City automated trading, we traced our way through some of the institutions support the arts with their names cropping up enormous changes the city has witnessed. regularly at all the major museums and galleries we visit.

On contemplating grasshoppers, Thomas Gresham’s It is interesting to see how the City continues to evolve as a symbol, I had never imagined it could also be mistaken for a tourist attraction and to see the weekend economy growing locust. Not the only moment of irony for me as Tim updated here. If plans for the Culture Mile from Farringdon to us on the new observation platform which will be going up Moorgate come off, along with the those for the walking next to the Gherkin, to be nicknamed the Tulip. I route between London Bridge and Tower Bridge, we could immediately began worrying about the headlines warning start to see even more interest in this fascinating and that Tulip Mania was returning to the financial district! diverse area, the original City of London. Stuart Cannon

ASSOCIATION OF PROFESSIONAL TOURIST GUIDES 7 www.guidelondon.org.uk April 2019 Guiding News

SIR (1819 - 1891)

This year the date 28 March marks the this figure across the network. He also used egg shaped 200th Anniversary of the birth of one of tunnels, wide at the top to take the weight of the city. However the most important people in the his insistence on checking and authorizing every detail himself shaping of modern London the eminent once again took serious toll on his health. civil engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette. We all know him as the man responsible It is not just the sewage system, monumental though it was, for the and that we should remember this extraordinary man for. He overseeing London's sewerage system initiated a programme of design and construction of several new thoroughfares to ease congestion in London, many of but he did so much more for the London Bazalgette Memorial which are familiar to us as guides. , Queen we know today as guides. Thames Embankment Victoria Street, , Born in Enfield, Bazalgette began his engineering career in and Road all owe their existence to him. In 1877 Ireland in 1836 working on land reclamation works and the MBW was given the authority to purchase Thames bridges drainage projects. He returned to a London engulfed in a series from private companies and make them toll free. of cholera epidemics and with an antiquated and inadequate sewer system. People believed diseases such as cholera were Bazalgette had to survey carried by air rather than by water. An overpopulated London in twelve river crossings and the mid nineteenth century had open sewers running alongside subsequently much needed drinking water. maintenance work was undertaken while he In 1845 Joseph Bazalgette married Maria Kough at St replaced three crossings Margaret's church, Westminster. He was by now heavily with structures of his own. involved in railway developments but overwork led to a mental Putney, Battersea and my breakdown and recuperation for a year at Merton in Surrey. He beloved Hammersmith returned to join the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, Bridge are his work. He also eventually becoming engineer in 1852. In 1855 the Metropolitan submitted a design of an Board of Works (MBW) was created and tasked to make sure innovative high level 850 feet span for the proposed new Tower that over a hundred square miles of London had the right roads, Bridge crossing. The Ferry was his last major lighting, bridges, tunnels and, crucially, sewers. Championed contribution to London's infrastructure but he also did work as by fellow French-descended engineering genius Isambard a consulting engineer on the drainage and sewerage systems Kingdom Brunel, Joseph Bazalgette was elected on a salary of for many other towns such as Oxford, Northampton, Margate £1000 a year as its chief engineer. Over the next three and at Windsor Castle. decades, he would transform London. Knighted in 1874 and elected 1858 is the year of 'The ' when a hot summer president of the Institute of Civil magnified the stench of untreated human sewage Engineers in 1884, Bazalgette overwhelming everyone including MPs in Parliament, where served for many years as lime soaked curtains fail to alleviate the smell. Legislation was Churchwarden at St Mary's, quickly passed that enabled Bazalgette to implement his Wimbledon, where he was buried solution of embanking the Thames in . Work after his death on 15 March 1891. began on 31 January 1859. The southern sections were His splendid neo-classical tomb is completed in 1865 but complex northern sections one of few memorials to this great were not finally completed until 1874: three and a half miles of man, the other being a small bust Embankment, fifty two acres of land reclamation,1300 miles of on the Thames Embankment at the sewers and eighty two miles of main interceptor sewer. junction with Northumberland Avenue that says: Flumini vincula Perhaps Bazalgette's real genius was that he deliberately over posvit - he put the river in chains. engineered. He worked out the size of pipe for the most densely populated part of the network and doubled it and then applied Steve Szymanksi Bazalgette’s tomb

Thanks to: Diane Burstein, Stuart Cannon, Victoria Herriot, Alex Hetherington, Nick Hancock, Sue Hyde, Richard Jones, Sarah Reynolds, Steve Szymanksi, Anna Targett and all other contributors.

We LOVE getting material from members. Guidelines is your monthly magazine and APTG, 128 Theobald's Road, London WC1X 8TN it is the way we communicate with each other through the medium of hard copy. We Switchboard: 020 7 611 25 00 welcome articles and photos from members but contributions may be held over and Direct line: 020 7 611 25 45 we reserve the right to edit them. Images should be high resolution – 3 00 ppi. [email protected] Editor: Edwin Lerner Please submit all copy and images for the next edition by email to [email protected] by 15 April for inclusion in the May issue. (JN8627) HB131218