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.

Fat Flying Rats (28.09.2010)

Using my ATM has of late been a hazardous experience, not from any street crime, but a far more dangerous assailant coming from the sky. Our local bank has erected a rather splendid sign above its frontage which has proved a perfect perch for pigeons, dozens of them. While ex-mayor Ken Livingstone’s most positive contribution to London has been to reduce the pigeons of Trafalgar Square from 4,000 to a mere 120, they have unfortunately like other vagrants just moved elsewhere.

He first banned the sale of pigeon feed in 2001 resulting in a family business that had traded for decades having to shut shop. Next at a cost of £60,000 a year he introduced a pair of Harris hawks, with their handler, the expense has almost certainly been covered by the reduction in the cost of cleaning up pigeon droppings from the surrounding areas.

Unfortunately, the rest of London is still plagued by these feral creatures that carry (sorry about this!) histoplasmosis, cryptococosis and psittacosis, so it would seem the pigeons above my ATM could previously have been a tourist “attraction” from Trafalgar Square.

On my garden on the bird, table are regularly two ring-necked doves, slim beautiful creatures, even if they are a little stupid and the contrast between our doves and London feral pigeons could be not starker.

Now with our fast-food litter lout culture it has given us pigeons so fat that they can hardly fly out of the way of my cab, with many of them having trouble taking off as they are missing a toe or foot after standing in the piles of their own corrosive droppings. These urban birds are even more stupid than their rural cousins, after centuries of evolution, not one of them have realised that by placing their foot even if it is now a stub, on a piece of bread, they wouldn’t have to throw it over their heads, tearing a piece off in the process.

The numbers of our wild friends, along with foxed and rats needs to be reduced, reports recently have included, dive bombing seagulls, foxes biting children in their beds and if it is to be believed rats 30 inches long.

Sparrow hawks regularly kill pigeons in my garden while the other birds are clever enough to get out of the hawks way it’s only the pigeons that get caught, they could be used to keep the numbers in London down, feeding them something to reduce their sex drive might deprive Londoner’s the opportunity of the amusing spectacle of the males courting rituals, but could have the desired effect.

Writing in the Evening Standard Sebastian Shakespeare suggests a course of action which might prove rather startling to tourists, as the bird’s fall of their perch (or their hands) and I quote:

A more pragmatic way might be to hand out poisoned bird feed to tourists and actively encourage them to feed the pigeons. This would kill two birds with one stone, so to speak: the tourists would still get their photo opportunities and it would be a very cost-effective way of keeping the pigeon population down.

If you still have the need for more about pigeons, I would direct you to Pigeon Blog probably the largest site you find on everything that’s amusing about our fat flying friends.

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.

Crocker’s Folly (21.09.2010)

This sad boarded up building in Aberdeen Place, on the market now for £4.25 million and put in the top 10 endangered list by the Victorian Society in 2007 is testament to one man’s optimism. It was built as the palatial Crown Hotel in 1898 by Frank Crocker who had heard that a new rail terminal was to be built here.

He spared no expense; every wall, window and ceiling is decorated in sumptuous style, with elaborate stucco featuring frolicking cherubs, with fine pillars and nice Victorian wood panelling. It had a grand saloon with marble bar-top and pilasters, marble stringing, marble archways, even a great marble fireplace; with a magnificent Jacobean-style coffered ceiling of the most intricate plasterwork; and acres of gleaming woodwork.

Probably the craziest was perhaps the bust of Caracalla a sly demonstration that the pub’s designers were quite conscious of the excess to which their client was pushing them: Caracalla was a Roman emperor known for his architectural excesses and his complete insanity.

Alas for Crocker! The truth is that while London as a whole may have welcomed the influence of the railway, most of the historic landlords and the well-heeled residents of this part of St John’s Wood did not. Their opposition forced the railway builders to tunnel under Lord’s Cricket ground and then the line turned left a few degrees at St John’s Wood, to terminate not at his doorway, but about a mile away, where Marylebone Station now stands, so expensive was this tunnel that the train operators were forced to economise on their own stations, that is why Marylebone Station is modest compared to say, St Pancras.

The Crown Hotel was a palace in the middle of nowhere; the grandest folly in London so tragic that London has been laughing about it for over a century. Crocker, naturally, went bust and then killed himself by jumping out of an upstairs window.

If you want to see what it look like back in the 1960s the pub was used in a scene from the film Georgy Girl.

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.

Order out of chaos (17.09.2010)

On CabbieBlog there are currently 180 posts and by far the most read has been a short introduction to London’s maps, so you might say that today’s contribution is back by popular demand.

In any city as large and diverse as London is maps can help you find your way around, and probably the most famous of these is Harry Beck’s tube map, although another use of mapping is perhaps less obvious, but these are often of far more use. These are maps that can be used when order has broken down to show the causality and how that order might be returned.

Morgan Map 1682

On Sunday 2 September 1660, the Great Fire of London began reducing most of the City to ashes, and among the huge losses were many maps of the city itself. The Morgan Map of 1682 was the first to show the whole of the City of London after the fire. Consisting of sixteen separate sheets, each measuring eight feet by five feet, it took six years to complete. The map is based on the first detailed and truly scientific surveys of the City, Westminster and Southwark, which had been underway since immediately after the Great Fire in 1666. For the first time the layout of buildings was shown vertically, and on the basis of mathematical calculation rather than pictorially, as had previously been popular. William Morgan’s beautiful map, on a scale of 300 feet to the inch, completed in 1682, symbolised the hoped-for ideal city.

Snow Map 1854

In the nineteenth century, there were several outbreaks of cholera in London. One could awake hale and hearty, develop diarrhoea, vomiting, agonising cramps and by teatime succumb to delirium and death. In the 1849 outbreak, a large proportion of the victims received their water from two water companies, both of these water companies had as the source of their water the river Thames just downstream from a sewer outlet. Dr. John Snow plotted the distribution of deaths in London on a map. He determined that an unusually high number of deaths were taking place near a water pump on Broad Street. Snow’s findings led him to petition the local authorities to remove the pump’s handle. This was done and the number of cholera deaths was dramatically reduced. The work of John Snow stands out as one of the most famous and earliest cases of geography and maps being utilized to understand the spread of a disease. Today, specially trained medical geographers and medical practitioners routinely use mapping and advanced technology to understand the diffusion and spread of diseases such as AIDS and cancer. A map is not just an effective tool for finding the right place; it can also be a life saver.

Abercrombie Map 1945

The Blitz of September 1940 had a shattering impact on London and its inhabitants. On just the first night of the attacks, 7th September, over 400 civilians lost their lives and 1,600 people were severely injured. Out of this destruction emerged the idea of reconstruction. Straight away innumerable newspaper articles, pamphlets, books, exhibitions and films called for the British Government to begin to prepare for when the conflict would be over. Whilst British forces were fighting throughout Europe, Africa and other parts of the world, exhibitions such as Rebuilding Britain in July 1943 began to set out a new agenda for architects and those concerned with the built environment. At the time, Patrick Abercrombie was one of the most authoritative figures on modern town planning. The best-known study that Abercrombie and his team of researchers completed was for London and after two years of research, he published The County of London Plan in 1943. Significantly, it recommended the establishment of several new towns on the outskirts of London, relieving congestion in the city’s central areas and to stop suburban sprawl. Its bright red indicates the areas of London that contained industry at this point in 1943, as you can see, there is a significant amount of red concentrated around the Thames just east of the Isle of Dogs – before the war there was still much heavy industry concentrated around the East End. The map was regarded as key to the argument for reconstruction.

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.

Keep calm and carry on (14.09.2010)

Broadcasting House in Portland Place is almost certainly the most famous 20th century building in London. Completed in May 1932 to provide a home to the world famous British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), whose motto “Nation shall speak unto Nation” would be better interpreted for BBC executives as “Where moron shall speak unto moron”, for Broadcasting House was inadequate from day one.

Its ingenious design to provide 22 soundproof studios, by surrounding the inner core of studios with the offices, the only part of the building visible from the outside, thereby forming a sort of protective outer shell worked, unfortunately no such consideration was made to soundproof beneath the building, as a consequence it allowed the rumble of tube trains to be heard occasionally.

Costing £350,000 a tidy sum at the time, within months it was found to be far too small and St. Georges Hall next door was taken over along with a disused roller-skating rink in Maida Vale.

Lord Reith the guiding force in the BBC in its formative years would have been particularly proud of newsreader Bruce Belfrage on 15 October 1940. For reasons best known only to Reith newsreaders wore a dinner jacket resplendent with bow tie to read on radio to the nation that day’s news.

Despite have painted the pristine Portland stone of Broadcasting House grey, German bombers managed to target the building, destroying the world famous gramophone library and killing seven, nonetheless Bruce brushed the fallen plaster from his dinner jacket and soot off his script and continued to read the Nine O’clock News with barely a pause for breath.

On the first floor directly over the entrance with its statute of Prospero and Ariel is the council chamber, the statute depicting from Shakespeare’s Tempest, Prospero sending Ariel, the spirit of the air, symbolises the future of broadcasting to the world.

Eric Gill its sculptor it would seem had other ideas. He insisted on carving the statute in situ. Standing on scaffolding above the entrance, female employees on arriving would be greeted by the unwelcome sight of London’s first “builder’s bum” for Gill wore a monk’s habit with nothing underneath.

When completed Prospero was found to have a girl’s face carved upon his bottom, the image facing the council chamber. As for Ariel being sent out into the world, he would appear rather well endowed for that, for such a young child.

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.

Fire Brand (10.09.2010)

The word curfew derives from the Norman French Couvre le Feu – meaning put out your fire, and not as is commonly thought to tell citizens that they must not leave their homes, but since it is bedtime a bell would ring to remind them to extinguish all their fires, something a baker from Pudding Lane in 1666 clearly ignored.

First ordered by William the Conqueror this long lasting tradition is still maintained at Gray’s Inn with a curfew bell rung each evening in South Square, itself the centre of the legal profession since 1370.

Fire, that fear of nay mediaeval city, with its timber framed buildings by the end of the 12th century London’s houses were required to be made of stone on the lower parts and roofs had to be tiled.

Each ward was required to provide poles, hooks, chains and ropes for the demolition of a burning house. Later as homeowners could insure their houses, the insurance companies employed their own firemen to protect those insured properties.

Fire-marks denoting which building was insured with which company were affixed to the front of a building.

These fire-marks can still be found in Goodwins Court, and probably accounts for this little gem remaining intact, which made its first appearance in the rate books in 1690, being described then as a row of tailors.

Approached from St. Martin’s Lane (opposite the Salisbury Buffet public house) through a doorway up a couple of steps this intimate little alley seems positive Dickensian with a row of eight narrow late 18th century shop fronts working gas lamps and an attractive clock face over an archway giving on to Bedfordbury. Take Samuel Johnson’s advice to his companion Boswell when just arriving in London “to survey its innumerable little lane and courts”.