The Rest Is History - 212. Haunted London

Episode Date: July 21, 2022

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Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello, welcome to The Rest Is History. Now, once again, we are in London. Tom Holland has wrote me into one of his exciting walking tours of our nation's capital. But this time, it's a tour with a bit of a difference, because, Tom, we're doing Hidden London, the secrets of London. Very exciting.

Well, what I thought was, I mean, one of the things about London, it's an unbelievably historic city, but there are lots of places where the history is kind of hidden. Yeah. But nevertheless, when you know what went on, when you have a sense of the kind of the ghosts that haunt it. I mean, one of the problems with London is that although it's an incredibly historic city, there are many of the most historic corners of it where the history isn't really visible. Yeah. So you have a track record, the Christmas Carol podcast, the Roman London podcast, of dragging me to what appear to be very banal corners of the city, outside branches of coffee shops and loss adjusters offices and things like that and to be frank that's where we are again we're at a big junction the old bailey now the old bailey is

very historic yes the old the old bailey which is the great courthouse is nearby there's a church i know you love a church so i imagine that's a play but the exciting thing for me is that i don't know where we're going exactly it's a mystery tour tour. So over the course of the lockdown, you know, you could only go out and have exercise if you went from door and out and then back to your door. Yeah. So we just ended up doing loads and loads of walks and I increasingly themed them

kind of around aspects of London history. So we did Roman London, we did Medieval London, we did Tudor London, We did the ghosts of London. We did Dickens's London, all kinds of different themes. And I've brought you to the area of the city that had the most intersections. So if you imagine them as ley lines, this was the kind of the spaghetti junction of London, psycho geographical walks. And as you say, Dominic, it doesn't look... It's not particularly picturesque.

It's very, very unappealing. But, so we did a walk of Roman London. We did. And talked about the wall. We are on the site of one of the gates in the Roman wall. And this was Newgate. And according to our old friend John Stowe, the Elizabethan antiquarian,

it was called Newgate because it was built in the reign of either henry the first or stephen so in the norman period was in fact the new gate he was wrong um he was wrong because it is in fact a roman gate and from here the road went it's watling street that goes up to um to basically to to the cotswolds to your to your neck of the world so if you just keep yeah you just keep heading along hoban viaduct you get back home so that's what so tom for those people who don't know london we are still within the walls of that well just by the walls of the city yes so so the so the roman wall marks the line of the city of london pretty much um so we are just on the edge of the city. And I think one of the reasons why this area of London is that we're going to go and look.

So we're going to go north away from the line of the Roman wall is that the stuff that went on just outside the city wall is incredibly interesting. So that's part of what we're going to look at. But but just a bit on Newgate. Newgate, of of course is famous as the prison of course so um there was there was a kind of prison here from from the end of the 12th century right the way up to 1902 1902 surprises me yeah so long because it's sort of very Dickensian image isn't it absolutely yes yes and so um vast kind of criminal complex and the fact that the the old bailey is there you've got the golden statue of justice with her blindfolded with the sword and the scales of justice, is a reminder of the fact that this was the site where people were arrested, chucked into prison.

And in fact, opposite us, where we're standing now, there is a pub called the Viaductaduct tavern yes i was just eyeing up that bub and in the basement where they store the beer you're a great man for a london basement tom i know yes well there are no roman ruins here sadly um but there are there are um surviving cells in which debtors were kept and wow so they're down down in the basement so if you're ever having a drink in the Viaduct Oven, you can ask the landlord, go and have a look. And there is apparently still a condemned man's cell on the far side. You'd be kept in that slightly larger because...

Of the Old Bailey. Yeah, of the Old Bailey. So you get loads of visitors. People who want to see someone who's about to be hanged. Yes, of course. And then you'd be led along a tapering corridor, so it would get narrower and narrower and narrower as you got to the gallows. In case you kind of, you know, as the prisoner, you'd have a panic and try and run away.

So they would execute people on site? Well, so the main execution site for a lot of the period was Tyburn Hill, which is now Marble Arch. And Hoban Viaduct you keep going on it ends up becoming Oxford Street so you'd be put on a tumbril and you'd be taken all this kind of about three miles uh and people would line and cheer and it'll be a great holiday great fun um that changed in 1783 right and we're next to a church, and basically this space here, so there's a kind of, the church is called, brilliantly, St Sepulchre without Newgate, so outside Newgate,

so we're outside the city walls here. This is where the gallows were, and it was a huge spectacle. So Dickens came here to see it, Thackeray came to see an execution. Dickens' descriptions of going to see executions. Dickens had a real fascination for executions, didn't he? He saw one in Rome, didn't he? Yeah, he did. It was special to see him. But a kind of legacy of that is that inside the church,

inside St Sepulchre without Newgate, there is an executioner's bell, which was endowed by a pious merchant in 1604. So it would sound whenever an execution was due to be held. To summon the locals? Yes, to summon the locals. And these verses would be chanted. Prepare you, for tomorrow you will die. Watch all and pray. The hour is drawing near. Prepare you for tomorrow you will die. Watch all and pray.

The hour is drawing near. That you before the Almighty must appear. Examine well yourselves in times repent. That you may not to the eternal flames be sent. Well, I'd like to hear that before I make excuses. Exactly. So I think that's all kind of very invigorating and inspiring. And the other invigorating, inspiring aspect of this corner

is that here we have London's oldest water fountain, drinking fountain. So this is a, it says the first metropolitan public drinking fountain erected on Hoban Hill in 18, what is that, 39? And removed when the viaduct was constructed in 1867. So there are two cups here still. Two cups, but no water, sadly. No. So this is sort of classic Victorian public service engineering, isn't it?

Yes. And it's the conjunction of gallows and temperance movement that is very, very Victorian. Yeah, so some people presumably will be coming here to watch the execution and getting absolutely tanked up. Yeah. And they're putting water here to, you know, calm down. To try and regulate it.

Yeah. So that's Newgate. So it's a kind of, you know, you could walk along here and have no sense of it. But I think once you feel it, maybe I'm being over romantic. I think, you know, the sense of misery and oppression does slightly ooze up out of the out of the tarmac maybe i'm right in thinking tom that this is where some tudor in the tudor period some monks uh were brought here because they'd refused to swear the oath of allegiance to henry the eighth that's right so so we're going to head north now along Gilt Spur Street. Yeah. And Gilt Spur Street, as its name suggests, this is where they would manufacture spurs, gild them.

And we're going to head up towards Smithfield, which was a huge open space outside the city of London to which cattle would be brought from across the country. And to this day, Smithfield is still the major meat market. It's the only one that continues from the Middle Ages on the same place. But it was also, in medieval times, the site of the great Priory of St Bartholomew. And we'll talk a bit more about that when we get to it. But yes, so when the Priory of St Bartholomew was closed down, there were about 10 monks that refused to take the Oath of Allegiance to Henry VIII, and so they were brought to New Gutgell and left to starve.

And as we will see, there are quite a lot of memorials reaching back to the Tudor period, back even to the Middle Ages. And one of the reasons why it's so rich in early modern and medieval monuments is because of course back in the city in 1666 you had the great fire which incinerated vast you know huge amounts of the medieval city but dominic if you look here as we come down giltspur street you'll see up ahead there is uh cock lane a golden no up up there oh yeah it's a golden statue of a fat boy this boy is in memory put up for the late fire of london occasioned by the sin of gluttony 1666 you're trying to tell me something tom so so this this this golden boy marks the furthest limit that the great fire reached

so it swept through newgate up giltsburg street and it was stopped here and the sin of gluttony is this a reference to sort of pudding lane baker's shops the boy at pie corner was erected to commemorate the staying of the great fire which beginning at pudding lane was ascribed to the sin of gluttony when not attributed to the papists as on the monument and the boy was made prodigiously fat to enforce the moral the thing is that by today's standards he's not really that fat he looks quite healthy he was originally built into the front of a public house called the fortune of war which used to occupy this site and was pulled down in 1910 now here's an interesting thing Tom the fortune of war was the chief house of call

north of the river for resurrectionists. So body snatchers, yeah. In body snatching days years ago, very strangely punctuated this, in body snatching days years ago, the landlord used to show the room where on benches around the walls the bodies were placed,

labelled with the snatchers' names, waiting till the surgeons at St Bartholomew's could run round and appraise them. Right, because the Priory is also a hospital. Right. So St Bartholomew's Hospital is another... Yes, we were opposite St Bartholomew's Hospital, one of London's most famous hospitals,

probably the most famous. Yeah, so I think this is an absolutely brilliant... This sense that... I mean, it's, again, a very anonymous corner apart from the statue of the fat boy. You'd have no sense that this is where body snatchers were hanging out. No, no, not at all. And yet this is absolutely why this is such an incredibly interesting

part of London to walk around, because it's absolutely full of these kind of ghosts. And talking of ghosts, we are on the corner of a road that is very, very famous to anyone who knows about ghosts and which featured in the wonderful episode we did on ghosts. And that is Cock Lane. Right. Now let's talk about Cock Lane. So Cock Lane, obviously, that's an allusion to the butcher's produce that is here. Right. So there are still roads, lanes, whatever. So it's kind of a

poulterers lane it's a poulterers lane um so but but down there so cock lane was um it was a house that in the 18th century um 1762 it's probably the most notorious haunting in the whole of london's history um and it's a poltergeist which claimed to be the ghost of a woman who'd been murdered by a former lodger. And it became the biggest talking point in London. Everyone was talking about it. And people came in and started kind of finding out. We had Roger Clarke, didn't we?

We had Roger Clarke telling us all about that. So if you're interested in the full story of that, go back and listen to that. Dr. Johnson went and investigated it. He did, yeah. Not a great ghost hunter. I think we talked then about... Dr. Johnson, ghost hunter. Yeah. There's a great TV series on think it'd be i mean i think we talked about yeah what is a great tv series and by the way i thought of it first um but um sadly for fans of the psychic it it basically people decided it had all been a fraud

yeah and actually as streets go it's a pretty drab and unprepossessing looking street now isn't it but that's the funny thing about this corner of london tom there can be very few places in london It's a pretty drab and unprepossessing looking street now, isn't it? It's got a faint hint of the Victoria. About this corner of London, Tom, there can be very few places in London where there's such a sort of gulf between the romantic kind of ghost-haunted memory and the frankly slightly banal reality. Yeah, and I think that that is exactly what makes London's history so hard to get a grasp on. Yeah. It's not like going around rome or even paris um it's it's not kind of in your face yeah but having said that because fortunately we're now going beyond the limits of the great fire there are some incredible

monuments to london's past i look forward to so i think we should we should head up now towards um saint bartholomew's priory um and saint bartholomew's priory was founded by a man called rahir and rahir was um a leading courtier at the court of henry the first so um the youngest son of william the conqueror um succeeded william william the second william Rufus. And some stories say that Rahir was Henry I's jester. Oh, nice. It would be wonderful to think that he was. He went to Rome on pilgrimage, got sick, prayed, and a vision of St Bartholomew came to him.

He got healed, got cured, and he made a vow that he would come back and he would found a priory in a hospital. And he came back, and Henry I gave him land by Smithfields, so just outside... So outside the city. Outside the city. And again and again, when you look at the line of the Roman walls

and you look at where monasteries, priories, abbeys, so on, are situated, they're next to the walls for the obvious reason that the Roman walls provided a vast quantity of building material that they could then put into it. So when the Reformation came, most of the priory got sold off, although not all of it, as we will see in due course. And the monks had run the hospital. so people in london were kind of very worried that uh they'd be left without the medical services that the monks had been

providing at the hospital and so they petitioned henry the eighth to basically refound it and so that's exactly what happened unless you're one of those monks who he shoved into starve to death yeah well that's obviously that's less good now it's a shame because we're standing in front of the main entrance into saint bartholomew's hospital yeah and uh it's absolutely covered in scaffolding so keeping with the spirit of this exactly exactly it's kind of yes a wonderful metaphor i shall have to use my uh my prodigious imagination consult the Bodleian. Or consult the Bodleian. But behind that scaffolding is the only statue of Henry VIII that stands in London. And very kindly, they have put a picture of it on the scaffolding.

So we've got the fat golden boy down there. Well, another fat boy. Fat Henry VIII. Yeah. So this is Henry VIII in his pomp, isn, another fat boy. Fat Henry VIII. Yeah. So this is Henry VIII in his pomp, isn't it? It's not Henry VIII as Prince Harry. It's Henry VIII as Johnny Vegas. Yes, this is the enema.

Yeah, the enema stage. The ulcer on the leg stage. So St. Bartholomew's Hospital, still a functioning hospital. Yeah. There were people, there were talk of closing it down i think about 10 15 years ago but it's it it carries on um and of course very famous um this is where harvey william harvey developed the blood transfusion blood transfusion but also very very famous for um the first meeting of the celebrated fictional couple of course watson of course has got back from afghanistan yeah he is

wounded yep and and uh holmes is in the chemical laboratory and a friend of course says you know gonna know a guy at the hospital who is a little bit eccentric but uh he's looking for someone to share rooms yeah and and they meet here and i think in the um in the uh the bend it come about update yes this is where he fall this, rather than the Reichenbach Falls, he jumps off St Bartholomew's Hospital as a kind of a tribute. A nod, yes. Yes, as a nod to that. So, I mean, I think anyone with an interest in London's history

is glad that the hospital carries on and continues to bear the name of of saint bartholomew now the priory which we're now you know we're on a street we're outside the hospital in medieval times the priory is ran where we are walking now we're on the open street so we're approaching a tudor gatehouse yeah um which is and you can see there's kind of um the essence of tudor architecture so black beams white paint yes um but there's an archway beneath it which is actually 13th century so the tudor gatehouse was added obviously in the tudor period oh that's history podcasting and it then got it then got covered over and i think it got kind of rediscovered after the blitz

so um they they removed the facing and discovered this kind of amazing yeah it's magnificent uh because there's very very few buildings of that period yeah in london right yeah i mean right uh but we're now going to the surviving chunk of the priory so when the prior so we're now walking through the gateway and we're walking down a pathway. And this was the nave of the Priory. So this was the kind of the main body of the church. Yeah. In traditional fashion, there's an incredibly banal office block right in the middle of what would have been the center of the church.

Yes. church yes but we're now approaching uh what what is now the parish church of saint bartholomew the great yeah which preserves um a section of uh of the original priory um and it is the oldest surviving parish church in london it's a very handsome little church very very handsome church it reaches back to uh to the norman period so it's got a brick tower, red brick tower. So the brick tower is later. Yeah. But the main body, when we, have you been here before? Never. Okay, so anyone who's seen Four Weddings

and a Funeral, this is the scene of the final wedding. So it's where Hugh Grant jilts Duckface and goes off. Oh yeah. This is a perfect opportunity for you to revive your Hugh Grant is it raining oh that's so moving and so when you step inside yes suddenly you're back in the middle ages so here is so on the right as you go in you you've got a section of the cloisters, just to kind of really one of the four sides of the cloisters.

But going in here, suddenly you are in this remarkable space and it's the meeting point. And so you come in and you basically you're at the interface of the Romanesque, which is the style of architecture that the norman kings were sponsoring so there we've got those romanesque arches and yeah so arcades and so on yeah so it's kind of narrow narrow arches yeah um squat arches squat pillars and then the place where we're standing kind of opening up onto that space you have the gothic yes soaring arches so so this and um the chapel in the in the tower of london is the earliest manifestations of the gothic and it's a kind of incredible incredible space and so so this you know this is a church that is going to be 900 years old in 2023 yeah um and so as you would expect it is just full of trace elements memories memorials to that history so this this

um font here dates from 1404 and do you know who was baptized there there's no reason why you would um uh hogarth hogarth who lived in the area i was going to guess someone from the 15th century because you're throwing me with 1404 so so hogarth was one of the guys who was very skeptical about um the cock lane ghost so he's very much a guy who was hanging around in this area yes he's baptized here being baptized very much very much a local um and if we walk down here um we come to uh what i think is in a way the most history haunted single the most single history haunted space in the whole of london because you see we we're going down the side of the uh around the pillars so we head towards the head of the church

behind the altar and ahead of us is a tiny altar which shows the virgin yeah um nice icon always with the baby jesus now this court this this place here next to the the icon of the virgin is the only known place to have hosted an appearance by the virgin mary in london well so you're gonna have to justify that so she appeared around 1180 so after the family you know some some kind of what's it's kind of 70 years 60 years after the founding of the priory and she turned up and she spoke to a canon called hubert and told him that the monks were doing the liturgy incorrectly so basically she was kind of telling them off yes she told hubert what they had to do in english i imagine it was in latin or yeah aramaic i mean

who knows what she was talking i imagine i'm asking too many questions i imagine it was a norman french i meant or yeah aramaic i mean who knows what she was talking i imagine i'm asking too many questions i imagine in latin um and so she told hubert what he had to do and he obediently did it and then the virgin mary vanished right and so in honor of that they built um this wonderful chapel which is attached it's behind directly behind the altar built onto it the lady chapel again has a kind of huge great picture of the virgin behind the altar up here but this after the reformation this all this space all got sold off yeah because of course though the reformers would not have been keen yes so the church got so this got kept as a church to serve as a parish church but this bit the, the Lady Chapel, which was built in honour of the appearance of the Virgin Mary,

that got sold off. And so it got bought up, it got used, it got turned into private accommodation, it got turned into workshops. And in the 1720s, this was a printer's. And in 1724, the printers took on a new assistant. Can I guess who it was? Have a guess. Was it Benjamin Franklin?

It was, Dominic. It was. I know more than you think, Tom. So this space is the only place that has featured both the Virgin Mary and Benjamin Franklin. And I think others. Am I not right in thinking that a dancing master was also involved with this space at some point? Did they have a dancing school or something? So there was a dancing school here, there was a printer, all kinds of things.

Mr. Turvey Drop, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. From Bleak House. That's right. Yeah. But the reason I love that is that, as you know, Dominic, I'm a great enthusiast for the way that Christian history has shaped the cast of thought. You astound me.

You astound me. enthusiast for the way that christian history has shaped the cast of thought and the sense of continuity between you know the age of faith and the middle ages and the the age of the enlightenment yes of course which many people see as being rad you know radical discontinuity i would see as being very much part of a continuum and so i think that this, you know, in terms of spaces that are haunted by the past, this is... Ghosts of dancers past. Of dancers past. So it got brought back by the church in the 19th century. So this is the chapel on the site now is a sort of...

No, this is the authentic. You know, this was... This space was turned into workshops. They then got cleared out and it got reconsecrated um given back to the church and the roof was was about to collapse and they had an appeal so they it opened earlier this year and this of course has been um uh a church of notable weddings tom has it not well i mentioned um hugh grant you did uh deborah mitford got married here so um all very very very exciting.

And there are two kind of interesting other highlights, just to point out. What have you got for us, Tom? So up there, there's an oriole window, which is where the prior, just before the Reformation, built it so that he could gaze down and check that the monks were behaving themselves. Oh, yeah, that's a very nice view. So that's kind of nice. But here is the tomb of prior here who founded

the guy monastery in the hospital the original roman yes and um he is so we talked about how this is an area of london that is haunted by ghosts he reputedly literally haunts this church um because the story goes that um in the 19th century the tomb was opened by workmen who and one of them stole his sandal and so the ghost of the strange very strange very strange no because he's not um he's not he's not a saint or anything why would you want his sandal dead man's sandal i i think simply to set up the story because i remember saying i remember telling this to roger clark and he turned around and said yes that story has appeared in about 500 iterations so again i don't think so but it's very but i mean it's it's it's

lovely tom but is that one of those things that sometimes happens in this podcast where you tell a story that turns out to be totally untrue well it's up to the listener to decide whether it's true or not okay Okay. I'm not going to say whether Priory Hears Ghost materialises on the day of his death, demanding the return of his handle or not. Just before we go into the break, I think this church is featured in lots of films, hasn't it?

Shall we go and see if there's a list? Well, I think there may be a list. And I'm prepared to bet that this church appeared in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Well, it would be astonishing if you were right. Are you a fan of Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Well, it would be astonishing if you were right. You a fan of Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, Tom? Yeah, I loved it. Did you? Yeah. Kevin Costner didn't annoy you? I loved its

distinctive geography, going from Dover to wherever it was, London, via Hadrian's Wall. Robin Hood films have a slightly checkered record, don't they? Because I always think of Russell Crowe's accent when he played Robin. So the end of the affair. Shakespeare in love um end of the affair twice it appears the golden age um snow white and the huntsman and the muppets most wanted muppets most wanted

well we're big fans avengers age of ultron transformers the last night we're big fans of the muppets on this uh yeah we are we love the muppets um so it's always good to have a muppets themed episode and i'm glad to see we've ticked that boxets on this. Yeah, we are. We love the Muppets. So it's always good to have a Muppets-themed episode, and I'm glad to see we've ticked that box. And on that note, I think we'll go to a break, and we shall come back after the ads with some more Secrets of London. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman, and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

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head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. So, welcome back to The Rest Is History um we have just left the church obviously it wouldn't have done for us to stay in the church while advertising was taking place so we we left for the for reasons of decorum and now tom has brought us outside to the site of a plaque to somebody who i know is very close to tom's heart a real hero of tom's it's to the immortal memory of sir william wallace that was a very good scottish accent that was basically mel gibson scottish accent got hung drawn and quartered and the reason for that

is that we are you know we're at smithfield and as we said in the first half this is one of the great open spaces um abutting the medieval uh walls the medieval limits of the city so um smithfield meant smooth field yeah place where you know all the cattle and everyone was bought we've got the meat market over there but because it was an open space um it could play host to all kinds of gatherings and there was obviously no more popular excuse for a gathering than to watch a rebel against uh his uh anointed liege lord be tortured to death but which is which is what happened here with william wallace you didn't write this caption that's for sure scottish patriot born at eldersley renfrewshire circa 1270 ad who from the year 1296 fought dauntlessly

in defence of his country's liberty and independence in the face of fearful odds and great hardship, eventually being betrayed and brought to London, blah, blah, blah, put to death. His example, heroism and devotion inspired those who came after him to win victory from defeat. And his memory remains for all time

a source of pride, honour and inspiration to his countryman that was mel gibson again yeah um yeah yeah so so tom you would not approve of that i would completely approve of it because the great cult of william wallace the the idea of him as a great patriotic defender of scottish independence was a product of um of of the union uh it was Scots who were confident in their British identity but who nevertheless were you know interested to to conserve the flame of a great Scottish a great Scottish hero now if you look closely there's a smaller plaque this memorial was placed here by Scots and friends at home and abroad by kind position of the governors of St Bartholomew's Hospital, 1956. So not an age of kind of rampant Scottish nationalism.

No, but just before the revival, I suppose, of Scottish nationalism. And there are still some very desultory. There's a few flowers here, a little card there. That's from Rod Stewart. There's a thistle. Or Alex Salmond, I think. There's some tattered Scottish flags. Yeah, yeah. there that's from roger stewart uh there's a thistle or alex salmon scottish flags um yeah yeah um but i mean so essentially traitors to the king would you know this was one of the places

where you would come to watch a good um a good hanging and drawing and and quartering um and uh it so the guts would then join all the guts from the butchers. And they would then be swept into the river fleet, which is over there, which we may come to in due course. So the stench of this was kind of overpowering in the Middle Ages. And actually, among the ghosts that haunt this place are literary ghosts, ghosts from fiction. And one of them is pip in great expectations by uh by charles dickens um who when he comes to london goes to the offices of mr

jaggers the uh the lawyer who has been entrusted with his you know the legal details of his his inheritance his great expectations and it's just down there just the side corner so between the the hospital and the church there's a side alley called little britain and that's just down there just the side corner so between the the hospital and the church there's a side alley called little britain and that's where he had his offices and dickens says that pip comes here from the country and he walks up towards jaggers's office and the stench from the uh from the meat market kind of makes him almost faint well the market is still here i mean we're within the market but there isn't a kind of there's no stench. But, so disemboweling has happened here, but other things happened as well.

And among the things that happened here, people would congregate for great kind of festive occasions, great social occasions, of which the preeminent one was St. Bartholomew's Fair. Yes, of course, very famous. Very, very famous. Established by the priory in 1123 um site of uh you'd have tournaments here as well so um there was a famous tournament under um rich the second

that chaucer played a key role in organizing but you would also have meetings that weren't necessarily sanctioned by the crown yeah and the most famous of those is when the peasants, who were embroiled in the Peasants' Revolt, marching on London, they all congregated here. They did indeed, didn't they? This is the, isn't this the showdown? This is the showdown, and led by Wat Tyler. Yeah.

And Wat Tyler gets struck down here by the Lord Mayor of London. He does, yes, because he doesn't show enough deference to Richard II. And so it's... So there's a very new plaque here. Well, so it's a plaque raised to the memory of the peasants who took place, who took part in the revolt. Some people might consider classic sort of radical tradition it's been placed slightly too high so you can't really read what's at the top

so the memory is already is already fading the william wallace one is much clearer yeah but there's something here uh what's it say it's something about and the plight of the people this is a terrible metaphor for the uh the plight of the british left i think that um but it's very hard to see what's so there's a mention of what tyler being killed here and of uh john ball who preached the uh you know when adam he when adam delved who then was the gentleman um so this was unveiled by um ken loach among other people um and there's a quote here from Thomas Paine on a plaque. If the barons merited a monument to be erected at Runnymede, that's a reference to Magna Carta,

Tyler merited one in Smithfield. Thomas Paine, 1791. Of course, the great thing about this is it's all a kind of invent... Like Magna Carta, it's kind of an invention, isn't it? The President's Revolt isn't a kind of proto-socialist uprising, really. But it's become part of that kind of invented radical tradition i suppose yeah and and that again absolutely is part of the fascination of london's history it's that the memories of what happened here don't have to be accurate for them themselves in turn to become part of history i think jeremy corbyn has been here tom i always like to do a little

well well you know there's there's something for all tastes here so there's something for scottish nationalists there's something for members of momentum and there's something for radical protestants because um here there is a third memorial yeah uh which was erected 1870 by the protestant alliance that's a evangelical group i i guess so uh and that commemorates the um so we've had disembowelings uh but most notoriously on the reign of queen mary yes there were the burning of heretics um so the burnings that took place here are essentially what gave mary the first her nickname of bloody mary um and the great theme of Fox's Book of Martyrs, this sense that the revival of Catholicism

would mean Protestants being burnt in Smithfield, haunted the imaginings of Protestants throughout the late 16th, 17th century. Within a few feet of this spot, says the memorial, John Rogers, John Bradford, John Philpott, and other servants of god suffered death by fire for the faith of christ in the years 1555 1556 1557 now of course since we're revisionist about the peasants revolt we should also be a little bit revisionist about

uh bloody mary who gets a bit of a bad press doesn't she because um you know burning heretics was hardly unusual behavior in the 16th century and some people would argue she was just unlucky in her posthumous reputation. Yeah, had she lived a bit longer, I'm sure... And had Catholicism become enshrined, once again, no one would say it was... History would remember it very differently. Just where we're standing in 1849 um some workmen were digging a sewer as they were digging it they found a mass of blackened stones and these it was claimed were

covered with ashes and human bones charred and partially consumed and an antiquary came to inspect it and had absolutely no doubt that he was gazing at the remnants of the incinerated Protestant martyrs. What, all those years later? Again, Dominic. I'm much too sceptical. You and your scepticism towards these wonderful stories. There's one on the subject of horrendous occasions from the past that commemorate in open spaces. There's one other. We won't go and look at it now because we haven't really got time.

But around the corner on the other side of of uh the meat market there's an open space uh charterhouse green which was originally a plague pit and during the black death so they were developing the tube line and they discovered all the the bones came tumbling out um and charterhouse green subsequently there was a priory was founded there carthusians um and again in the reformation all got sold off became a famous school that then moved out one of the more famous private schools isn't it so charterhouse i don't know where it went but is it sorry sorry godalming godalming okay um having an encyclopedic knowledge of schools well very very impressive. Someone has to.

So, essentially, I mean, the sense of history here is kind of almost oppressive. And unless you knew to look, to go through that gate yard, to go into St. Bartholomew the Great, to know what happened in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and certainly to know what happened in this open space. What Tyler, William Wallace, Protestant martyrs. It's the coordination of the banality of the modern day landscape. St Bartholomew's Hospital and certainly to know what happened in this open space what Tyler William Wallace it's the coordination of the modern day landscape with the layering of frankly a very bloody and violent history isn't it yeah that you know people are bustling well they're not even bustling about actually a few people are sort of trudging in a slightly disconsolate way

past at the end of the day from their office on their way to the commute home and and the memories are preserved in the the street now yeah there's one last place i'd like to okay but do you think i mean probably there's never been a point in the history of this part of london where it has been quieter and more desultory than it is now. Do you think? I think that's true. For so much of its history, this was a bustling, you know, it would have been, maybe the analogy is if you were to visit a city like, I don't know, Delhi or Istanbul or something, crowded, you know, rich and poor jumbled up together, hawkers in the streets, pickpockets. Yeah, and with the prospect of a good execution

so yeah i mean there's no prospect of that now no so so in many ways london has gone downhill i think it's less interesting um but that's precisely what history podcasts are for to bring back the spirit of to bring to conjure up yeah to conjure up the vanished ghosts yeah um and actually what gives you a very good sense of just how horrible uh this this place would have been is that we so we're now walking parallel to the great victorian structure of the uh of the meat market um away from the open space where the burnings and the disembowelings happened. And we're going downhill. And the reason that we're going downhill is that we're plunging into a river valley.

And the river that we're heading towards is the River Fleet. So that is now, for those people who don't know, the Fleet is probably the most famous, isn't it, of London's vanished rivers. So the fleet gives its name to fleet street which is obviously probably not anymore but for certainly when we were growing up was synonymous with newspapers um and when did the fleet vanish tom well it's it so it starts to get covered over um 17th 18th as late as the 19th century you could still sail up um a section of the fleet but the value of the fleet and one of the other reasons why the meat market is here is that you could sweep the carcasses you know so all the guts that you've hacked out when you're when you're you're doing your joints you could

just sweep it into the into the river some listeners may remember we had a podcast about disease with kyle harper and he was talking about you know cholera and dysentery and all these things and he would not be impressed no by the uh by the standards of hygiene no well and this um there are three very famous lines by jonathan swift who wrote about the fleet sweepings from butcher's stalls dungung, guts and blood. Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud. Dead cats and turnip tops come tumbling down the flood. Well, anyway, this podcast is sponsored by the London Tourist Board. I mean, to be fair, there's no evidence of that right now.

So the fleet was, by this stage, until it got covered over, was quite broad. So Fleet Street, where it crosses the River Fleet just in front of St Paul's Cathedral, Lugget Hill, that was a ford. So that was the reason it's called Fleet Street is because you could cross the fleet there. But it all got covered over. And you remember we started this episode on hoban viaduct

we did indeed and the viaduct is basically built over the river valley of the fleet and the fleet marks um one of the kind of that you know one one of the uh the the urban boundaries and it's on the other side of the fleet i just want to show you one last one last kind of place of horror ah tom um you lure me up to london with these but i think but i think you'll enjoy it because it's it's a fictional place of horror right very good and we've already mentioned i like any place of horror factual or fictional to be honest with you we've already mentioned the novelist who created this fictional place of horror all right excellent and it is of course charles dickens and the place that we're heading towards is the place where the young oliver twist when he comes to london gets picked up by the artful dodger please sir i want some more um

that people will be saying at the end of this podcast i certainly hope so and he gets taken and he gets taken by the artful dodger um toger to visit a pleasant old gentleman and his hopeful pupils. And of course, the pleasant old gentleman is Fagin, and the hopeful pupils are the Pickpockets. So we're coming down now to, well, it's now a major road, but the river fleet runs beneath it. And we cross there um and then we will come to um saffron hill you're you're never happier listeners to our christmas carol podcast will know that you're never happier than bringing us to the dingiest dreariest spot imaginable we're coming down some steps here and there's a stream of dog urine. Yeah. There's a DHL van.

Dripping down the steps. We're at the back of some sort of loading bay. It's the most unromantic corner of London you could possibly imagine. So this is Saffron Hill. Which definitely does not live up to its surname. So this was all owned by the Bishop of Ely. So you remember in our rich the third episode um we talked about how richard of gloucester before having but hastings beheaded

asked the bishop of ely for strawberries from his garden he did indeed yes so the bishop of ely's garden was kind of in this neighborhood um and it's uh saffron hill because saffron grew here now as you say there's no trace of saffron now yeah so we're kind of very it's it's very narrow there are very high buildings on either side blank buildings yeah i wouldn't bring people sightseeing here kind of gloomy and miserable but this is this is where fagin's lair was um and i know that you're a big dickens fan so um perhaps you have i have a little reading here perhaps you have a little reading that you'd like you didn't expect that um but well actually you did because you put it in the note so um so here we go oliver could not help bestowing a few hasty

glances on the other side of the way as he passed along. A dirtier or more wretched place he had never seen. The street was very narrow and muddy and the air was impregnated with filthy odours. They've played quite a considerable part in this episode. There were a good many small shops but the only stock in trade appeared to be heaps of children who even at that time of night were crawling in and out of the doors or screaming from the inside. The sole places that seemed to prosper amid the general blight of the place were the public houses, and in them, Tom Holland, the lowest orders of Irish, who were generally the lowest orders of anything, were wrangling with might and main. I hope my wife isn't listening to this.

Covered ways and yards, which here and there diverged from the main street, disclosed little knots of houses where drunken men and women were positively wallowing in the filth and from several of the doorways great ill-looking fellows were cautiously emerging bound to all appearance upon no very well disposed or harmless errands yes so there we are and so you mentioned that the uh the taverns uh and one last link with oliver twist is ahead of us there's a pub that is now called the one ton but dickens knew as the three cripples three cripples and uh that that that's fagin and bill sykes is local so that's where they uh and there's some sort of lightly looking Bill Sykes figures lurking outside the park. Yes, they're dogs on

binder twine plotting break-ins So I agree, Dominic, that although there may not be a huge amount to see Well, there's nothing to see, Tom Well, there's a tavern but I mean, once you know

that this is Fagin's Lair... You have to know. And there's a message here I think you have for the listeners, Tom. They should venture out and dig up the layers of history beneath even the most unprepossessing neighbourhood. Well, the thing is that it's true of London, it's true of lots of places... Of Stevenage, of Slough...

Maybe not of Slough, true of lots of places. Of Stevenage, of Slough. Maybe not of Slough, but of lots of places that, you know, obviously the more you know of what goes on, the more you have a sense of the past oozing up out of the tarmac, out of the brickwork. Like the bowels of some dismembered Scot. Indeed. Flung into the fleet. Wash away with the dead dogs.

I think it's just about beginning to rain. So on that note, I think we should say farewell to our listeners. Yes. And we will see you next time. A farewell from London town. Fancy a quick pint? Yeah, let's go. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening,

and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A,

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