Part 2
NINE ELMS LANE it is said derived its name from nine Elm Trees which stood in a row facing a small mansion known as "Manor House"--on the site there has recently been erected, partly out of some of the old materials, the offices and premises belonging to Haward Bros. Forty years ago, Londoners wending their way to Battersea fields regarded themselves in the country away from the smoke of town where they could rusticate at pleasure as soon as they entered Nine Elms Lane on their pedestrian excursions. Here were hedgerows, and green lanes, and market gardens, and orchards, meadows, and fields of waving corn, where reapers might have been seen in harvest-time reaping and binding sheaves of golden grain. Dikes and ditches had to be crossed.[1] In the event of high tide, which was of no uncommon occurrence, the district would be partially inundated with water, in some places people might ply in small rowing boats as easily as on the River Thames. On the site where now stands the wharf of John Bryan and Co., the celebrated Contractors for Welsh, Steam, Gas, and household Coals in general, were situated the pleasure grounds and tea gardens belonging to Nine Elms Tavern--the old tavern is still remaining. By the side of the Coal Wharf is the Causeway where watermen used to ply for hire in order to ferry people across the river. Steel has given us a lively description of a boat trip from Richmond on an early summer morning when he fell in "with a fleet of gardeners.... Nothing remarkable happened in our voyage, but I landed with ten sail of Apricot boats at Strand bridge after having put up at Nine Elms to take in melons." Within the immediate vicinity is Thorne's Brewery with its clock turret at its summit which at night is illuminated with gas so that the passers-by looking at the clock might know the hour. On the spot where Southampton Streets are, stood in olden time a large mansion surrounded by extensive grounds, said to have been inhabited by the King's Champion. The Champion _of the King, (campio regis)_ is an ancient officer, whose office is, at the coronation of our Kings, when the King is at dinner to ride armed _cap a pie_, into Westminster Hall, and by the proclamation of an herald make a challenge "that if any man shall deny the King's title to the crown, he is there ready to defend it in single combat, etc., which being done," the King drinks to him, and sends him a gilt cup with a cover full of wine, which the Champion drinks, and hath the cup for his fee.
[Footnote 1: About ten years ago a brick sewer was constructed under the supervision of the Metropolitan Board of Works where the filthy black ditch which partly formed a boundary line between Battersea, Clapham, and Lambeth Parishes was filled up. T. Pearson constructed the sewer, and Mr. Benjamin Butcher was Clerk of the Works.]
On the north side of Nine Elms Lane, nearly opposite the place where the "Southampton Arms" Tavern is situated was a windmill.
On the site now occupied by Thorne's Brewery there used to be a Tan Yard and Fellmonger's Establishment. When the ground was opened for the purpose of drainage some old tanks were discovered in which the hides were soaked containing remains of lime and hair. In the rear of the Brewery there was a Hop Garden where that bitter plant much used for brewing was cultivated. The only regular vehicle that passed through Nine Elms Lane was the carrier's cart--the few inhabitants of the place used to "turn out" to see it pass--a marked contrast to the present hurried and incessant traffic! Facing the Railway Terminus were two Steamboat Piers for landing and taking up passengers. At race times the excitement between the rival steamboat companies was intense--"touters," men hired expressly by each of these companies to induce passengers to go down their respective piers, became at times so exasperated with each other that they fell to blows, a sight which the baser sort of the crowds assembled on such occasions enjoyed to their hearts' content.
Many things have been said by way of disparagement of Battersea and not at all reflecting credit on certain localities within the parish. Battersea has been called "the Sink Hole of Surrey." Europa Place, Bridge Road, has been designated "Little Hell," and the spot where Trinity Hall has been erected at the end of Stewart's Lane, received the epithet of "Hell Corner." Persons in the habit of receiving stolen property were said to reside in the neighbourhood; moreover, there was a gang called "Battersea Forty Theives!" "Sharpers" are said to have abounded in every direction, so that strangers going to Battersea would be "cut for the simples." But we who know something of London life know that other Metropolitan parishes have their "dens of infamy" and localities of "Blue Skin," "Jack Sheppard," and "Jonathan Wild" notoriety, that beneath the shadow of St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, our Houses of Parliament and Mansions of the Nobility and Aristocracy, squalor and crime, vice and grandeur walk side by side, and oftentimes hand in hand.
Adjoining Thorne's premises and Swonnell's Malt houses, is the London and South Western Railway Company's Goods Station, which, before the extension of that Company's line in 1848 to Waterloo Road, was originally the Metropolitan Terminus. Though this part of the line crosses the most grimy portion of Lambeth, a distance of two miles and fifty yards, yet it cost the Railway Company £800,000. The London and Southampton Railway (as it was first called) was opened on the 11th of May, 1840, which, in connexion with the opposite wharf and warehouses on the banks of the river, at that time occupied an extent of between seven and eight acres. The entrance front of the (then) Metropolitan Terminus at Nine Elms, erected from designs by William Tite, Esq., Architect to the Company, was not unhandsome though at present it has rather a dingy appearance for want of renovation, and has a central arcade which originally led to the booking office and waiting rooms now used for the manager's and clerks' offices for the goods traffic department. The railroad was commenced under the authority of an Act of Parliament which received the Royal assent on the 5th of July, 1834 (it was opened as far as Woking Common on the 21st of May, 1838). By this Act the Company were empowered to raise £1,000,000 in £50 shares, and a further sum of £330,000 by loan. Since that time several additional Acts have been passed authorizing the Company to extend their line and increase their capital. The Company's capital for the present year (1879) is £17,000,000. Mr. Wood was the Company's first Locomotive Superintendent. When the London and Southampton line was first opened all the workmen in the Company's service had a half holiday and one shilling each given to them. The Richmond Railway--this though an offshoot of the South Western, and worked by that Company, was executed by a private one. It was however sold to the South Western Company in October, 1846. It had been opened on the 27th of July previous. Number of miles open 648. The gross receipts for the year ending December 31, 1873, were £2,195,170. The railroad intersects Battersea parish to the extent of two miles and a half. The Goods Department comprises the hydraulic shed, down goods shed, carriers' shed, egg shed, the old warehouse and granary by the riverside; down office, Wandsworth Road Gate; cartage office, Nine Elms Lane. Officers of the Company.--General Manager, Archibald Scott, Esq.; Locomotive Superintendent, W. Adams, Esq.; Resident Engineer, William Jacomb, Esq.; Treasurer, Alfred Morgan, Esq.; Goods Manager, J. T. Haddow, Esq., Nine Elms; Assistant Goods Manager, Mr. W. B. Mills, Waterloo; Superintendent, R. H. Ming, Esq., Nine Elms; Chief Inspector, Mr. Robert Lingley, Nine Elms; Law Clerk, M. H. Hall, Esq.; Mr. H. B. Terrill, Cashier; Mr. J. E. Hawkins, Chief Clerk; Superintendents of the Line, E. W. Verrinder, Chief Superintendent, Waterloo Station; John Tyler, Western Division, Exeter Station; William Gardiner, Assistant Superintendent, Waterloo Station; W. H. Stratton, Storekeeper, Nine Elms Works.
Soon after the opening of the London and Southampton Railway a collision between two passenger trains occurred at the Nine Elms Terminus resulting in the death of a young woman, a domestic servant, who, with a fellow servant, had been spending the day at Hampton Court. The Coroner's Jury returned a verdict of accidental death _a deodand_ of £300 was levied on the "Eclipse" locomotive engine, the moving cause of death. The Railway Company paid the £300 to Earl Spencer as Lord of the Manor, who most generously divided it amongst the deceased's relatives.
_Omnia qua movent ad mortem sunt deodanda:_ What moves to death, or kills him dead, Is deodand, and forfeited.
On the South Western Railway Stone Wharf are the agents' offices of the several depôts for the sale of Portland stone, Bath freestone, etc. Huge blocks of stone direct from the quarries are here deposited and piled block upon block. A single block in some instances weighing ten tons elevated and removed by means of a steam traveller moving on a gantry.
When the workmen were engaged in "digging out" the ground for the foundation of the goods sheds a human skeleton was discovered, on which Mr. Carter (coroner) held an inquest. Dr. Statham, who made the _post mortem_ examination, stated that the skeleton was that of a male person, that there were three severe cuts upon the head either of which was sufficient to cause death. As no further evidence was procurable a verdict was given in accordance.
About forty years ago, when Mr. Gooch was Locomotive Superintendent, a fire broke out at the London and South Western Railway Works, Nine Elms Lane, which caused great destruction of property, including a very handsome clock tower. Various metals were fused and mingled into shapes fantastic, portions of which were substituted for chimney-piece ornaments in the homes of the workman and kept as mementos of this conflagration! A man of the name of Dover who it is said accidentally set the stores on fire was so frightened that it turned the hair of his head grey in one night!
At Nine Elms Locomotive, Carriage and Stores Departments are fire precautions which the Railway Company insist upon being strictly observed. A fire engine with hose and all necessary appliances is kept in a building set apart for it adjoining Heman's Street Entrance gate. A properly qualified fireman is appointed to look after the whole of the buildings by night, as a precaution against fire. The fireman's name is Thomas Lewin, and his residence is 51, Thorne Street, Wandsworth Road. His hours of duty are from 5.30 p.m. to 6.30 a.m. It is the fireman's duty to perambulate the whole of the works during the night, and to make a daily report of the circumstances in the book provided for that purpose. He is responsible that the fire engine, hose, hydrants, etc., are kept in working order and tried once a week. A statement of the trial is to be made in the fireman's report book with any suggestions or remarks. Positions of Hydrants at Nine Elms Works--There are 120 hydrants (always charged) distributed as follows:--15 in the offices, paint loft and shops beneath; 4 in the general stores; 4 in wheelwrights' and signal shops; 2 in bonnet shop; 5 in waggon shop; 4 in new waggon shop and saw mill; 5 in smiths' and carriage fitting shops; 9 in erecting shops; 2 in turning shop; 3 in tender shop; 4 in new erecting shop; 1 in permanent way shop; 4 in arches under the Viaduct; 52 in running shed; 4 at outlets of water tanks, and 2 on the coal stage. Positions of Tell-tale Clocks:--1 in the office; 1 in general stores; 1 in wheelwrights' shop; 1 in paint shop; 1 in saw mill. It is the fireman's duty to commence to "peg" each of these blocks four times every night at the following hours, viz., 8 p.m., 10.30 p.m., 1 a.m. and 3.30 a.m.
Facing the Goods Station are the Company's Wharves with an extensive river frontage. Here also formerly stood Francis' Cement Works, adjoining is Nine Elms Steamboat Pier. The South Western Railway Locomotive Works and Goods Department occupy a vast area. It is computed that about 2,000 persons are employed in the various departments. Here were formerly orchard-grounds--many a goodly tree bearing fruit and pleasant to the eye has been felled. "Woodman spare that tree!" though spoken by feminine lips would have no force of appeal in this fast age of iron railways and steam locomotives, when Railway Companies scruple not by virtue of Acts of Parliament to pull down by hundreds the dwellings of the poor, it is not to be supposed for an instant that a few fruit trees however delicious their produce or delightful their shadow should prove a peculiar obstacle in the way of this March of Civilization! On payment of sixpence, children at half-price, persons might enter these orchards with full liberty to eat as much fruit as they liked on condition that they brought none away. The old Spring Well near Nine Elms Lane, Wandsworth Road, is within the recollection of many, who by descending some six or eight steps reached with their hands the iron ladle out of which they often drank cooling draughts of nature's sparkling aquatic refreshment. Ah, everything has a history and its lesson if we did but know. We all exert unconscious influence either for good or evil,--some secret action performed; some deed of kindness done; some public boon conferred with the benefactor's name concealed shall by-and-by be proclaimed upon the house-top. A cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth shall not lose its reward. Some persons wish to be remembered by posterity, even wicked parents would not like after death to be obliterated from the memories of their children. The best of all human monuments is a good character,--Solomon says, "a good name is rather to be chosen than riches."
Our forefathers never dreamed of erecting such drinking fountains[1] as we have in these days with troughs for cattle and smaller ones for mongrel barking curs to slake their thirst; the pond by the way, the wooden horse trough outside the road-side Inn, the long-handled iron pump, in some instances resembling the head and tail of the British Lion having the body of a greyhound, pleased them and suited their purpose. The site now environed by the London Gas Works was formerly a large market ground, here too grew apple, pear, and cherry trees, gooseberry bushes and currants, roses were cultivated and rendered the air fragrant with their sweet perfume. In the ditches and trenches or small channels and streams occasioned by the tidal overflow from the river, juveniles of both sexes might have been seen catching with hand and cap sticklebacks and utilizing a medicine phial or gin bottle for an aquarium. Senior boys and hobbledehoys with jovial facial aspect who had not studied ichthyology or that part of zoology which treats of fishes, attempted to catch larger fry by adopting the Izaak Walton method of angling with rod and line, and thought themselves amply rewarded if after much patient endurance the motion of their floats indicated that their baits had taken, their eyes would glisten at the sight of a few roaches and perches. Youngsters would amuse themselves by watching the newts and tadpoles, the leaping and swimming of that amphibious reptile of the _batrachian_ tribe, wondering perhaps, supposing their biblical knowledge to have extended thus far, whether those were the kind of creatures that crawled out of the river Nile and crept into the houses of the Egyptians.
[Footnote 1: His Grace the Duke of Westminster is the President of the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association.]
Many a dainty dish of stewed eels have the miller's men had at Mill-pond Bridge, who not unfrequently caught alive this precious kind of anguilla as it lay concealed between the stones and mud, without the aid of eel-pot or basket. Mill-Pond Bridge derives its name from the old tidal water flour mill, the only vestige of the mill remaining is the outward carcase, which is in a ruinous condition; beneath its cover are the lock gates, the entrance of the creek where thousands of tons of coal are conveyed in barges to the London Gas Works.
NEW ROAD, as it is designated, leading from Battersea fields to the Wandsworth Road was a lane with a mud bank on both sides. In a line with the centre of the South Western Railway "Running Shed" was formerly Mill-Pond which answered the purpose of a large reservoir of water raised for driving the mill wheel.
Water mills used for grinding corn are said to have been invented by Belisarius, the General of Justinian while besieged in Rome by the Goths, 555. The ancients parched their corn and ground it in mortars. Afterwards mills were invented which were turned by men and beasts with great labour, yet Pliny mentioned wheels turned by water. _See Telo-dynamic Transmitter._
The simplest mill for bruising grain was nothing more than two stones between which it was broken. Such was often seen in the country of the Niger by Richard and John Lander on their expedition to Africa. The manna which God gave to the children of Israel in the desert "the people went about and gathered it, and ground it in mills or beat it in a mortar," _Numbers xi._ 8.
From mills and mortars thus rudely constructed there must have been obtained at first only a kind of peeled grain which Dr. Eadie says may be compared to the German _graupe_, the English _groats_, and the American _grits_ or _hominy_. Fine flour was laboriously obtained from household mills like our coffee mills. The oldest mention of flour is in Gen. xviii. 6; but bread which is made of flour or meal is named in Gen. iii. 19. In order to reduce the flour to a proper degree of fineness it was necessary sometimes to have it ground over again and cleared by a sieve.
Samson when a prisoner to the Philistines was condemned to the mill-stone to grind with his hand in the prison-house, Judges xvi. 21. In England prisoners are sent to the treadmill as a punishment.
The Talmudists have a story that the Chaldeans made the young men of the captivity carry mill-stones with them to Babylon where there seems to have been a scarcity at that time. They have also a proverbial expression of a man with a mill-stone about his neck which they use to express a man under the severest weight of affliction.
Windmills are of great antiquity and stated to be of Roman or Saracen invention, they are said to have been originally introduced into Europe by the Knights of St. John, who took the hint from what they had seen in the crusades (_Baker_). Windmills were first known in Spain, France and Germany in 1299 (_Anderson_). Wind saw-mills were invented by a Dutchman in 1633, when one was erected near the Strand in London.
Acorns was the coarse fare of the old inhabitants of Britain, when wild Britons painted their skin to make themselves appear more fierce, and native tribes in a still more barbarous condition, half naked or clad in the skins of beasts, not cultivators of the soil, subsisted on the flesh of their cattle or on the precarious produce of the chase. Packs of hungry, growling, cruel wolves[1] prowled in the woods and forests, and Druidical Priests exercised an entire control over the unlettered people they governed, and human captives seized on Britannia's shores were offered as victims in sacrifice, a holocaust to the divinities and false gods which ancient Britons worshipped!
[Footnote 1: Wolves were very numerous in England, King Edgar unsuccessfully attempted to effect their total destruction by commuting the punishment of certain crimes into the acceptance of a certain number of wolves' tongues from each criminal; their heads were demanded by him as a tribute particularly 300 annually from Wales, A.D. 961.
In 1289 Edward I. issued his Royal Mandate to Peter Corbet for the extermination of wolves in the several counties of Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, Salop, and Stafford; and in the adjacent county of Derby.
Camden at page 900 informs us certain persons at Wormhill held their lands by the duty of hunting and taking the wolves that infested the country, whence they were styled _Wolf Hunt_.
In Saxon times and during Athelstan's reign wolves abounded so in Yorkshire that a retreat was built at Flixton in that county "to defend passengers from the wolves that they should not be devoured by them." On account of the desperate ravages these animals made during winter the Saxons distinguished January by the name of the Wolf month. An _outlaw_ was called a _wolf's head_ as being out of the protection of law and liable to be killed as that destructive beast.]
The Accipenser, in ichthyology, a genus of fishes belonging to the Amphibia Nantes of Linnæus. The Accipenser has a single linear nostril; the cirri are below the snout, and before the mouth. There are three species of this genus. The ruthenus has four cirri, and fifteen squamous protuberances; it is a native of Russia. The huso has four cirri; the body is naked, has no prickles or protuberances. The ichthyocollo, or _isinglass_ of the shops, famous as an agglutinant, and used also for the fining of wines, is made from its sound or scales. The Sturio, or Sturgeon with four cirri and eleven squamous protuberances on the back. This fish annually ascends our rivers (it has occasionally been seen in years gone by as high up the river Thames as Wandsworth) but in no great numbers, and is taken by accident in the salmon nets. It seems a spiritless fish making no manner of resistance when entangled, but is drawn out of the water like a lifeless lump. This cartilaginous fish is highly prized for food, not unlike in taste to veal. About thirty-six years ago a Royal Sturgeon was caught in the wheel of the mill at Mill-Pond Bridge then in the occupation of Mr. Hutton the Miller (who was noted as a breeder of game fowls), now the property of the London Gas-Light Company. It appears that a local tradesman named Henry Appleton was going to town and saw a great crowd, some with guns shooting at a great fish, but the Sturgeon's natural armour resisted the force of their small shot such as they were then using. Mr. Appleton upon seeing the state of affairs hastened to procure a bullet or two as a more effectual means of capturing the prize and the first shot or bullet fired was fatal to the poor sturgeon which was then landed and conveyed into the garden of Mr. Hutton's private house upon the exact spot of which at the present time stands the house (since erected) on the banks of the Creek in the occupation of Mr. Methven. It then became after the usual ceremony of asking the Lord Mayor, the property of Mr. Appleton, and was exhibited by him in York Street (now Savona Street), on premises now in the occupation of Mr. Dulley, Butcher. After being exhibited several weeks great crowds coming from all parts of London to see it, the Sturgeon was sold to a Fishmonger residing in Bond Street, who publicly exhibited it in his shop for some years with a description stating particulars, where it was captured and by whom and its length, being upwards of 9-ft. It is said to have been equal in weight to a sack of flour viz., 280 lbs.
The Sturgeon is more abundant in the Northern Coasts of Europe. It is also found in the more Southern parts. It was esteemed by the ancients as a very great luxury and it was held in high repute for the table by the Greeks and Romans and at their banquets it was introduced with particular ceremonies.