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Ye Olde Watling LCCOLSPYOW15729 St. Paul’s Ye Olde Watling LCCOLSPYOW15729 Ye Olde Watling St. Paul’s (29 Watling Street, EC4) © The Great British Pub Crawl 2020 • Watling Street • Great Fire of London • Rebuilt 1668 • Sir Christopher Wren • Builders (St. Paul’s Cathedral) Copyright © 2020 The Great British Pub Crawl Company All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of The Great British Pub Crawl Company, except in the case of uses permitted by copyright law. St. Paul’s Ye Olde Watling LCCOLSPYOW15729 Wheelchair Access on Ground Floor Disabled Toilets Storyi Ye Olde Watling takes its name from Watling Street the name of the ancient road on which it is built. Watling Street Watling Street is a historic route in England that crosses the River Thames at London and which was used in Classical Antiquity, Late Antiquity, and throughout the Middle Ages. It was used by the ancient Britons and paved as one of the main Roman roads in Roman- governed Britain during the Roman Empire. The route linked Dover and London in the southeast with St Albans and Wroxeter to the northwest. Watling Street was the traditional site of the Roman Defeat of Boudica, the line of the road was later the southwestern border of the Danelaw with Wessex and Mercia, and Watling Street was numbered as one of the major highways of medieval England. First used by the ancient Britons, mainly between the areas of modern Canterbury and St Albans using a natural ford near Westminster, the Romans later paved the route, which then connected then ports of Dubris (Dover), Rutupiae (Richborough), Lemanis (Lympne), and Regulbium (Reculver) in Kent to the Roman bridge over the Thames at Londinium (London). The route continued northwest through Verulamium (St Albans) on its way to Viroconium Cornoviorum (Wroxeter). In the early 19th century, the course between London and the Channel was paved and became known as the Great Dover Road: today, the route from Dover to London forms part of the A2 road. The route from London to Wroxeter forms much of the A5 road. At various points along the historic route, the name Watling Street remains in use. A section of Watling Street still exists in the City of London close to Mansion House underground station on the route of the original Roman road which traversed the River Thames via the first London Bridge and ran through the City in a straight line from London Bridge to Newgate. The other sections of the road in Central London possess a variety of names, including Edgware Road and Maida Vale.1 It seems that there had been a pub on this site for some years prior to 1663, because in that year, three years after Charles II had been restored to the throne of England, the existing pub was itself restored. 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watling_Street [extracted 17/11/2020] Copyright © 2020 The Great British Pub Crawl Company All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of The Great British Pub Crawl Company, except in the case of uses permitted by copyright law. St. Paul’s Ye Olde Watling LCCOLSPYOW15729 Sadly, this restoration did not last as long as the monarchy’s, for just three years later, in September 1666, the newly restored pub was destroyed in the Great Fire of London, along with a great many others. Great Fire of London (2 - 6 September 1666) The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of London from Sunday, 2 September to Thursday, 6 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall. It threatened but did not reach the City of Westminster (today's West End), Charles II's Palace of Whitehall, or most of the suburban slums. It destroyed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, St Paul's Cathedral, and most of the buildings of the City authorities. It is estimated to have destroyed the homes of 70,000 of the City's 80,000 inhabitants. The fire started in a bakery shortly after midnight on Sunday, 2 September, and spread rapidly. The use of the major firefighting technique of the time, the creation of firebreaks by means of demolition, was critically delayed due to the indecisiveness of the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth. By the time large-scale demolitions were ordered on Sunday night, the wind had already fanned the bakery fire into a firestorm which defeated such measures. The fire pushed north on Monday into the heart of the City. Order in the streets broke down as rumours arose of suspicious foreigners setting fires. On Tuesday, the fire spread over nearly the whole City, destroying St. Paul's Cathedral and leaping the River Fleet to threaten Charles II's court at Whitehall. The battle to put out the fire is considered to have been won by two key factors: the strong east wind dropped, and the Tower of London garrison used gunpowder to create effective firebreaks, halting further spread eastward. The death toll is unknown but generally thought to have been relatively small; only six verified deaths were recorded. Some historians have challenged this belief claiming the deaths of poorer citizens were not recorded and that the heat of the fire may have cremated many victims, leaving no recognisable remains. A melted piece of pottery on display at the Museum of London found by archaeologists in Pudding Lane, where the fire started, shows that the temperature reached 1,250 °C (2,280 °F). The social and economic problems created by the disaster were overwhelming. Flight from London and settlement elsewhere were strongly encouraged by Charles II, who feared a London rebellion amongst the dispossessed refugees. After the fire, London was reconstructed on essentially the same medieval street plan which still exists today.2 2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_London [extracted 17/11/2020] Copyright © 2020 The Great British Pub Crawl Company All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of The Great British Pub Crawl Company, except in the case of uses permitted by copyright law. St. Paul’s Ye Olde Watling LCCOLSPYOW15729 Writing in January 1668, the diarist Samuel Pepys stated: ‘It is observed and is true, in the late Fire of London, that the fire burned just as many parish churches as there were hours from the beginning to the end of the fire; and next, that there were just as many churches left standing as there were taverns left standing in the rest of the City that was not burned; being, I think, thirteen in all of each; which is pretty to observe.’3 Ye Olde Watling was not one of the lucky 13 mentioned by Pepys, but it was one of the first to be rebuilt after the fire, in the very year that Pepys wrote the above. The story has it that the rapid rebuilding of the pub was down to Sir Christopher Wren, who desperately needed somewhere to house and refresh the workers engaged in rebuilding St. Paul’s Cathedral. Sir Christopher Wren (30 October 1632 – 8 March 1723) Sir Christopher Wren PRS FRS was one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history, as well as an anatomist, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist. He was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 52 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including what is regarded as his masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710. Wren had been involved in repairs of the old cathedral since 1661. In the spring of 1666, he made his first design for a dome for St Paul's. It was accepted in principle on 27 August 1666. One week later, however, the Great Fire of London reduced two-thirds of the City to a smoking desert and old St Paul's to a ruin. Wren was most likely at Oxford at the time, but the news drew him at once to London. Between 5 and 11 September he ascertained the precise area of devastation, worked out a plan for rebuilding the City and submitted it to Charles II. Others also submitted plans. However, no new plan proceeded any further than the paper on which it was drawn. In 1669, the King's Surveyor of Works died, and Wren was promptly installed. The principal creative responsibility for a number of the churches is now more commonly attributed to others in his office, especially Nicholas Hawksmoor. Other notable buildings by Wren include the Royal Hospital Chelsea, Royal Naval College, Greenwich, and the south front of Hampton Court Palace. (The Wren Building, the main building at the College of William and Mary, Virginia, is also attributed to Wren.) Educated in Latin and Aristotelian physics at the University of Oxford, Wren was a founder of the Royal Society (president 1680–1682), and his scientific work was highly regarded by Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal.4 3 From Popham, H.E.; The Guide to London Taverns (Claude Stacey Ltd., 1927) 4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Wren [extracted 17/11/2020] Copyright © 2020 The Great British Pub Crawl Company All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of The Great British Pub Crawl Company, except in the case of uses permitted by copyright law.
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