The House by the Thames (19 page)

By this time Edward Perronet Sells, then aged thirty-two and a husband and father himself, had been appointed as overseer to the poor in the Clink division. Edward Sells senior's duties had shifted towards the proposed repair and/ or rebuilding of the dilapidated, part-medieval church, an issue that was to occupy parishioners for several decades.

The wrangles about the state of St Saviour's church were redolent of growing Victorian antiquarianism on the one hand and Victorian progressiveness and utilitarianism on the other. In 1817 Edward Sells was in favour of restoration, for he was on the Church Repairs Committee when it emitted the sanguine proposal that ‘we will begin at the Tower and proceed regularly from year to year, until the whole is completed, the Vestry voting such sum of money annually as in their judgement shall appear proper.' But, needless to say, matters did not proceed as smoothly as that; every repair seemed to reveal that a different part of the church also needed attention, and after a great deal of money had been spent restoring the old Lady Chapel (with its whiff of Popery) the parishioners began to get restless and then vociferous.

By the 1830s, when London Bridge was being rebuilt, with its approach road much higher and running much closer to the church than the old way to the bridge, there was a question as to whether the church should not be substantially rebuilt at the same time. Some of the suggestions for this in the local paper were less realistic than others – ‘A Church if built on arches might be brought to the level of the road, and we should thus not only improve the comfort and appearance of the building, but possess the additional accommodation of Vaults, and save the Parish the expense of a new Burying ground which will otherwise soon be wanted.' (This was the Useful Railway Arch theory of architecture – the first railway line was even then making its inexorable way into Southwark, and there were unrealistic hopes of charming little houses to be inserted into each arch of the viaduct).

A pamphlet war ensued, instigated by two Southwark citizens who realised, too late, that they should have attended parish meetings themselves. Opinions varied from St Saviour's having been ‘spared from ruin by the more enlightened and civilised portion of the parishioners' to – ‘Any Parish church which requires the enormous sum of £22,000 for
remaining repairs only
ought to be taken down. We can have a new building for £15,000 …' There were elaborately mocking gibes about ‘refined gentlemen' belonging to ‘the Gothic interest' perpetually running out of money for ‘St Saviour's temple'. From this period (November 1831) there has survived
¹¹
a letter in particularly beautiful copperplate from one such refined gentleman; it is signed, in the same hand, ‘Edward Perronet Sells, Hon. Sec.' and headed from Bankside, Southwark. It appears to be a pro-forma begging letter: ‘… Trusting you will feel an interest in so desirable a work as the restoration of the ancient Altar Screen … Committee formed for that purpose …' Along with it has been saved a list of subscribers who had already sent or promised money, including Mr Pott (he of the big vinegar manufactory), Messrs Barclay and Perkins, and also the Sells – including an otherwise mysterious Edward Sells Esq. of Walthamstow. E. Sells Esq. of Bankside was donating five guineas. Messrs E. P. and V. Sells were giving the same sum each, expressed as ten guineas between them.

Yet a long report in a local paper of five years later, in 1836, suggests that Edward Sells senior had by this time changed his mind. He was seventy-three that year, and this was probably his last local appearance before retiring to Camberwell. By this time the argument about the state of the church had degenerated into a quarrel about church rates, which had resulted in the Vestry failing to fix a rate at all. Money was owed to the Bishop – at that time the parish was still, for historical reasons, in the diocese of Winchester. There were fears that, if a ruling was sought from a higher authority such as Parliament, Southwark would end up by losing its fervently contested status as an independent borough and would be merged into London – something that did inevitably happen under the Metropolitan Board of Works a generation later.

It was at a contentious meeting on the question that Mr Sells senior got to his feet. By this time he no longer held any Vestry office but ‘claimed his privilege as an inhabitant to deliver his sentiments' and wished ‘as an old parishioner' to save everyone from the political consequences of their own folly. His long speech is the only one quoted extensively in a newspaper report, and one sees that he was by then a local ‘character' who commanded respect:

‘He had taken much pains to save the parishioners from high charges, he had been the first to reduce the rates from one shilling to ninepence, and had paid off a debt of £1000 – (Cheers). They could not do
without
a rate … Mr Sells was afraid the Bishop would come among them if they did not pay.' He affirmed that they should not expect members of Dissenting churches to pay rates that went towards the physical fabric of St Saviour's. (This had long been a bone of contention.) They should not demand money from the poor either – ‘He had now stepped forward with the hope of exciting the charitable portion of the church party to save the poorer inhabitants from the charge – (Hear, hear) – When he looked at the pile of building in which they were assembled, he could not help saying it was a heap of rubbish – (great confusion) – and not a noble structure as they were told it was, which was to stand for ages – (Shame, shame) – nothwithstanding the vast sum which had been expended upon it.' Here he revealed that the church repairs committee had issued ‘bonds' with the common seal attached that had nothing to back them – ‘he felt that they were not binding upon the parishioners and the seal was not worth a dump – (Hear, hear) – He was not a man that acted with injustice, for he was always cautious of getting into debt when he knew he had not the means of paying (Cheers)'.

There followed a little joke about him being prepared, if the Bishop demanded it, to stand in the church in a white sheet for four hours himself, as a penalty for failing to set a rate (Loud laughter). ‘He was friendly to the voluntary system, and when he looked round the neighbourhood and saw the noble institutions, all of which were raised and supported by that system, he defied any man to stand up and say it did not and would not work well.' [He was here referring to the parochial schools, and to places such as the Surrey Dispensary and the Surrey Refuge for the Destitute, for which subscription recitals of music had been given in the church.] ‘It was the Dissenters who first set this example, and for shame the church party was compelled to follow their steps – (Hear, hear, and laughter) – There was no divine right to compell them to support such a church establishment where bishops were seen rolling in rich equipages with half a dozen powdered lackeys in tawdry liveries at their backs. (Hear, hear) – He should now conclude by opposing the rate which went to uphold such an unchristian establishment.'

A lifetime's experience is evidently rolled up in this peroration. One recognises the tone, as unmistakable then as it was to be in the Labour movement of the following century, charitable but abrasively rational. Evidently, by this time, the faction that wanted to preserve all the old fabric of St Saviour's had been cast in the classic right-wing role of those who cared more for ‘old stones' than for the plight of the hungry. One wonders what Edward Perronet Sells, who life's trajectory suggests a rather different personality and set of priorities, thought of his father's speech.

A new committee was formed, to look after ‘purely parochial …
not
political matters'. The Sells sons were on it. The issue of the rates was eventually brought expensively before the court of the Queen's Bench, who fixed a rate. In 1838 another proposal for a new church was launched, this time to cost £8000. By the following year the plan had been reduced to the rebuilding of the nave only and, in spite of complaints that there was not enough room in the church as it was, this scheme at last went ahead and is the central portion of the church we see today.

At the same time a new church, St Peter's, was built and opened on Bankside on a piece of land donated by Mr Pott, the vinegar manufacturer. At the opening ceremony ‘numerous ladies and gentlemen were entertained to an elegant repast' in a marquee, while charity school children who had sung songs were ‘regaled with buns and other good things in the ground of Messrs Pott'. Evidently the
perceived
need for more room for congregations was great, as the population of Southwark grew and grew, though whether large numbers of the new urban working classes ever attended church is another matter.

The Bishop laid the foundation stone for St Saviour's new nave. The dust of Massinger, Fletcher, Shakespeare's younger brother, prominent neighbours of the first Edward Sells and countless others was shovelled away with the old flooring to become hard core under the new buildings that were re-drawing the map of south London.

Three years later the Bishop intervened in parish matters to stop funds for charities being raised by performances in the church. He did not even want the children from the parochial schools singing ‘sacred music' there to raise money for their schools. Objections to ‘his Lordship's interference' were forthcoming from E. P. Sells, among others, but Edward Sells could not any longer voice his firmly held views since he had died in 1841, in retirement at Camberwell Grove.

His voice speaks out to us in one other preserved document dating from some twenty years before. That was when the question of rebuilding the many-arched London Bridge was at last being seriously discussed, and as a prominent member of the Watermen's Company, Edward Sells was called to give evidence at the enquiry: ‘I am a coal-merchant on Bankside,' he said, ‘and have been acquainted with the navigation of the river Thames above bridge for upwards of forty years … From the nature of London Bridge the inconveniences are very great indeed; because there are only two arches, the centre arch and one besides that. [He is referring to the two arches slightly wider than the rest, which were constructed when the bridge was modified in the middle of the eighteenth century]. It is impossible at particular times of tide to pass through with any safety whatever; I myself have lost many hundred pounds, not through the negligence of my lightermen, but from the state of the Bridge …' In fact more than money was lost. In the year of Edward Sells's birth there had been a collison at the Bridge in which ten people drowned, and there were other fatalities through the years. He himself once had a narrow escape: ‘… I have been on board myself at the time accidents happened. I was on board a lighter about twelve or fourteen years ago [i.e. about 1806], she went into one of the small locks [arches] owing to not being able to make any other on account of the pressure of craft, and was sunk, and the whole of the coals lost, and the barge injured to a very considerable amount, almost so much as not to be worth repairing. I should suppose the loss not to be less than £200 in the lighter and cargo … I could state many other accidents which have happened to my own craft, but I was not actually on board; they were to the amount of many hundred pounds.'

So we leave Edward Sells II in his role as life-long man of the river. In that he employed others but still worked on occasions alongside them, he was very much a figure of his own entrepreneurial times. Although, by the time he was old, when trousers had come in for general wear, and coats were waisted and skirted affairs on the way to becoming the Victorian frock-coat, I rather imagine that Edward Sells stayed all his life with the breeches, cutaway and neckcloth that had been the standard dress for active men of his generation. It was not till the third Sells, he of the beautiful handwriting, that the artisan mould was broken. As part of this evolution, Edward Perronet Sells was eventually to distance himself, and his own sons, from their Bankside origins.

EDWARD PERRONET SELLS
, born just before the French Revolution, grew to manhood while Britain was at war with Napoleon. The unregulated, unpoliced, oil-and moon-lit London of Georgian days was his heritage, with fields and hedgerows within easy reach. He married in his twenties, a young woman with another Huguenot name, which suggests a network of inherited relationships. His own eldest son first saw the light in the propitious year of the battle of Waterloo.

He was to have eight or possibly nine more children, mostly boys, all of whom thrived. In the fullness of time several of these younger sons were despatched into the Victorian respectability of Holy Orders. (One assumes that their grandfather's remarks, made not many years before, on the unchristian wealth of Anglican bishops, were carefully ignored.) Two of these young clergymen eventually went to minister to souls, and incidentally to acquire large tracts of land, in Australia, when it was ceasing to be a penal settlement and becoming a desirable colonial destination, thanks to the new steamships.

Edward Perronet knew Southwark when it was a hub of the coaching business, its high street lined with inns. He was in middle life when the first railway line appeared, and lived to see this expand to a vast, countrywide network. The trains' new speed seemed both to cause and symbolise the past's unprecedented rapid retreat. The coach-routes, and all the paraphernalia that had attached to them, vanished like ghosts of a remote era. The villages round London were transformed not just into suburbs but into dense urban districts, unrecognisable from Edward Perronet's youth.

He retired from the family business in 1852, the year after he and his fellow coal-merchants had exhibited a huge block of Welsh anthracite at the Great Exhibition, that celebration of Britain's breath-taking industrial and commercial dominance. He set up house in the comfort of suburban Bristol, where he probably had business connections through the Welsh coal-trade. He lived on for more than twenty years, dying in 1873 in a world now revolutionised by clean water, piped gas, antiseptics, anaesthesia, cheap public transport, the telegraph … No generation, before or since, has known such changes in physical habitat.