Bizarre London Read online

  TIME, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE!

  The Grenadier’s dead subaltern is perhaps London’s most famous pub ghost (see Chapter 14), but with so many ancient taverns in the capital it’s no surprise that more than a few claim to be haunted:

  Ten Bells, Commercial Street, E1

  Formerly called ‘The Jack the Ripper’, as recently as 1996 the pub was said to have been taken over by the ghost of Annie Chapman, one of the Ripper’s victims. Poltergeist activity has also been reported, together with ‘inexplicable’ gusts of wind, none of which can be bad for business.

  Flask Tavern, Highgate West Hill, N6

  An apparition of a young lady has been seen entering and leaving the pub, and is thought to be the ghost of a barmaid who committed suicide on the premises. (More unusual perhaps is the chicken that is said to haunt nearby Pond Square, possibly the very chicken the philosopher Francis Bacon was stuffing with snow in 1626 – to test its value as a preservative – when he caught a chill and died.)

  The Spaniards Inn, Spaniards Road, NW3

  The car park is said to be haunted by a horse, and with no credible justification this is said to be Dick Turpin’s famous Black Bess. More believable, perhaps, are reports of ‘Black Dick’, a seedy moneylender who was knocked down and killed by a coach outside. His ghost is said occasionally to trouble drinkers in the bar by tugging at their clothes.

  The Anchor Bankside, Park Street, SE1

  This famous riverside pub in Southwark is another where claims of a non-human haunting have often been made, this time with reports of the ghost of a dog, which, in the early eighteenth century, was injured while trying to protect its master from footpads or drunks. A member of the gang is said to have violently slammed a heavy pub door on the dog, severing its tail and sending it scurrying into the night, since when it has never been seen again. Not alive, anyway.

  The George, Strand, WC2

  A timbered fake, the present 1930s pub replaced one with much earlier origins. This perhaps explains the occasional presence of the ghost of a seventeenth-century Cavalier that is said to haunt the premises. It once surprised a decorator who was whitewashing the cellars. The staff were so used to the manifestation – which, obviously, they call George – that they had not thought to warn him first.

  The Viaduct Tavern, Newgate Street, EC1

  Wrongly but frequently said to incorporate some of the old Newgate Gaol cells in its cellar – which, sadly but absolutely, do not exist – the City’s last remaining Victorian gin palace has a poltergeist. Nicknamed Fred, he slams doors and blows fuses and on at least one occasion in the 1990s removed an entire roll of carpet that two workmen had taken up in order to work on the floorboards.

  The Rising Sun, Cloth Fair, EC1

  This is one of several pubs close to Bart’s Hospital that are said to have been popular with the area’s ‘resurrection men’ or grave robbers. The ghost at the lovely Rising Sun nevertheless sounds like more of a peeping tom than a bodysnatcher. On more than one occasion, it reportedly attempted to remove the bedclothes of two barmaids who lived there during the 1980s, and, more recently, another female member of staff felt an ice-cold hand run down her back while she was taking a shower. Nothing has ever been seen, but footsteps have been heard in the empty bar.

  The Bow Bells, Bow Road, E3

  Made visible by a gaudy orange frontage, this East End pub has a ghost that is said to haunt the ladies’ loo. An attempt was made to flush it out in 1974, despite the fact that reports of ghosts are usually good for business; but during the exorcism, the loo door flew open with such force that the glass was shattered and the proceedings brought to a halt.

  The Black Swan, Bow Road, E3

  Hit during a Zeppelin raid in the Great War, a number of victims – including the landlord’s daughters Cissie and Sylvia – were said to haunt the bar before the rebuilt pub was demolished in the 1970s. Unusually, the high-flying dirigible – no. L-33 – was later brought down near Colchester on 24 September 1916 and the crew taken into custody.

  More Modern Manifestations

  Historic buildings one somehow expects to be haunted, and most reports of ghosts seem to involve spirits dressed in Victorian clothes or something even earlier. But a death’s a death and, if one believes in spirits at all, then surely logic suggests that new buildings – and a few more recent victims – will also get their chance to shine.

  Heathrow Airport

  On a densely foggy day in March 1948, an incoming Douglas DC3 operated by Sabena crash-landed at the airport, killing all three crew and seventeen of its twenty-two passengers. With visibility down to a couple of hundred yards, rescue workers reported having a conversation with a man who appeared from nowhere asking if anyone had seen his briefcase. Since then, there have been occasional reports of a spectral figure on one of the two runways, a man whose description sounds similar to the strange report on the day of the crash. On at least one occasion, police and a fire truck have been dispatched to an area where the figure had been seen wandering around on the tarmac, but on arrival no trace of anyone has ever been found.

  The London Palladium

  As theatres go, the Palladium on Argyll Street is a relatively new one, barely a hundred years old despite its neo-classical façade. Nevertheless, and like a number of older theatres (including the Adelphi and Her Majesty’s), it is said to be haunted, this time by the ghost of a young woman called either Helen Campbell or Mrs Shireburn who appears on a staircase at the back of the Royal Circle.

  Unusually, neither name has any theatrical connection but both are thought to be linked to Argyll House, a large townhouse that formerly occupied the same site. This belonged to a Scottish nobleman – Archibald Campbell, 3rd Duke of Argyll (1682–1761).

  Broadcasting House

  The BBC’s iconic headquarters was completed in 1934, but is said to be haunted by the ghost of a limping butler from an earlier era. He first appeared in 1937, well dressed and sporting the kind of luxurious whiskers that were by then decidedly outdated. A spectral waiter has also occasionally been spotted there but, like the butler, he reportedly dissolves into nothingness should anyone attempt to engage him in conversation.

  ____________

  1 Which, incidentally, and somewhat irritatingly, is these days a messy and imperfect 1.16 square miles following boundary changes in the 1990s that incorporated an area north of London Wall into the City of London.

  3

  Building London

  ‘I don’t know what London’s coming to – the higher the buildings, the lower the morals.’

  Noël Coward

  An Englishman’s Home Is His . . .

  . . . Castle

  In Morden on Phipps Bridge Road, a small, one-bedroom flint tower, complete with crenellations and arrow slits, provides a surprising neighbour for an otherwise perfectly ordinary terrace.

  . . . Former Public Loo

  Architect Laura Clark recently converted some old council conveniences in Crystal Palace into a stylish subterranean apartment. With the average price of a London house forecast to reach £500,000 in the next few years, the ‘bijou’ abode includes a tiny private garden and an entire wall for displaying the owner’s shoe collection. (In Fitzrovia, another former underground loo has been converted into a café bar called The Attendant.)

  . . . Cossack Peasant’s Hut

  Thought to have been brought over from Russia for an international expo in the late nineteenth century, this traditional wooden ‘izba’ now forms part of a family home in The Vale, Chelsea.

  . . . Wren Church

  London’s tallest house, the tower of Christ Church Greyfriars has a view of St Paul’s and includes three bedrooms and three bathrooms spread over a positively knee-knackering eleven floors. Fortunately, a small lift is provided, and three dead queens are buried in the garden.1

  . . . Mini Skyscraper

  With one room per floor, Joe Hagan’s super-slim, seven-storey, steel-and-glass home looks like a scale model for
a construction by Mies van der Rohe. It occupies a plot no larger than a lock-up garage on Golden Lane, just north of the Barbican.

  . . . Shipping Container

  Converted into brightly coloured, live-work spaces for artists, Container City at Trinity Buoy Wharf provides some of the most distinctive accommodation in London’s reborn docklands.

  . . . Pub Yard

  One of London’s most compact family houses was created by architect Hugh Strange on just 75 square yards of disused land.

  . . . Museum

  Architect Sir John Soane left his house and its entire contents to the nation on the understanding that nothing would be added to his astonishing collection and absolutely nothing from it sold to pay the bills.

  . . . Time Capsule

  Within the shell of an old Spitalfields townhouse, the late Denis Severs, an American, re-created perfectly the atmosphere and feel of the seventeenth century and lived there ‘with a candle, a chamber pot and a bedroll’.

  . . . Tudor Palace

  One of the contenders for central London’s largest, non-royal private house, Crosby Hall dates back to the 1460s and originally stood in the Square Mile. In 1908, it was brought brick by brick to Chelsea, and has now been painstakingly restored by an insurance broker with a perfectionist’s passion for all things Tudor.

  Not the British Museum

  London has some of the best museums in the world but also some of the strangest, from fans to bones to magic tricks and monsters:

  The Fan Museum, Crooms Hill, Greenwich, SE10

  The only museum in the world dedicated solely to fans. It’s very good, but you can see why there aren’t more of them.

  The Museum of Brands, Colville Mews, W11

  The perfect encapsulation of our modern consumerist culture, and a fascinating romp through packaging, advertising and how the hidden persuaders do their persuading.

  London Fire Brigade Museum, Southwark Bridge

  Road, SE1

  A new use for an old fire station, and every small boy’s dream.

  Magic Circle Museum, Stephenson Way, NW1

  It’s magic, literally.

  Cuming Museum, Old Walworth Town Hall,

  Walworth Road, SE17

  Napoleon’s ceiling, pieces of the waistcoat Charles I was wearing when he was beheaded, and everything else of his father’s that an eccentric Victorian son couldn’t bear to see thrown away – or rather that portion of it that survived the devastating fire of 25 March 2013.

  Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons,

  Lincoln’s Inn Fields, WC2

  Medical curiosities, scores of gruesome odds and sods from the path lab – and London’s tallest human skeleton.

  Horniman Museum, London Road, SE23

  Stuffed animals, anthropology, musical instruments and a torture chair from the Spanish Inquisition.

  The Anaesthesia Museum, Portland Place, W1

  Three hundred years of ‘It’s a Knock-out’.

  Grant Museum of Zoology, University Street, WC1

  Jam-packed with more than 65,000 specimens – many of them in jam jars, and more than a few of them now extinct.

  The Cinema Museum, Dugard Way, SE11

  Literally a million historic film stills from the Ronald Grant Archive, together with London’s largest collection of old usherette uniforms, posters, antique projectors and lots of authentic 1960s swirly carpet.

  The Kirkaldy Testing Museum, Southwark Street, SE1

  The home of David Kirkaldy’s Victorian testing machine, designed to evaluate materials for strength and durability at a time when Britain was the workshop of the world.

  Royal London Hospital Museum, Whitechapel Road, E1

  Located in the crypt of a late nineteenth-century church, it commemorates Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, nurse Edith Cavell, and forensic medicine from the time of Jack the Ripper.

  The London Sewing Machine Museum, Balham

  High Road, SW17

  With more than 600 examples, including Charlie Chaplin’s and another belonging to Princess Victoria, this is almost certainly south London’s largest collection of sewing machines.

  London’s Earliest Skyscrapers

  1314 – St Paul’s Cathedral, EC4

  Before the Great Fire, the City landmark dominated the landscape in a way Wren’s magisterial replacement sadly hasn’t done for years. Begun after an earlier conflagration (in 1087), at 585 ft it was the third-longest church in Europe and the spire reached an incredible 489 ft into the air. (By comparison, Wren’s dome is just 278 ft high, and the building nearly 70 ft shorter overall.)

  1420 – Southwark Cathedral, SE1

  When the Old St Paul’s was destroyed in September 1666, the title of London’s tallest building passed to Southwark Cathedral, which at 163 ft retained the crown until 1710 when it was finally overtaken by Wren’s builders.

  1757 – Pagoda, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

  The writer and aesthete Sir Horace Walpole hated it on sight and watching it go up complained that ‘in a fortnight, you will be able to see it in Yorkshire’. He exaggerated slightly; at 163 ft it was an astonishing thing for the time but it has since been calculated that it would have needed to be nearly 80 times taller to be seen by Yorkshire folk from their back gardens.

  1888 – Queen Anne’s Mansions, SW1

  Fourteen storeys and 116 ft high, banker Henry Hanley’s block of luxury flats led to a change in the law when Queen Victoria expressed displeasure at it ruining her view of the Houses of Parliament. In 1894, a new London Building Act set an absolute limit of 80 ft, but unfortunately when Hanley’s horror was pulled down in 1973, it was replaced by Basil Spence’s much taller and even uglier Ministry of Justice.

  1929 – 55 Broadway, SW1

  At 174 ft, Charles Holden’s London Transport HQ (now Transport for London) horrified firemen who said their ladders would not reach that high. As a result, the upper floors remained empty for years, and even now are used simply for archive storage.

  1937 – Senate House, WC1

  Another Charles Holden design, and the building English fascist leader Oswald Mosley planned to use as his parliament once he had taken over. The 210-ft monolith famously provided the model for Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ in Nineteen Eighty-Four after the author had been employed there during the Second World War. (That such a prominent landmark survived the Blitz has encouraged speculation that it was a favourite of the Nazis and that, planning to use it when he had won the war, Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to leave it alone.)

  1952 – Shell-Mex House, WC2

  Overlooking the Thames and with more than half a million square feet of floor space, Shell-Mex House was one of the largest buildings of its era. This 190-ft-high Art Deco masterpiece also boasts the two largest clock faces in the capital. Each clock has a diameter of 25 ft, and requires an electric motor the size of a family car to move the hands. However, neither chimes for fear of upstaging Big Ben.

  LONDON’S SMALLEST LISTED BUILDING . . .

  . . . is a small, brick-built hut for the Lincoln’s Inn ostler. Dating back to 1860, when he would have been responsible for taking care of lawyers’ and visitors’ horses, the job was soon redundant as horsepower gradually supplanted the horse.

  Estates of the Nation

  On its completion in 1937, Dolphin Square, SW1, was the largest self-contained block of flats in Europe. With more than 1,250 apartments as well as a swimming pool, shopping arcade and restaurant, it has long been popular with politicians and, at its peak, was home to at least eighty Members of Parliament and the House of Lords. Princess Anne lived there briefly, too, making it one of London’s more unusual royal residences.

  Once home to comedians Tommy Trinder and Arthur Smith, Du Cane Court in Balham was completed in 1937 and is still the largest privately owned residential block in Europe. With 676 apartments, it is so large that, in 1940, pilots of the German air force were reportedly using it as a navigational aid on their bombing ru
ns over London. (This revelation also prompted suggestions after the war that it had been designed by a Nazi sympathiser to look like a swastika from their air, but it wasn’t and doesn’t.)

  Developed after the Great War by London County Council to provide much-needed ‘Homes for Heroes’, East London’s Becontree Housing Estate is still thought to be the world’s largest public housing project. With a starting population of more than 100,000 – including 25,000 children of school age – its construction was on such a scale that it required the laying of a new railway line and even a special wharf on the Thames.