APTG’S FIRST VIRTUAL MOM For the first time ever APTG held a Members Open Meeting over the internet

APTG Chair Danny Parlour Secretary Alex Hetherington Pepe Martinez described progress led the meeting from home took minutes of the meeting on the marketing of virtual tours

On Tuesday 19 May APTG held its first All guides had the opportunity to speak and Members’ Open Meeting via the medium of express their views. Pepe Martinez informed Zoom. Over seventy guides logged in to share those present of progress on virtual tours: there their views on whether or not to freeze fees for are promising signs that blue badge tourist the first time. The membership have the guides will be able to market their skills on the chance to vote on this matter and the result will internet while obliged to work from home. be announced in the next issue of Guidelines. APTG has now entered the digital age.

BANKSY’S NEW PAINTING The paintings of the Bristol-based graffiti Called Game Changer, it shows a boy artist Banksy usually appear unannounced holding the figure of a flying nurse while on the streets and some can be seen in famous superheroes such as Batman and London’s East End. His latest artwork, Spiderman lie in a waste basket nearby. It is however, was donated to Southampton in black and white, the only colour being a General Hospital and has been put on red cross on the nurse’s uniform. The display in a corridor there with the full co- painting will be auctioned in the autumn to operation of the hosptial authorities. raise funds for the NHS. Thanks to Southampton General Hospital for permission to reproduce the painting

BRANCH COUNCIL Also in this issue: Chair - Danny Parlour Aaron Hunter - CPD CHAIR’S LETTER - PAGE 2 Secretary - Alex Hetherington Craig Kao - Technology LOCKDOWN LEARNING - PAGE 3 Alfie Talman - Treasurer Edwin Lerner - Guidelines HISTORY OF GUIDING - PAGES 4 & 5 Tricia Ellis - Site Liaison Nan Mousley - Membership DARK CHELSEA - PAGE 6 Maria Gartner - CPD Nick Salmond - Facebook SURPRISING SUBURBIA - PAGE 8 Victoria Herriott - PR Amy Wang - Mandarin issues

ASSOCIATION OFASSOCIATION PROFESSIONAL OF PROFESSIONALTOURIST GUIDES TOURIST GUIDES www.guidelondon.org.ukwww.guidelondon.org.uk September 2019 June 2020 Union news

LETTER FROM THE CHAIR I hope you are all keeping well in these difficult times for our profession.

Nick Salmond, Pepe Martinez and our Secretary Alex Hetherington have all done a great job in presenting the skills and knowledge of London Blue Badge Tourist Guides via the GuideLondon live broadcasts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I have thoroughly enjoyed these talks and urge you to check them out if you have not done so already. They are live at 4pm each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thank you to all those who have got involved with them too. Your efforts are very much appreciated. Everyone has done a fantastic job: all very professional, imparting fascinating stories and at the same time in a fun and exciting way!

Please continue to share any blog posts or actual videos regarding the GuideLondon Live broadcasts, especially if you have featured in them. It is a great way for us to engage clients, sites that we work with and partnership organisations such as London & Partners (who love to share new and high quality content such as this). LinkedIn is a particularly good platform to share this type of content on too. Kindly give GuideLondon a follow on LinkedIn (and myself - hehe!).

Another great success is the Joint Lockdown Learning CPD Programme run by Aaron Hunter and Sue Hyde. For those who wish to add to their knowledge while waiting to get back to work, these lectures on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10am and 2pm are a great resource. There is still time to purchase a subscription (from £30) and binge watch all previous lectures and join in with live ones until the end of June 2020. This is when the project finishes and the content will be removed, although the Joint CPD programme may be extended, so watch this space.

A massive thank you also to Nick Salmond for joining APTG Branch Council and taking over Marketing from Alex Hetherington. We are very pleased to have you on the team and look forward to working with you.

That’s all from me. I wish you all good health, stay safe.

Kind regards,

Danny Parlour.

WEBSITE TRAFFIC SOCIAL MEDIA BROADCASTS The website traffic for April is down due to The social media broadcasts are really COVID-19 but we had 20,8835 unique helping to keep the brand alive! As of early visitors, a nineteenth consecutive month May, along with the introduction video, there with over 20,000 - not bad, as most travel have been fourteen broadcasts which websites are experiencing a 25% to 90%+ reached 126,674 people and resulted in drop in traffic. Year to date, our traffic is down 62,295 views. They have received 1,717 10%, the drop-off starting in March from key sections of the likes/reactions, 984 comments and 394 shares. It is website including Find A Guide, GuideMatch, Guides important to know that we have had involvement from thirty (individual profiles) and Tours. five different blue badge tourist guides in this project. Thanks to all of those who have helped with it, especially: WEBSITE BLOG POSTS: Nick Salmond, Alex Hetherington, Fiona Lukas. Five new blog posts were added to the website: Afternoon Tea in London by Emily Baker MULTI-LANGUAGE PROJECT The View from my Window: A Third Eye Opens After review of the changes made by our development The View from my Window: Source of Memories & Dreams agency Pedalo, I have requested clarification and a few The View from my Window: Good News from Victoria Park tweaks before we migrate to the live website, hopefully The View from my Window: Our Three Local Heroes sometime in May, by the time you read this. The View from my Window posts are by Steve Fallon. Ursula Petula Barzey

2 Union news

Guides showcase their skills and knowledge virtually via: LETTER - HISTORY OF GUIDING Wow! A real blast from the past with very LOCKDOWN LEARNING familiar names such as Majorie Crapnell, Elsa Behrens, Major Battcock, Rod Lovell- It all began when Heart of England guide Sam Loveday took us to the Pank and meetings at Caxton Hall when I plague village of Eyam, after which Pepe Martinez led us around the was on the Guild EC. East End. Since then we have found out about the lives of Mary Anning, Agatha Christie and Nancy Astor, heard tips on how to One of twenty eight Festival of Britain manage money and deal with teenagers, been introduced to the qualified guides of 1951, Jane Paterson wonders of medieval stained glass and walked over London Bridge (wife of commander Patterson) introduced me to guiding as I was a dancer with her withPhoto Richard Paul IngMetcalfe and down Fleet Street with Sophie Campbell. daughter Jennifer, who had also qualified These are just a sample of the CPDs offered by the joint APTG/Guild for her Blue Badge. Lockdown Learning programme. Four times a week talks are streamed to guides who can see and hear their colleagues explore Jane had one of the original maroon the wonders of our profession. There is no need to worry if you miss badges and recommended that I wore a hat a broadcast, as those who pay the minimum of thirty (maximum one and gloves for my interview at the London hundred) pounds can gain access to recordings and view them Tourist Board, with Major Battcock as one whenever they like. Please note that the last live online CPD will be of the four interviewers. It was still a very on 16 June and the recordings will only be available until 30 June. seasonal job and I was asked how I would cope with not working for six months in the The presenters are paid the proper freelance rate for their work and winter, which was normal for resting any left-over funds will go to charities such as the Guides’ Benevolent theatricals anyway. Fund, Go Make It Happen and Project 2020 for the Guild. The half day fee was £7 and full day £15. It is still not too late to sign up! Aaron Hunter and Sue Hyde have The cost of the course in 1972 was £150. been working hard to put together this programme and there are still Rodney Scrace, Chairman of the London some more great lectures lined up. If you wish to join go to: Tourist Board, also did the course with me tickets.britainsbestguides.org/event/lockdown-learning- in 1972 and passed! extraordinary-cpd-programme/ The advertisement during the Festival of

Britain was for ‘suitable ladies to sign up for the BTHA course’. It was published in the GUIDE LONDON BROADCASTS Telegraph as far as I can remember. My We are continuing the live broadcasts on Guide London's Social memory of what Oswald Clark always said Media feeds, Facebook, Youtube and Twitter on Mondays, that we needed as guides was ‘enthusiasm’ Wednesdays and Fridays at 4pm. The aim is to keep the Guide for which he enunciated every syllable. London brand in people’s minds in the hope they will use the site I am delighted that you have published this. when they finally are able to plan their London trip. So far we have It should get the attention of members since featured talks on Westminster Abbey, the Tower and Windsor Castle, we do not have work to distract us. Locations where The Crown was filmed, VE Day, Famous Detectives Sandra Jack in London, Curious Facts about London Underground - and many more. Broadcasts are archived on YouTube and can be accessed at See pages 4/5 for Simon Rodway’s article youtube.com/user/GuideLondon. As of 1 May, we have had 84,000 views on Facebook, reaching 170,000 people. We have had 2,400 likes and 1,300 comments. 550 NEW MEMBERS posts have been shared. Youtube has fewer views as it takes time to Katharine Alcock (right) build a base. On YouTube we have had 6,000 views this year with Year qualified 2020 630 hours of output watched. As lockdown lifts, we will reduce the Language: English number of broadcasts. However, if you would like to contribute to this Tel: 07534 146374 series, please contact Nick Salmond with your ideas at Website: katherinealcock.com [email protected]. Email: [email protected] Broadcasts in late May and early June: 18 May - The Mirror and the Light 25 May - British Museum Adrian Popa Vasile 20 May - Shakespeare 22 May - The Beatles (recorded) Year Qualifiied 2020 27 May - Health Service 29 May - Greenwich attractions Mother tongue: Romanian 1 June - British Library 3 June - Winston Churchill Other languages: English 5 June - London’s Green Spaces 8 June - Launch of Virtual Tours Tel: 07548 304100 10 June - Charles Dickens 12 June - Florence Nightingale Email: [email protected]

ASSOCIATION OF PROFESSIONAL TOURIST GUIDES 3 www.guidelondon.org.uk June 2020 guiding news

A HISTORY OF TOURIST GUIDING Members in enforced idleness might enjoy Simon Rodway’s history of our profession Early days 1920 – 1940 The course had been started by Bryant The blue badge was a fairly recent arrival, turning up Peters, a former schoolmaster who spent his when there was already a mature and skilled guiding demob gratuity on printing thousands of profession in place in London and throughout Britain. prospectuses, hoping to persuade people to If there was an antecedent it could well be the late let him show them the Tower or Saint Paul’s John Warren, a British Army ‘Old Contemptible’ who or listen to a lecture. Peters tried to sell the enlisted (underage) in 1914 and was dispatched to idea of guide training to the London County Belgium as part of the British by Expeditionary Force. Council, who sent him to the Home Office, Few of these soldiers survived beyond 1915 but John Simon Rodway who sent him to the Ministry of Education, did and in 1919 he found himself back on civvy who sent him finally to the BTHA. For the next street. Capitalising on his military background, he got himself twenty years Peters and ‘visiting specialist lecturers’ a job as ‘gentleman escort’ with Thomas Cook. instructed potential guides who consisted of army officers, insurance and banking men, civil servants and - best of all, in This was the heyday of genteel tourism, an age of uniformed Bryant’s view, because they knew how to deliver information porters, hand-tooled luggage and transatlantic liners criss- - actors. crossing the Atlantic. Guides like John had an agreeable profession to themselves until the thirties – when women The Guild arrives started to arrive. Gerda Soameson, who already had a lively In 1951 the news came that there would be a Festival of business guiding Danish groups, approached a company Britain in London and it was at a meeting on 10 August 1950, called Dean and Dawson for work, only to be could she could when twenty eight BTHA qualified guides converged on the not possibly guide their tourists as she was a lady! She George pub in Southwark, that Marjorie Crapnell slapped responded, ‘More fool you! I speak five languages!’ They down the first five shilling (25p) membership on the table and invited her to their offices, subjected her to an exam, through the Guild of Guide Lecturers was born. She was especially which she sailed, and entered the history books as the first proud of the fact that her membership number was 001. The recognised female British tourist guide. She later gleefully Guild chose for its logo a plant called , then recalled taking Nazi party officials around Westminster Abbey blooming on the capital’s bombsites. and enjoying their discomfort when she presented them with Guild meetings were held at Caxton Hall in Westminster, the statue of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli! where scaffolding has now come down to reveal a glorious Guides have ‘A good war’ 1880s terracotta exterior. The Guild attracted heavyweight The late 1940s saw large numbers of American servicemen vice presidents like the Dean of Westminster, the Duke of coming back with their wives and families to show off their Bedford and the Town Clerk of the City. Dinners were held in wartime haunts – and this at a time when it took seventeen places like the Guildhall or the Harcourt Rooms in the House hours to fly the Atlantic. Guides’ commentaries could be raw of Commons. The profession was being recognised. and personal with comments such as ‘This is where my Guiding begins to grow friends were killed when the bomb flattened the pub’. Frank Jet travel was now making tourism easier with wanderlust Elstone joined Thomas Cook as a guide in 1946. ‘In those fuelled by swinging London, the Beatles, James Bond and the days guides would come into the office and sit in a special film Blow Up. The season began to extend beyond May to room on the chance of a job turning up. One of those was September and competition in guiding was hotting up. dear old John Warren.’ Their clients were often foreign In the 1960s pressure for a permanent base led to a guide businessmen with a couple of days to kill after their meetings. booking bureau, for both tour operators and the public, being ‘No coaches in those days had amplification,’ remembers set up at the Mount Royal Hotel. In 1965 the first International Frank. ‘Megaphones deafened the back seats and completely Congress of Guides and Tour Directors met in Madrid and bypassed the front seats.’ was attended by London guide Elsa Behrens, who had lived Training begins in Spain. So enthused was Elsa that she organised a second Frank remembered the first guide training course taking place Congress in London and she was awarded an MBE in 1980. from September 1948 to May 1949 at the Regent Street Other notable early guides were Guild Chairs Major Roy Polytechnic, now the University of Westminster. Early guide Battcock and Rod Lovell-Pank. courses in the 1950s included sixteen two hour lectures, four The 1960s were significant as tourism grew so much that Saturday afternoon practicals and one day on a coach, with even the government took notice. BTHA was superseded by students expected to read extensively and carry out private the British Tourist Authority (BTA) in 1960. In 1969 the Tourism study. The cost was one guinea and the price of the exams Act set up twelve regional tourist boards with a London Tourist ten shillings and six pence. Training was provided by the Board (LTB) for the capital. The area covered was London British Travel and Holiday Association (BTHA) and successful and anywhere within a day’s journey – Bath, Stratford, students were given a maroon metal badge with space for a Canterbury, Cambridge, Dover. Guides welcomed the name and the words ‘Registered Guide’. intervention of government in a chaotic unregulated market.

4 guiding news

Enter the blue badge that paid under the rate should be reported to The new tourist boards assumed BITOA and the LTB and that paying under the rate responsibility for training guides and the BTA might be the reason some operators could not find was happy to hand the role over to the LTB in guides in peak season. London. The first course lasted six months, The Guild’s second home was a fourth floor in followed by exams, and the first blue badge Bridge Street above Grandma Lees sandwich was awarded in the 1970s. The course was shop. Members recall the daunting hike to the run by the late Oswald Clarke and Eric Smith, fourth floor, but the floor below could be used for whose maxim was, ‘Smile! Your clients are on meetings and lectures. This office went the way of holiday!’ Many guides remember Mr Clarke the wrecking ball when the Jubilee line and and Mr Smith with great affection. Portcullis house arrived in 1999, prompting the hop As the season peaked, the perennial cry from to Borough High Street (and now Crosby Row). tour operators down the decades is ‘We can never get a APTG is founded - and then the Institute guide!’ The LTB’s response was to issue an Intermediate The 1980s brought a major threat affecting guides’ fees, one Guide badge to some unqualified guides, valid only for the which has polarised the profession ever since. In 1987 the current season. When they tried extending their validity Office of Fair Trading (OFT) was alerted that the Guild was beyond the end of the season tempers frayed. The Thames publishing fees and they threatened to use the full weight of and Chiltern Board introduced a blue badge for Windsor the restrictive Trade Practices Act of 1976 to prevent this. ‘In almost identical to the London one, but with a course lasting all likelihood this Act was never designed for use against a only two weeks and Windsor guides began turning up in small group of self-employed professionals,’ recalls Monica central London. By 1977 Guild Chair Rod Lovell-Pank had Carney, APTG’s Founder Chair. Nevertheless, it sent the had enough. profession running for cover. Lovell-Pank is fondly remembered as a military man who It was Jeanie Carmichael’s idea to ask advice from a union thundered away on his typewriter about the complete lack of about the OFT threat and Clive Jenkins’ white collar workers consultation every time the LTB handed down decisions on union (later MSF, now Unite) was approached. Jenkins was guiding. Any decision affecting guides was presented to the a flamboyant and in some ways divisive figure. The late Gerry Guild as a fait accompli, often detrimental to guides’ interests. Lord remembers a first meeting with him when the ByArcadi 1971 Monastery the Guild was printing its own list of members and champagne corks popped. Jenkins might have been a stylish founded the International Committee representing different warrior, but it was a style that rankled with some guides. languages. Guides were seeing their earnings shrink as the MSF lawyers said that there was nothing in the law against economy suffered rampant inflation and the Guild a group of sole traders publishing agreed fees, but the Guild recommended an increase in the daily rate from £10 to £15. vote on whether to join with the union was defeated. Tour companies continued to try and get guides at the lower Instigators of the move were coming under abuse with hate rate but the Guild stuck out for the extra fiver a day. messages left on answerphones, the comments nearly In 1978 the issue of undercutting triggered a demonstration always being anonymous. when guides leafleted coaches and lines of tourists outside At the end of 1988 a group of seventy guides chose to leave Saint Paul’s, the Tower and Westminster Abbey. ‘Make sure the Guild and APTG was formed in February 1989. The your guide is wearing the blue badge’ was the message in opinion of the lawyers was borne out in 1995 when the case nine languages. Not everybody approved of the campaign came to trial and the judge said that guides could publish but it helped to persuade tour operators to use qualified minimum fees. Phil Cookson recalled leading a walking tour Scene from The Crown guides. The Guild formulated a fees scale and a schedule of when one of his customers came up to him and introduced working conditions. The profession was becoming organised. himself as the man who made that judgement! 1980 saw the thirtieth anniversary of the Guild, just as 2019 Unqualified guides can tout for business from visitors and you saw the thirtieth anniversary of APTG. They moved out of the sometimes still see them leading a group of tourists with homes of their Chairs and opened an office under a railway notes in one hand and a map in the other. In 2002, however, arch in Blackfriars (since demolished). It meant that Katrine the Institute of Tourist Guiding arrived to oversee training and Prince was the first to have a chair and desk to Chair from. professional standards. Training and examining were handed The Guild also had a full time administrator, Pauline Davies. over to the profession - the best place for it. The blue badge Guide training courses were beginning to proliferate all over continues to be seen as the world’s most professional tourist Britain and Katrine Prince campaigned for common guiding qualification and Britain remains one of the most standards by building close contacts with the regional tourist popular destinations in the world. The blue badge is truly the boards. She persuaded regional directors to adhere to a Rolls Royce of tourist guiding. common standard and a training syllabus was agreed. Simon Rodway Undercutting remained a perennial problem. The Guild’s International Committee kept reiterating its advice to the Simon was an APTG member and former Guidelines editor membership: do not accept work under the rate! Roy Allen, who ran Silver Cane Tours. He died in 2015. writing in the Guild Newsletter, suggested that companies Thanks to Richard Skinner for forwarding this. EL

ASSOCIATION OF PROFESSIONAL TOURIST GUIDES 5 www.guidelondon.org.uk June 2020 guiding news THE DARK SIDE OF CHELSEA Fact is stranger than literary fiction in one of London’s most fashionable suburbs

On a Chelsea walking tour you might begin at Sloane Square Station where in April 1960 publisher Peter Davies threw himself under a train. The verdict by the coroner was, 'suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed'. When Peter Davies Ltd was launched, the papers ran headlines stating, 'Peter Pan becomes publisher'. Davies was one of five Llewelyn Davies boys whom J M Barrie took under his wing when their parents died. Yet he came to loathe what he called, 'that terrible masterpiece'. It was Jack, not Peter, who profited most from the story. When told by Subway at Crystdal Palace Cattle trough, his mother to stop scoffing chocolates or he wouldSpaniard’s be sick tomorrow, his retort was, “I shall be sick tonight”, after which he carried on. Barrie was so impressed that he offered Jack a halfpenny royalty for every performance of the play. Two of the boys, like Peter Pan, never grew up. They were

Michael, who drowned in the Thames aged twenty, when he George Eliot Her famous novel and a friend went boating in Oxford in a known danger spot: (born Mary Anne Evans) ‘Middlemarch’ there was a suggestion of a suicide pact. Another, George,

was killed in the Great War, aged twenty one. J M Barrie wrote, “Nothing that happens after we are twelve matters Also on Cheyne Walk is the former home of George Eliot very much.” Nico Llewelyn Davies said of Barrie, “He was an (born Mary Ann Evans). She took on a man’s name to be innocent, which is why he could write Peter Pan”. taken seriously as a novelist. However, she may be seen as one of the true early feminists. Her novels such as In Leonard's Terrace you will find a blue plaque to Bram Middlemarch give us a real sense of this, as does her actual Stoker, where you may need to keep some garlic handy, as life story. This novel netted her the equivalent today of he was the creator of Dracula, supposedly coming up with £570,000 in just two years. the idea after a nightmare induced by a rich crab dinner. It was believed that the inspiration came from Vlad the Scandalously for the times, she lived with a married man Impaler, who is said to have killed 400,000 victims impaled George Lewes at her house ‘The Heights’ in Surrey. Despite on spikes in Romania in the fifteenth century. They were the fact he had already separated from his wife before they boiled, skinned and left to be eaten by animals. Vlad was met, and his three sons often lived with her and called her known as 'Dracula', the son of the dragon. Dracula means 'mother', she was shunned by friends and family. After his 'Devil' as well as 'Dragon'. death at the age of sixty, she married Johnny Cross, a man of forty. He was her neighbour and had installed a lawn As a child Bram Stoker was struck by a mysterious illness tennis court for her at The Heights. While on honeymoon in and could not walk until he was seven. Doctors did Venice, he attempted suicide by leaping out of the window bloodletting on him and this fear of loss of blood was also an of their hotel. However, he was rescued by hearty inspiration for the story. Growing up in Dublin, he would play gondoliers. They moved into Cheyne Walk in 1880, but she in the Clontarf graveyard among the graves of the 'undead'. died nineteen days later. The marriage lasted only six He would also visit the family vault of St Michan, Dublin, months, as George Eliot died of a heart attack. She where some of the coffins were open with protruding limbs described her symptoms to her doctors exactly: "Tell them I hanging out, heads thrown back as though sleeping, ready have great pain on the left side". to wake like vampires. There is a mysterious story attached to her death. Fellow What of Stoker the hero, who was awarded the Royal writer Katherine Macquoid had intended to visit her, but had Humane Society Medal? In 1882, while on a steamboat, not got around to it. Early one morning, she awoke to see Stoker rescued a man from a suicide attempt when he the novelist standing at the bottom of her bed and heard a jumped off the boat into the Thames. He brought him home voice murmuring 'sixty-one'. She took this as a portent for to his house in Cheyne Walk, but the man died on the her own death, believing she would die at this age. Later kitchen table, much to the horror of Stoker's wife Florence. that day her son rushed round to tell her that George Eliot His brother tried to revive the man, but to no avail. Florence had died a month to the day after her sixty first birthday. had nearly married Oscar Wilde, another Chelsea resident who, like Stoker, had studied at Trinity College Dublin. Clarissa Skinner

6 guiding news CORONA FREE CORNER A miscellany for guides in lockdown. Please let us have your contributions.

HARRY UNDER THE HAMMER MASTERS OF SOCIAL MEDIA A rare first edition of the first Harry Potter book Britain is emerging as the master of the social media cultural enchanted buyers at Bonhams in a recent auction universe. A survey of art museums has placed five from London of fine books. Department Head Matthew Haley in the top ten of social media followings. New York has three said that it was "a little piece of Harry Potter whilst Paris and Amsterdam have one each. The Tate, Saatchi, history," and that he was not surprised that it British Museum, National Gallery and Victoria and Albert achieved a price of $146,807 (about £120,000). museums have secured the Twitter, Instagram and Facebook hordes as the world's cultural institutions endeavour to entice THE RITZ IS SOLD people to their digital offerings. An exhibition devoted to Manga The Ritz Hotel has been sold for an estimated £800 million to a and Pokémon's Pichachu has been identified as the BM's most Qatari buyer, leading to a bitter legal battle within the Barclay popular show of 2019. Although visitors had to pay, the show family and a bugging scandal at the hotel itself. Sir Frederick attracted more people per day than a free exhibition of Barclay had warned that he would take action against Aidan, Rembrandt's drawings at the museum. son of his twin brother Sir David, and other family members if Other British winners in the survey the hotel was sold for less than one billion pounds. The 114- by The Art newspaper include year old hotel was bought by the brothers for £75 million in Steve McQueen's Year Three 1995. It is currently closed for the first time in its history but exhibition at Tate Britain featuring hopes to reopen soon. The Barclays also own the Telegraph London's schoolchildren. The most and delivery firm Yodel. popular paid-for exhibition was THE COURTAULD IS CLOSED Antony Gormley at the Royal Academy which drew an average The Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House has closed for of 3,842 visitors a day. On a global redevelopment and is due to reopen in Spring 2021, although Steve McQueen’s Year Three level, Britain's museums rode high you can take a virtual tour at courtauld.ac.uk. The Courtaulds show at Tate Britain Museum last year. The Louvre retained top were Huguenot silversmiths who arrived in the 1600s and lived spot as the most visited with 9.6 million visitors and the National in Soho. George Courtauld trained as a silk thrower (someone Museum of China in Beijing second with 7.39 million. The BM who makes twisted yarn from silk fibre). In 1799 his employers came fifth, Tate Modern sixth and the National Gallery seventh. asked him to start a mill near Braintree in Essex, where silk- No other city had more than one museum in the top ten. The weaving moved after it left Spitafields. George’s son Samuel V&A came eleventh with 3.9 million visitors, its Christian Dior then opened mills making black silk crepe. In 1889 artificial silk exhibition drawing 600,000 people. (later known as rayon) was exhibited at the Paris exhibition and the Courtauld factory switched to producing it. BEST FOOT FORWARD On May 29 1953, three days before the The company chairman in 1920s was Samuel’s great-nephew, queen’s coronation, Sir Edmund Hillary and another Samuel. After his wife died of cancer in 1931 he Norgay Tenzing reached the 29,035-foot donated his London house and their art collection to the nation summit of Mount Everest and became the as a memorial to her. Courtauld established a trust to care for first people to stand on the roof of the world. the house and collections and to set up an institute for the study The boots that took Hillary to the summit of art. Molas have been excavating the site at Somerset House were made by James Taylor and Son. and, amazingly, exactly where the Courtauld is planning to The Hilary Boot Shortly before the ascent bespoke footwear locate its new toilets, they found a fifteenth century cesspit! had been posted to Kathmandu, but the parcel broke open and Objects found in it include tableware, a ring, a pendant and a the right boot went astray. A swiftly made replacement was spur. More details are on the Courtauld website. There will be dispatched to Nepal. Months later the lost item was found and an exhibition of the finds when the gallery reopens. returned by the Post Office. James Taylor and Son has been LOW EMISSION TRANSPORT plying its trade in Marylebone’s Paddington Street for over 150 years. It is one of the UK’s few remaining bespoke shoemakers. London currently has 200 electric buses and TfL plans to have The now-famous - albeit unused - Hillary boot (whole cut, with 2,000 on the roads in the next five years. They have also just one seam at the back, a hob-nail sole and a double-stitched ordered hydrogen buses built in Belfast by the firm Wrightbus welt) has pride of place in its window to this day. which was bought by the JCB heir Jo Bamford. According to Bamford, hydrogen buses work better on longer routes because Contributors: Augusta Harris, Gail Jones, Victoria Herriott electric vehicles do not have powerful enough batteries. and Antony Robbins

ASSOCIATION OF PROFESSIONAL TOURIST GUIDES 7 www.guidelondon.org June 2020 SURPRISING SUBURBIA Steve Szymanski explores his part of London - near the A40 Like all of us, I have found lockdown hard. At the start of the St Mary the Virgin (right) built in the year I was preparing for the new season but this all came to a thirteenth century - parts still survive from shuddering end in mid-March. We were permitted to do daily then - and ‘restored’ over the years. The exercise but, as I live in suburbia, it was not much use to me two brick buttresses were added in 1718 as a London guide. Then it struck me that there is a rich vein because it was thought the church might of twentieth century history as London expanded with fall down the hill. Sadly, the church is residential, commercial and infrastructure development. I had currently closed, and I could not see the another brain wave in that I live in Northolt which, like Ruislip fine but tiny interior (14 by 7.3 metres) and Pinner, was originally a small farming village. Some but I did learn that it has a fascinating evidence must still exist - so I set out to investigate. history. From 1293 until 1873 its rector was the Bishop of London who appointed a live-in vicar. The church then passed into the hands of Brasenose College, who still hold the right of advowson to appoint the rector. Presumably, it was they who appointed Pamela Walker, first female Anglican rector in the country. In the fourteenth century a manor house was built behind the church. Nothing remains of it now though the outline is marked by wooden sleepers. However, there is a Westminster Abbey connection, as Richard II bought the Manor towards the end of The Northolt Alps - seen on the way to or from Stratford his troubled reign and gave it to the Abbey to pay for his and his When you mention Northolt to a London blue badge guide they wife’s tomb. When he abdicated, the Abbey had the manor are likely to think of RAF Northolt which you pass on the way demolished and sold the land. to Oxford or Stratford. It is technically in Ruislip and the reason I headed home through for its name is that when it was created in 1915 the Royal a large mass of social Flying Corps named airfields after the nearest railway station housing known as the (Northolt Junction). Another landmark on the A40 are the Racecourse Estate. I famous ‘Northolt Alps’, four conical peaks constructed with always assumed it was spoil from the redeveloped . Not only do they named thus because block traffic noise but they offer great views to central London. the builders liked horse They are part of the Northala Fields leisure park development. racing, but it turned out Northala is an odd name, perhaps that there really was a racecourse here in the 1930s. Northolt made up by a twenty first century Park was the headquarters of the Pony Turf Club (PTC), the marketing guru, but it also sounds centre for pony racing, which had a dubious reputation. To Anglo-Saxon. Online research legitimise it, the PTC was founded in 1923 and a pony revealed this second guess was racecourse called Northolt Park was constructed in 1929. correct and it was the name of the Lower admission prices, more meetings, plus proximity to settlement mentioned in the London and easy access by train made it an extremely popular 3 Savile Row Domesday Book with thirty two location and both Max Miller and George Formby filmed there. inhabitants and a church, In the Second World War the site was taken over by the armed becoming Northolt in the sixteenth forces, housing Italian prisoners of war. Attempts were made to century. I have lived there for revive it after the war but the need for housing had higher nearly twenty years and I knew of priority. Their famous cantilever stand was relocated to Brands the small green with a George VI Hatch,and all that remains are the entry gates (above) and Coronation Clock (right) but was street names as a reminder of past glories. not aware of a church. I have learnt a lot more about my local bit of suburbia, proving My walk took me up a small lane to Greater London still has the capacity to surprise. Belvue Park and an absolute gem, Steve Szymanksi (who also took the photographs)

Thanks to Augusta Harris, Victoria Herriott, Gail Jones, Antony Robbins, Clarissa Skinner, Steve Szymanski and the late Simon Rodway.

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 7611 2500 welcome articles and photos from members but contributions may be held over and Direct line: 020 7611 2545 we reserve the right to edit them. Images should be high resolution – 300 ppi. [email protected] Editor: Edwin Lerner Please submit all copy and images for the next edition by email to [email protected] by 15 June for inclusion in the next issue. (JN8627) HB131218