Transcription
How are you all? How are you all doing? I'm just, um, on the hunt of a very special location at the very beginning of the walk. I don't normally jump straight into it like this. It's all, I mean, a little bit of a preamble, isn't there? But we're bang on the scent of something rather special.
I'm coming through the grounds of the London School of Economics, the famous LSE, and I'm coming along some Clements Lane, which is a very old part of the street plan. I'm looking for the site of a holy well, as you do, just here at Aldwych, just off of Holborn, actually. Looks like St. Clement's. Clements Lane seems to come to a dead end. I believe St. Clements Lane continues, or once continued, down there, and I think it runs into the back of the Royal Courts of Justice. So, no passing through there on a whimsy stroll. I think we have to take this part here, which, uh, is now, I think, the continuation of St. Clements Lane, but it's been rerouted from its original medieval route.
So, the plan for today is to pick up the trail of the City of London churches, but we're going to start just right outside the western edge of the city. In fact, we're going to start where was once the western gate of the City of London, and taking a number of really interesting locations as we progress along Fleet Street, one of the most famous streets in the whole of Britain. And there's so much to talk about along the way. Obviously, we won't do the entire history of Fleet Street. We will keep our focus, but we'll pick up a few of those really, really important locations. And, uh, yeah, this is a very special walk today. May not be a very long walk, but wow, there's not many miles you can walk in this country that are packed with so much history and so many stories. Maybe the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, perhaps, is a good, but it's anyway, it's, I'm not going to rank it. It's a great walk though.
Okay, first church, it's just down here. So, here is the magnificent St. Clement Danes church. Today, it's known as the Royal Air Force church. It was adopted by the Royal Air Force after the war, when it was rebuilt in the 1950s. But it's said that there's been a church on this site since the 9th century. Of course, it has a very evocative name, Saint Clement Danes. There are various stories about where the name Saint Clement Danes comes from. It's associated with the Danes, i.e., the Vikings. The two most popular stories are: number one, that this was an area here, Aldwych, that the Danes colonized in the 9th century, and they built a church, simple as that. The hole in that theory is said to be the fact that Aldwych is an Old English name. So, you would have thought if the Danes colonized it, they would have given it a Danish name, a Viking name. So, that's seen to be slightly less plausible.
The more favored story is, is that after Alfred the Great defeated the Danish army in the 9th century, that they were forced to convert to Christianity. This much we know. And that he ordered them to build a church on this site, which they dedicated to the patron saint of mariners, being a seafaring folk. St. Clement is the patron saint of mariners. There are two most popular theories. There are others that all relate to the Danes, either being, someday being killed and then building up a church to remember them by. There's one where a bunch of unarmed Danes were slaughtered near this spot, um, when they were come to parley, or maybe even come to worship, and they were killed on this spot, and so a church was built and named after them. There's lots of theories. Either way, they're all very evocative, and they all place this spot here in the, in the so-called Dark Ages, in the ancient history of London. Positioned between the City of London and the Royal Palaces of Westminster, and it really sets the tone for our walk today.
I did mention a holy well, didn't I? And also, I've seen the doors open over there, so I've got to go through it.
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They've done an incredible job of the restoration of this church, because the church has been rebuilt a number of times. It was first rebuilt by, um, William the Conqueror in the 11th century, and then it was rebuilt again in the Middle Ages, um, and then it was rebuilt again by Sir Christopher Wren, I think, 1682. So, there was a red church that was here until the Second World War, and it was completely gutted during the Blitz, and it was rebuilt again in 1958. But if you were to just walk inside that church, you would be, I think, you might think you were in the original Wren church.
We started this video looking for a holy well. I think there's an indicator here and a little bit about the story. So, this, uh, iron here, this iron plaque marks the point where there was a well sunk 191 feet deep beneath this point to access the water. I don't think that's the holy well there, actually. This was, uh, erected by the, the, um, church wardens in 1807. The holy well that was here from the Middle Ages, I believe, is now underneath the, uh, the Royal, the Royal, uh, Law Courts over there, all Courts of Justice. And it's said that the holy well was a stopping-off point for the Canterbury pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, you know, the pilgrims of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
And here's a statue to someone who's, uh, very closely associated with the territory, or about to walk through. Samuel Johnson. Dr. Johnson, considered to be the greatest man of letters in the English language, of course, the author of the first English dictionary, who just decided to write it himself and asked people what they thought certain words meant and wrote it down. I prefer the depiction of Dr. Johnson in Blackadder. If you haven't seen it, there's bound to be a clip on YouTube. Look it up. It's hilarious. But very significant figure, incredibly significant figure.
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And here we have the Royal Courts of Justice. This is home to the High Court and the Court of Appeal. It's a really quite magnificent late Victorian building. I think it was built in the 1880s. So, despite its medieval appearance, it's only about 140 years old, but it's a magnificent building. Inside, I've been in there on two occasions.
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This stone pillar here, in the middle of the street, marks the point of the old Temple Bar, the western entrance to the City of London. According to legend, the monarch had to ask permission to pass beyond this point. This was the only place that the monarch could enter the City of London, and the Lord Mayor would have to come out and present them with a ceremonial sword, from which they could then proceed into the City of London. The original Temple Bar was removed and taken to an estate in Hertfordshire. I think it's been returned now, just behind St. Paul's Cathedral in Paternoster Square. And a lot of buses along here. It's interesting that one of the reasons they are said to have removed the old Temple Bar, the old gate, basically built for like horses and carts at most, and mostly foot traffic or people on horses or pushing carts along, of course, by the time you got the more you got busier and the carriages got bigger, it created massive congestion. And there are images of all the congestion caused by the very narrow gate. So, I think it may have been an example of an early road widening scheme rather than any kind of symbolic removal of the, uh, of the old gate. I could be wrong about that. Like I could be wrong about a lot of things.
So, we're now in Fleet Street, which is heavily associated with the newspaper industry, with the British press. In fact, it's still used as a kind of collective term to talk about the, the press. We talk about the Fleet Street press, don't we? Although I don't think there are any newspapers left in Fleet Street, actually. There might be one. I think the Catholic Church's newspaper is still here. I think it's called The Tabard, or something, isn't it? I'm sure somebody will know in the comments below. And the idea of printing associated with this street goes back to 1500, when William Caxton opened the first printing press in Britain in, uh, in Fleet Street. Oh, one of the first known. William Caxton's the person we attribute with printing, and that was just up here in Shoe Lane, actually, just slightly off Fleet Street. And the first newspapers opened here in the late 17th century, I think in the 1680s. They were the first newspapers that were based in Fleet Street, and that tradition carried on right until 1986, and a certain, uh, Rupert Murdoch decided to break the print unions by moving his newspapers east to Wapping. Led to a massive industrial dispute that went on for ages, but it succeeded in breaking that link between Fleet Street and the press.
Now, pretty much every building in Fleet Street has a story, has a very epic story, a significant story, and it would be impossible to cover it all. So, we're going to pick out a few choice things, a two few choice features that relate to the theme of our walk, being a walk amongst the City churches. We've got some dungeons in the West coming up. We've got the Temple Church coming up. We should try and find the spot of the Sweeney Todd's barber shop where he committed his dastardly murders.
This is the magnificent Dunstan's-in-the-West, to distinguish it from Dunstan's-in-the-East. And for some reason, I'm not sure why, this church seems to be the hub of the origin myths of London. So, just there, above or behind St. Dunstan's famous clock, you'll see two strange-looking statues that, uh, hit the bell, that beat the bell, chime out the bells from Dunstan's-in-the-West. And they are now said to represent Gog and Magog. But originally, Gogmagog was just one person, was a giant, Gogmagog. And Gogmagog is a curious character intrinsically linked to the origin myths of Britain and the origin myth of London. There are various accounts of this story, but I'll give you a kind of potted, condensed, combined story.
Gogmagog was descended from Albina. Albina, possibly along with her sisters, was exiled from somewhere in the classical world. Could be, uh, Troy, could be Greece, could be somewhere even further afield. And she was sent to Britain for doing something wrong, upsetting her father, for some reason. And she basically gave birth. Oh, look, there they are! I see them hitting the bell. Gogmagog heard me saying their name. Um, so Albina gave birth to a race of giants. I hope you're following me so far. And Britain, then, at that point, was completely populated by a race of giants. Did they build Stonehenge? According to this timeline, they arrived afterwards, but that's not complicated. So, you've got a race of giants, and then you get Brutus the Trojan. Now, Brutus the Trojan is the offspring of Aeneas from the Trojan Wars, a great hero. And he accidentally killed his parents, in most versions of the story, and so he's exiled, either from Troy or from Italy, where Aeneas went to live after the Trojan Wars. Hope you're following this.
So, Brutus then wanders around looking for somewhere to settle. He's got a band of Trojan warriors with him. He goes to France, where he gets involved in a mighty battle. He slaughters a warrior there and founds the city of Tours, but he has to keep moving. New places, new lands to conquer, new people to slaughter. So, he arrives in a place that is, um, settled by Albion, the Isle of Albion. Albion was known as Albion. So, Brutus arrives on this island, completely populated by giants, which he sets about slaughtering until there is just one giant left, Gogmagog, the mightiest of all the giants of Albion. They get involved in an almighty battle between Brutus's best warrior, uh, how do you pronounce his name? Corinnaeus, I think it is. Corinneus. I'll put the name on the screen. And he gets involved in a mighty battle with Gogmagog, finally throwing Gogmagog off a cliff. I think this happens in Cornwall. And then Corinnaeus settles that land, known as Cornwall, which I think was originally called Cornwallis, wasn't it? That's what I got from The Last Kingdom. Then Brutus can then claim Britain as his own and becomes the first king of Britain and makes London his capital. He settles London and forms the capital of Britain in London. A great origin myth that we should teach in every school.
There are, however, a couple of other statues in the porch of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West. Sadly, we can't get in there at the moment, it's being restored. But they tell a different story. So, in the porch of that church, it's all right, mate, carry on. In the porch of that church over there, are some Dunstan's-in-the-West, just beneath Gog and Magog, should be Gog. Gog, Magog, and Corinnaeus are three statues, and they're 14th-century statues that once sat atop the Lud Gate on Ludgate Hill. And they're of King Lud and his two sons. And King Lud is also attributed with establishing London, giving it its name. Ludden, London, kind of works, doesn't it? So, you can either have Brutus establishing, uh, London, or you can have King Lud establishing London. Maybe there's a story that includes them both. Those stories do both come from Geoffrey of Monmouth's book, so I don't know how he reconciles that. That was quite a breathless retelling of a very long story with multiple different versions. Um, I hope you forgive me if it wasn't necessarily the most coherent retelling of that story, but that's true behind those statues up there in that church.
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Here we are, stood outside for the bankers, number 37 Fleet Street, established in 1672, making it one of the older banks, if not the oldest banks in London, still in operation. Great old school kind of tailors here, and this is where you can get your wig and gown when you get called to the bar. Just, uh, how much is it? £700. They've got it on special offer, £660.
One of the best things about walking along Fleet Street are all these little kind of courts and places just off the street. Here we have Hare Place, just down there, usually the offices of, uh, legal chambers. It's still the center of the, the legal profession in London. And next to Hare Place is the famous El Vino wine bar. And this is where all the, all the journalists used to drink. Famously, G.K. Chesterton used to drink in here. Never actually been in El Vino, not a massive wine drinker.
So, we are really just focusing on, on the south side of Fleet Street here, and you really could do a video on either side. And we're not even covering everything on this side of the street, so I'll have to find a way to incorporate the north side of Fleet Street in a future video. My god, look at this. Plough Court. You see, they're everywhere, these little distractions, urging you to wander off the street, which we should do, once we've been to the Temple. And of course, I haven't mentioned the obvious thing that clearly Fleet Street takes its name from the River Fleet, which runs along the bottom of the street. We'll get to that shortly, and you can feel already that we're passing down into a river valley. We are now going down the hill.
So, as I stand at the top of Bowery Street, I feel like I should give credit to this wonderful book, London Compendium, by Ed Glinn. I've been carrying this book around for nearly 20 years. When did it come out? I don't know, but I've had it in my bag since about 2002. And he says something about Bowery Street, which I will look up. We also have these Fleet Street heritage plaques here that tell us actually the first printing press was set up in 1480, not by William Caxton, by Wynkyn de Worde. It's a good name, isn't it? I think he worked with Caxton, though. In 1480, in Shoe Lane, off Fleet Street, there you go. And other printers followed.
So, I managed to walk past the entrance from Fleet Street into the Temple because I want to go to the Temple Church. And I know the church is closed today, but that gate's normally open, but it was closed. So, I'm a little bit concerned we might not be able to get in. So, we're going to have to go down here, down Plough Court, and hopefully, I think there is a side entrance into the, into the Inner Temple, or certainly, I think we'll be the Middle Temple, in the Temple. Can never tell the difference. So, here we've got Temple Court, which apparently is a, uh, luxury hotel now. Wonder what they did with all the old retired barristers and judges who used to live here. But, um, that could give us an entrance into the Temple. Let's give it a go. Looks like we are in luck. This will take us to the Inner Temple, which is one of the most fascinating and mysterious places in the whole of London. Isn't this magnificent? It's a real slice of old London. In fact, it's such a real slice of old London, it's often used for filming, along with Lincoln's Inn, to represent Georgian and Victorian London. And these buildings here are mostly barristers' chambers, legal chambers. People do live here. Retired judges live in the Temple.
As the name would suggest, this land here was once owned by the Knights Templar, the Knights Templar of legend and law, who, uh, used to protect the pilgrims going to the Holy Land in Jerusalem. And they became incredibly wealthy and influential very quickly, and they bought a big chunk of land here, significantly outside of the City of London. They didn't want any interference from the City of London, maybe the City of London wouldn't accept them, something like that. Anyway, so it became almost like a rival power base, which they set up here. And they became too powerful, too influential, and the various monarchs and the nobles and the lords of Europe got together and got the Pope to ban the Knights Templar. And there was famously a big crackdown on them, wasn't there? I think that's one explanation for Friday the 13th. Did it happen on Friday the 13th? Have I got that confused with something else? Anyway, by the early 14th century, the Knights Templar were forced to give over all their land to their rivals, the Order of St. John. So, the Order of St. John took over this land here, and they were the ones that set up the legal establishment here. But the great legacy of the Templars is to be found through here, the Temple Church.
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And here it is, Temple Church. Built sometime between 1160 and 1185, when it was consecrated by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. It was built by the Knights Templar to be a model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. So, it was known as a piece of Jerusalem in London. For people that couldn't make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, this was the closest they could get. They could come to this church, and it would be a little piece of Jerusalem here in London. It's where the Knights Templar were initiated into the order. This is where the initiation rites took place. It's also where the punishments took place as well. There was a cell here where they would be locked if they fell foul of the Knights Templar, sometimes being starved to death inside. The church, which unfortunately we can't go into today, I don't think. There are some Templar burials, and there's some effigies where you have the effigy of the knight on top of the tomb. They're really quite startling. Well worth a look if you can get down here.
Of course, Temple Church is made famous by Dan Brown, by playing a significant role in his novel, The Da Vinci Code. And what I thought was really interesting is, once I came through here about 15, 16 years ago, and they were doing a talk in here about The Da Vinci Code and the role of the Temple Church and the Templars in that story. So, they were completely embracing that mythology, perpetuated, and I imagine that's slightly embellished by Dan Brown for his story. Of course, Dan Brown took a lot of that stuff from, uh, or had sourced, let's just say, a non-fiction book called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which I think sort of popularized a lot of the myths around the Knights Templar, rather than being a group of sort of, uh, kind of warrior monks who got incredibly rich and just basically went into property and banking. But they laid on all this other kind of mythology. And, uh, what's interesting is, there was a legal case between the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and Dan Brown, which played out just over the road in the Royal Courts of Justice. So, it all came back to this spot here.
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This is Pump Court.
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These are the cloisters.
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So, this is Middle Temple Hall, a magnificent medieval building. I think it dates from at least the 1500s. It's said that this is where Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was first performed, possibly by Shakespeare's own company. It really is a magnificent building. This really is such a magical, beautiful, peaceful little slice of London here, hoisted away between Fleet Street and the Thames. And amongst all the legal chambers, you've got wonderful little remnants and vestiges, such as this building here. This is a buttery that was built sometime before 1515. Its Fig Tree Court adjoined it, and it was destroyed in the Great Fire of London. Then it was rebuilt, and it was destroyed again during the Blitz in 1940. This little remnant of the buttery remains.
So, we're going to pass through that gate there into Tudor Street and back into the contemporary world from this little time capsule here. I really love walking through the Temple. It's got such a magical feel to it, particularly for someone like me, whose sense of history is partly informed by things like The Hobbit and Blackadder, and such like. That place makes it all kind of, quite feel quite real. Um, there's one more place I really want to show you. Last, we still got a semblance of light. It's, uh, it's getting, it's getting dark now, it's getting gloomy, which is the perfect time to go to this final site, um, which is sort of a holy well, a site of pagan worship. I mean, do I need to say more?
What I will say, though, is this area we're walking through here, between the Temple, the Thames, and the River Fleet, was known as Alsatia. Alsatia, Alsatia, as in Alsace, the disputed territory between France and Germany, because this, at one point, was a lawless land where there was no real legal authority, sat between the, uh, the influence of Westminster and the royalty, and the influence of the City of London. And this became a place where you could seek refuge from, uh, prosecution, a bit like the Liberties of Holborn. I'm not sure this was technically a liberty, but it was certainly an area of outlaws that, uh, fell into that kind of use after it was abandoned by the Royal Palace. Bridewell was abandoned by Edward VI, turning into, um, a workhouse. We'll, we'll deal with that when we get there. And so, this became a really lawless area. Amongst the outlaws to hide here was Daniel Defoe, who, walking down Fleet Street, saw a notice calling for his arrest with quite an accurate description of himself. So, he crossed the street, came to Alsatia, where he knew he couldn't be reached and prosecuted. And after that, apparently, that became the name for areas that were a bit dodgy and a bit rough and a bit lawless became like, it became known as Alsatia. I'm probably saying that wrong. I know someone will correct me in the comments. And, uh, you might see parallels. The fact that it's this area of Alsatia where really the printing presses, the Fleet Street printing presses, later became based. So, maybe there's a, maybe there's a resonance there.
So, we're going to go up Whitefriars Street here, which I guess must have been the name of a friary, because on the other side of Farringdon Road, on the other side of the River Fleet, you have Blackfriars, Blackfriars, the Blackfriar pub, and the Blackfriars Monastery. I feel like we can't ignore Hanging Sword Alley. I don't hold out great hope for where it may lead. It's bringing us to the backs of some office buildings here. I think this one on the right is called Fleet Bank House. There you go, there's a name that tells you the story of an area. But just above the top of this building here, we can see the magnificent spire of St. Bride's Church, which is the next church on our tour of City of London churches. And St. Bride's Avenue will take us to the magnificent St. Bride's Church.
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St. Bride's is a really magical little church, isn't it? They claim that there's been worship on this site for 2,000 years. There's Roman remains that were found here that may have been associated with worship, or may have been a burial site. They're not sure. But they also believed that it was a site of pagan worship as well. And then a very early Christian community was established here. The first church was built in the Anglo-Saxon period. There's a little remnant of the wall down there, which you can see in the crypt. Beautiful little museum in the crypt there. And then there was later, the Danes built a church here. And there were continuous churches built on this site. I think it says there were eight churches built on this site. And Christopher Wren added that magnificent spire. That became a great spire. Ian Sinclair writes about how, I think it was in the '80s, that you could just climb that spot. It was a side door that was always open, you could just go up there and get these magnificent, magnificent views of the entire city. It's a really magical place. It's known as the journalists' church, because it was where, well, okay, because it's on Fleet Street, but it was also where Caxton moved his press here, I think, in the 1500s. It's a really magical, beautiful little spot.
Now, I did read some time ago, I think it's in my book, Old Baths, Wells and Springs of London, or Springs, Baths and Wells of Old London, the Septimus Sunderland book, that there was a, a holy well on this site. There's a location somewhere behind the church, so we'll go around the back there, see if we can find any remnant of it. It may have been dedicated to St. Brigid, or some, uh, St. Bridget, some Brigid, who was the Celtic goddess of healing, I think, of healing and childbirth, that was originally worshipped here. According to Ed Glinn, at that little nugget about St. Brigid. Here's another little nugget that may or may not be true. Apparently, the traditional shape of a wedding cake, now the multi-tiered wedding cake, comes from the steeple here, Wren's steeple, because there was a baker in the lane, laneway here, who used that as a design for a wedding cake that caught on. True or not true, will we ever know?
Right, we're just going to go down this little alleyway here to see if we can find the site of an old, very important palace that stood beside the banks of the River Fleet. The Old Bell pub. Any of you used to drink in there? Any good memories of the Old Bell? Looks like a fine boozer to me. There's another fine-looking pub, what's called The Crown and Sugar Loaf. I have drunk in most of the pubs along here.
So, here we're just beneath the back of the church, you can see St. Bride's. And St. Bride's is up there. So, it's somewhere around here that you would place the holy well. I don't think there's any sign of it anymore. I have looked, actually, in the past, but, um, when you're walking between holy wells, I think you could take this as the, as the site. That's two, isn't it, in one walk? It's not about going now, basically. I want to find a site that I can call the location of the old Royal Palace built by Henry III. It must be here because I can see, you can see Farringdon Road down the end there, which would have been the River Fleet. So, somewhere here was that original palace. It's Henry III built a palace here, right between the banks of the Thames and the River Fleet, which is just another side of this building that way. I've only just worked out it was called Bridewell Palace. It must have been from the well, right? The holy well that was here. Bridewell, surely that is Bridget's well, Brigid's well, Brigade's well. Am I clutching at straws there? I think we should go down Bride Court, don't you? I think this could be a good place to capture the spirit of the old medieval palace.
So, Henry III used to hold his court here at Bridewell Palace, and then it became abandoned, became, uh, sort of a slightly, um, in ruins. And it was renovated by Henry VIII for the visit of Charles V in 1522. It was here at Bridewell Palace that Henry VIII negotiated his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. He then passed it on to his son, Edward VI, who gave it to the City of London to establish a kind of workhouse, house of correction for the idle, the strumpet, and the vagabond. It was then that area became known as a kind of lawless area, Alsatia. But it's incredible to think of a really important palace here on this site. I'm slightly using this arcade to give it a sense of structure, a sense of building, but it's very evocative, and it's, you get these stories everywhere around London. You would never know. There are no markings or anything to indicate that such a historic event as the divorce of Henry the, of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon was negotiated right here. One room stood here, or I'm sure people take a cheeky wee after a few too many pints in the Old Bell. And here, the Albion pub. The resonance of Albion and the giants of Albion live on to this very day. There's no leaving behind our mythology.
We still have an awful lot of the City churches still to visit today. It was more about quality rather than quantity. A street of stories, so many amazing stories and myths. I love walking around here, and I love telling you these stories. I hope you enjoyed that magnificent walk. Well, it's magnificent for me, obviously. You'll be the judge of whether it was magnificent for you. I recommend going down into the comments section. There will be some great comments, people with memories of Fleet Street, of working there, people with all the historical stuff that I've missed out. We'll have to come back and do the other side, weren't we? Of, um, the other side of Fleet Street, and then got Fetter Lane, Shoe Lane. This kind of links in with my Little Italy video, which I'll link below, along with my River Fleet video, which I'll link below, and the other City of London churches videos. I'm not sure there'll be another video before New Year, so I'd love to take this opportunity to wish you a very Happy New Year and an amazing year ahead. I feel really optimistic about the year ahead, and there'll certainly be loads more great walks to share with you. Take care, all the best, and as ever, I look forward to seeing you on the next walk, wherever that may be. And actually, I don't have a clue.
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