Travels and Thoughts
Monday, 9/9/19
Pam and I enjoyed the complimentary breakfast after which Pam went to her conference. By this point, my feet were very sore, so I went back to the room, took some advil, and rested for a brief time. My morning tour was of Westminster Abbey. I was surprised by the long lines to get in!
Unfortunately, visitors are not allowed to take photos inside the abbey. If you want to see the magnificient inside, you can click on this link:
https://www.westminster-abbey.org/visit-us/photo-gallery
To me, the most interesting parts were the for Benjamin Britten, a composer I am particularly fond of; the poets' corner; Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I, Henry VII, and so much more.
James I's infant daughter Sophia, who died aged 3 days, was given a creepy bassinet sarcophagus.
It was an awesome feeling to be standing where every English monarch since 1066 has been crowned with but three exceptions - Edward V, Edward VIII, and perhaps Mary I. Seventeen English monarchs are interred here.
In the poet's corner, many are actually interred right there including Chaucer (he was the first), Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy (minus his heart - that is buried in Dorset), Rudyard Kipling, George Frederick Handle, Dr. Samuel Johnson (I visited his home also), Laurence Olivier, Edmund Spenser, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. Many of these greats I have taught in British Lit classes.
Oliver Cromwell, who overthrew the monarchy and caused a civil war was originally buried behind the High Altar (1658), but when the monarch was restored in 1660, his corpse was dug up, dragged to Tyburn, hanged, decapitated, the body tossed into a common grave, and its head put on display outside the Abbey. Wow, the English take their revenge seriously!
There was so much more that it almost overwhelms the senses. I have seen many photos of the famous Rose Window, but to see it in person was very exciting. It is so beautiful and vibrant with the sun streaming through the glass giving a multicolored hue to everything.
Although Shakespeare isn't actually buried there, there is an impressive sculpture of him. Charles Darwin, Oscar Wilde, and Marlow also have memorials. Elizabeth I's tomb is there as are Henry VII and Mary Queen of Scots. There is an impressive bust of Blake; I wonder if his religious views were a concern to the people who commissioned the bust?
As with many of the famous sites, the crowds were large and it was difficult to tarry. There was so much to see, but so little time.
I ubered back to the Amba Hotel to rest a bit and put my feet up. I didn't have too much free time as the pub tour was to begin at 2:00pm. I took another uber to Newgate Street to meet the tour guide. Our group was small (8 people). The tour guide was absolutely great! His knowledge of facts that one would not easily find in a tour book was impressive!
Our tour began at the medieval gate, one of many that enclosed London. There were 12 originally.
Left: This is the only one of the twelve original walls that enclosed medieval London. Above the keystone, there is a small hole. This is where the heads of traitors were spiked. This merry London ritual began in about 1300 and continued until about 1660 (end of Cromwell era). The lofty heads included, at different times, those of Sir Thomas More and Oliver Cromwell. the heads were dipped in tar as a preservative so facial recognition must have been impaired. Seeds were placed in the tar to attrack ravens and such. At one stage 30 heads were counted on the Gateway.
Our first historic pub was the Cockpit which is ancient, dating back to the 18th century. But pub yore puts this as the site of Shakespeare's Blackfriars house, two centuries before that.
The name comes from the age-old pastime of pitting rival cocks against each other for the amusement of onlookers. Those onlookers would stand in the gallery, still present above the bar.
Our guide mentioned that there was a large bucket suspended from the ceiling (not there now). If the owner of a specific rooster overstated the abilities of his bird and onlookers bet on it for that reason, they would lower the bucket, shove him in, raise it somewhat and throw stuff at him - drinks, garbage, etc.
Right: The step down in the bar area indicates where the original cockpit was located.
This painting of two fighting cocks is hung next to the main bar.
On our way to the next pub, we passed St. Bride's church. The spire is said to have inspired the wedding cake. The church was built in 1675, designed by Christopher Wren after the previous building was destroyed in the Great Fire of London (despite reputedly having its own fire engine). The steeple wasn't added until 1703, making it the tallest church in London (after St Paul's) and a prominent landmark on the skyline of the time.
The story goes that, towards the end of the 18th century, an apprentice baker who worked at nearby 3 Ludgate Hill, fell in love with his boss's daughter, Susannah Prichard. In order to impress her (and, presumably, his future father-in-law) He decided to make an elaborate cake for his nuptials. Looking around for inspiration, he caught sight of the nearby steeple, and the rest is history. At least, that's how the story goes...
As we continued walking, we passed this statue of Queen Anne in front of St. Paul's cathedral. Our guide told us that she was the last British Monarch. We, of course, questioned that. He explained that Anne was queen until 1714. After her death, since she had no living children, the closest living relative who was not catholic (the Act of Settlement passed in 1701 said that no catholic could become monarch) was her second cousin George Louis of the House of Hanover (German). He became George I, and from then on, all English monarchs were decended from the German Houses - Hanover then Saxe Coburg and Gotha. George V changed that german name for Windsor during the 1st WW since he didn't want to remind the Brfitish that he was decended from Germans - ah! what's in a name!
Back to the pub tour: At the Cockpit, I discovered pull/live beer. I had never heard of it before. The taps in the photo on the right access beer by pulling the tap and, in effect, pumping the beer from the barrel into the glass. No preservatives nor gas is added to live beer; it has live yeast in it. That is why it tends to be warm as to cool it would kill the yeast and stop the fermentation. At this pub, I had Tribute, a pulled beer, which was very tasty - but then aren't they all?
Left: The bald man was our guide, Max. The wall he is standing in front of was built from bricks that survived the Great Fire of 1666. This wall was built inn 1668. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall. It threatened but did not reach the aristocratic district of Westminster, Charles II's Palace of Whitehall, or most of the suburban slums. It consumed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, St Paul's Cathedral, and most of the buildings of the City authorities. It is estimated to have destroyed the homes of 70,000 of the city's 80,000 inhabitants.
Samuel Pepys in his diary wrote extensively of the 4-day fire. Pepys took a boat to inspect the destruction around Pudding Lane at close range and describes a "lamentable" fire, "everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that lay off; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the
very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another." Pepys continued westward on the river to the court at Whitehall, "where people come about me, and did give them an account dismayed them all, and the word was carried into the King. So I was called for, and did tell the King and Duke of Yorke what I saw, and that unless His Majesty did command houses to be pulled down nothing could stop the fire. They seemed much troubled, and the King commanded me to go to my Lord Mayor from him and command him to spare no houses, but to pull down before the fire every way."
The copper relief above the bar depicts the friars making wine. The wall relief below shows friars preparing fish (I think). Above isn't too clear, but the art works cover every inch of the place - amazing!
BLACKFRIAR PUB: Above the "174" stands the black friar. It was built in about 1875 on the site of a former medieval Dominican friary, and then remodelled in about 1905. Much of the internal decoration was done by the sculptors Frederick T. Callcott & Henry Poole. It is really very ornate with art in copper, tile, glass, marble, wood, etc.
This is a photo of the ceiling in the dining area. Absolutely amazing work!
The Punch Tavern was named after the famous Punch and Judy puppet show featuring Punch and his wife Judy that had its first appearance after the Restoration in 1660. Cromwell who ruled from 1640 to 1660 was a puritan and very anti drinking, theater, comedy, etc. When Charles II returned to the thrown in 1660, Londoners were thrilled to return to an age that allowed comedy and fun.
This Victorian pub was referred to as a Gin Palace. Gin was the drink of the poor. It was cheap and available. The Gin Palaces sprang up to provide an elegant pub for drinking cheap gin. The customers
felt that they were in an elegant place, and that helped aleviate the drudgery of poverty. These "gin palaces" had elaborate etched glass, marble floors, many mirrors, and mosaics. The Punch Tavern had over 55 different types of gin. A patron could ask to see three or four different bottles. The barkeep would let the customer smell the various bottles before determining which one was preferred. Although some in our group chose to drink gin, I enjoyed another pulled beer.
Right: Entry way to Punch Pub with the elegant etched glass, wall decorations, mirrors, etc.
Left: advertisement for the gin of the month. 8 pounds equals $10, which for a double is not a bad price.
There was also a sign advertising trivia every Wednesday evening.
This is probably one of the first automatic gin dispensers. A customer would put a coin the cat's paws, and a shot of gin would be dispensed from the cat's mouth - or so our guide told us.
This is St. Bride's church again, but this time out guide asked us what the wall was doing there. It is a charnel house! There was a law that said you must be buried in the same parish where you were born. After awhile, the grave yard filled to capacity, so the bodies were deposited below the church. In the church graveyard, bodies would be placed in wooden coffins beginning at the back and moving to the front of the space. When it was full, the oldest graves would be dug up and the bones deposited in the charnel house below the church.
Left: This is Johnson's Square. The house with the door is Samuel Johnson's house. I was very fond of his writing when I was a student. He was truly a Renaissance Man - poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. He wrote the first English dictionary!
I especially liked some of the famous things he said: "The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
"Kindness is in our power even when fondness is not." And with our current social situation, his comment, "When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency" is especially apt.
My final favorite is: "The majority have no other reason for their opinions then that they are the fashion."
Right: There is no statue to Johnson, but there is one to his cat, Hodge. Joohnson fed his cat oysters (that is what you see in front of Hodge on the statue). Oysters, like gin, were reserved for the poorest of the poor. Oysters came from the Thames which was poluted with all sorts of nasty things - blood and offal from the slaughter houses along the river, chemicals from the print shops that lined Fleet Street, and human waste which was freely dumped in the river.
Johnson's servant balked at the idea of purchasing oysters in the shops along the Thames because he didn't want them to think he was eating them - my how times change!
Left: In Johnson's Square is also the home of Samuel Boswell, a close friend of the older Johnson. Boswell wrote the definitive biograhy of Dr. Johnson which is considered by many as the greatest biography written in the English language. I remember being assigned to read it in British Lit; although not riviting, it was interesting.
The black clock on the second story is also a sign identifying Boswell's house.
The Great Beer Flood of 1814
Our guide told us of the beer flood in London. I took it with a grain of salt until I double checked his facts. There was a beer flood!
The London Beer Flood was an accident at Meux & Co's Horse Shoe Brewery on 17 October 1814. It took place when one of the 22-foot-tall wooden vats of fermenting porter burst. The pressure destroyed another vessel, and between 154,000–388,000 gal of beer were released.
The resulting wave of porter destroyed the back wall of the brewery and swept into an area of slum-dwellings known as the St Giles rookery. Eight people were killed, five of them attendees at the wake being held by an Irish family for a two-year-old boy. The coroner's inquest returned a verdict that the eight had lost their lives "casually, accidentally and by misfortune". What a sad irony!
Our guide said that breweries stopped using the mega vats after this tragedy and downsized them.