An Historical Unusualness for Every London Borough (Part 4)
The last eight boroughs in our historical crawl.
Welcome to Londonist: Time Machine’s Friday newsletter for paying subscribers, with a chunky, nourishing teaser for everyone else.
Today, I’m finishing off my series on the 32 London boroughs, which coincides with the 60th anniversary of their creation. You can read parts one, two and three in the archive.
First up, the History Radar and a few recent links…
History Radar
Upcoming events for those who enjoy London history.
👨🏾🏫 TRAFALGAR SQUARE BLACK HISTORY: Join the Black History Walks team on 5 May for a tour around the Trafalgar Square area with a focus on African/Caribbean history. Hear about African kings and Queen Victoria, African Resistance leaders of the 1860s, media propaganda, the planned mis-education of indigenous people and much more.
👏 VE DAY 80: Thursday 8 May marks the 80th anniversary of VE Day, so expect to see plenty of events to mark the occasion in London this week, including a military procession, a Red Arrows flypast, the return of the ceramic poppies to the Tower, and special concerts, services and exhibitions. All rounded up here.
🎨 TATE BIRTHDAY WEEKENDER: Does a quarter-century count as ‘history’? This year marks 25 years since Tate Modern opened in the former power station on Bankside. Celebrate the milestone at the gallery's Birthday Weekender on 9-12 May, which includes various activities, talks and tours, and late night openings. All free.
💥 WWII: London Archives is an absolute treasure house of records relating to London’s history, but the sheer amount of stuff there can be a bit daunting. Happily, the archives puts on regular ‘document viewing’ sessions, where in-house staff show off some of the best holdings on a given subject. On 9 May, they’ll be looking at some important documents relating to London in the Second World War. The session ties in with the Archives’ current exhibition on the same subject.
🌺🚴🏻 PLANTS + BIKES + HISTORY: VeloNotte Botanica on 10 May is an historical-botanical promenade by bike, which will uncover the secret life of plants that bring Londoners pleasure. From grapes and apples introduced by the Romans to planes and weed, this grand tour will feature comments by prominent historians, landscape designers and botanists. It's accompanied by a special soundtrack.
🎪 PUPPET FESTIVAL: One of those unique London events, the Covent Garden May Fayre & Puppet Festival, is back on 11 May. It celebrates the first recorded production of a Mr Punch show, as seen/recorded by Samuel Pepys in Covent Garden in 1662. It draws puppeteers from all over the country for a procession, church service, shows, stalls and workshops. This year's event is a special one, as it coincides with the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of street performers in the area, with free shows throughout the afternoon.
And a few historical links
Did you read Wednesday’s newsletter about the aeronaut Margaret Graham? In response, a reader pointed me in the direction of this excellent video from the Hackney Society, which highlights a selection of remarkable women buried in Abney Park cemetery, including Margaret Graham.
Another fine video from John Rogers this week, too. The hirsute London explorer goes in search of the ‘Walthamstow Slip’, a mysterious strip of land in Leyton that’s technically part of Walthamstow.
Meanwhile, Look Up London discovers the oldest lychgate in England, which happens to be in Beckenham, South London. The Gentle Author has a rather excellent piece on the remaining traces of Shakespeare’s London. Finally, the Press and Journal of Aberdeenshire have a follow-up to a story I ran some years ago, about these two-billion-year-old landmarks in Bromley. Now that’s ancient history.
An Historical Unusualness for Every London Borough (Part 4)
Redbridge
The date is 21 August 1939. London is on edge. War with Germany seems all but inevitable. Thousands of children will be evacuated in the coming weeks. But the last skies of peacetime hold their own perils. It has been a sweltering day in east London. As the afternoon draws to a close, thunderclouds gather over Valentine’s Park near Ilford. Around 30 people crowd into a wooden shelter to escape the downpour. Suddenly, a lightning bolt strikes the corrugated iron roof. The discharge passes down through the structure and into the bodies of the closely packed shelterers. Seven lives are lost, and many more are injured.
Later, the coroner for the case could find no previous occasion when so many had been killed by one lightning bolt — though seven people had lost their lives during a pair of strikes in Wandsworth Park on 14 June 1914. By macabre coincidence, those deaths had also occurred two weeks before the advent of a world war...
The Ilford lightning strike remains England’s worst incident of the kind. As far as I’m aware, no plaque or memorial marks the site.
Richmond
More morbidness in Richmond. The murder of Julia Martha Thomas in 1879 was one of the most publicised crimes in Victorian London. Thomas was beaten and strangled by her maid Kate Webster, who then dismembered, boiled and chopped up the body. Webster’s subsequent trial and execution were the talk of the nation. So notorious was the murderer that Madame Tussaud’s displayed her wax effigy before she’d even been executed.
For decades, a mystery lingered over the crime. Most of Thomas’s body had been recovered shortly after the murder, but never the head. That finally turned up in 2010, more than 130 years after the awful event. The final twist in the tale? The skull was uncovered by builders working for David Attenborough. The naturalist had unwittingly moved in next to the murder scene.
Southwark
London has many peculiar museums. Perhaps the strangest, in name at least, is the Kirkaldy Testing Museum on Southwark Street. A museum of… testing? It is just that. This was the workshop of David Kirkaldy (1820-1897), whose business and pleasure was to test the strength of construction materials. In this building, Kirkaldy put girders, cables and other materials under great pressure to check they were up to the job. Indirectly, he must have saved many lives. The museum is open twice a month to visitors (book in advance).
The most famous feature of the museum is its pediment, which demands “Facts not Opinions”. The motto underpins the engineer’s profession. “Yeah, those cables look pretty strong to me… I’m sure they’ll hold the bridge up, no sweat” is not a valid way to proceed. The pediment reminds us of the importance of testing, data and full understanding.
In gentler times, the message came across as a touch Gradgrindian. Today, in the age of fungible facts, ‘alternative truths’ and the general devaluing of science, the pediment shines out as a beacon of hope. Those of us who still cling to old-fashioned concepts like objectivity and rational thinking can draw strength from the message over this doorway. Well, that’s my opinion, anyway.
Sutton
I’m a glutton for Sutton. The southern borough has a string of historic museums and buildings of architectural interest, which deserve more attention. The Lumley Chapel is a case in point. This medieval church fragment in Cheam is of uncertain age, but many of its stones are thought to predate the Norman Conquest. That makes it one of the oldest buildings in London, never mind the Borough of Sutton. If this were in Westminster, it would be in all the guide books.
Inside, the walls are festooned with expensive memorials to local luminaries. Some of the tombs and tablets feature colourful representations of a parrot or popinjay. This was one of the emblems of the Lumley family, who owned much of the land round here in the 16th century. The bird would have been considered a rare and exotic pet at the time. To the eyes of a modern Londoner, however, the tomb feels spookily prescient. Ring-necked parakeets, exactly like those supporting the coat of arms, are now among London’s most common birds. They are especially noisy above the leafy streets of Cheam and nearby Nonsuch Park. Did the Lumleys foresee the future? Are those popinjays perched on crystal balls?
Tower Hamlets
I’ve hosted a fair number of pub quizzes over the years. Of all the questions I’ve written, my favourite is this: who are the only two people to have been imprisoned in the Tower of London AND to have performed at the Royal Albert Hall? Have a think, and then scroll down…
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