London Travel Guide Continued...
The Gunter estate
West of the Day estate is the Gunter estate in Earl's Court and West Brompton. Originally the estate covered over 100 acres ( 40 hectares), but much of the land was sold in 1917. The founder of the Gunter family fortunes was Robert Gunter, proprietor of Gunter's Tea Shop in Berkeley Square, orre of the great institutions of Regency London. George III bought his buns there, and the aristocracy of Mayfair lounged about outside on hot days cooling themselves with Gunter's renowned ices and sorbets. As well as creating a successful catering business, which is still going under the name of Payne & Gunter, Gunter also bought land in Kensington, between Barkstone Gardens and Wetherby Gardens in the north and Gunter Grove and Edith Grove in the south. The profits from the development of this land, starting with the Boltons in the 1850s, enabled the Gunters to acquire a large estate near Wetherby, North Yorkshire. They lived there until Sir Ronald, the 3rd and last Baronet, died in 1980. His daughters and grandchildren have no doubt inherited the property.
HollandHouse estate
Across Kensington High Street from the Gunter estate, Charlotte Townshend, daughter of Lord Galway, owns what is left of the Holland House estate. Originally the estate comprised 200 acres (80 hectares), but sales over the years have reduced it, particularly the disposal in 1951 of 52 acres (21 hectares) of gardens and parkland surrounding the bombed-out remains of Holland House. These remains, incorporating a youth hostel, can still be seen in the middle of Holland Park, which is now a public open space.
Mrs Townshend also owns a 3,OOO-acre (1,200"hectare) estate in Nottinghamshire and a 15,OOO-acre (G,OOO-hectare) estate around Melbury House near Dorchester, Dorset, where she lives. She inherited Melbury and the Holland estate from the Earls of Ilchester, who in turn acquired it from their cousins the Hollands in the 19th century. The Ist Lord Holland, father of rake and politician Charles James Fox, originally bought the estate in 17G8.
Phillimore estate
The east of Holland Park is an estate belonging to Lord Phillirnore. His ancestors acquired the land through the marriage of Joseph Phillimore, a
Gloucestershire clothier's son, to Ann D'Oyley, daughter of a wealthy City merchant, in 1704. Originally 64 acres (26 hectares) but now much reduced, the estate covers the southern slope of Campden Hill and is made up of brilliant white stucco terraces in streets like Phillimore Walk and Phillimore Place. In 1874 artist and Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne leased one of these houses - then virtually new - and lived in it for the rest of his life. His family kept it unchanged after his death and it is now a fascinating Victorian time-capsule museum. Lord Phillirnore, who is the 5th Baron, lives at Binfield Heath, near Henley, in Oxfordshire.
St Quintin estate
In the remote northern part of the borough, near the canal and the railway lines, the Legard family of Scampston Hall near Malton in North Yorkshire owns the very small remains of the 200-acre (80-hectare) St Quintin estate in the vicinity of St Quintin Avenue. The St Quintin family, Yorkshire squires since the Middle Ages, acquired the estate in the form of a farm called Notting Barns in 1767. The farm was developed in the 19th century, and many of the freeholds were then sold off in the 20th century. Lady Legard of Scampston Hall is the daughter of the last of the St Quintins.
THE END OF THE ESTATES?
It seems fitting to end with an estate like the Legards', which has all but disappeared, because all the old freehold estates in London (with the exception of the Queen's) are threatened with extinction. The menace comes from a piece of legislation called the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993. The act sounds innocuous enough, but its consequences are potentially revolutionary. Under this act, all leaseholders in flats and houses have the right to buy their freeholds, subject to certain conditions. It remains to be seen how many of them will be either able or willing to exercise their new right, but if significant numbers of them do, the old estates will inevitably be broken up and will become yet another chapter in the long history of London.
There are those, such as the members of the Leasehold Enfranchisement Association, who think this may not be such a bad thing. Perhaps it is not, for the freeholders have benefited greatly from the increase in the value of their land over the centuries without actually putting anything into its development. In virtually every case, all the capital for building was provided by the house builders, many of whom went bust as a result. Maybe it is time, therefore, for the freeholders' free ride to come to an end.
TAKEN FOR GRANTED
Many features of London have become so familiar to us that we take them completely for granted. Sometimes they are conspicuous things, landmarks even, like Cleopatra's Needle or the ET'Ibwer. Sometimes they are less obvious things like drinking fountains or blue plaques. Occasionally they are names, such as Dick Whittington's, that are indissolubly linked with the city. All of these features have fascinating but largely unknown stories behind them. Here, we recount a dozen of the most interesting of them in the hope that they will rescue their subjects from an unmerited, if understandable, neglect.
THJE LIGHTS Of PICCADILLY CIRCUS
Piccadilly Circus, right in the heart of the capital, is a good place to start. This central hub is famous for its illuminated advertisements. The fronts of some buildings are now almost entirely covered by ever-changing walls of coloured lights spelling out the names of well-known products and even the temperature. But why are the lights there at all, and why are they only in one part of Piccadilly Circus?
Once upon a time Piccadilly Circus was a true circus, in other words a circular interchange linking the upper part of Regent Street with the lower part and Waterloo Place. Then in 1886 a new road was created leading off from the north-east. To improve access to this road - Shaftesbury Avenue - buildings on the south side of what is now Glasshouse Street were demolished, leaving the buildings on the north side facing directly on to the circus. The occupants of these buildings were suddenly presented with fantastic advertising possibilities. Taking advantage of the new technology of electrically illuminated advertisements, particularly the intermittent or flashing variety that attracted attention, some of them quickly put up large signs on the roofs of their buildings.
Vulgar additions
The London County Council disapproved of these vulgar additions to the London streetscape and succeeded in getting them removed. But its clever opponents countered by attaching the signs to the fronts of their buildings instead. The only way the council could have them removed now was by invoking by-laws concerned with the safety of pedestrians walking on the pavements below It did try to apply these by-laws, but the courts ruled that the signs presented no danger to the public and could therefore stay. Thus by 1910 famous names Eke Bovril and Schweppes shone forth in illuminated coloured letters 8 feet (2.4 metres) high and there was nothing that anybody could do about H.
Meanwhile, on the triangular Trocadero site, now occupied by Madame Tussaud's Rock Circus among others things, the council was itself the freeholder, so here it could apply not only by-laws but the clauses of its own leases to attack the new signs. The trouble was its leases had been drafted long before anyone had even heard of illuminated advertisements, and the wording wasn't specific enough to deal with the new situation. So although the council succeeded in getting Mr Hutter of the Piccadilly Restaurant on the top floor to take down a Gordon's Gin sign because its fixings damaged the facade of the building, it was powerless when the ingenious restaurateur simply constructed a steel frame protruding out over the roof parapet and hung the sign on it clear of the facade: By the early 1920s the battle of the lights had been won by the advertisers. Looking back, their victory would have been achieved much sooner had it not been for the austerity brought by the First World War.
If you go to Piccadilly Circus today, you will see that the lights - the subject of countless picture postcards - are concentrated in one section of the circus. The simple reason for this is that the freehold of the rest of the circus is owned by the Crown Estate. Like the old London County Council, the Crown Estate was opposed to the signs, but it had the advantage of better leases which could be, and since have been, successfully enforced to prevent the erection of any signs of which it disapproves. For this reason there have never been any illuminated advertisements on Crown buildings, and, according to recent pronouncements, there never will be.
THE STATUE OF EROS
Piccadilly Circus's other claim to fame is the statue of Eros. This is a misnomer for two reasons. First, it is not a statue at all but a memorial fountain commemorating the great Victorian philanthropist, the Earl of Shaftesbury, after whom Shaftesbury Avenue is named. Second, the figure so delicately poised atop the fountain is not the God of Love but the Angel of Christian Charity. At least, that is what the experts say. The situation is confused somewhat by the words of the sculptor himself, Sir Arthur Gilbert, who said that the naked figure (formerly golden, now leaden and not the original) rep re ents 'the blindfolded love sending forth ... his missile of kindness'. It would seem therefore that Gilbert did indeed create the figure to represent love, but the love he had in mind was a religious sort, not the erotic type suggested both by the resemblance of the figure to Cupid and by the popular christening of the memorial 'the statue of Eras' within a fortnight of its unveiling in June 1893.
Rancour
Given the nature of Lord Shaftesbury's work, it is extraordinary how much rancour his memorial managed to excite. Interference with the design by both the Memorial Committee and the London County Council led to squabbles. between the two bodies and even more bitter arguments between them and the ultra-sensitive Gilbert. Gilbert was particularly incensed by the council's insistence that he reduce the size of the main fountain basin. The memorial was also meant to function as a public drinking fountain, and Gilbert claimed that, if the basin were made too small, drinkers would get soaked in their attempts to get a drink of water. After the unveiling (which he refused to attend) he was proved right and was pilloried for it in the press, even though he was in no way to blame. With his public reputation temporarily in shreds, he was also nearly bankrupt because the bronze had cost him far more than he had estimated. It comes as no surprise to find Gilbert admitting many years later that the Shaftesbury memorial affair traumatized his entire life.
Had the memorial been constructed to Gilbert's design, it would be a much more exciting structure than the rather dismal stump it is today. Not only would there be a large fountain playing into a wide basin at ground level, but the fountains at the top would form a shimmering globe of water, above which the graceful angel would appear to be hovering, completely unsupported.
There is one final intriguing mystery about Eros. Is the statue a clever pun on Shaftesbury's name? If you look closely at Eros's bow, you will notice that it has no arrow in it and that it is pointing downwards. Are we meant to conjecture from this that the arrow or 'shaft' has been fired downwards and that it now lies 'buried' in the ground? There would certainly appear to be some kind of connection, but whether Gilbert ever intended it or not we shall never know for sure.
DRINKING FOUNTAINS
All over central London, in parks and gardens and by the sides of roads, you will find public drinking fountains. Many bear the name of one organization: the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association. Before this organization was founded in 1859, it was incredibly difficult - incredible in relation to our own experience today - for the vast majority of Londoners to get something as simple as a drink of water when they were out and about in the streets. Cart drivers and cabbies faced the additional difficulty of watering their horses In fact the only places where horses could be watered were in the troughs some publicans placed outside their pubs. The water in these troughs was not free, however. It had to be paid for, either directly or by buying beer. 'All that water their horses here/Must pay a penny or have some beer' was one common sign erected above many public houses' water troughs. With 50,OOO-plus horses on the streets at anyone time, horsewatering must have been a lucrative business for the average publican.
By the .mid-1850s some improvements had been effected in the supply of drinking water to the capital, but distribution was still woefully inadequate. Into the breach stepped Samuel Gurney, MP and member of a well-known Quaker banking and philanthropic family. Through his efforts the Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain Association was set up on 10 April 1859. Just 11 days later the first drinking fountain, incorporating its own filtration system, was activated in front of a large crowd of eager onlookers. The fountain, paid for by Gurney, was let into the wall of St Sepulchre's Church in Newgate Street and can still be seen there today, complete with its two metal drinking cups.
Bowls for dogs
Over the next couple of years more fountains were installed at the rate of nearly one a week. Before long, most incorporated small bowls for dogs. Then the association decided to tackle the horse problem, too: in 1867 it changed its name to include cattle troughs (,cattle' was used rather than 'horse' because the troughs were also intended for live cattle on their way to market) and started installing these all over London. The ones we see today are the solid granite variety introduced after the first metal ones had proved unsatisfactory. The association continued installing troughs until the 1950s, when horse-drawn traffic was finally driven off the roads by motorized transport.
Today the association, which is based in Chislehurst in Kent, continues to install modern drinking fountains in schools and playing fields and also helps people in other countries, notably Africa, obtain their own supplies of fresh drinking water. Meanwhile its older fountains in London present a pretty sorry sight. Few work, and most are filled with rubbish. This isn't the fault of the association. The responsibility for maintaining fountains lies with local authorities. Unfortunately, they are often hamstrung by a lack of resources - and in an age when most people can either turn on a tap or buy a bottle of mineral water, the renovation of derelict public drinking fountains is not a high priority. |
