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Category Archives: London

The Marauder’s Map (of London)

06 Saturday May 2017

Posted by Gargleyark in Art, London, Things that happened

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Tags

Art, harry potter, maps, marauders map, oh no look what mike's done now

Trusty and Wellbeloved Reader,

I’ve always enjoyed making presents rather than buying them, so – when it came to making a present for a certain lover of Harry Potter – I thought it was time to take a crack at something I’d always wanted to do – a marauders map, but of an actual place.

Therefore, kind reader, here is a little piece of work that I called The London Map.

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The outside of the map was very much based on the marauders map, with only a little wording changed here and there. If I’d had more time I’d have made the towers here reference my little history of London’s gates.

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So the outside was simple enough – I had a pretty good template from the actual map – but producing London as per the hands of Mooney, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs was a much more interesting prospect.

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Opening the map reveals a complex array of lines of text in different scripts and sizes running across the paper.

 

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Once expanded the map is almost a meter across, stretching from St James’s Park in the West to the Tower of London in the East. 

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A few landmarks appear with smaller names, hidden among the scribbled streets.

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In other places some more unexpected landmarks appear.

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Ultimately, what a great fun project – next up… Aberystwyth?

Adieu, kind Reader.

 

Wintery Rhymes

28 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by Gargleyark in Essex, London, Poetry, Things that didn't happen, Things that happened

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Tags

oh no look what mike's done now, poems, Poetry

Propelled Reader,

Yes, wintery can be spelled that way.

The Reader will allow me pause to put my odd attempts at poetic creativity here – not every blog post can be as interesting as others – and, now that I’ve been allowed this dull pause in interesting content, go and find something more interesting to read.

To the Happy West

I wandered by the waves last night
  In many a pleasant dream;
A youthful moon shone proud and bright
  And I within his beam
  But it was just a dream.

I felt the salt air in my heart
  And breathed the winter shore.
And thought that time would never part
  Those happy days before
  That stand up here no more.

The happy west, the conq’ring sea –
  These things I’ll breath again –
But there are hearts of lads like me
  That pine for them in vane
  And shall not come again.

Their hearts were willing long ago
  But clay makes good men still:
These dancing spirits wander so
  But time will cure what’s ill
  When I’ll go west and still.

Sunrise, 2016

The sheen of dawn
That ran aground
On the high idle mountain
Coloured the waiting room of stars
For a moment red
And newborn.
And the banners of darling things:
The diamond starlight
And baleful moon
Turned out,
And, done into nothing,
Poured down bronze
From out the autumn of the night
Into the bright rising spring
Of day.

A Tired Old Year

“That rhyme’s as broken as the rest of the world.”

  Big Ben strikes
Four and five and six.
He showers the evening down
And mocks at England’s politics:
The thorn of state and crown.

  The world shakes –
Another modern fear –
And happy news a tinderbox
To help it burn more clear.
Still turn those senseless clocks.

  Time and time again
Repeats old history
Philosophers mock at societies lot
And says’t no mystery –
Who wins or not.

  No, for sure
‘Tis clear as Bow bell’s chime
Evil asks only good does naught
And now’s its time –
How joy was short.

  But hope –
Lads, that’s an honest cure
Let’s not forget our friends
And when the world lays all unsure
We’ll work for better ends.

Night, 2016

Heaven transcendent
Crouched over a void of tears
That dribbled out
Towards the hue-forsaken west
And into a colourless tribute
Among newborn stars.

“There comes, you know,”
Spoke those time agnostic lights
“A day when dawns will be made of ash
“And dreams counted out
“When all things are up and done.”

The west sighed
And breezes from the bosom of home
Trembled forgotten things.
Charging good health
And happy days
And ignorant joys.
And starlight distant
Employed in their immaculate heaven
Mocked the quiet ambitions of man.

The trees breathed out together
And under the quiet reigns of night
And happy chords of heaven
Echoed those night wind stars again
“Beds of mould
And finite smiles
Are no comfort in this bleak eternity.
Starlight fades
And empty lungs
Tell no histories here.”

Adieu, dearest Reader.

What Happened to Aldgate?

18 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by Gargleyark in History, London, Things that happened

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Tags

aldgate, bethnal green, gates of london

Botanical Reader,

Now that you are well planted in your chair, allow me to potter along with a little story of Aldgate that I have meant to put into this lettered form for far too long.

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When I left off the eighteen-hundred year history of that edifice the year was 1761, and I clumsily ended saying that it was briefly being reconstructed at Bethnal Green as a curiosity. I had a sneaking feeling that something was wrong here; this was the only mention that I had found of it being reconstructed, and there was no evident reason for why this would have happened.

The story that I found, however, was beyond what I had expected – and stretches the history well into the 19th century.

To begin, we must go back to 1761, when the order for the gate to be dismantled was first given. The structure that was being pulled down dated from 1607, but may well have contained much recycled material from the earlier medieval structure.

This is where I have to introduce a magnificent antiquary – Ebenezer Mussel esq. – a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries and renowned collector of a vast range of ancient objects. From Roman and Egyptian treasures to illuminated manuscripts and even a pair of Elizabeth I’s gloves, this man’s vast collection covered the history of much of the globe, and his interest seems no less disposed towards the poor fate of the ancient gates of London. So, naturally, he bought one.

This gate was, as the Reader may be happy to expect, Aldgate – and he had all of the materials of the gate used to construct a wing on his home known as Corner House in Bethnal Green. It is this that led to it becoming known thereafter as Aldgate house. Corner House itself is recorded as early as 1538, and had already been rebuilt in the early 1640s and possibly again during the reign of James II, Mussel had bought it in 1760, only a year before purchasing Aldgate.

Mussel sadly died without seeing the new ‘Aldgate wing’ finished, but his son Ebenezer Mussel jr. had it finished in 1766 and had an inscription made up to celebrate it.

Aldgate House c.1800

Aldgate House c.1800

The wing stood on the north side of the house; incorporated into the gate were the ancient battlements, the pair of circular portraits of Roman emperors, supposedly based on coins from a hoard discovered when Aldgate was being rebuilt in 1607. The arched relief under the window may have been the wooden relief cut from ‘Wat Tyler’s Tree’ – a tree on Bow Common that had been cut down some years earlier, and local legend said had been the tree under which Wat Tyler had met his rebellious peasants.

A slightly later engraving of the house.

A slightly later engraving of the house.

After Ebenezer Mussel snr.’s death at the start of October 1764 the house and Ebenezer’s possessions’ ownership came into question, and it took two law cases for things to be settled, during which time the house was rented to a few of the many Jewish families who were at that point moving into Bethnal Green. The collections in the house were sold off in 1765, and the library followed in 1782. In 1790 the house was finally confirmed as having passed to his wife, Sarah, who had remarried in May 1765 to one John Gretton. Sarah, however, had died before 1790 so the house went to her widowed husband.

As a side note completely outside of the gate, and just to spark a bit of 18th century gossip, Sarah and John’s first daughter was born only three months after their marriage, and their marriage itself was only seven months after Ebenezer’s death.

Hughson describes the house as still standing in his description of London published in 1807, but it can’t have been long after this that Gretton had the aging property pulled down and replaced with a few houses and a small Calvinist church, which he touchingly named the Ebenezer Chapel. The chapel was finished in 1811, and the entire development by 1813. It is unclear how long this stood for, but by the end of the 19th century the population demographic seems to have shifted enough that there was little need for an independent chapel in the middle of Bethnal Green. By the start of the 20th century it had been replaced by Our Lady of the Assumption Roman Catholic Church, which still stands on the site today.

Some Odd Poems

26 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by Gargleyark in London, Poetry, Things that didn't happen

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Charitable Reader,

For the last few days I have been happily on holiday and also unhappily ill; now allow me to rhyme a little instead:

Night, London, September

The spendthrift stars, so rich in gold,
Were distant skies and dawns untold
And night’s new easel, plain and bare,
Was fresh with unadventured air.

The treetops spoke unlikely tales
That rolled the hillsides out of Wales,
To breath beneath those clotted suns
A story fit for greenwood lungs.

Stretching back their ancient limbs
Their figures played beguiling hymns
While high the eaves of mem’ry raised
And, backwards facing, lonely gazed:

They told of Harry Monmouth’s cause
When heaven’s anvils rang with wars,
And sang a tune of King Charles’ town
Before the rebels tore him down.

They spoke in knitted oak-green tongue
Of when Paul’s new built steeples rung,
And in the bloody height of doom
When it stood bright against the gloom.

They dreamt and whispered every tale
That they had glimpsed in life’s long trail,
Of daring men and noble lords,
Of senators, and flames, and swords.

And I sat out all dreaming too
To sleep an age long over due
Beneath my quarry cleared of light;
The empty and embracing night.

The Final Hour

All of heaven with his fiery garb descended:
I knew him not but saw him plain.
He sank his heart and, sure, his day was ended
So was the happy hour, when things could start again.

It was the proper hour, when time had done his duty,
With quiet glances of the sea-wet dawn,
When things to do had passed, and day had shed his beauty
And sin had had his way with me, and left the night forlorn.

Now slow I pace through ever conquered ages
With flaming forks and terror in between;
It’s little joy for six short feet of wages
And foolish things that once had been.

Adieu, Happy Reader.

The Medieval Gates of London: A Summary

03 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by Gargleyark in History, London, Things that happened

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My Befuddled Reader,

Allow me to at last finish the several small pieces I’ve inexpertly written here on the history of London’s gates. This last section simply sums up all previous drawings, and gives a small timeline of the gates themselves.

A N   AP O L O G Y    A N D    E X P L A N A TION
O F   T H E   I M A G E S

The images are drawn from a mixture of views, all of which I believe to have been done at or near the time that the gates were extant in the form represented. Any buildings around the gates I have left out, to allow for clear viewing of the gates, walls, and towers. The one image that inspired the entirety of this work is the only one that I have no evidence when or by whom it was drawn, and is unlabelled even as to which gate it is – but occurs within the Aldersgate section of Pennant’s Account of London. The first image of Aldersgate in the accompanying work is based partly on that image.

The other images pre-dating 1600 have been taken from early maps, which, although informative on many things, were not created to record the details of each building – and therefore the detail of those gates is as much on my own supposition as historical fact.

The walls, too, are very much based on my own suppositions and a few maps and descriptions, and there are very likely some smaller postern gates and pieces of demolished wall that are inaccurately depicted or even missing from my drawings.

One difficulty that has hampered the accuracy of these images is not just inconstancy between several artists working at the same time, but also that it’s not labelled on most drawings whether they are taken from within or without. My images are all drawn from without the gates, but – especially my image of Newgate – very possibly switches from without in the first two images to within for the final image.

The earliest image of Ludgate is taken from a view in the Museum of London, while my earliest image of Moorgate is taken from another view in the same museum, painted at the same time and also apparently of Ludgate. Since both cannot be the same gate, I chose the view that agrees the best with the history of the gate up until that time, and decided the other view was Moorgate based on most of the other gates having images showing them looking very different at that time, and the other image also agreeing well enough with the history and position of Moorgate.

Aside from that, these images are the best that I can supply to represent the gates as their appeared at the respective dates of the images. Therefore, the history above being as complete as I can be pleased to present it; I will take my leave of them for a time, and happily finish this attempted history.

A   W E L L – H I N G E D   T I M E L I N E

C. AD 55 – London Bridge is built, and somewhere along it is possibly a defensive structure; a predecessor to Bridgegate.

AD 100- The fort at Londinium is founded, while it is possible the disputed Iron Age settlement that stood a century previously had defensive gates, it is the gates of this fort that we first have evidence for and probable locations of.

AD 150 – Aldgate is built.

AD 200 – The city walls and gates are built; aside from the pre-existing Aldgate, these are Newgate, Aldersgate, Ludgate, and Bishopsgate.

AD 375 Aldersgate is built

AD 450 – By this time the officials of the Roman empire have been out of the country for almost half a century. London is probably almost uninhabited; the gates and other public structures fall into disrepair.

886 – Alfred the Great re-establishes the city among the old Roman ruins, he plans out new streets and repairs the defences, most likely repairing to some extent the Roman gates.

1215 – Following the Baron’s Revolt, Jews are expelled from the city and their houses and synagogues torn down, the stone being used to repair several of the gates and some of the city wall. This is attested to some five hundred years later when Ludgate is pulled down and stones bearing Hebrew inscriptions are found in its medieval footings.

1415 – A postern in the city wall is demolished and Moorgate built in its place.

1598 – Stow publishes his survey of London, noting that several of the city gates are in a sorry condition.

Early 1600s – about this time there was a drive to repair or rebuild several gates – although the focus seems to have been for aesthetic rather than defensive purposes.

1642 – At the outbreak of the Civil Wars it is already clear that the gates and city defences are inadequate, since at this date temporary defences are built beyond the city limits.

1660 – On the restoration of Charles II the portcullises of the gates are removed or wedged open, most of the physical gates are removed from their hinges.

1666 – The great fire destroys Ludgate and damages Newgate, supposedly Moorgate was affected by the fire too, but its distance from the fire effected areas suggests that instead the fire was just used as an excuse to rebuild the gate there too.

1760 – Parliament passes an act to allow the removal of the city gates, within two years there would only be Newgate left in the entire city.

1767 – The last of the city gates, Newgate, is demolished.

Referendum Floods

23 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by Gargleyark in Essex, London, Poetry, Politics, Things that didn't happen, Things that happened

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Soggy Reader,

I’d thought hard enough on the long journey home tonight  (I was clever enough to move out having registered to vote back in Essex) to produce a poem upon the odd predicament, with more rain running than trains. Which I certainly have never done before, and never about flooding.

Enjoy.

Getting Home for Mum’s Birthday

23rd June 2016

It was a Thursday, dull and grey,
(A soggy referendum day)
When I was walking down the Strand
And saw a swimming pool at hand –
I was surprised, for though quite clean,
T’was where the underground had been.

The station master, rather wet,
Gave a speech I shan’t forget:
He calmly said, though unsure how,
That “Essex is aquatic now.
“For those of you who might have voted,
“We don’t know where your paper’s floated.”

The county, high in disarray,
Was fathoms now, not miles away.
Platform four and five were clear
And had become a working pier,
While on the route to Bethnal Green
There sat a stranded submarine.

Commuters, ragged from the stress,
Had donned more ‘buccaneering’ dress
And taken out the Cutty Sark
For ‘pleasure boating’ in Hyde Park;
(But sadly – t’was unlucky chance –
The wind had pushed them out to France.)

I think before next time it rains
We’ll need a vote upon the drains,
And hopefully, though wisdom’s thin,
We’ll have more votes to take ‘Eau’ in;
What good can ‘go alone’ pretend
And who would vote to lose a friend?

The Medieval Gates of London: A History of the Selected Minor Gates

12 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by Gargleyark in Art, History, London, Things that happened

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Complicit Reader,

Here it is, then – the last of these happy few posts on the Gates of London. This little history finishes here with the stories of three minor gates, one of which stands to this day; these are the Holbein Gate, Westminster Gate, St. John’s Gate, and Bridgegate.

Allow me to carry on:

THE MINOR GATES OF THE CITY

It is not easy to define a ‘minor’ gate in the city; I have my own small selection to present here, and may not be what the reader expects – though I hope my minor presentation will be a happy encounter. There were easily a dozen small gates and entrances knocked through London’s walls over the years as the growth of the city progressed, and the walls proved less defensive and instead just an inconvenient remnant of older times. It is indeed one of these small postern gates that Moorgate developed from. These gates, however, are poorly recorded and were generally little more than minor doorways made through the ancient fabric – in the end uninteresting both as a drawing as well as the subject of a singular history.

There were plenty of other gates; some defensive and some decorative: of these I present a selection; the first is a monastic gate, of which there were once many such gatehouses in London; two are from the entrances of a palace, a grand way to show off power and wealth; and my final example is defensive, though it does not fall into the group of ‘major’ gates to the city.

Allow me to gather a history of these, and present it immediately.

S A I N T   J O H N ’ S   G A T E

This very fine gate is the only gateway of medieval origin still standing in the city – the Reader may take note that the fine gate of St Bartholomew-the-Great is not presented here instead since that gate was constructed from the remains of the church there following the dissolution, and was never in medieval times (as far as my minor knowledge affirms) a gatehouse. That of St John’s, however, was probably one of the finest medieval monastic gatehouses in London – being the entry point to Clerkenwell Priory, headquarters of the Knights Hospitalier.

The first form of this gate was destroyed when much of the priory was ransacked during the Peasants Revolt and not rebuilt for over a hundred years. I can only suppose the cause for this delay being that there was enough of the ruined gate left to act as a reasonable gatehouse, and the priory’s fortunes being spent on entertaining royal guests meaning that none remained for the upkeep or reconstruction of its buildings.

Whatever the cause of the delay, the new gate was built in 1504 by Grand Prior Sir Thomas Docwra, and it is the form of that gate which is still present today.

At the time of the dissolution it was granted to the Duke of Northumberland, who used the priory as little more than storerooms. It was occasionally used by the city to entertain officials until 1537 when, in a rather dramatic attempt to reuse the priory for building materials, the majority of the church was blown up.

When that infamous queen Mary came to the throne she rebuilt what she could of the church and attempted to revive the priory. Then,following her fall, it returned to numerous private hands, with occasional work on the church, but little known of the gate.

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The 18th century saw the gate become an alehouse, and by this time the roofline seems to have been rebuilt, as well as the top of the left hand tower. During the Victorian fervor for everything Gothic the gate was heavily remodelled and rebuilt in a style the Victorians found pleasing, but which masked or destroyed much of the true medieval fabric.

It is this form that we encounter today – presently the museum, bur previously the headquarters, of the order of St. John. And indeed, if you want to meet with one of these kind relics which this work has humbly tried to revive, then this is surely the place.

H O L B E I N   G A T E

This very well designed structure gained the name Holbein Gate from common belief that it had been designed by the master artist himself, although there is no proof of this in any documents from the time. It was also known at different times as the King’s Gate or the Cockpit Gate.

It served as the main gate to Whitehall  Palace, taking roughly a year to build and being finished in 1532. Within only some small time after this it was apparently modified, with the gate arch being shortened to a square and windows being let in to increase the already ample living floors above.

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Unlike the defensive gates of the city, I can give no grand history for this building; of the two floors above it the lower would seem to have been rented out to different noble tenants and the upper set aside as official use. Indeed, the top floor was for many years the ‘Paper Office’.

This gate along with Westminster Gate and the still remaining Banqueting Hall were the only major parts of the palace to survive the Whitehall fire of 1698.

With the open space that the destruction of the palace created, the area became a busy thoroughfare and by the early 18th century the gate was already proving problematic to traffic. Suggestion was made in 1719 to pull it down, but there was an outcry against the monumental building’s destruction, and the plan was foiled.

The Holbein Gate stood for 40 more years, and was taken down in August 1759. It had been intended to be re-erected elsewhere, but – and to the constant misery of the present times – that did not occur.

W E S T M I N S T E R   G A T E

Westminster Gate is, similar to the above, of Tudor construction and was also a gate to Whitehall Palace, it was perhaps not as beautifully built as the Holbein Gate, but certainly more curiously. It acted as a minor gate to the palace and appears from masons’ fees to have been built in the early 1530s, at about the same time as the Holbein Gate.

The structure seems to have remained relatively untouched after Tudor times, being used as lodgings – The Duke of Buckingham, that noble rogue, would have been familiar with it since his mother lived the latter part of her life there.

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An anonymous compiler of the celebrated work Old and New London adds an unusually unwelcome comment in the summary of the gate,  noting ‘Altogether, if we may judge from the prints of the gate published by Kip, and also in the “Vetusta Monumenta” by the Society of Antiquaries, it was one of the ugliest structures in the metropolis’.

Westminster Gate did not get the same reprieve from the plans of demolition that the Holbein Gate was saved from in 1719. After some planning the workmen moved in and the site was cleared in 1723, since at that time it blocked the only road into the houses of parliament.

 

T H E   B R I D G E G A T E

This gate, as far as history preserves, is of medieval foundation – though a bridge has been present in London since Roman times, and it is not inconceivable that those men of famous engineering skill put up a gate on or at one end of the bridge that stood then. The fact that the Roman bridge at times supported a small garrison suggests at least some kind of fortification existed upon it.

The medieval tale of this gate begins with, of course, the building of a medieval bridge. It is partly down to the sad murder of Thomas Becket, Henry II’s unlucky archbishop, that the bridge was constructed – part of the great wealth of building that was done as penance by that noble king. At the centre of the bridge he placed a chapel dedicated to Becket, and – importantly for this work – upon the bridge he constructed at least one gate: the Bridgegate.

The gate was likely finished midway through the reign of King John, of Robin Hood fame, in the first decade of the 1200s. Less than a further decade later it faced its first role as a defensive structure during the Barons revolt of 1215 – by an unclear scheme the Barons made it past the gate and into London.

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By the fifteenth century there were two gates on the bridge, one at each end. For this work I will focus on the southern most for the following reasons; firstly, it is apparently the oldest; secondly,  it is the gate that was external to the city, and therefore more important in the history of the city’s defence; thirdly that more images of it throughout its  time survive; and fourthly, it is simply the most interesting.

This last point,  aside from the tales of daring attacks on it, is due in part to a particularly grizzly decoration that adorned the gate – all gates in the city were hung with traitors heads, but Bridgegate appears to have totalled the most, with sometimes more than thirty heads atop it. The heads being pickled and covered in tar meant that some could be many decades old before falling or being taken down.

This gate is also celebrated as the bridge over which that ferocious Henry V entered following his triumph at Agincourt.

It was breached by attackers at least twice more after the Barons’ Revolt of 1215; once during the Peasants’ Revolt, on the 13th June 1381, and once during Jack Cade’s rebellion of 1450. The poor gate was also burned in early May 1471, when the Wars of the Roses saw London briefly under siege.

The gate was also rebuilt several times – it is recorded that on the 14th of January 1437, “the great stone gate and the tower standing upon it, next Southwark, fell suddenly down at the river, with two of the fairest arches of the said bridge.”

In April 1577 the northern gate was rebuilt, which saw the already bedecked southern gate gain yet another grizzly troupe of traitors’ heads. A little after this, on the northern side of the gate,  a third gate of decorative wood was built.

By this time, however, the buildings along the bridge were a considerable problem for traffic – it was in fact quicker to ferry goods across the river most of the time during the day. The last thing of note I find is the noble Charles II passing under the gate in great ceremony in 1660 having been restored to the throne.

In 1758 the government began purchasing and demolishing the houses along London Bridge and not log after this the act approving the removal of the gates to the city was passed in 1760. The gate itself was completely cleared within two years, one of the last buildings on the bridge to be taken down. Shortly before this it appears a great deal of work had gone into having the gate refaced in an austere but reasonably pleasing fashion, likely after 1730 since Seymour makes no mention of this construction.

I forgot, Kind Reader, that there is also my apology and explanation of the images previously rendered in ink, as well as a Well-Hinged Timeline that gives a quick overview of these gates and their histories. I will be adding that soon…

Adieu, dearest of Dear Readers!

The Medieval Gates of London: A History of Moorgate

07 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by Gargleyark in Art, History, London, Things that happened

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Well-secured Reader,

The last of the main gates is here! Here’s a quick history of Moorgate and a summary of the final days of the gates; enjoy, kind Reader!

M O O R G A T E

Moorgate is the latest of the main city gates to have been constructed, and according to folklore was originally a Roman postern gate. Whatever the date of the original postern, the small nature of the gate compared to the heavy traffic that it received meant that orders were given in 1415 for the wall in that place to be taken down and a new grand gate constructed in its place. This was to allow better access for Londoners wanting to get to Moorfields, one of the few public areas in the city that was not build upon. Other reports suggest that the postern was in fact sealed up and Moorgate was built in a different position to its predecessor.

William Hampton modernised the gate, giving it a more impressive look, in about 1511. This date is questionable however, since Hampton was mayor of London in 1472 and died ten years later, making it unlikely that he was available to help improve the gate in 1511. It is possible that there is confusion here, and Hampton improved the gate during his mayoralty and it was then again repaired in 1511 by another, and both dates appear in other histories – this would agree with several 18th century histories I read after having supposed this point.

20160410_113031

The gate was apparently damaged in the fire of 1666, although according to some sources the fire never actually made it to the gate, so the fire may have been more of an excuse to fund its further improvement, whatever the case it was rebuilt completely in about 1672. This new gate had pedestrian arches on each side and an extra high main gate, reportedly either to allow soldiers ceremoniously marching through it to hold their pikes straight, or due to the city’s want to introduce a haymarket nearby and therefore wanted space under the arch for tall carts of hay to pass.

20160410_113037

Finally the gate was pulled down in 1762, and the stone reused for widening the central arch of the old London Bridge.

These excellent gates, the history of which is now related in as full and ready detail as I can muster, steadily descended from their original defensive purposes as early as the medieval period, when garrisons were replaced by prisoners and their military use began to diminish.

They remained a symbol of power and were useful for displaying the dismembered parts of traitors as late as the end of the 17th century. By the 1600s several parts of the wall around London had been broken through, and peppered with a great number of small gates and entrances for the convenience of the people. The futility of the walls and gates for any kind of defence was further proven in the Civil War, when rather than using these defences to protect the city, new earthworks were built beyond the city limits – more practical since they were in the open, away from the crushing houses and streets, as well as being better suited against the artillery of the times.

After the restoration of the glorious King Charles II in 1660 the physical wooden gates of the city were all removed from their hinges and the portcullises jammed open, several of the gates at this time were already ruinous and they were already well beyond any form of practical defensive use.

By now being well within the limits of the city, one can only suppose that any use made of the gates for collecting charges for bringing goods into the city had long since passed. The last date that I can find for any considerable construction work on the gates is in 1735, when Bishopsgate was completely rebuilt in a dignified Georgian style.

Finally, the gates became more and more of an inconvenience, blocking traffic and stopping the widening of roads. The London Streets Act 1759/1760 was passed to allow the main gates of the city to be demolished and within less than a decade not a single trace remained of them remained.

One more post to come; the selected minor gates of the city.

Adieu, dearest Reader.

The Medieval Gates of London: A History of Aldersgate

14 Saturday May 2016

Posted by Gargleyark in Art, History, London

≈ Leave a comment

Happy Reader,

With five gates already blogged about, I am – in presenting the sixth – now over half way through this small series. Allow me, without further delay, introduce the Reader to the minor history of famous Aldersgate:

A L D E R S G A T E

While it is the second-newest of the main gates to the city, Aldersgate is still of a very ancient foundation, being built toward the end of the fourth century. It was possibly near the site of an earlier gate that was a part of the same Roman fort as Cripplegate. It is unclear if Aldersgate is a continuation of this gate, or a new gate built on a different site, if it is considered to be the former then it does in fact deserve to be in the above section.

The gate may be first mentioned in the Laws of Ethelred in about the year 1000, when it is called the gate of Ealdred, however this could also apply to Aldgate, or even another minor London gate now unknown to history. I think, though, that it is likely to refer to this gate, since in a Patent Roll of February 1270 a gate is referred to as Aldredesgate after Aldgate has already had its name well established as Aldgate for some years.

20160410_113019

Aldersgate is firmly established as the name at least by the 1300s, although no records survive of any repairs or construction occurring to the gate. James I, the first of that blessed line of England’s monarchs, passed under the gate when he entered the city as its king before his formal coronation in 1603, not long after which an equestrian relief of the king was added to the outside of the gate. It was rebuilt in an elegant style in 1617, the relief of James being added onto this gate as well.

Aside from this relief of the king, the gate also sported statues of a second image of James enthroned, and images of the prophets Samuel and Jeremiah.

20160410_113025

The use of the rooms over the gate are unclear throughout its medieval life, but it was leased for commercial purposes in the 17th century and was a printing office for some of that century, later becoming the residence of the city’s Cryer.  Several buildings put against it at this time added considerable load to the gate, and were in the end pulled down shortly before the Great Fire.

It was damaged in this fire but was restored in 1670, finally being pulled down in 1761.

The Medieval Gates of London: A History of Cripplegate

11 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by Gargleyark in Art, History, London, Things that happened

≈ Leave a comment

Dumbfounded Reader,

Allow me to cure your confusion with a little more blogging on some gates.

C R I P P L E G A T E

The final gate I shall touch upon in my list of Roman gates is Cripplegate, which in my opinion must have been the oldest gate to survive in modern times – originating as part of the defences of the original Roman fort at London a little after AD100. Being quite distant from the heart of Saxon London, the gate appears to have had a quiet Saxon history.

It was supposedly the site of a miracle in 1010, when Bury St. Edmunds was under threat of being sacked by the Danes and the body of the saint for which that town is named was transferred to London for reburial. When passing through Cripplegate many sick people were apparently cured, and the gate itself was renowned for being a blessed place where sick people could go to be cured. The origin of the name though doesn’t appear to stem from this occurrence, but instead possibly derives from the Saxon name Crepelgate, meaning a covered entrance or pathway. The Brewers Company of London paid for it to be rebuilt in 1244. It was rebuilt again in 1491 after money was bequeathed for the purpose by Edmund Shaw, a goldsmith.

20160410_113044

Blimey I’ve uploaded that more wonky than I realised

Similar to other gates, its medieval purpose was often that of a prison, but occasionally was set aside as a residence or for other official purposes.

It survived the great fire of 1666 and the structure was improved in 1663 – when a foot gate was added – and apparently again in 1675, although what these second improvements were I cannot find. At this time the City Water Bailiff had use of the structure for his own residence.

20160410_113050

It survived another century, before meeting the same fate as the other gates of the city in 1760.

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