Lost London (23 page)

The architect, T E Knightly, had insisted that the main ceiling should be painted the same colour as the belly of a London mouse, and is said to have hung a strip of the same in the
painter’s workshop to facilitate an accurate match. However, if the interior design left a little to be desired, the acoustics were superb. The walls were covered in wood paneling that was
separated from the stone work by batons, covered with stretched cloth and sealed, achieving its designer’s aim of resonating like a violin.

When Henry Wood started his Promenade concerts in 1895, it proved a turning point for the hall, which over time was to become known as the ‘musical centre for the Empire’.
Nonetheless, its cramped seating came in for much criticism well into the 20th century. In 1913, for instance, the
Musical Times
commented:

In the placing of the seats, apparently no account whatever is taken even of the average length of lower limbs, and it appeared to be the understanding ... that legs were to be left in the
cloak room.
At two pence apiece this would be expensive, and there might be difficulties afterwards if the cloak room sorting arrangements were not perfect.

Fortunately, the seating arrangements were significantly improved during a rejig shortly before the First World War and the hall went from strength to strength. In the 1930s it became the base
for both the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with many of the period’s greatest musicians playing here, including Richard Strauss, Maurice Ravel, Edward Elgar
and Claude Debussy. Indeed, competition between the rival orchestras did much to raise the standard of classical music playing in Great Britain.

The Proms, supported by the BBC which was based nearby, were by then a fixture at Queen’s Hall and the highlight of the classical music calendar. The outbreak of the Second World War put
an end to that though, with the BBC withdrawing its staff to Bristol and the last Proms concert at Queen’s Hall going ahead in 1940. In April 1941, an incendiary device completely gutted the
main auditorium and it was deemed too expensive to rebuild. The Proms subsequently moved to the Royal Albert Hall, while Queen’s Hall was demolished and the site redeveloped.

Fleet Street

T
HE
R
AINBOW HAD BEEN A TAVERN UNTIL ITS
enterprising landlord, Mr Farr, started selling the new drink in the 1650s.

Arousing much jealously from vintners who in 1657 accused him of causing ‘Disorders and Annoys’. In their indictment, they referred to ‘James Farr. A barber,
for makinge and selling a drink called coffee, whereby in makinge the same, he annoyeth his neighbours by evil smells’. Nonetheless, Farr persisted in his enterprise, the Arabic drink
becoming increasingly popular all the way through to today. The Rainbow, however, was demolished in 1859.

Chelsea

‘A
H!
R
ANELAGH WAS A NOBLE PLACE!
S
UCH TASTE!
Such elegance! And such beauty!’

So said William Hone in his
Table-Book
in 1829. Located two miles outside of London in the grounds of Ranelagh House
in what was then the village of
Chelsea, it briefly eclipsed Vauxhall (another of the capital’s fashionable pleasure gardens) as the most exclusive haunt of the wealthy.

Ranelagh Gardens opened to the public in 1742 and its chief attraction was a Rotunda that boasted a 185ft circumference and resembled the Pantheon in Rome. Its interior was elegantly decorated
and when well-lit and full of company, it was thought unequalled in ‘Europe for beauty, elegance and grandeur’. It was heated by equipment hidden by its arches, porticoes, niches and
paintings. The ceiling was decorated with celestial figures, festoons of flowers and arabesque, all lit by a circle of chandeliers.

Masquerades were the order of the day at Ranelagh and were often attended by the entire royal family donning disguises. Horace Walpole’s description of the Jubilee Masquerade in 1749
captures the essence of the occasion:

It was by far the best understood and prettiest spectacle I ever saw – nothing in a fairy tale ever surpassed it. One of the proprietors, who is a German, and belongs to court, had got
my Lady Yarmouth to persuade the king to order it ... When you entered, you found the whole garden filled with marquees and spread with tents, which remained all night very commodely. In one
quarter was a May-pole, dressed with garlands, and people dancing round it to a tabour and pipe, and rustic music, all masked, as were all the various bands of music that were disposed in different
parts of the garden; some like huntsmen, with French horns; some like peasants; and a troop of harlequins and scaramouches in the little open temple on the mount. On the canal was a sort of
gondola, adorned with flags and streamers, and filled with music, rowing about. All round the outside of the amphitheatre were shops, filled with Dresden china, japan, &c., and all the
shopkeepers in masks; the amphitheatre was illuminated, and in the middle was a circular bower, composed of all kinds of firs, in tubs, from twenty to thirty feet high; under them orange trees,
with small lamps in each orange, and below them all sorts of auriculas in pots; and festoons of natural flowers hanging from tree to tree. Between the arches, too, were firs, and smaller ones in
the balconies above. There were booths for tea and wine, gaming-tables and dancing, and about two thousand persons present. In short, it pleased me more than the finest thing I ever saw.

Caneletto’s painting of the Rotunda’s interior in 1751 marked the beginning of the venue’s heyday, which peaked in the 1780s. But its wildly popular exotic masquerades were to
prove its downfall, as they acquired a reputation for immorality and became less and less frequented by people of rank and fashion. By 1800 Ranelagh was struggling to make ends meet, as Vauxhall
Pleasure Gardens across the river once again drew the fashionable crowd. The last masquerade was held in 1803 and the much-loved Rotunda was demolished in 1805.

Sir Richard Phillips returned to the scene of the now abandoned Gardens in 1817 and wrote:

No glittering lights! No brilliant happy company! no peals of
laughter from thronged boxes! no chorus of a hundred instruments and voices! All was death-like stillness!
Is such, I exclaimed, the end of human splendour? ... I was myself one of three thousand of the gayest mortals ever assembled in one of the gayest scenes which the art of man could devise—ay,
on this very spot; yet the whole is now changed into the dismal scene of desolation before me!

Today the old grounds are home to the Chelsea Hospital.

Wapping

R
UNNING EAST FROM THE
T
OWER OF
L
ONDON
to Limehouse, the ill-fated Ratcliffe Highway became so notorious
that its name was twice changed in an attempt to salvage its reputation.

This ancient road was originally built by the Romans and connected the city to the village of Ratcliffe (or Red Cliff), which by 1600 had been swallowed up by urban and
dockside development. The area around the road was famous for its maritime community and by the 17th century had an earthy reputation.
The Gentleman’s Magazine
once described its
population as ‘dissolute sailors, blackmailing wharfmen, rowdy fishermen, audacious highwaymen, sneak thieves and professional cheats’.

By 1850, the highway had become the ‘Regent Street of seamen’, according to Walter Thornbury. It had shops specializing in selling wild animals, it was not
unusual to see tigers, lions and pelicans as you walked along its length. On one occasion, a tiger escaped and grabbed a small boy in its jaws before making-off down Commercial Road. A passerby
took up a crowbar to free the poor infant from the animal’s jaws, but his blow only succeeded in killing the child.

Yet it was another incident that sealed Ratcliffe Highway’s infamy. On Saturday, 7 December 1811, Margaret Jewell, a housemaid, returned to her employer’s shop after buying oysters
for their supper. Unable to open the door of 29 Ratcliffe Highway and finding the house in darkness, she called for assistance. When the door was forced, the bodies of Timothy Marr, his wife and
their baby, plus a shop assistant, were discovered. They had been brutally murdered, their throats cuts.

Panic spread like wildfire and the government offered a reward of 500 guineas for the arrest of the perpetrator. Nonetheless, just twelve days later another killing spree took place at the
King’s Arms public house on nearby Gravel Pit Lane, running from Ratcliffe Highway towards the river. The landlord – a man named Williamson – his wife and a barmaid had all had
their throats cut too. An apprentice, John Turner, discovering the murderer at his work, only escaped by running away, locking himself in his room and climbing out of a window, using his bed sheets
as a rope. Shortly afterwards, a man named Williams, a former shipmate of Marr’s, was arrested and imprisoned at Coldbath Fields.

The effect of these grisly murders should not be underestimated. Not only did Ratcliffe Highway receive a new
name (it was first renamed as St George’s Street and
became The Highway in 1937) but public outrage was such that it led to significant pressure for a full-time police service.