St John St: infamous for robbers attack- Spa Fields 1817: radical Black Dwarf ing travellers to City, till 19th Century Congregational paper based at 99-119 Families, Owenite Rosebery Ave; 1983 Peace Commune, 1821-4 Centre Squat on same spot. Spa Fields: gather orking ing point for rowdy W crowds, especially Clerkenwell House of k National 1816-18. Riot started Detention, Sans Walk: Woodbridge St, Battle of Coldbath ally: one Clerkenwell Bridewell, ields, 1833: police here 2 December Stormed by Bawdy prisoners freed by F attac - House Rioters, 1668, by GordonSekforde rioters, 1780. St: Red Bull Theatre famous Union Classesof the r London apprentices, Grays Inn Rd, 1 Nov policeman killed for satirical plays 1688, by Gordon rioters, and stroppy 133 Goswell Rd: c. 1902-7: audiences, 1630s. 1932: Unemployed 1780; bombed by Guy Aldred holds free- Fenians, 1867. e of thinking , anarchist and demonstration C o J communist meetings in . r e ess, y r r e u basement of his mum’s s s attacked by police Clerkenwell Close: p a house. een: centr o le Coldbath Fields Prison, pioneering penitentiary n m home to Feminist paper Spare Rib d and lefty printers Black Rose Press, in P g a printing pr H s S s 1970s. e o a a c g d i e L , e : a 1 ty L n o x Memorial Librar 7 o e f 9 m fi 0 n a c s e d tt e 1 . t o a s 7 37a Clerkenwell Gr a n ck at 9 radicalism since 1860s: London t e M 4: B d u R u in t e ll to c Patriotic Club, SDF ’s C n ru ri it Lenin, and Mar Warner St Temperance m in p g Hall: Eliza Sharples H o u Old Holborn Town Hall: secularist Literary & se Turnmill St: a rookery and Baptists Head, St Scientific Institution, R redlight area for centuries. lots of leftwing events, io Johns Lane: meeting 1840s. ts including ILP Mayday . St Johns Priory, 13th place for radicals socialist carnival,1895. overflowingSaffron with Hill thievery Rookery: and June 1381: sacked by c. 1800. crime. Home to Gordon Rioters revolting peasants. and other rebels. Wrestler-in-the- London Lesbian & Hoop tavern, Hopkinsons 44 Grays Inn Rd: socialist Gay Centre, 69 c.1414: haunt of Coffee House, Cowcross St, the Lollards. 20th Century Press, till Saffron Hill, 1980s/90s. 1893. 1848: physical force Chartists met here to plot rebellion. 37 Grays Inn Rd: Hatton Garden, 1798-99; United Central Books, Englishmen met in pubs to plan for Communist Party radical uprising... later Colonel Despard Smithfield: bookshop, 1957-90s. & mutinous soldiers planned rebellion in Bleeding Heart pub here, 1802 heretics and rebels CLERKENWELL executed here for 28 Grays Inn Rd:Freedom centuries... Wat Tyler killed; defeat of anarchist paper Field Lane/Union based here, 1889. Peasants Revolt Court rookery, “the Hub 18th/19th centuries: Black Boy fought the law c.1744. warren of slum tenements & Alley Gang Bartholomew Fair: The alleys. Escaped prisoners most prominent London shletered here during fair for centuries: a Gordon riots. teeming riotous of the Radical Snow Hill, 1848: Utopian communists outpouring of popular held conference in a culture, feared by Burning rivers of gin, those in power. 1780: Langdale’s huge gin hall here. Wheel” distillery burnt out by Gordon rioters CLERKENWELL: the Hub of the Radical Wheel Clerkenwell is one of London’s oldest suburbs, a watch and clockmaking, and later lockmaking. As • Radicalism: Clerkenwell has been called ‘the hub of • The NUWC fed into the the Chartist movement working class area for centuries, teeming with printing became widespread from the 16th century the the radical wheel’. Movements that grew up for (1830s-40s), the first great self-organised political slums and rookeries, many of which sheltered area hosted numbers of printers and later publishers: parliamentary reform & working class representation, movement of the British working class. Both moderate criminals, rebels, and rioters. But it was also an this fed into the local reputation for freethinking and agitations around work, wages, unemployment, and Chartists (such as the London Working Mens area of artisan industries and small workshops. As debate. social or political issues which working class Association) and the ‘physical force’ wing (eg the • Networks of control: from the twelfth century organisations took up, could all be found focussed here. London Democratic Association) met on the Green, a result of its working class and industrial several prisons were built in or near the area. Not only The French Revolution helped to inspire a movement in local coffee shops like Lunts, on the Green, or character, Clerkenwell was a stronghold of radical were london’s largest jails, Newgate and the Fleet, just for parliamentary reform in the 1790s. The London Hopkinsons, in Saffron Hill. Local Chartist meetings movements and later socialists. down the road, but just north of Clerkenwell Green Corresponding Society, a working class organisation, were often attacked by police, and one occasion the Clerkenwell has also acted as a focus for national stood the Bridewell, and the Clerkenwell House of initially working for reform, was strong in Clerkenwell, resulting battle spread to the rooves of Clerkenwell events, movements and struggles. Detention. With the Clerkenwell Workhouse, the meeting in the Jerusalem Tavern. The authorities houses. In 1848, Chartists disillusioned by the futility • The Peasants Revolt: the 1381 rebellion, sparked by Quaker Workhouse, the madhouse and the charity repressed the reform movement viciously, which led to of petitioning for ‘their rights’ were planning an the heavy new poll tax, but in fact an expression of school all on neighbouring sites, this area formed a radicals plotting a revolutionary uprising - groups met uprising: 300 of their ball cartridges were dug up by many grievances of a complex mix of social classes, nexus of coercion & repression of the local poor. in local pubs, like the Baptists Head, in St Johns Lane, police in Clerkenwell’s St James Churchyard. came to its climax in Smithfield and Clerkenwell. As Another harsh reminder of state power (till 1783) was or the Bleeding Heart in Hatton Garden. Later, the First International, the International rebels from Kent and Essex poured into London, they the ‘Heavy Hill’, the old road up Holborn Hill before After the Napoleonic Wars, in a climate of recession, Workingmans Association, met at no 37a & the London poor attacked symbols and centres of the Viaduct was built, part of the ritual route taken by there was a new upsurge of agitation for reform; mass Clerkenwell Green: a building that has been a focus power. On June 13th the Clerkenwell Priory, HQ of the the cart carrying condemned prisoners from Newgate meetings were held on Spa Fields, off today’s for socialists, trade unionists, & communists for 150 Order of the Knights of St John, in St John’s Lane, was to be hung at Tyburn. Rosebery Avenue; in December 1816 one led to a huge years. Later the Social Democratic Federation stormed and burned - partly because the head of the Later Coldbath Fields Prison was built on Rosebery riot. Once again, government repression led to plans (Britain's first Marxist grouping), its marxist-anarchist order, Robert Hales, was also Lord Treasurer of Avenue, on ultra-modern lines for its times. for revolt. Meanwhile, there was a flowering of radical offshoot the Socialist League, and several anarchist England, responsible for collecting the poll tax (they But resistance was strong in all these institutions; at publishing: the Black Dwarf, a leading radical paper, groups all held public meetings here between the 1890s chopped off ‘Hob the Robber’s head the next day!). times of disorder the prisons were all attacked & pris- was published from Rosebery Avenue, and local shops and World War 1. The Socialist League’s HQ stood on But on the 15th, after the Revolt had won oners freed; and escapes and riots were common. The spring up selling radical literature, like John Cleave’s Farringdon Lane, while the SDF’s printing press was concessions from the king at Mile End, another most famous escaper was Jack Sheppard, who in shop in Shoe Lane, off Farringdon Road. These shops housed at 37a Clerkenwell Green, which has since negotiation at Smithfield ended with the murder of 1724 broke out of the House of Detention, the Fleet, serve as meeting points for local troublemakers and as become the Marx Memorial Library. rebel leader Wat Tyler: the king persuaded the crowd and Newgate in turn. distribution points for the numerous ‘unstamped’ • Mayday has been celebrated here as International to move to nearby Clerkenwell Fields, where they were • Rookeries: The Clerkenwell area, especially around radical newspapers. Another local meeting place was Workers Day since its origins in 1890, when the first surrounded and disbanded. Executions & repression the banks of the Fleet river, became well known for its the Literary & Scientific Institution, founded by Workers Mayday was attacked here by police; trade followed. slums, or ‘rookeries’, notorious streets of overcrowded female secularist Eliza Sharples in Warner Street in unionists still march annually from the Green on May • Thirty years later, the area was a stronghold of garrets and lodging houses, haunts of the poorest, the 1840s for anti-religious discussions and scientific 1st. religious rebels the Lollards, reformers fighting for a inhabited by criminals, rebels, prostitutes... These areas lectures & classes. These were all part of a strong But the area hosted subversion even into the 1980s: the more democratic and personal church. Smithfield’s sheltered outcasts and provided solidarity and unity artisan tradition of self-education. London Workers Group, a forum for communists, Wrestler-in-the-Hoop tavern was one of their meeting against authority.