Strands of History Strands of History Northbank Revealed by Clive Aslet First published in 2014 by Wild Research, 40 Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3BU www.wildsearch.org © Wild Research 2014 © Text Clive Aslet 2014 All rights reserved The Northbank BID West Wing, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA www.thenorthbank.org isbn 978-0-9576966-2-4 Printed by OZGraf Olsztyńskie Zakłady Graficzne S.A. ul. Towarowa 2, 10-417 Olsztyn, Poland ‘Looking to Northumberland House, and turning your back upon Trafalgar Square, the Strand is perhaps the finest street in Europe, blending the architecture of many periods; and its river ways are a peculiar feature and rich with associations.’ Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred: or, The New Crusade, 1847 ‘I often shed tears in the motley Strand for fullness of joy at so much life... Have I not enough, without your mountains?’ Charles Lamb, turning down an invitation from William Wordsworth to visit him in the Lake District Contents Foreword 10 Chapter One: The River 14 Chapter Two: The Road 26 Chapter Three: Somerset House 40 Chapter Four: Trafalgar Square 50 Chapter Five: Structural Strand: Charing Cross Station and Victoria Embankment 58 Chapter Six: Serious Strand: The Law Courts 64 Chapter Seven: Playful Strand: Shopping, Hotels and Theatres 72 Chapter Eight: Crown Imperial: The Strand Improvement Scheme 82 Chapter Nine: Art Deco and Post War 94 Chapter Ten: The Future 100 Image Acknowledgements 108 Further Reading 110 About Wild Research 111 7 About the Author Clive Aslet is an award-winning writer and journalist, acknowledged as a leading authority on Britain and its way of life. In 1977 he joined the magazine Country Life, was for thirteen years its Editor and is now Editor at Large. He writes extensively for papers such as the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Spectator, and often broadcasts on television and radio. He is well-known as a campaigner on the countryside and other issues. His novel, The Birdcage, was published in 2014. 9 Foreword The Lord Shuttleworth KCVO Chairman of the Council, Duchy of Lancaster In 2015, the Duchy of Lancaster will mark claimed the crown of England and declared that the 750th anniversary of the creation of the his Lancaster inheritance should forevermore Lancaster Inheritance. Still owning the Savoy be held as a private estate of the monarch, Estate between the Strand and the Embankment, separate from all other Crown lands. The Duchy the Duchy surely has a strong claim to be the remains to this day the owner of most of the longest inhabitant in the area of London now site of John of Gaunt’s immense Palace of the known as Northbank, the subject of this timely Savoy, notwithstanding its physical destruction and fascinating book by Clive Aslet. by Wat Tyler and others during the Peasants’ The Inheritance can be traced back to Peter Revolt as long ago as 1381. One of our buildings, of Savoy, whose niece, Eleanor of Aquitaine, the enchanting Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy, wife of King Henry III, gave the manor of originally built in 1512 as part of the hospital the Savoy to her second son, Edmund, Earl of created on the ruined site by Henry VII, may Lancaster. It was Edmund’s grandson who was be the oldest building on the north bank of the created the first Duke of Lancaster, and the Thames between Westminster Hall and Temple Inheritance passed to his daughter Blanche, Church. who married John of Gaunt. It was in 1399 that It is precisely because of our place in the Henry Bolingbroke, then Duke of Lancaster, history of the Northbank area that the Duchy 10 of Lancaster will play its part, along with of Country Life. With his expert eye for detail, many neighbours, owners and occupiers, in and a strong sense of tradition and place, but the developing vision for its future. While with plenty of original ideas for the future, he is safeguarding and indeed promoting the history just the person to write about Northbank. With and rich traditions of the area, its thoroughfares this book, Clive demonstrates a real feeling for and buildings, we also want to participate in the character of the area, and for its evolution as its evolutionary development. For example, an important part of our capital city. we expect to continue our custom of beating the bounds of the manor of the Savoy, with members of the Council led on foot by the Clerk Shuttleworth and the Chapel Steward and choir from one August 2014 boundary marker to the next, set in the walls of various offices, a theatre, and the Embankment itself. At the same time, we are pleased that in addition to our mix of modern retail and office space, we have recently introduced some new student accommodation, recognising the increasing value of people living in Northbank. I first came across the work of Clive Aslet some twenty-five years ago. When I was appointed chairman of a government agency, the Rural Development Commission, I asked a respected senior civil servant to recommend some background reading about relevant issues. He said there was not much available but I should have a look at some of the things written by ‘young man called Aslet’, who in his words ‘seems to talk some sense’. Since then, Clive has produced much thoughtful and informed work as an author, a journalist, and a renowned editor 11 12 fig 1 Map of the Northbank Business Improvement District’s ‘footprint’, stretching from Trafalgar Square in the west along the Strand and the Victoria Embankment as far as Aldwych and the Royal Courts of Justice in the east. Countless landmarks fall within the boundary. 13 Chapter One The River First there was the river. It did not look ‘fifteen-foot enigma’ is, in its present form, like the modern Thames, corseted between largely Tudor, but the spring which feeds it nineteenth-century embankments. Two bubbles into a Roman reservoir. A Roman coffin thousand years ago it resembled a piece of and pottery have also been found in the area. fraying cloth, broader and shallower than the (The bath remained in use into the Victorian present river, which wove its way between period, when Charles Dickens so much enjoyed a mass of little islands. To either side was his plunges that he an ambiguous area, neither wholly river nor wrote about them in ‘To begin with, wholly land, made up of mudflats, reed beds David Copperfield; London was nothing and marshes. Herons fished here. So did less happily, the communities who made their living from the antiquarian William more than the walled river. A road grew up, going to the bridge built Weddell, MP, died City of London, a by the Romans. It ran along the steep-sided ‘from a sudden chill’ ridge that went parallel to the river. It came to after plunging in, in square mile.’ be called simply ‘Strand’. 1792). To begin with, London was nothing more It was not only the rich who congregated than the walled City of London, a square in these parts. The civic authorities excluded mile. Wealthy individuals had country estates outsiders — undesirables of all description outside the walls: evidence of one of them may — from the comforts and protection of the survive in the so-called Roman Bath that exists City. Tanneries, gaols, brothels, play houses in Strand Lane, an alley off Surrey Street. This — anything that would upset the not-over- 14 fig 2 The Thames from Somerset House Terrace towards the City, by Canaletto, circa 1750, part of a pair of paintings by the Italian artist. Its counterpart looks along the river in the opposite direction towards Westminster. When Canaletto painted this view, Somerset House was still much as it had been when rebuilt for Charles I’s Widow Queen Henrietta Maria after the Restoration – ‘mighty magnificent and costly,’ according to Pepys. However, George III’s Queen Charlotte preferred Buckingham House, and in 1774 large parts of Somerset House collapsed. The site was then cleared to make way for the present building. 15 fastidious nostrils or moral sensibilities of near an old Roman fortification, in this case the Middle Ages — could only settle down London). They may have taken over a small around the City’s skirts. In an earlier period, wooden church that already existed; if so, this Scandinavian settlers — the friendlier face, as was rebuilt in stone in the reign of the King one might hope, of the Viking migrations — Cnut (himself a Dane) at the beginning of the were also kept at arm’s length. Had they been eleventh century. It was one of several churches fiercer, they would not, presumably, have been with Scandinavian names, five in the City being content with land west of the City, well-watered dedicated to St Olaf (or Olave), the zealously by streams flowing briskly towards the Thames, Christian King Olaf Haraldsson of Norway who but otherwise somewhat lonely. As it was, they had been canonised after his death in battle in are remembered in the name of the church of St 1030. The impression given by a charter of 951, Clement Danes, its location bestowed by King Edgar perhaps originally related on the small Benedictine to the spring which fed the monastery that became Roman baths. Westminster Abbey, is that St Clement was a Pope it was a bleak spot, referred who died at the end of to simply as London Fen. the first century when the It sounds as though it Emperor Trajan ordered him would have been damp and to be tied to an anchor and marshy.