A Complete Face Lift at Dickens House Museum

On my first visit to The Dickens House Museum a few years ago I came away thinking what a very disappointing experience it had been. As a Dickens fan I had had high hopes of the visit.

Dickens House Museum (January 2008)

The Dickens House Museum (January 2013)

On Friday 4th January after our stay at Hampton Court Palace we decided to visit the newly re-opened Museum to see whether matters had improved.

The Dickens House Museum is the only remaining London home that Dickens occupied and that was for only about two years. It was at a time when he was not long married, was making a name for himself and it was here that he wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. The address is 48 Doughty Street in Bloomsbury, WC1.

“Number 48 Doughty Street was an important place in Charles Dickens’s life where he resided from 1837 until 1839. Dickens described the terraced Georgian dwelling as ‘my house in town’.

Two of his daughters were born here, his sister-in-law Mary died aged 17 in an upstairs bedroom and some of Dickens’s best-loved novels were written here, including Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. However Dickens required more space for his growing family and moved to 1 Devonshire Terrace in 1839. The house remained a residential property, but was threatened with demolition in 1923, when the Dickens Fellowship acquired it. The Museum was opened in 1925 and has become the home of the world’s finest Dickens-related collection.” From the Dickens House Museum website.

I have to concur with what fellow WordPress blogger “Visiting Houses and Gardens” said about it here. However, the house has been closed for renovations [The Great Expectations Project] for a good part of 2012 – the Dickens Bicentenary Year.

It reopened in December last year and a great amount of work must have been done during that time. With the help of National Heritage Lottery Funding the adjacent house was purchased and that now houses all the offices, the shop, cafe and other requirements for this modern age of “Heritage Visiting”. Number 48 is now purely Dickens’ Home as it might have looked at the time that he lived there – 1837-1839.

We are invited by the Museum to : “Step this way”

“Visitors to 48 Doughty Street can see the house as it might have been when Dickens lived here.  Rooms are decorated in the early Victorian style that Dickens would have favoured and personal posessions of Dickens from his lifetime as well as manuscripts, letters and portraits are on display.”

So, on entering number 49 we were directed into the front room of this house where there was a shop and the cash desk. We were handed a guidebook each with instructions to return it on leaving the Museum. From there we stepped into number 48 and toured the house that Dickens knew and we enjoyed (and learned from) the experience.

Dining with Charles Dickens

This way to the Sitting Room, Everyone!

The Dickens Family Sitting Room at Christmas

Living at Hampton Court Palace

“I’ve often thought I should like to live at Hampton Court. It looks so
peaceful and so quiet, and it is such a dear old place to ramble round in
the early morning before many people are about.”

One of my favourite humorous books of all time is “Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog)”  by Jerome K. Jerome from which the above quotation has been taken.

Lucky me, last week I was able to stay a couple of nights in this 1,000 room palace and ramble around it out of hours when few or even no people were around. Since 1993 The Landmark Trust have run the two Hampton Court Properties on behalf of the Royal Palaces. We visited friends at The Georgian House two years ago and this year my sister and I stayed in the Fish Court apartment.

Fish Court and the door to the Apartment

Tennis Court Lane – The Georgian House is on the left and Fish Court on the right

Hampton Court Palace was built by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey during the years after 1514 when he first acquired the riverside site. In 1529 as a last-ditch effort to appease the king’s wrath he presented the sumptuous palace to His Majesty King Henry VIII. He had failed to obtain an acceptable result with regard to the king and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Soon after, all of his property was made forfeit to the King. And so the Palace became a favourite home of Henry and his children and his descendants and royalty until 1760 and the death of George II. Henry built and extended the Tudor Palace further and William III and Mary (1689-1702) brought about further rebuilding and remodelling.

There’s a huge contrast between the original west-facing Tudor building (top) and the newer East and South Fronts (above).

During and after the reign of George III the palace ceased to be used by royalty and was subdivided into a large number of dwellings and apartments. These residences were called ‘Grace and Favour’ homes. I have long known about there existence because I remember in the 1950s and early 1960s when I was a Brownie and later a Girl Guide one of the annuals featured a story about Lady Olave Baden-Powell, the widow of Lord Robert Baden-Powell, the then Chief Guide, living in a Grace and favour apartment at the Palace.

“A celebrated and much-loved 20th century figure, Lady Baden-Powell, moved into her palace apartment in 1942. She was heavily involved in the Scouting Movement that her husband had founded. Lady Baden-Powell’s response following the offer of a palace apartment in 1942. “I was astounded; I had never dreamed of such a privilege being accorded me’. The apartment was ‘a bit dilapidated’ because of the war but most importantly would be ‘home’”. She described how, during the war, she survived a bomb, which exploded causing her ceiling to collapse in 1944.”

Taken from : Grace and Favour HCP

In the Fish Court Library I also found a book about the history of the apartments “Grace & Favour: the story of the Hampton Court Palace Community, 1750-1950″. 

Staying at Hampton Court in January we still noticed lots of visitors during the day and even late into the evening at the temporary ice rink erected just within the main (Trophy) Gates.

The Temporary Hampton Court Ice Rink

Being residents we were able to enter the palace and  join in any tours free of charge. We had to wear our passes all the time.

We only had one full day so we joined a costumed tour and visited two sets of apartments that we had missed on our previous visit. In the middle of the day it was so nice to just turn the key of our apartment door and have a bite of lunch and relax before heading out to the gardens and grounds and visit more of the Palace in the afternoon.

Actor playing the part of Thomas Seymour on the eve of Henry VIII’s death in January 1547

The most well-known feature in the grounds and probably in the whole Palace is its world famous Maze. I first visited Hampton Court Palace in the early 1960s and my top priority was to get into that Maze. I seem remember finding it a bit disappointing but loved Jerome K. Jerome’s witty description of his friend Harris’s earlier visit to the Maze:

“Harris asked me if I’d ever been in the
maze at Hampton Court. He said he went in once to show somebody else the
way. He had studied it up in a map, and it was so simple that it seemed
foolish—hardly worth the twopence charged for admission. Harris said he
thought that map must have been got up as a practical joke, because it
wasn’t a bit like the real thing, and only misleading.”

Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was appointed Chief Gardener here in 1769 and lived in Wilderness House on the edge of the grounds near the Lion Gates. Just two years ago a blue plaque was unveiled by  the present Head Gardener. Read about it here. It was very difficult to get a decent angle for a photo of either the house or the plaque.

Even in January the fountains are spurting water and the gardeners have their heads down preparing the ground for spring planting and some other people were also enjoying walking along the stony paths and terraces.

Pond Garden and Banqueting House

At the far end of the garden is the Great Vine planted by Capability Brown.

In the evening we could creep along passages and watch a game of Real Tennis still being played on the original court where Henry himself enjoyed a game or two!

Before returning to our very own private Royal apartment to plan the rest of our London visit.

“Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards any one.” Edith Cavell (1865-1915)

Photograph of Nurse Edith Cavell displayed in St Mary’s Church, Swardeston

Growing up in Norwich I have always known about Edith Cavell our local Norfolk heroine of the First World War. My school bus passed by the Memorial to her located outside the Erpingham Gate at Norwich Cathedral, her grave lies within the Cathedral precincts and we had a school house called ‘Cavell’.

The Norwich Memorial to Edith Cavell

Born at Swardeston House in 1865  the family of the Reverend Frederick Cavell moved the following year in to the new Swardeston Vicarage which Edith’s father had paid to have built on land next to his parish church of St Mary the Virgin.

St Mary’s Church, Swardeston

Swardeston Vicarage Today

It was here that Edith Cavell spent her early days. You can read much more about her early life, interests, education and travels here.

Edith Cavell in 1910 with her two adopted stray dogs Jack and Don (photo in Swardeston Church)

She had worked in Brussels, become fluent in French and later trained as a nurse working at times in both London and Brussels. She later turned to nurse training and such was her attachment to Belgium that when she heard of the invasion of Belgium by the Germans in 1914 she returned to that country and was already nursing there when Britain declared war on Germany on 3rd August 1914.

To Edith all men were equal and to be treated so at her hospital. She not only treated and nursed German and Belgian soldiers she later became involved in assisting British soldiers who were wounded and cut off from their retreating army beyond the front line.

“Edith also faced a moral dilemma. As a ‘protected’ member of the Red Cross, she should have remained aloof. But like Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the next war, she was prepared to sacrifice her conscience for the sake of her fellow men. To her, the protection, the concealment and the smuggling away of hunted men was as humanitarian an act as the tending of the sick and wounded. Edith was prepared to face what she understood to be the just consequences.” (Edith Cavell website)

Plaque attached to a house in Ghent (Courtesy RB)

In August 1915 Edith was interned and the date for her execution as a collaborator was set as 12 October 1915. The evening before the English chaplain Stirling Gahan was allowed to visit her in her prison cell. There she received Holy Communion and they recited the words of the hymn Abide With Me together. This is what she said to him :

“I am thankful to have had these ten weeks of quiet to get ready. Now I have had them and have been kindly treated here. I expected my sentence and I believe it was just. Standing as I do in view of God and Eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone”.

Despite Spanish and American attempts at intervention she was shot at dawn on Tuesday 12 October 1915.

Edith Cavell’s Grave at Life’s Green

After the War, in 1919, Edith Cavell’s body was returned to England and a funeral service was held at Westminster Abbey on 15 May. A special train brought her remains to Norwich station from where she was buried in a spot called Life’s Green in the grounds of Norwich Cathedral. Ironically, her coffin was carried on a gun carriage!

Books and Film 

YouTube film Edith Cavell (1939) starring Anna Neagle

Friends Lynne and Lyn have both written eloquently about a recent biography of Edith Cavell by Diana Souhami. I heard Souhami speak in London about the biography and I’ve read it myself but I refer you to their superior reviews.

Lyn also read and reviewed a novel about Nurse Cavell Fatal Decision by Terri Arthur.

Other Memorials to Edith Cavell

Edith Cavell Window at Swardeston Church

War Memorial at Swardeston, Norfolk

Statue erected in honour of Edith Cavell near Trafalgar Square, London.

Edith Cavell bust in the London Hospital Museum. Lynne‘s photo. She says : “Apparently it was in the sitting room of the nurses home I lived in there, not that we ever noticed it.”

Tea and Cake and Quiet London (2)

From the peace and shade of the Bonnington Square Garden we headed for nearby Newport Street (SE11) and The Ragged Canteen at Beaconsfield (QL p.115). However when we arrived we found that it is closed for most of August. On our way there we had passed through what was left of the original Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens and we had noticed a very nice tea shop with a buzz of friendly chatter and gentle music coming through the wide open doors and windows (it was a very hot day), so we decided to turn back and take our afternoon break there. It turned out to be an excellent choice despite not being Quiet; there’s a classical guitarist strumming gently in the corner.

The Tea House Theatre

Inside The Tea House Theatre

This book stood on a chair by the door.

Refreshed, we strolled along the Albert Embankment to The London Eye where we met huge milling crowds and quickly bought tickets for the Thames Clipper service to take us back down the river to Tower Pier, a short walk from our hotel.

We chose and booked a Quiet restaurant for our evening meal : Carnevale near The Barbican (QL p. 91). After an hour or so in which to refresh ourselves we then walked the mile or so to and from the restaurant. We marvelled at the height of so many buildings, the almost hidden churches and all the new work that seemed to be going on in order to cram this city with even more curiously shaped high buildings. On our way back we noticed that one of the hidden churches was still open so we peeped inside at the exhibition “This is not a Plate : your heritage, your language, your culture“. St Ethelburga’s Church (QL p. 66) is a centre for peace and the exhibition and late opening were to coincide with the London 2012 Olympic Games.

This is not a Plate display

“Following devastation by the IRA bomb in 1993, this small 700 year old church has been transformed into a centre for peace and reconciliation. Not only are services still held here, meditation sessions are also offered once a week. In the pebbled courtyard visitors can enter a Middle Eastern Bedouin tent made of woven goats hair – a special place for anyone seeking quiet contemplation.” [QL p. 66]

It kind of rounded off our hot and dusty day very serenely.

Sunday was another hot and sunny day but despite this we had decided to participate in one of The London Walks ”The Old Jewish Quarter” departing from nearby Tower Hill at 10.30am. Perfect.

“This walk traces the history of London’s Jewish community in the East End. It’s a story that embraces the poverty of the pogrom refugees and the glittering success of the Rothschilds; the eloquence of the 19th-century Prime Minister Disraeli and the spiel of the Petticoat Lane stallholder; the poetry of Isaac Rosenberg and the poetry-in-motion of Abe Saperstein’s Harlem Globetrotters. Set amid the alleys and back streets of colourful Spitalfields and Whitechapel, it’s a tale of synagogues and sweatshops, Sephardim and soup kitchens. Guided by Shaughan.” [From the London Walks leaflet]

Lo and behold the highlight of this walk is a visit to The Bevis Marks Syngogue (QL p. 65) where Maurice took over from Shaughan to tell us more about the synagogue and its former members.

“Thanks to Oliver Cromwell, Jews in England could practice their own religion openly for the first time since the Middle Ages. In 1657, a Quaker builder was invited to build this London synagogue and it was completed in 1701. (He later returned all profits from its construction to the Jewish community). Bevis Marks is the oldest synagogue in Britain and has barely changed since the early 18th century. In the main room of the synagogue hang seven ornate brass candelabra, one for each day of the week, but overall, with its original wooden seating and simple balconies, the interior is very simple and unadorned.” [QL p. 65]

The walk finished just by Christ Church Spitalfields so we made our way down Commercial Street to Whitechapel Art Gallery. There’s a cafe serving quiches and salad, sausage rolls, Scotch eggs and cookies and cakes – all homemade. After a bite to eat and a cup of tea we found we had time to see one exhibit and we chose “Government Art Collection: Commissions: Now and Then” and “The Story of the Government Art Collection” a fascinating insight into art in public/government ownership.

“It was the cost of decoration that prompted the use of art instead of wallpapers to cover the walls of government buildings in 1899. Today the Government Art Collection is one of the most important collections of British art, with 13,500 works dating from the 16th century to the present day displayed in over 420 government buildings worldwide.

On display for the first time from the Collection’s archives are rare documents, such as papers detailing the loan of Winston Churchill’s bust to the Oval Office in Washington from 1997 to 2008, and records of paintings hung in 10 Downing Street under Prime Ministers from the first Duke of Wellington to Margaret Thatcher. A 1962 document records artist William Coldstream’s proposal that the Whitechapel Gallery hold an exhibition of the Collection, while a World War II photograph shows the bomb damage to the State Rooms at 10 Downing Street.” [Whitechapel Art Gallery promotional literature]

A Quiet Weekend with Tea and Cake and much more besides!

Tea and Cake and Quiet London (1)

Our visit to Benjamin Franklin House (QL p. 23) on Friday was such a success for us both that we decided to devote the rest of the weekend following up places suggested by Siobhan Wall in her book Quiet London and some eateries suggested in another little book of mine Tea and Cake London by Zena Alkayat.

From BHF we trotted off to Lincoln’s Inn Fields to try to track down The Fleet River Bakery  (T&C L p. 40) mentioned in the Tea and Cake book. We eventually found it and bought ourselves tea and cake (my cake was Hummingbird – pineapple, mango and pineapple – so lovely and moist). We decided not to eat in but to take our food and drink into the Lincoln’s Inn Fields and picnic on a park bench in the sun.

London is so interesting and you never know what you might see so we usually walk whenever we can. Our route back to the hotel took us along Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill, past St Paul’s Cathedral, past 30 St Mary Axe (The Gherkin, to you and me) and finally to Aldgate and Minories.

The Royal Exchange and The Gherkin

We called a few of the Quiet restaurants that evening but all were full. We ended up at Morito the Tapas bar next to and owned by Moro on Exmouth Market. The tapas was excellent but the bar would not gain a place in Quiet London!

Next day we had a number of places in mind and began our Quiet London Trail at the Crypt Museum (QL p. 20). A 20 minute ‘pop in’ to the church of All Hallows By The Tower ended about two hours later! You can see why (and this poster does not mention the exhibition “Bonuses, Benefits & Bailouts : the morality of the King James Bible”).

All Hallows By The Tower

“To tie in with the 350th anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer, All Hallows by the Tower and The Museum of the Book in Limehouse are pleased to present this exhibition of manuscripts, first edition bibles, prayer books and other artefacts challenging our thinking on issues of legality versus morality using the King James Bible as a starting point.” [Summer Programme leaflet]

“This tiny museum lies underneath one of London’s original Saxon churches. In the crypt is a Roman tesselated floor from a house built in the late 2nd century. The museum also holds registers dating back to the 16th century. The highlight, however, is the intricate brasses inlaid in the stone floor of the church, near the altar.” [Quiet London, p. 20]

Moving on from All Hallows we visited The Wellington Arch. Recently opened by English Heritage this London landmark has not yet arrived in Quiet London. You can climb (or take the lift) to the top for views towards Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace Gardens, Green Park and Piccadilly. There’s an exhibition space (at the moment it commemorates 100 years of Blackpool Illuminations and the Blackpool Tower), a further gallery showing the history of the Arch and its former locations plus a bijou bookshop of London book titles.

Next up we crossed the river (underground by tube) to Vauxhall. During the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries the pleasure gardens of Vauxhall were one of the London places to see and be seen but our hunt was for something very much more esoteric : Bonnington Square Garden (QL p. 46).

Bonnington Square Garden

“Known as ‘the Pleasure Garden’ in homage to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, this former bomb site and derelict playground  was transformed by the imaginative residents of the Bonnington Square Garden Association. Amazingly, this south London oasis is full of lush tropical plants and intriguing public sculptures.” [QL p. 46]

The residents continued their enthusiasm for all things green by planting out more areas in the neighbourhood, on street corners and other small open spaces.

Bonnington Cafe (plays music so not quiet!)

[To be continued]

An Eighteenth Century American Polymath in London : Benjamin Franklin

On Friday I joined my sister for a weekend break in London. Right now London is riding on the crest of the Olympic Games wave and there’s evidence everywhere that the Games have just taken place and the Paralympics are due to begin in about ten days’ time. We checked in at our bargain priced four star hotel in the City early on Friday and shared ideas on where to go and what to do. My first suggestion, taken from Quiet London by Siobhan Wall, was to call and make a booking to visit Benjamin Franklin House.

We’d both come across Franklin in a vague sort of way on our various trips to Boston and New England but we really knew nothing much about him. Our visit to 36, Craven Street right next door to Charing Cross Station was to change all that.

Craven Street, WC2

Here’s a brief resumé of his career in England taken from the Benjamin Franklin House website.

“While lodging at 36 Craven Street, Franklin’s main occupation was mediating unrest between Britain and America, but he also served as Deputy Postmaster for the Colonies; pursued his love of science (exploring bifocal spectacles, the energy-saving Franklin stove); explored health (inoculation, air baths, cures for the common cold); music (inventing the delightful glass armonica for which Mozart, Bach and Beethoven composed) and letters (articles, epitaphs, and his witty Craven Street Gazette), all while forging a hearty social life and close friendships with leading figures of the day.”

Franklin lived at 36 Craven Street between 1757 and 1775

Benjamin Franklin House, 36, Craven Street, London, WC2

The Historical Experience brings to life the years that Franklin spent in London lodging in this house with Mrs Margaret Stephenson and her daughter Polly, later to be joined by Polly’s husband William Hewson (in 1770) who ran an anatomy school on the premises. The Historical Experience is based on Franklin’s last day at the house (20 March 1775) and we followed the actress as Polly around the house from room to room as the drama unfolded with use of lighting, sound and visual projection.

The house itself held great interest for us. It was so very like 13, Princelet Street in Spitalfields where we stayed last January. Both houses were built in the first half of the eighteenth century and have a very similar design and  layout and have managed to survive with surprisingly many of their original fixtures and fittings in place.

The Hall, Benjamin Franklin House

The rear of Benjamin Franklin House

The Friends of Benjamin Franklin House rescued the house from its dire condition at the end of the last century and after a great deal of hard work the Grade 1 listed Georgian building was opened to the public on 17 January 2006 which was 300 years to the day since the birth of Benjamin Franklin. Miraculously it is the only surviving house on the street. From the front this is not at all obvious but at the back the neighbouring houses are all of new brick.

“A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.”
Read more athttp://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/benjamin_franklin.html#VtV0qrzico5gm2OK.99

The Brownlee Brothers of Bramhope

Read All About It! Read all about it!

The Golden Post Box on New Road Side Horsforth

Yesterday I was in Morecambe. I planned the trip a few weeks ago not realising that the 2012 London Olympics Men’s Triathlon was to take place from 11.30 on that very day. I missed seeing the race in its entirety, there was no public TV at the hotel (we did ask), but I received the good news by text almost instantly from a friend, followed by several others, whilst lunching at The Midland Hotel.

What we wanted to hear was that one of the brothers had won gold and the other silver. In fact the result was Alistair Brownlee – Gold and his brother Jonathan – Bronze. A superb effort and result nonetheless.

Alistair and Jonathan now live in Bramhope having moved there from nearby Horsforth. Both boys attended Bradford Grammar School where, along with my own two sons, they were keen members of the Cross Country Team. Sometimes we would share lifts to and from the school cross country coach on a Saturday.

Every Sunday I drive through the village of Bramhope and for the last several months have noticed the street decorations for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee which have stayed in place for the London Olympic Games. Two Sundays ago I remembered to take my camera with me and stopped to take a snap of the decorated village signpost. As I walked around trying to find the best angle my eye fell on two cyclists who had stopped outside the village shop. Two cyclists in Bramhope? Surely they must be Alistair and Jonny so I wandered over to say ‘hello’ and wish them good luck. We had a chat and I’m sorry I didn’t think to take a photo of them. You can just see a white cycle helmet behind the display in the picture below. That is Alistair.

Well done, boys! You have done Yorkshire and Britain proud. And Good Luck in the future.

I leave you with one further comment. Yesterday, after Alistair’s win, the medals table showed the county of Yorkshire in 10th position!

Ode to an Excellent Bookshop

I don’t normally buy new books these days. I tend to use the library and sometimes buy secondhand out of print. The exception is if I’m in an independent bookshop. Some of my favourites are in London and last Thursday and Friday I visited two branches of this shop :  Daunt Books.

On Thursday I popped into the Hampstead Branch at South End Road near the former bookshop in which George Orwell worked now a branch of Le Pain Quotidien (right).

The shop advertises a great idea that I had never heard of before : Daunt Books Walking Book Club! I hope the weather stays fine for them.

On Friday I revisited the shop and its sister branch opposite Belsize Park tube station. I had decided to take up the “challenge” put to me by a member of my local book group to choose a couple of suggestions for future reads for the group. After a search of the tables and shelves I came up with (and bought) my two choices.

“Deep Country: five years in the Welsh hills” by Neil Ansell is “Touching. Through Ansell’s charming and thoroughly detailed stories of run-ins with red kites, curlews, sparrowhawks, jays and ravens, we see hime lose himself … in the rhythms and rituals of life in the British wilderness.” (Financial Times)

and

“The hare and the tortoise” by Elizabeth Jenkins – well, if it’s good enough for discussion on Hampstead Heath on Sunday, it’s good enough for us! Jenkins lived very near South End Road on Downshire Hill. Her memoir ‘The View from Downshire Hill‘ tells about her life and home and living in this delightful area of north London.

8 Downshire Hill, Hampstead. The former home of Elizabeth Jenkins.

Another author who lived very near here was the poet John Keats and that very morning I had heard a brief radio snippet in which there is a visit to the Keats Shelley House in Rome where Keats died on 23 February 1821. I visited Rome back in 2008 and it was one of the highlights of the trip to see inside The Keats Shelley Museum by the Spanish Steps. There is a Landmark Property at the top of the building : Piazza di Spagna. How I would love to stay here!

The Salone, Keats-Shelley House

The Salone is dedicated to the posthumous reputations of Keats, Shelley and Byron. The main library collection of the house is here.

Keats House, Hampstead.

“I am convinced more and more day by day that fine writing is next to fine doing the top thing in the world.“

(John Keats 1795-1821~Letter to J. H. Reynolds, 24 August 1819, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) ‘The Letters of John Keats’ (1958) vol. 2, p. 146.)

“Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.”

Letter, August 28, 1819, to his sister Fanny Keats. Letters of John Keats, no. 146, ed. Frederick Page (1954).

Have you seen ‘Bright Star’?

Tea and Books and Two London Gems

I was in warm, sunny London on Thursday. The original plan was to meet a friend from my online book group and attend a showing of the 1953 film “Little Boy Lost” organised by the Persephone Book Shop. I always book my cheap train tickets way ahead and when we came to enquire about the film all the places had been taken but I still had my train tickets. In the end it turned happily as the weather was so warm and sunny that it might have been a shame to have been cooped up in the BFI.

Our Plan B was to visit the National Trust property Sutton House instead. I’ll copy and paste Clare’s summary of the history of the house as she summed it up perfectly to our group yesterday :

“It is a Tudor house, with lots of later additions, and a
fascinating history. It was first owned by Ralph Sadleir, an important
official in four reigns starting with Henry VIII. After that it was owned by
other individuals plus passing through the hands of two separate girls’
schools, a boys’ school, a church institute which ran all sorts of
activities for young men, and in the 1980s it was occupied by squatters who
wanted to form an arts community there.”

Today Sutton House is very much a part of the local community and the only staff we came across were volunteers all of whom were friendly, helpful and knowledgable. You can check out the website to see the variety of activities organised at the house – not surprisingly it’s booked up for over a year for school party visits. At one point I spotted a flyer for ‘Sutton House Book Brunchers’ who meet at the Bryck Place Tea Room once a month. Bryck Place is the original name for Sutton House and the tea room is a delight – a book lovers’ and tea drinkers’ paradise! There was a bit of renovation going on in the tea room on the day we visited so it was a matter of help-yourself to drinks and cake or scones and jam and drop a contribution in the box. So we did! The tea rooms are surrounded by shelves mostly stacked with secondhand books but some also with secondhand cups and saucers and jugs and teapots all for sale.

The tour of the house began in the Linenfold Parlour (see the poster pictured above). This would have been an important room in Sadleir ‘s original building in what was at the time (1535) a quiet, rural village. You then can visit the cellars, climb the Painted Staircase to the Gallery, the Little Chamber and the Great Chamber, a bedroom now decked out as a Victorian study and climb up again to an exhibition and history room on the second floor. A further staircase takes you right down to the ground floor again where, on this east side of the house, is a Tudor kitchen with access to an enclosed courtyard and a Georgian Parlour. This last room had a corner devoted to tea and it’s accoutrements and I was happy to note the following little verse :

 “In lands near or far

or wherever you be

friendship is welded by

a good cup of tea”

From Sutton House it’s a short walk to Hackney Central Station where we boarded our London Overground trains in opposite directions. As I sat on my train heading towards Whitechapel the following text came through on my ‘phone : “Afternoon tea now available at 45a!”  Some friends, staying at the Landmark Trust property 45A Cloth Fair this week, were inviting me to join them for (another) cuppa and more cake. I’ve stayed at 45A in the heart of Smithfield between Barbican and St Paul’s tube stations half a dozen times already so it was like arriving home as I climbed the creaking staircase to the first floor sitting room and joined my friends for tea and cake.

Princelet Street – A Landmark Library Reviewed

One thing I should point out about in case you didn’t already know is that there are no tellys at Landmark Trust properties. Self-made entertainment is the order of the day. Each property usually has a small supply of jigsaws and every one also has its own library. I have already mentioned Landmark Libraries here.

There are all the reference books needed to find your way around the area, check spellings during Scrabble games or whilst doing a crossword, the trusty latest edition of The Handbook, a Bible and some recipe books NB here these consist of a Madhur Jaffery and The Paupers’ Cookbook and there is always the local Pevsner architectural guide.

Here at Princelet Street the children’s and young people’s books include that lovely ‘This is London’ featured in the previous post about The Tower of London, some Beatrix Potter books and well-chosen titles by Rosemary Sutcliff, Leon Garfield and Sally Gardner.

Of course, you can’t stay within a stone’s throw of Brick Lane without finding a copy of Monica Ali’s book of the same name on the bookshelves.

There is also ‘On Brick Lane’ by Rachel Lichtenstein (her grandparents came here from Poland in the 1930s). A book I noticed on a previous visit and read shortly after. It’s a history of the neighbourhood and the different nationalities and cultures that lived here in Spitalfields and an excellent introduction to the area. ‘Rodinsky’s Room’ is another of Rachel L’s books and the result of her investigation together with Iain Sinclair into the strange mystery of the disappearance in the 1960s of David Rodinsky from his room above the synagogue in Princelet Street itself. It’s another book that I bought after seeing it here although I haven’t read it yet.

“Rodinsky’s world was that of the East European Jewry, cabbalistic speculation, an obsession with language as code and terrible loss. He touched the imagination of artist Rachel Lichtenstein, whose grandparents had left Poland in the thirties. This text weaves together Lichtenstein’s quest for Rodinsky -which took her to Poland, to Israel and around Jewish London -with Iain Sinclair’s meditations on her journey into her own past, and on the Whitechapel he has reinvented.” [From Amazon product description].

The area has been well researched, not only by Lichtenstein. My sister read me all sorts of stuff about the churches in the City and about walks in the East End. And not surprisingly, books on architecture feature strongly, and not only church architecture. I loved this title and mused for a while flicking through looking at the sketchy illustrations of buildings.

Peter Ackroyd’s biography of London is here as well as his novel ‘Hawksmoor’ a dramatisation of which was broadcast on the radio a few years ago. It’s about the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor and the building of Christ Church, Spitalfields, a couple of streets away. I could not find that recording but I have found an interview with Ackroyd talking about ‘Hawksmoor’ with James Naughtie on Book Club on Radio 4, here.

And here also, is dear Amanda Vickery’s ‘Behind Closed Doors’. Very apt for this house as the TV programme ‘At Home with the Georgians’ featured nearby Denis Severs House (that book is here too: 18, Folgate Street).

It would also be impossible to have a library books in London without featuring several Charles Dickens titles.

Finally, the Landmark Trust supply their own History Album at every property. This makes fascinating reading as their investigations into the buildings and their histories are rigorous to a degree. 13, Princelet Street was left to the Trust by Peter Lerwill who bought the house and renovated it very much in the LT fashion. There was little more for the Trust to do when they took over other than decorate, equip and furnish the house ready for its guests . There is still a detailed history album on the shelves.

But possibly the best source of Landmark entertainment of an evening is the reading aloud of the many comments in The Log Book.