London's Secret Square Mile (eBook)

MYDDLETON PASSAGE, EC1

As at Myddleton Square and Myddleton Street, a reference to Hugh, later Sir Hugh, Myddleton, royal jeweller and wealthy seventeenth-century entrepreneur whose brainwave the New River was and who dreamed of transporting unlimited supplies of clean, fresh water nearly 40 miles from Great Amwell and Chadwell in Hertfordshire to a spot near Sadler’s Wells.

He did it too, despite the fiercest possible opposition, from both those landowners across whose estates his channel would pass and a variety of other vested interests. Myddleton nevertheless committed himself to completing the job in just four years, something which proved a struggle until James I put his shoulder to the take in exchange for half the profits.

Four years later the water began to flow along an open channel 10ft wide and 4ft deep into the Round Pond by Sadler’s Wells. Soon Myddleton’s New River Company had excavated three more reservoirs, from which sweet water was piped into the City along wooden pipes no leakier than our own, and Myddleton had collected a baronetcy for his efforts. Further reward came in 1862 when John Thomas was commissioned to sculpt him in marble, the resulting figure being presented by the wealthy contract Sir Samuel Morton Peto, unveiled by Gladstone, and erected on Islington Green.

NANTES PASSAGE, E1

A clear reference to the Edict of Nantes, the infamous revocation of which in 1685 denied many important civil rights to French Protestants prompting thousands to flee the country. Many ended up in London, working as weavers in and around Spitalfields, while others crossed the river to settle in Wandsworth in what was then still Surrey.

By the early 1700s the number of weavers in Spitalfields may have been as high as 30,000 – Flemish workers as well as French Huguenots, with the latter building no fewer than nine French churches in the neighbourhood, the most famous of which (in Brick Lane) subsequently became a synagogue, a Methodist chapel and then a mosque as the demographic profile of the local population evolved.

Many were hugely successful, with a score or more leaving £5,000 at their deaths, equivalent to more than a million at current prices, and today their legacy is not hard to discern. Besides other Frenchified street names – such as Fournier and Princelet – the most elegant houses in the area, once the homes of successful silk merchants and some exceptionally skilled master weavers, still display the characteristically large attic windows required to admit the maximum hours of daylight for those working away inside.

NELSON PASSAGE, EC1

To look at today it’s not much of a memorial to our greatest sea captain, but then besides the eponymous column there is a Nelson Square in Southwark and a Nelson Place in Islington. Elsewhere Nile Terrace and Trafalgar Avenue mark two of the man’s key victories, just as Duncan, Camperdown and Napier Streets commemorate other naval heroes.

NEW COURT, EC4

A rare surviving fragment of a Nicholas Barbon original, Middle Temple’s New Court was built by the speculator in 1676 on part of the gardens of Essex House in what would then have been the Outer Temple. Inherited by Queen Elizabeth’s favourite, Robert Devereux, from his uncle the Earl of Leicester, it was the scene of his arrest before he was carried off to Lambeth Palace and then the Tower where he was executed for high treason.

Barbon bought the old house in 1674 and hurried to pull most of it down on hearing that Charles II rather fancied it as a gift for a loyal servant. Within two years he had completed his development, the seven-bay block on the west side that we see today being still very much as he built it, and sold it on to the members of Middle Temple.

NEWCASTLE CLOSE, EC4

Before the construction of the immense, £2.5 million Holborn Viaduct in 1869, what had hitherto been Newcastle Street used to turn sharply to the left to link up with Old Seacoal Lane.

The latter name came from a type of cheap but low-grade fuel. Inferior to charcoal, it was filthy stuff and as early as 1377 Thomas and Alice Yonge informed their lawyer that, besides spoiling the wine and ale in their cellar, ‘the stench of the smoke from [a neighbour’s] seacoal … penetrates their hall and chambers so that whereas formerly they could let the premises for 10 marks a year they are now worth only 40 shillings.’

Traditionally called seacoal because it arrived in the capital by boat, much of that shipped to London came from Tyneside – coals to Newcastle, and all that – hence the name here, as it is close to where the fuel would have been unloaded onto wharves situated along the River Fleet at a time when barges could travel as far as Ludgate.

NEWCASTLE COURT, EC4

Situated off atmospheric little College Hill where the unexpected highlight is the fine seventeenthcentury stone gatehouse to the old Mercers’ School. With its memories of the old Whittington College, it gives a view onto the private but charming little courtyard behind as the wooden gates are left open during business hours.

Before the college was built this was Royal Street, a reference not to the Crown but to the area’s ancient drink-related heritage (we’re in Vintry Ward, from Vintarii or wine importers) and more specifically a thirteenth-century community of French-speaking wine merchants who lived hereabouts. They came from La Réole, a commune in the Gironde department of Aquitaine, which also explains the name of the adjacent church, St Michael Paternoster Royal.

Long after Richard Whittington and his college had gone – the buildings were sold for £92 when Henry VII suppressed it – property in the area was acquired and developed by a favourite of Charles II, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. In about 1730 his residence was demolished and replaced by a row of smaller houses. Collectively known as Castle’s New Court, the name gradually morphed into its current anagrammatic form.

NEWMAN’S COURT, EC3

Formerly Newman’s Yard after a seventeenth-century property owner who in mid-century had a spat with the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors over a right of way. The Merchant Taylors are still round the corner in Threadneedle Street and won the dispute, but for some reason Newman’s name was allowed to stand.

A hundred years later the yard would have been known to customers of the adjacent Virginia and Maryland coffee house, a popular gathering place for local shippers and merchants which in 1744 changed its name to the Virginia and Baltick to reflect the shifting business interests of its clientele.

By 1810 the thriving coffee house business had moved to the more spacious Antwerp Tavern behind the Royal Exchange. Here, within a few years, the regular customers had formed a committee of senior members, taken over a private room where entry could be restricted and controlled, and devised a set of rules and procedures to prevent the ‘wild gambling’ which was beginning to impinge on their business dealings.

While the creation of the modern Baltic Exchange was still several decades away this was the start of the Baltic market as we know it.

NORTHUMBERLAND ALLEY, EC3

Before joining the generalised westward migration of the moneyed, and long before moving into the magnificent ducal palace which for nearly 300 years stood at the western end of the Strand, the Earls of Northumberland kept a large house on Seething Lane.

John Stow recorded a visit in 1598, by which time the family had moved on and the place had become a low gaming house ‘common to all comers for their money, there to bowle and hazard.’ Soon afterwards it slipped down another rung, becoming a tenement for the very poor.

Remains of the house were discovered during the excavation of the foundations of Friary Court in 1981 – taking its name from the nearby Crutched or Crossed Friars – but this was nothing compared to an earlier find, an authentic Roman pavement, which after being lifted in 1787 in a pioneering example of rescue archaeology passed into the care of Burlington House, Piccadilly, and the Society of Antiquaries of London. As previously noted, the society had at this point only recently ceased gathering at the Mitre Tavern in Fleet Street.

NUN COURT, EC2

First recorded in 1720, the name is thought to derive from a local householder or developer rather than having any specific religious connection. As with others in this vicinity, what remains today is merely a portion of the original as a consequence of the driving through of Moorgate in the 1840s to improve access to London Bridge.

OLD CHANGE COURT, EC4

An early attempt at market manipulation, the Old or King’s Exchange was established by Henry II in the shadow of the old St Paul’s as a central point where items of value – gold and silver – could be exchanged for currency. It was, says Strype in his survey, somewhere ‘for the receipt of Bullion, to be coined. For Henry II. in the 6th Year of his Reign, wrote … that He and his Council had given prohibition, that none, Englishmen, or other, should make change of Plate, or other Mass of Silver, but only in his Exchange at London.’

Andrew Bokerell ‘Maior of London’ was charged with ‘farming’ the Exchange, items thus collected being despatched to the Mint while the officers under Bokerell were responsible...