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There are no Cells at The Viaduct Tavern

Written on May 2, 2012 by Peter Berthoud in Curiosities, Photography

In countless books, guides, apps and websites dealing with “Secret”, “Hidden” and “Curious” London it is asserted with bland confidence that the cellars of the Viaduct Tavern contain cells from old Newgate Prison. This is nonsense but sometimes a picture can help to nail a lie better than dates.

This image dates from 1897 and shows the last incarnation of Newgate Prison on the same site, facing the newly built Viaduct Tavern.

Newgate Prison and The Viaduct Tavern 1897

Newgate Prison wasn’t completely demolished until 1902. The Viaduct Tavern was built in 1869. So there is an obvious discrepancy in dates, but that aside, would it really have been conceivable that prison authorities would have wanted some of their cells to be included within the cellars of a brand new pub as it was being built?

The image below dates from around 1927. The view is much the same today. Newgate has now been replaced by “The Old Bailey”. The Viaduct looks on.

Old Bailey and The Viaduct Tavern

So the dates don’t add up and the proposal is ludicrous but that doesn’t stop those that peddle regurgitated “hidden gems” of London. Even supposedly authoritative books glibly trot out the same old tosh. This is the entry from the latest edition of The London Encyclopedia.

Viaduct Tavern - From The London Encyclopedia

In the London Encyclopedia entry for Newgate Prison they even use precisely the same illustration that I did to show the Viaduct Tavern and Newgate were both standing at the same time, page 585 for those of you who wish to check.

And here is a typical entry from one of the plethora of “hidden gems” type books. This is from Secret London – An Unusual Guide.

Newgate Cells from Secret London

These beer and coal cellars are interpreted in much the same way elsewhere. Sometimes, as here, in the most embellished and fanciful accounts, the coal holes are referred to as feeding tubes for prisoners.

This is not a “feeding tube” but a coal plate mounted above a coal cellar, just like hundreds of thousands still to be found throughout London.

Coal plate outside the Viaduct Tavern immediately above one of the "cells"

Here is an image of an actual cell in Newgate, it dates from 1897, about when the pub was celebrating its first birthday. Tellingly, it completely lacks racks for beer barrels, such as those to be found in the Viaduct.

A Newgate Cell 1897

This image is also from 1897 and shows how the cells were arranged, above ground.

Inside Newgate Prison 1897

Even the pub’s own website (via Fullers) doesn’t make the claim that the cellars were once cells in Newgate, preferring a more cautious assertion that they were part of “the Giltspur Comptor, a debtors’ jail affiliated to Newgate Prison”.

Fullers Website

Well it would be nice to think so but the The Museum of London Archaeology Service disagree. The pub wasn’t on the site of the Compter and the Compter’s foundations have long gone in any case.

This is from the 1998 MOLAS report of fieldwork surveys on the site (carried out during the construction of the New Merrill Lynch Regional Headquarters, which occupied the site of Giltspur Street Compter) : King Edward Buildings, former Royal Mail Sorting Office, Giltspur & Newgate Street, EC1, the key paragraph is this one:

In early 1787 the majority of the site was cleared of buildings and later that year the construction of the Giltspur Street Compter prison begun (see London Archaeologist 1993, vol. 7, 115-121), and it was ready for occupation by 1791. The overall layout of the brick-built prison buildings can be established from surviving draft plans. Excavations to date have revealed some unrecorded design features including one stairwell and number of brick-built culverts. Excavation of the foundations of several blocks have revealed that they were interlaced with pine planks and beams, which are being studied as part of an English Heritage funded project on imported softwoods. The prison was in closed in 1853 and demolished in 1854, this work entailed the extensive robbing out of the below ground foundations.

So there we have it. Will this little blog post help to stem the flow of nonsense? Probably not, but at least I have got this particular gripe off my chest.

If you are in the mood for more London “facts” that aren’t actually true why not have a look at this excellent feature from Londonist from a few months back?

The author of this blog is a qualified and insured City of Westminster Tour Guide who runs unique walking tours and private tours in London, please see tabs for details.

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Down & Out in 1930′s London

Written on April 3, 2012 by Peter Berthoud in Photography

Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell’s classic book on his experience of rough living, was published in 1933. These photos of London’s rough sleepers, and the hostels and homes that they sheltered in, were taken around the same time.

I wonder how many of these faces and places Orwell would have recognised?

Homeless man asleep on a bench, the Embankment in the City of London, mid 1930s.

Orwell gives “Paddy’s” account of sleeping on an Embankment bench:

‘De whole t’ing wid de Embankment is gettin’ to sleep early. You got to be on your bench by eight o’clock, because dere ain’t too many benches and sometimes dey’re all taken. And you got to try to get to sleep at once. ‘Tis too cold to sleep much after twelve o’clock, an’ de police turns you off at four in de mornin’. It ain’t easy to sleep, dough, wid dem bloody trams flyin’ past your head all de time, an’ dem sky-signs across de river flickin’ on an’ off in your eyes. De cold’s cruel. Dem as sleeps dere generally wraps demselves up in newspaper, but it don’t do much good. You’d be bloody lucky if you got t’ree hours’ sleep.’

Homeless man, the Embankment, mid 1930s.

Orwell slept on the Embankment himself and found that:

It corresponded to Paddy’s description. It is, however, much better than not sleeping at all, which is the alternative if you spend the night in the streets, elsewhere than on the Embankment. According to the law in London, you may sit down for the night, but the police must move you on if they see you asleep

Rowton House "An Hotel for Working Men" at Arlington Road, Camden Town, mid 1930s.

Orwell also used some of the shelters, homes and hotels used by the homeless. In his opinion the Rowton Houses, illustrated here, were the best of the bunch.

The best are the Rowton Houses, where the charge is a shilling, for which you get a cubicle to yourself, and the use of excellent bathrooms. You can also pay half a crown for a ‘special’, which is practically hotel accommodation. The Rowton Houses are splendid buildings, and the only objection to them is the strict discipline, with rules against cooking, card-playing, etc. Perhaps the best advertisement for the Rowton Houses is the fact that they are always full to overflowing.

A private cubicle in one of the Rowton Houses, mid 1930s.

At the time there were six Rowton Houses in London. The Arlington Road house is still in use today as a homeless shelter.

A Smoking Room in one of the Rowton Houses, mid 1930s.

Other shelters were provided by a range of organisations including The Church Army.

Dinner at Church Army Home in Westminster, mid 1930s.

A contemporary of Orwell’s, John Brown, wrote in his 1934 autobiography “I Was a Tramp”:

“The Church Army ‘Captain’ had proved himself a good Samaritan, but his beds were occupied by the greatest set of villains in England, judging by their talk.”

The workshop at "Morning Post" Embankment Home, mid 1930s.

Chopping and bundling firewood in the workshop was technically voluntary. However it was “expected” that recipients of shelter, food and clothing would perform their daily, “voluntary” duties .

Inside the Salvation Army Shelter at Blackfriars Road, mid 1930s.

For Orwell, the next best shelters were those provided by The Salvation Army.

Next best, in point of cleanliness, are the Salvation Army hostels, at sevenpence or eightpence. They vary (I have been in one or two that were not very unlike common lodging-houses), but most of them are clean, and they have good bathrooms; you have to pay extra for a bath, however. You can get a cubicle for a shilling. In the eightpenny dormitories the beds are comfortable, but there are so many of them (as a rule at least forty to a room), and so close together, that it is impossible to get a quiet night. The numerous restrictions stink of prison and charity. The Salvation Army hostels would only appeal to people who put cleanliness before anything else.

Homeless man asleep on Blackfriars Bridge, mid 1930s.

"An hour snatched from care on Blackfriars Bridge.", mid 1930s.

Of course homelessness in London is still a current and pressing issue. Somehow the passage of time has rendered these tragic images strangely beautiful but if they also provoke a desire to support the homeless of today I would personally recommend the work done by St Mungo’s. They “run over 100 projects and help thousands of homeless people make life changes every year”.

The author of this blog is a qualified and insured City of Westminster Tour Guide who runs unique walking tours and private tours in London, please see tabs for details.

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London Pubs in the 1930s – How Many Can You Name?

Written on March 16, 2012 by Peter Berthoud in Architecture, Food & Drink, Photography

These beautiful photos of London pubs all date from around 1938. These are London pubs as our grandparents and great-grandparents enjoyed them.

Many still look remarkably similar today, over 70 years since these images were captured. How many of them can you identify and locate? The answers can all be found on my new Facebook page. Just follow the link.

Recently I have publishing many other vintage photos of London on Facebook. Along with several more vintage shots of London pubs, there are also albums of London children, dogs, transport, Soho, street scenes, and markets. Most of the images date from the 1930s and I am adding to these incredible albums daily.

You don’t have to be on Facebook to see all the images, or even need to “like” the page for that matter. But of course any “likes” and “shares” would be very much appreciated!

The author of this blog is a qualified and insured City of Westminster Tour Guide who runs unique walking tours and private tours in London, please see tabs for details.

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“Google” Maps of London: 1940s Style

Written on March 8, 2012 by Peter Berthoud in Architecture, Curiosities, Maps, Photography

Nowadays we are all used to seeing maps overlaid upon satellite imagery but the idea isn’t so new. Way back in 1947 London was mapped in a very similar style.

Just as in their modern day digital equivalents, places of interest were marked with little labels, over 1200 of them, showing everything from statues to blue plaques, and from museums to clubs.

These maps all come from this slim, hard-copy, volume:

I wish I had the others in the set. You can pick up copies from time to time on Amazon et al, for £8.00 – £10.00. Of course the technology being used to produce these maps was not satellite but light aircraft. However one advantage of this was that the photographers got some great aerial shots of London landmarks and published many of these in the Atlas.

Air-Photo Atlas of London - St Paul's Photo

St Paul's Cathedral

Air-Photo Atlas of London - Strand Photo

Strand, The Thames and Waterloo Bridge

I’ll be putting the whole set of these aerial photos on my Facebook page. There are many more vintage photos of London there too:, dogs, street scenes, transport, all sorts; to see them justs “Like” the page.

Contemporary photos are on my Flickr photostream.

The author of this blog is a qualified and insured City of Westminster Tour Guide who runs unique walking tours and private tours in London, please see tabs for details.

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