For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

A Tall Tail (22.03.13)

Since the horsemeat scandal, CabbieBlog seems to have taken on a foodie theme. This week I found a little mouse sitting on top of the bird seed which is stored in plastic containers in my shed. How he came to be there I have no idea. The sight of my furry friend reminded me of what is claimed to be London’s smallest statute.

Two mice are fighting over a piece of cheese high up on a building on the southeastern corner of Philpot Lane by the junction with 23 Eastcheap. They apparently date from 1862 when the building was constructed for the spice merchants Messrs Hunt & Crombie by John Young & Son.

No documents seem to exist as to who sculpted this homage to fromage, however, they could be a memorial to a tragic fight between two builders over a cheese sandwich – except the sandwich hadn’t been invented at that time.

The builders in question were working on the Monument, designed by Sir Christopher Wren and built between 1671-77 to commemorate the Great Fire of London. It stands on the junction of Fish Street Hill and Monument Street about 400ft away from Philpot Lane.

At some point during the Monument’s construction, the two builders sat down to enjoy their packed lunch of bread and cheese. Having a head for heights – well you would doing that job – the men were content to sit at their workplace, perched on a high scaffold. This was before steel scaffolding, hard hats and the ubiquitous hi-vis jackets, no health and safety in those days.

One of the men noticed that his cheese had been nibbled away. His suspicion as to the identity of the cheese nibbler, for reasons best known to him, fell on his mate sitting beside him perched high up on the Monument.

A fight broke out not wise when you’re poised so high up. Trading punches, the unfortunate pair lost their footing and plunged to the ground to their deaths.

It was only later, after similar disappearances of bread and cheese, that the real culprits were discovered – an infestation of tiny mice.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Dark Satanic Mills (19.03.13)

Food producers adulterating our food is a recurring problem. When the Albion Flour Mills opened the traditional millers – who feared the factory would drive their wind and water mills out of business – had for a long time been spreading rumours that flour from the factory was adulterated with all manner of unpleasant substances.

Since bread was the main diet of the poor millers were often portrayed as the greedy cheating baddie. At times of high wheat prices bakers and millers would be the target of rioters, often accused along with farmers and landowners of hoarding to jack up prices. Bread riots could involve the whole community, though they were often led by women, rioters would often seize bread and force bakers to it at a price they thought fair.

The Albion Mill was the first significant factory built in London. It was situated east side of Blackfriars Road on the approach to Blackfriars Bridge close to the Thames. Inside this modern wonder of its day, vast steam engines powered mill wheels which ground the flour on a huge scale.

Before the fire grinding 10 bushels of wheat per hour, by 20 pairs of 150 horsepower millstones, the Mills were the industrial wonder of the time, quickly becoming a fashionable sight of the London scene, they were regarded as the most powerful machines in the world. The trendy middle and upper classes had liked to drive to Blackfriars in their coaches and gawp at the new industrial age being born.

But in 1791 the factory dramatically burned to the ground in very suspicious circumstances.

The Mills stood in Blackfriars, an area together with neighbouring Southwark long notorious for its rebellious poor and for artisan and early working-class political organisation. At one time the Thames Bank at Lambeth was littered with windmills – eventually, they were all put out of business by steam power. When the Albion opened London millers feared ruin.

It was hardly surprising that when the mill was an inferno, they made their joy immediately apparent. A huge crowd gathered and made no effort to save the Mills, but stood around watching in grim satisfaction. Later in the day locals and mill workers danced around the smoking ruins, ballads of rejoicing were printed and sung on the spot and millers waved placards which read ‘Success to the mills of ALBION but no Albion Mills.’

After a soldier and a constable got into a row, a fight broke out leading to a mini-riot; but firemen turned their hoses on the crowd thus the first recorded use of early water cannon. To further make their point, the millers labelled the factory Satanic.

William Blake lived a short distance from the factory and it is thought the event inspired the line ‘Dark Satanic mills’ in his poem And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time, later made famous as the hymn Jerusalem.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

I could eat a horse (13.03.13)

The site of 37 Albany Street was once home to naturalist William Buckland Dean of Westminster, a fanatical animal collector and one of London’s strangest characters.

To prove the efficacy of bird droppings as fertiliser he once used great quantities of it to write the word ‘guano’ on the lawn at his Oxford College. When the summer came and the grass had grown well the letters could be clearly seen.

Buckland’s house was overrun with animals including two monkeys he let drink and smoke, some he slept with and others were kept till they died and then dissected or just left to rot. But Buckland’s taste for natural history extended further.

He started the Society for the Acclimatisation of Animals which aimed to naturalise exotic animals to widen the nation’s diet. His wide circle of friends were guests at Albany Street and were treated to roasted hedgehog, grilled crocodile streak, slug soup, horse’s tongue, boiled elephant trunk, rhinoceros pie and boiled porpoise head which tasted like ‘broiled lamp wick. If you partook of his generous hospitality, the chances are that the dish of the day came from an animal that had roamed Buckland’s house and garden a little earlier as a pet.

Stewed mole was a dish that Buckland announced to be the most revolting thing he’d eaten, though this was before he tried ‘horribly bitter’ earwigs and ‘unspeakable’ bluebottles.

Buckland acquired exotic creatures when there was a death at the nearby London Zoo. On one occasion returning from holiday, he was furious to discover in his absence, the zoo had buried a dead leopard. Buckland eagerly dug it up for supper.

He showed no qualms in using his taste buds in pursuit of knowledge. Travelling to London on his horse one dark wintry night Buckland got lost, but trusting to his extraordinary sense of taste he simply dismounted, picked up a handful of earth, tasted it, shouted “Uxbridge!” and went on his way – if only London’s cabbies could do the same.

While visiting a cathedral where saints’ blood was said to drip on the floor, Buckland took one lick to determine the ‘blood’ was, in fact, bat urine.

Buckland’s friend Edward Harcourt, Archbishop of York, was, like Buckland himself, a great collector of curiosities and had managed to obtain what was believed to be the shrunken, mummified heart of Louis XIV. He kept it in a snuff box in his London house and rashly showed it to Buckland during a dinner party. “I have eaten many things”, Buckland is reported to have said, “but never the heart of a King” and before anyone could stop him he gobbled it up.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Churchill banishes dandruff (08.03.13)

Located on a spot referred to in the 1950s by Churchill as “where my statue will go” and unveiled by his widow Lady Clementine Spencer-Churchill in 1973. Winston Churchill’s 12 ft bronze statute gazes towards Westminster Bridge shows the wartime leader standing with his hand resting on his walking stick and wearing a military greatcoat standing on a 8 ft high plinth with ‘Churchill’ inscribed on it in large capital letters.

The statue wasn’t without controversy – when the sculptor revealed his first attempt he was told to start again because it looked too much like Mussolini.

A later proposal to insert pins standing out of the Winston’s bald domed head was turned down in the 1970s – the pins were intended to stop wild birds from sitting on its head. It would also have given a rather punk persona to the great man, something briefly achieved by an anti-capitalist protester giving him a turf Mohican in the May Day riots of 2000.

But watch the statue for long enough and you’ll notice pigeons aren’t so fond of making their mark on it as they are on Nelson Mandela. This isn’t due to the respect in which the birds hold Britain’s wartime leader, but rather a sign of the respect in which the establishment holds him.

Churchill might be shocked to discover the authorities – exhibiting indomitable Churchillian spirit in the war against guano – afforded his statue the ultimate honour of a small electric current.

Any pigeon thinking of evacuating its bowels on Churchill’s bald pate is soon put off by an unpleasant tingling in its feet. The shoulders on which he carried the heavy burden of war are similarly spared the ignominy of white excrement epaulettes.

The unique privilege has another effect in winter when the electric bird-scarer doubles up as a heater, preventing Churchill from growing a snow coiffure.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Gallic Snug (26.02.13)

Although the bar was called York Minster until quite recently most had known it as The French House and it’s had a Gallic feel since it opened in 1914. In the Second World War, it became the favoured watering hole of General de Gaulle while he was organising the Free French forces. It was while using the bar as a homely headquarters that de Gaulle wrote his famous speech ‘À tous les Français’ urging his countrymen to keep alive ‘the flame of French resistance’. Ironically its frontage was blown out in an air raid.

After the war, the bar gained its reputation as a haunt for the heavy drinking, louche bohemian, with regulars a celebrated roster of artists, writers, wits and eccentrics including Aleister Crowley.

In 1984 it became clear the York Minster’s fame had spread worldwide when the real Minster (the cathedral in York) suffered a catastrophic fire and donations for repairs destined for York Minster began arriving at the bar from around the globe.

When the landlord redirected the funds north to Yorkshire he discovered the Bishop of York had for many years been quietly receiving unsolicited cases of claret intended for Gaston Berlemond a Belgian who had bought the pub in 1914.

It sells more Ricard than anywhere else in Britain and only serves beer in half-pints, except for on April the first, when a recent custom has been that Suggs serves the first pint of the day.