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.

The Spirit of London (06.06.13)

One of the projects that I have been most proud of is my contribution to The Spirit of London, a magnificent coffee-table book, produced by Anthony Osmond-Evans to celebrate the London Olympics and HM Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee. The book which was presented to Her Majesty was also given to all athletes competing in the London 2012 Olympics. The paints with a broad brush the changing seasons, personalities and cultures, which make up the colourful mosaic that is London today. In addition to my contribution the Mayor of London Boris Johnson and the Lord Mayor both wrote forewords for the book.

A Cabbie’s London Spirit by David Styles

Any artist or photographer will tell you that professionally they observe the world around them in ways that others take for granted, and it’s this same attention to detail that’s needed when one undertakes The Knowledge, the qualification required to become a London cabbie; every street, club, bar, church, hotel and even blue plaques must be committed to memory.

In pursuit of all these facets of London the student discovers that there is more to London than is apparent at first sight. Just like a photographer they stop looking at the features of London in isolation and try to put them into some context of London’s history and its people.

The Knowledge was introduced in 1851 after complaints that cabbies didn’t know where they were going by visitors to the Great Exhibition in pursuit of obtaining the Knowledge a student discovers that some streets in the City; Milk Street, Poultry, Goldsmith Street are named after the goods once sold there, or Old Jewry was an area where Jewish money lenders lived before being expelled by King Edward I.

On the Knowledge when given London Stone to locate in Cannon Street a little research suggests that London’s prosperity was thought to depend on London Stone’s safekeeping and that the Romans could have used the limestone block as the point to measure all distances from Londinium.

While London Bridge enabled London’s cab trade in the 16th century to challenge the watermen’s monopoly to go south of the river ferrying wealthy City merchants to Southwark so they could enjoy the delights of the gaming houses and stews (brothels) on Bankside in an area owned by the Bishops of Winchester and known as the Liberty of the Clink – unregulated by the city authorities.

The latest place for Knowledge students to find – The Shard – London’s newest building nearing completion at London Bridge Quarter is the European Union’s tallest building and students will be expected to know its formal name – London Bridge Tower – and the entrance to the 5-star Shangri-La Hotel within its walls.

London’s longevity as the world’s premier city is the result of generations of resourceful, hard-working individuals coming together to improve their lives and in so doing adding another strata of history, business and culture in this incredible city for future Knowledge students to go out and find.

The words of Samuel Johnson should be the mantra for any prospective Knowledge student:
“Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but must survey the innumerable little lanes and courts . . . that the wonderful immensity of London consists.”

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.

What’s in a name? (31.05.13)

It is the Celts who probably named the Thames. It is thought by some to come from the Old English word ‘Temese’, meaning ‘to flow turbidly’. A simple name for a river full of detritus you might think, but it was probably the only waterway in the region that actually flowed, even if a little muddily.

The river’s sinuous looping remains central to the idea of London and is frequently used on graphic devices representing the capital even the BBC’s Eastenders uses it on the titles.

Today we Londoners refer to this lower stretch of England’s longest river as, well, ‘The River’ in the definite article as if it was the only river that existed, or at least the only one that mattered – which of course it is.

Ham comes from a bend in the shore, similar to ‘ham’ from the bend of the knee, a cut of meat from the thigh of the hind leg of certain animals, especially pigs. Hampton gets its name from a pig’s anatomy.

At times it has erroneously been given a male gender and nicknamed Old Father Thames a kind of post-modern quasi-tutelary deity when in reality at times it has flooded and rather than protected Londoners has taken lives.

Over time most goods that entered London came via The River, so landing places were crucial. In Old English the word for a landing place was Hythe, some locations on The River’s foreshore still bear this out: Rotherhithe or cattle harbour from which cattle may have been shipped across The River for the market at Smithfield. Greenhithe and Bablock Hythe in Oxfordshire are also locations of mediaeval docks.

Lambs were landed just west of Westminster – you could say today politicians act like a flock of sheep – but from that, we get the corruption, Lambeth.

Further, upriver Chelsea was where the chalk was landed and Putney (once Puttenhuthe, possibly where hawks were landed, but more probably named after a man who had hawk-like features).

Greenwich was first recorded in 964, its name derives from the Old English for a green trading place or harbour. At Shadwell, its name is derived from a shallow spring or stream, not a shady well as some might think of the area.

Further downriver Woolwich unsurprisingly is named after a trading place for wool, while its neighbour Thamesmead sounds as if it should be a bucolic place to enjoy a glass of mead.

Thamesmead’s name in fact was the winning entry in a newspaper competition. The area’s topography of lakes and canals relieving the starkness of the built environment was once dubbed ‘the town of the 21st century. I doubt if many of its residents today would agree with that sentiment.

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.

Bloomsbury Blues (28.05.13)

When I first started working, driving a cab in London, dotted around the Capital were a number of small independent garages, many providing facilities for cabbies to empty their bladders as well as fill up their cabs.

One popular such garage with the most basic of washroom facilities was once to be found in Waverton Street, Mayfair occupying a site worth probably many millions more than the fuel they were selling.

The oldest garage in London, which until recently was located in Store Street, a short anxious drive from Oxford Street when running low on diesel. The Bloomsbury Village Garage reminiscent of a period that Enid Blyton wrote about closed in June 2008 after being turned down for listing by The Department for Culture Media and Sport.

It opened in 1926 probably for the exclusive use of The Duke of Bedford, a well known car enthusiast, who on 1st April 1968 was fine £50 for undertaking on the M1, the police had recognised his number plate DOB1.

The petrol station which attracted famous customers’ including Lewis Hamilton and Jamie Oliver was once probably used by Virginia Woolf’s chauffeur has now been redeveloped using most of the original brick and stone incorporating the original kiosk. A mosaic above harks back to the ‘golden age’ of motoring when it was possible to fill your tank and spend a penny in central London.

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.

Hippy Homes (10.05.13)

It was a beautiful summer’s evening and after nearly five years hard graft to pass The Knowledge a task which at times had taken over my life I was now ‘King of the Road’.

Having criss-crossed London a thousand times I thought I knew every square, cul-de-sac and back-water of London, but my fare had directed me to Bonnington Square, somewhere I had never investigated.

As we turned into the square ahead of me was a sub-tropical garden in Vauxhall!

Here tucked away a stone’s throw from where the gardener John Tradescant had founded ‘The Ark’ with its collection of botanical specimens from around the world were tropical trees in peoples’ front gardens.

The story of the saving of Bonnington Square from developers is a true David v Goliath. In the early 1980s a large number of properties were acquired for demolition by the then Inner London Education Authority in advance of proposals to build a new school on the site. However, plans for the school were dropped and the houses were left empty.

The square was taken over by squatters who formed a Bohemian community comprising of individuals from around the world. The squat had two community gardens one created from a derelict playground which previously was a bomb site, a café, wholefood shop, nightclub, newsletter and even a milk bar.

Forming housing co-operative they started negotiating with the ILEA to lease the 100 properties to the South London Family Housing Association. The co-op did up the houses and saved them from dereliction, some have tenants or shared ownership and some even have the occasional freehold.

If ever there was a place in London which shows the capital to be a collection of villages, this little community, in the shadow of the brutal St. George’s Wharf this is it.

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.

Urban Philistines (07.05.13)

Are we becoming a city of Philistines? I ask this as public art is becoming more vulnerable to deliberate damage or theft, for until recently works of art left out in public spaces only had to contend with the occasional pigeon defecation.

In the past, anyone who had good reason to despise a statue would limit their protests to something impermanent. Gladstone’s statue is a case in point. Theodore Bryant director of the Bryant & May match factory, a prominent liberal, had deducted a shilling from the wages of his staff as a contribution to the erection of Gladstone’s statue near the factory. The match girls who worked in appalling conditions for a pittance went to the unveiling, and a gruesome story is told by Annie Besant that some cut their arms and let their blood trickle on the marble, paid for, in truth, by their blood.

The Duke of York statue just off The Mall cost £25,000 to build and finance was raised by subscription – each individual in the army was required to contribute a day’s pay. Although many in the army resented this deduction the statute was never desecrated.

But recently we have had a Barbara Hepworth stolen from Dulwich Park and probably sold for scrap, the charming bronze Doctor Salter’s Daydream which once sat on a bench in Bermondsey has been stolen while the accompanying piece – the good doctor’s daughter holding a cat – has been n forced into hiding. A Banksy by that most ephemeral of artists, who expects his pieces to be painted over, has been ripped from the wall it was painted upon to end up in an American auction house and when a statue of Bomber Harris was installed outside St. Clement’s Church a spate of red paint throwing occurred protesting about the bombing of Germany in World War II.

The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is proposing to sell a Henry Moore entitled ‘Draped Seated Women’ known to the locals as ‘Old Flo’ hoping to raise £20 million and another Moore ‘Knife Edge Piece’, which stood on Abingdon Green near the Houses of Parliament, has been undergoing restoration after decades of graffiti artist’s work.

Now with the death of Baroness Thatcher, a debate has arisen upon where to site a suitable monument. Its detractors argue that any representation of her in a public space will inevitably be vandalised. Hardly surprising since in 2002 at Guildhall Art Gallery a marble statue of the Iron Lady was decapitated first by a cricket bat and when that failed a metal rope.

So what is the future of public art? Will our parks be devoid of any artwork unless guarded night and day?