Part 1
Transcribed from the 1873 William Collins, Sons and Company edition by David Price, email [email protected]
[Picture: Cover of book]
[Picture: Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Hall, Crimean and Canning Monuments. Penitentiary, Vauxhall Bridge, Lambeth Suspension Bridge, Lambeth Place, and Bethlehem Hospital in the distance]
COLLINS’ ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO LONDON AND NEIGHBOURHOOD:
BEING A
CONCISE DESCRIPTION OF THE CHIEF PLACES OF INTEREST IN THE METROPOLIS, AND THE BEST MODES OF OBTAINING ACCESS TO THEM: WITH INFORMATION RELATING TO
RAILWAYS, OMNIBUSES, STEAMERS, &c.
* * * * *
With fifty-eight Illustrations by Sargent and others, AND A CLUE-MAP BY BARTHOLOMEW.
* * * * *
LONDON: WILLIAM COLLINS, SONS, AND COMPANY, 17 WARWICK SQUARE, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1873.
PREFACE.
IN this work an attempt is made to furnish Strangers with a handy and useful Guide to the chief objects of interest in the Metropolis and its Environs: comprising also much that will be interesting to permanent Residents. After a few pages of General Description, the various Buildings and other places of attraction are treated in convenient groups or sections, according to their nature. Short Excursions from the Metropolis are then noticed. Tables, lists, and serviceable information concerning railways, tramways, omnibuses, cabs, telegraphs, postal rules, and other special matters, follow these sections. An ALPHABETICAL INDEX at the end furnishes the means of easy reference.
The information is brought down to the latest date, either in the Text or in the Appendix at the end. And the Clue-map has, in like manner, been filled in with the recently opened lines of Railway, &c., as well as with indications of the Railways sanctioned, but not yet completed.
CONTENTS.
PAGE HOTEL CHARGES viii GENERAL DESCRIPTION 9 A FIRST GLANCE AT THE CITY 15 A FIRST GLANCE AT THE WEST-END 27 PALACES AND MANSIONS, ROYAL AND NOBLE 33 HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT; WESTMINSTER HALL; GOVERNMENT OFFICES 40 ST. PAUL’S; WESTMINSTER ABBEY; CHURCHES; CHAPELS; 47 CEMETERIES BRITISH AND SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUMS; SCIENTIFIC 62 ESTABLISHMENTS NATIONAL GALLERY; ROYAL ACADEMY; ART EXHIBITIONS 68 COLLEGES; SCHOOLS; HOSPITALS; CHARITIES 70 THE TOWER; THE MINT; THE CUSTOM HOUSE; THE GENERAL 77 POST-OFFICE THE CORPORATION; MANSION HOUSE; GUILDHALL; MONUMENT; ROYAL 84 EXCHANGE THE TEMPLE; INNS OF COURT; COURTS OF JUSTICE; PRISONS 90 BANKS; INSURANCE OFFICES; STOCK EXCHANGE; CITY COMPANIES 93 THE RIVER; DOCKS; THAMES TUNNEL; BRIDGES; PIERS 97 FOOD SUPPLY; MARKETS; BAZAARS; SHOPS 109 CLUBS; HOTELS; INNS; CHOP-HOUSES; TAVERNS; COFFEE-HOUSES; 116 COFFEE-SHOPS THEATRES, CONCERTS, AND OTHER PLACES OF AMUSEMENT 121 PARKS AND PUBLIC GROUNDS; ZOOLOGICAL, BOTANICAL, AND 125 HORTICULTURAL GARDENS ALBERT HALL AND INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION 129 OMNIBUSES; CABS; RAILWAYS; STEAMERS 136 SHORT EXCURSIONS— UP THE RIVER 143 DOWN THE RIVER 154 CRYSTAL PALACE, &C. 162 APPENDIX. TABLES, LISTS, AND USEFUL HINTS— Suburban Towns and Villages, within Twelve Miles’ 169 Railway-Distance Chief Omnibus Routes 171 Tramways 173 Clubs and Club-Houses 173 The London Parcels’ Delivery Company 174 Money-Order Offices, and Post-Office Savings-Banks 175 London Letters, Postal and Telegraph System 175 Reading and News-Rooms 176 Chess-Rooms 177 Theatres 177 Concert Rooms 178 Music Halls 178 Modes of Admission to Various Interesting Places 179 Principal, Public, and Turkish Baths 180 Medicated Baths 181 Cabs 182 Hints to Strangers 183 Commissionaires or Messengers 183 THE GREAT INTERCEPTIVE MAIN DRAINAGE SYSTEM OF LONDON 184 INDEX 185
HOTEL CHARGES.
THERE is only one class of hotels in and near London of which the charges can be stated with any degree of precision. The _old_ hotels, both at the West-End and in the City, keep no printed tariff; they are not accustomed even to be asked beforehand what are their charges. Most of the visitors are more or less _recommended_ by guests who have already sojourned at these establishments, and who can give information as to what _they_ have paid. Some of the hotels decline to receive guests except by previous written application, or by direct introduction, and would rather be without those who would regard the bill with economical scrutiny. The _dining_ hotels, such as the _London_ and the _Freemasons’ Tavern_, in London, the _Artichoke_ and various whitebait taverns at Blackwall, the _Trafalgar_ and _Crown and Sceptre_ taverns at Greenwich, and the _Castle_ and _Star and Garter_ taverns at Richmond, are costly taverns for dining, rather than hotels at which visitors sojourn; and the charges vary with every different degree of luxury in the viands served, and the mode of serving. The hotels which can be more easily tested, in reference to their charges, are the _joint-stock_ undertakings. These are of two kinds: one, the hotels connected with the great railway termini, such as the _Victoria_, the _Euston_, the _Great Northern_, the _Great Western_, the _Grosvenor_, the _Charing Cross_, the _Midland_ and _Cannon Street_; while the other group are unconnected with railways, such as the _Westminster Palace_, the _Langham_, the _Salisbury_, the _Inns of Court_, _Alexandra_, _&c._
COLLINS’ ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO LONDON.
Whether we consider London as the metropolis of a great and mighty empire, upon the dominions of whose sovereign the sun never sets, or as the home of more than three millions of people, and the richest city in the world to boot, it must ever be a place which strangers wish to visit. In these days of railways and steamers, the toil and cost of reaching it are, comparatively speaking, small; and, such being the case, the supply of visitors has very naturally been adjusted to the everyday increasing opportunities of gratifying so very sensible a desire. To such persons, on their arrival at this vast City of the Islands, we here, if they will accept us as their guides, beg to offer, ere going into more minute details, a
GENERAL DESCRIPTION.
Without cumbering our narrative with the fables of dim legendary lore, with regard to the origin of London—or _Llyn-Din_, “the town on the lake,”—we may mention, that the Romans, after conquering its ancient British inhabitants, about A.D. 61, finally rebuilt and walled it in about A.D. 301; from which time it became, in such excellent hands, a place of not a little importance. Roman remains, such as fine tesselated pavements, bronzes, weapons, pottery, and coins, are not seldom turned up by the spade of our sturdy excavators while digging below the foundations of houses; and a few scanty fragments of the old Roman Wall, which was rather more than three miles round, are still to be seen. London, in the Anglo-Norman times, though confined originally by the said wall, grew up a dense mass of brick and wooden houses, ill arranged, unclean, close, and for the most part terribly insalubrious. Pestilence was the natural consequence. Up to the great plague of 1664–5, which destroyed 68,596, some say 100,000 persons—there were, dating from the pestilence of 1348, no fewer than some nine visitations of widely-spreading epidemics in Old London. When, in 1666, the great fire, which burnt 13,200 houses, spread its ruins over 436 acres, and laid waste 400 streets, came to force the Cockneys to mend their ways somewhat, and open out their over-cramped habitations, some good was effected. But, unfortunately, during the rebuilding of the City, Sir Christopher Wren’s plans for laying its streets out on a more regular plan, were poorly attended to: hence the still incongruous condition of older London when compared, in many instances, with the results of modern architecture, with reference to air, light, and sanitary arrangements. On account of the rubbish left by the fire and other casualties, the City stands from twelve to sixteen feet higher than it did in the early part of its history—the roadways of Roman London, for example, being found on, or even below, the level of the cellars of the present houses.
From being a city hemmed within a wall, London expanded in all directions, and thus gradually formed a connection with various clusters of dwellings in the neighbourhood. It has, in fact, absorbed towns and villages to a considerable distance around: the chief of these once detached seats of population being the city of Westminster. By means of bridges, it has also absorbed Southwark and Bermondsey, Lambeth and Vauxhall, on the south side of the Thames, besides many hamlets and villages beyond the river.
By these extensions London proper, by which we mean the _City_, has gradually assumed, if we may so speak, the conditions of an existence like that of a kernel in a thickly surrounding and ever-growing mass. By the census of 1861, the population of the _City_ was only 112,247; while including that with the entire metropolis, the number was 2,803,034—or _twenty-five times_ as great as the former! It may here be remarked, that the population of the _City_ is becoming smaller every year, on account of the substitution of public buildings, railway stations and viaducts, and large warehouses, in place of ordinary dwelling-houses. Fewer and fewer people _live_ in the City. In 1851, the number was 127,869; it lessened by more than 15,000 between that year and 1861; while the population of the _whole_ metropolis increased by as many as 440,000 in the same space of time.
If we follow the Registrar-General, London, as defined by him, extends north and south between Norwood and Hampstead, and east and west between Hammersmith and Woolwich. Its area is stated as 122 square miles. From the census returns of 1861, we find that its population then was 2,803,921 souls. It was, in 1871, 3,251,804. The real _city_ population was 74,732.
The growth of London to its present enormous size may readily be accounted for, when we reflect that for ages it has been the capital of England, and the seat of her court and legislature; that since the union with Scotland and Ireland, it has become a centre for those two countries; and that, being the resort of the nobility, landed gentry, and other families of opulence, it has drawn a vast increase of population to minister to the tastes and wants of those classes; while its fine natural position, lying as it does on the banks of a great navigable river, some sixty miles from the sea, and its generally salubrious site and soil—the greater part of London is built on gravel, or on a species of clay resting on sand—alike plead in its favour.
At one time London, like ancient Babylon, might fairly have been called a brick-built city. It is so, of course, still, in some sense. But we are greatly improving: within the last few years a large number of stucco-fronted houses, of ornamental character, have been erected; and quite recently, many wholly of stone, apart altogether from the more important public buildings, which of course are of stone. Of distinct houses, there are now the prodigious number of 500,000, having, on an average, about 7.8 dwellers to a house. For our own part we are somewhat sceptical as to this average. But we quote it as given by a professedly good authority.
The Post-Office officials ascertained that there was built in one year alone, as long ago as 1864, no fewer than 9,000 new houses. Though, by comparison with the houses of Edinburgh and some other parts of the kingdom, many of these are small structures, with but two rooms, often communicating, on a floor, a visitor to London will find no difficulty in seeing acres of substantial residences around him as he strolls along through the wide, quiet squares of Bloomsbury, the stuccoed and more aristocratic quarters of Belgravia and South Kensington, or by the old family mansions of the nobility and gentry in, say, Cavendish, Grosvenor, or Portman Squares, and the large and more modern houses of many of our wealthy citizens in Tyburnia and Westburnia, farther westward of the Marble Arch. But of this more anon.
We have often heard foreigners laughingly remark of sundry London houses—apropos of the deep, open, sunk areas, bordered by iron railings, of many of them—that they illustrate, in some sense, our English reserve, and love of carrying out our island proverb—viz., that “every Englishman’s house is his castle,”—in its entirety, by each man barricading himself off from his neighbours advances by a fortified _fosse_!
Without particular reference to municipal distinctions, London may (to convey a general idea to strangers) be divided into four principal portions—the _City_, which is the centre of corporate influence, and where the greatest part of the business is conducted; the _East End_, in which are the docks, and various commercial arrangements for shipping; the _West End_, in which are the palaces of the Queen and Royal family, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and the residences of most of the nobility and gentry; and the _Southwark and Lambeth_ division, lying on the south side of the Thames, containing many manufacturing establishments, but few public buildings of interest. Besides these, the northern suburbs, which include the once detached villages of Hampstead, Highgate, Stoke Newington, Islington, Kingsland, Hackney, Hornsey, Holloway, &c., and consist chiefly of private dwellings for the mercantile and middle classes, may be considered a peculiar and distinct division. It is, however, nowhere possible to say (except when separated by the river) exactly where any one division begins or ends; throughout the vast compass of the city and suburbs, there is a blending of one division with that contiguous to it. The outskirts, on all sides, comprise long rows or groups of villas, some detached or semi-detached, with small lawns or gardens.
The poet Cowper, in his _Task_, more than a hundred years ago, appreciatively spoke of
“The villas with which London stands begirt, Like a swarth Indian with his belt of beads.”
We wonder what he would think now of the many houses of this kind which extend, in some directions, so far out of town, that there seems to be no getting beyond them into the country.
From the Surrey division there extends southward and westward a great number of those ranges of neat private dwellings, as, for instance, towards Camberwell, Kennington, Clapham, Brixton, Dulwich, Norwood, Sydenham, &c.; and in these directions lie some of the most pleasant spots in the environs of the metropolis.
The flowing of the Thames from west to east through the metropolis has given a general direction to the lines of street; the principal thoroughfares being, in some measure, parallel to the river, with the inferior, or at least shorter, streets branching from them. Intersecting the town lengthwise, or from east to west, are three great leading thoroughfares at a short distance from each other, but gradually diverging at their western extremity. One of these routes begins in the eastern environs, near Blackwall, and extends along Whitechapel, Leadenhall Street, Cornhill, the Poultry, Cheapside, Newgate Street, Holborn, and Oxford Street. The other may be considered as starting at London Bridge, and passing up King William Street into Cheapside, at the western end of which it makes a bend round St. Paul’s Churchyard; thence proceeds down Ludgate Hill, along Fleet Street and the Strand to Charing Cross, where it sends a branch off to the left to Whitehall, and another diagonally to the right, up Cockspur Street; this leads forward into Pall Mall, and sends an offshoot up Waterloo Place into Piccadilly, which proceeds westward to Hyde Park Corner. These two are the main lines in the metropolis, and are among the first traversed by strangers. It will be observed that they unite in Cheapside, which therefore becomes an excessively crowded thoroughfare, particularly at the busy hours of the day. More than 1000 vehicles _per hour_ pass through this street in the business period of an average day, besides foot-passengers! To ease the traffic in Cheapside, a spacious new thoroughfare, New Cannon Street, has been opened, from near London Bridge westward to St. Paul’s Churchyard. The third main line of route is not so much thronged, nor so interesting to strangers. It may be considered as beginning at the Bank, and passing through the City Road and the New Road to Paddington and Westbourne. The New Road here mentioned has been re-named in three sections—Pentonville Road, from Islington to King’s Cross; Euston Road, from King’s Cross to Regent’s Park; and Marylebone Road, from Regent’s Park to Paddington. The main cross branches in the metropolis are—Farringdon Street, leading from Blackfriars Bridge to Holborn, and thence by Victoria Street to the King’s Cross Station; the Haymarket, leading from Cockspur Street; and Regent Street, already mentioned. There are several important streets leading northward from the Holborn and Oxford Street line—such as Portland Place, Tottenham Court Road, King Street, and Gray’s Inn Lane. The principal one in the east is St. Martin’s-le-Grand and Aldersgate Street, which, by Goswell Street, lead to Islington; others are—Bishopsgate Street, leading to Shoreditch and Hackney; and Moorgate Street, leading northwards. A route stretching somewhat north-east—Whitechapel and Mile End Roads—connects the metropolis with Essex. It is a matter of general complaint that there are so few great channels of communication through London both lengthwise and crosswise; for the inferior streets, independently of their complex bearings, are much too narrow for regular traffic. But this grievance, let us hope, is in a fair way of abatement, thanks to sundry fine new streets, and to the Thames Embankment, which, proceeding along the northern shore of the river, now furnishes a splendid thoroughfare right away from Westminster Bridge to Blackfriars Bridge, by means of which the public are now enabled to arrive at the Mansion House by a wide street—called Queen Victoria Street, and, by the Metropolitan District Railway, to save time on this route from the west.
We shall have occasion again to allude to the Thames Embankment some pages on, and therefore, for the present, we will take
A FIRST GLANCE AT THE CITY.
London is too vast a place to be traversed in the limited time which strangers usually have at their disposal. Nevertheless, we may rapidly survey the main lines of route from east to west, with some of the branching offshoots. All the more important buildings, and places of public interest, will be found specially described under the headings to which they properly belong.
The most striking view in the interior of the city is at the open central space whence Threadneedle Street, Cornhill, Lombard Street, King William Street, Walbrook, Cheapside, and Princes Street, radiate in seven different directions. (See illustration.) While the corner of the Bank of England abuts on this space on the north, it is flanked on the south by the Mansion House, and on the east by the Royal Exchange. It would be a curious speculation to inquire how much money has been spent in constructions and reconstructions in and around this spot during half a century. The sum must be stupendous. Before new London Bridge was opened, the present King William Street did not exist; to construct it, houses by the score, perhaps by the hundred, had to be pulled down. Many years earlier, when the Bank of England was rebuilt, and a few years later, when the Royal Exchange was rebuilt, vast destructions of property took place, to make room for structures larger than those which had previously existed for the same purposes. For some distance up all the radii of which we have spoken, the arteries which lead from this heart of the commercial world, a similar process has been going on to a greater or less extent. Banking-houses, insurance-offices, and commercial buildings, have been built or rebuilt at an immense cost, the outlay depending rather on the rapidly increasing value of the ground than on the actual charge for building. If this particular portion of the city, this busy centre of wealth, should ever be invaded by such railway schemes as 1864, 1865, and 1866 produced, it is difficult to imagine what amounts would have to be paid for the purchase and removal of property. Time was when a hundred thousand pounds per mile was a frightful sum for railways; but railway directors (in London at least) do not now look aghast at a million sterling per mile—as witness the South-Eastern and the Chatham and Dover Companies, concerning which we shall have to say more in a future page.
[Picture: Bank of England, Royal Exchange, Mansion House, &c. (Cornhill, Lombard, Threadneedle Streets.)] {16}