RAPH G IC PO A Notes and News 2013 O L T S The Society’s AGM was held on Tuesday 9 July in O N the impressive setting of St Clement Danes church C (minutes will be published in the May 2014 O I Newsletter E Newsletter ). It was followed by talks by Robert D Number 77 T Thompson on the index to this year’s publication, N Y by Peter Anderson on the history of the building, O November 2013 and by Elizabeth Williamson on recent research on L the parish by the Victoria County History. Unlike our previous annual publication, this year’s offering, The A-Z of Charles II’s London , was happily available for members to take home, and also, unlike last year, there was plenty of tea, as well as a copious supply of sandwiches. Plans are already in hand for the 2014 AGM, which will be extra special as it will take place in the Egyptian room in the Mansion House in the City, the Lord Mayor’s An American in London: Whistler and the official residence; the Lord Mayor, Fiona Woolf, Thames, Dulwich Picture Gallery 16 October 2013 hopes to be able to welcome us. The date is Monday – 12 January 2014. The first major London 7 July; further details will be in the May Newsletter . exhibition to explore the American-born artist’s Council members for 2013-4 are listed on the radical new aesthetic approach to the city and river. back page of this Newsletter. They include our new Take the Tube. London Underground in Membership Secretary, John Bowman. He takes Camden. Camden Local Studies & Archives over from Patrick Frazer, who was thanked for his Centre. From 11 June 2013 – 31 December 2013, many years of hard work for the Society. 2nd Floor, Holborn Library, 32-38 Theobalds Road, If you are not yet in possession of your London WC1X 8PA. Monday 10-6, Tuesday 10-6, publication for the year, The A-Z of Charles II’s Thursday 10-7, Friday 10-5, alternate Saturday London , contact the Treasurer. 11-5. Celebrating the 1913 Ancient Monuments Act. l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l Wellington Arch, Hyde Park Corner. A series of small exhibitions through the year examining the movement to protect England’s heritage are Exhibitions completed by Brutal and Beautiful: Saving the Twentieth century , 25 September – 24 November, A diverse range of London’s archives, art, and Almost Lost: London’s Buildings Loved and architecture and artefacts are displayed in special Loathed . 4 December – 2 February. These exhibitions this autumn. complement English Heritage’s permanent The Parish, London Metropolitan Archives, 40 exhibition telling the chequered story of the Northampton Road EC1. 14 October 2013 – 13 Wellington Arch and its sculpture. Wednesday – February 2014. Free. The lives of Londoners and Sunday 10-4. their local communities revealed by registers, documents, photos, maps and other sources, from l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l earliest records to the present day. ( NB The LMA is closed for stocktaking 31 October – 18 November). The Cheapside Hoard, London’s Lost Jewels. Lecture Museum of London. 11 October – 27 April. New examination of a cache of late sixteenth and early NEW CITY, Contemporary Architecture in the seventeenth century jewels and gemstones discovered City of London, by Alec Forshaw. Tuesday 10 in 1912 – displayed in its entirety for the first time in December, at the Garden Museum, Lambeth Palace over a century. Daily 10-6. See further p.2. Road SE1 7RB. Drinks at 6.30pm, Lecture at 7pm. Georgians Revealed: Life, Style and the £20. This is the annual Banister Fletcher lecture of Making of Modern Britain. British Library. 8 the London Society, which has recently merged November – 11 March. With accompanying book with the Heritage of London Trust. For further ‘exploring the everyday lives of people in Georgian details contact [email protected] Britain’ (hardback £30 paperback £20). Also guided Alec Forshaw’s book on the same subject, walks on Sunday 17 November (booking needed; published by Merrell, will be reviewed in the next see boxoffice.bl.uk Newsletter . Miscellanea The jewels are delicate and light. There are chains set with garnets or turquoises, some long and worn London Maps online. Our thanks go to our in great loops around the neck. Chandelier earrings with emerald grapes or rubies are hung from thin member David Gaylard, who has alerted us to the wires. Rings in a rosette setting of garnets or useful online material available from the National sapphires and reliquary pendants of gold and Library of Scotland (maps.nls.uk). This includes the enamel are among the many items on display. They very detailed Ordnance Survey five-foot-to-a-mile are not jewels of the aristocracy but for the rich London Survey of 1891-5, printed on 729 sheets, middle-class merchants who aspired to great now very easily accessed at maps.nls.uk/ wealth. Rarely seen portraits of Elizabethan and os/london-1890s/index.html . The maps have also early Stuart figures have been placed alongside the been georeferenced so that they can be viewed as a cabinets to show how the jewellery was worn. It is a seamless layer on top of present day maps and truly magnificent hoard. satellite images. – Denise Silvester-Carr SALE! LTS members may already be aware that our member Hawk Norton is selling his large The Cheapside Hoard: London’s Lost Jewels , collection of London maps, books and prints. The by Hazel Forsyth. Museum of London 20-13, bulk of the collection is still available for sale, and a 248pp. ISBN 978 1 78130 920 6. £19.95. catalogue is being prepared. If you would like a pdf copy of the catalogue, send an email to Hazel Forsyth, the exhibition organiser, has spent [email protected] . more than 20 years studying the history and SPECIAL OFFER to LTS members. The ideal mystery of the Cheapside Hoard. She is a good and Christmas present! A 20% discount on London: A dedicated historian with an excellent eye for a View from the Streets (see review p.14), please visit striking display. Using previously unknown britishmuseum.org/shop and enter code LTS2013 documents this magnificently illustrated book tells at checkout. This offer is valid until 31 January of the stonecutters, lapidaries, enamellers, 2014. It is limited to one purchase per person and merchants and goldsmiths who fashioned or sold is not valid with any other promotion. the gems, and of the ships – some of them manned by pirates – who brought the raw stones to London. l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l The book is more exciting than any detective novel, yet at the same time amazingly instructive, and reasonably priced. The Cheapside Hoard – Ann Saunders The display of the Cheapside Hoard at the Museum of London has attracted much attention (including a l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l television programme on BBC4 on 15 October). Two of our Council members share their enthusiasm. Changing London: West Smithfield Enamelled chains set with lapis lazuli and pearls, – and Holborn Viaduct earrings with carved amethysts, a small watch in an emerald case and a collection of precious and West Smithfield began as a medieval livestock semi-precious stones are among the 500 items that market NW of the City, on open land just outside comprise the Cheapside Hoard. It was discovered the walls. The site was also used annually for the by workmen in 1912 buried beneath a demolished notoriously rowdy Bartholomew Fair, right up to building in Cheapside, a few hundred yards from 1855, when the City Corporation moved the live where they can now be seen in an exhibition at the meat market north to the fringe of built-up London Museum of London. at Copenhagen Fields, Islington. The City Surveyor London’s Lost Jewels are an amazing treasure chest of gems, the biggest cache of its kind in the world. They were probably a jeweller’s stock and were buried between 1640 and 1666, a few hundred yards from the modern museum. They lay there for almost 300 years, and the builders who found them took the gems, not to the Goldsmiths’ Company but to a Wandsworth pawnbroker and antique dealer called George Fabian Lawrence. ‘Stony Jack’, as he was known, was also employed by new London Museum and he was keen to secure the treasure for it. The navvies were rewarded for their find and the hoard was eventually granted to the museum. Apart from a showing in 1914, it has not been seen in its entirety since then. Smithfield Market buildings from Holborn Viaduct page 2 Horace Jones then replanned the enlarged site Blashill’s Italian-Gothic corner buildings, with covered markets above an underground containing stairs down to the Farringdon Road railway linked to the Metropolitan line. After much level. The north-east block was destroyed in World debate on whether a meat market should continue War II, but has now been replicated as a façade in in the centre of London, the impressive building of front of vast new commercial premises for AXIA real 1868 housing London Central Meat Market was estate, the gleaming white stonework of 2013 acting refurbished in 1992-5 to satisfy modern hygiene as a buffer between the colourful ironwork of the requirements. But the other market buildings have bridge and the steel and glass upper floors rearing been gradually abandoned and are now the up behind.