Georgian London

Ada Lovelace Day - Mrs Margaret Bryan, Astronomer of Blackheath

Mrs Margaret Bryan was born, it is thought, some time before 1760. She had two daughters, and was married to Mr Bryan. In her thirties, she opened a school for girls near Hyde Park Corner. But Margaret Bryan’s school had one remarkable difference: it was an academy for teaching girls mathematics and science.

In 1795 she moved the academy to Blackheath, where it flourished until 1806. In 1797 she published A Compendious System of Astronomy. In it, she excuses her temerity in writing on such subjects, explaining that it is for the use of her students, rather than for public consumption. Her friends, she said, insisted she publish and she asks to be judged by those, who like her, seek ‘truth, although enfeebled by female attire’.

Charles Hutton, Professor of Mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, endorsed the work of the 'beautiful’ Mrs Bryan, saying that, 'even the learned and more difficult sciences are … beginning to be successfully cultivated by the extraordinary and elegant talents of the female writers of the present day’. Hutton respected Bryan, and encouraged her in her 1806, Lectures of Natural Philosophy: thirteen lectures on hydrostatics, optics, pneumatics and acoustics. 

Her final publication came in 1815, with An Astronomical and Geographical Class Book for Schools. In 1816, she left for Margate, where instead of retiring, she opened another academy.

A Brief Guide for Speakers New To Addressing Blind and Deaf Groups

Recently I taught a week long course for blind students on London’s Georgian history and ordinary life during the period, including living life disabled. Whilst the majority of my students had become blind during their adult life, a significant number had been blind since childhood and were also deaf.

Whilst I had made preparations to have what I hoped would be interesting material available, including objects, eighteenth century books and textiles, I hadn’t quite taken on board various aspects of delivery and the pace of our studies. This brief guide will, I hope, help any other speaker intending to address a blind and deaf group. The terms blind and deaf are used here, as I have been contacted by blind and deaf people by email and asked to use these terms, rather than ‘impaired’, which is less favoured by the students themselves. Also, by issuing this guide, I am not claiming to be any sort of expert at all, just to pass on the things I learned, and wish I had known at the beginning of the course! This is also a work in progress and if anyone wants to contribute to it, as either a speaker/teacher or a student they can always email me lucyinglis77@gmail.com

1) If your group includes deaf members, you may be expected to wear a transmitter fob around your neck. These usually just switch on and off. Keep it away from your mobile phone. Members with compatible hearing aids will also wear one. Often, they will play with them during the talk. Don’t get distracted by this, if there’s a problem, they or their guide will tell you. (Pro tip: remember to switch your transmitter off during any tea breaks and when you are in the loo….)

2) Be aware of your venue. If in a lecture theatre, make sure those using the transmitter are in range (near the front), even if guides have to sit nearer the back. This also applies to sitting in the round. Be aware that some students may not want to be separated from their guides, so just suggest it rather than enforce it. If someone can’t hear deaf or not, you’ll soon know about it because they will tell you.

3) Any disabled group is likely to be from a more diverse range of backgrounds and knowledge bases than your typical lecture audience. If your subject is specialist, speak assuming a basic level of knowledge, but a high level of interest and ability. 

4) Introduce yourself at the very beginning. Hopefully, your group will be wearing clear name tags. The group does not know what you look like, which is not necessarily important, but it gives them no yardstick on which to feel acquainted with you before you all engage with the material. Where is your regional accent from? How old are you? Where do you live now? Are you married? Have children? Did you have a shocking journey to the venue? Any tiny anecdote will break the ice. Be comfortable with dispensing a little bit of something about yourself, it will make all the difference to the atmosphere in the room.

5) Speak slowly and clearly. I know, as a speaker, you will think you already speak slowly and clearly. I can almost guarantee you will have vocal nuances that are difficult for the deaf, such as closing your sentences abruptly, or swallowing the odd word. Almost all of these aren’t a problem and will add to your appeal as an individual, but only as long as you SLOW DOWN. This, in turn, will dramatically affect the amount of material you can expect to deliver. Work on approximately 2/3rds of your usual amount but have supplementary up your sleeve for Q&A.

6) Expect to be interrupted. Guide dogs are still just dogs, though they are brilliant too. They sigh, yawn, stretch, grunt and gurgle like any other dog. Plus, disabled students often invest a huge amount of time, effort and emotion into getting to a talk or lecture. If they have a guide, then that’s double the effort. Your talk is important to them, as is their often extensive preparation. It is absolutely usual to be interrupted with shouts of, ‘I CANNOT HEAR YOU,‘ or requests for clarification of a point or a name. This is not bad manners, and it will teach you valuable things about both your delivery and the quality of information you are imparting in a way that may be glossed over in an ordinary lecture.  

7) Don’t be worried if you see students with their eyes closed, not looking at you or even with their head resting on arms while you are speaking. They are all listening.

8) If someone stops you, either by interruption or by raising their hand, stop speaking and identify them. For example: Ruth would like to ask a question, Ruth go ahead. Ruth will then ask her question. Bear in mind that people using the transmitter are now sitting, effectively, in silence. Most are very patient with this, but be aware of the length of time the question is taking, and if necessary, reassert yourself as speaker. In ALL CASES, repeat the question, cutting it down to the shortest version. For example: Ruth is asking whether gin really was such a scourge amongst the poorer classes in the eighteenth century, and my answer is x. This maintains context and flow for the deaf members of the group.

9) Don’t fret about your language. Mincing around phrases such as, ‘When we look at,’ or ‘You might have heard about,’ is obvious and the vast majority of your students and audience will use these phrases themselves without any second thoughts. 

10) If you can, take along at least one object you can allow to be passed around. Blind people are exceptionally careful when they handle things as they are more reliant on it for experience. They also gain a huge amount from it and it will elevate their experience of your teaching.

11) If you are reading or using notes, which is absolutely fine, do it with your HEAD UP NOT LIKE ME IN THE PICTURE. My students told me they could tell whenever I dropped my head to read a passage or quote. So I stopped doing it. It is a very good lesson for all speakers.

Speaking to students with different levels of ability than you might be used to can be daunting, but they only want you to give what you would give to any other group: respect, commitment and passion for your subject, no matter how niche. If you get the opportunity, I suggest you seize it. It may well be some of the most fun teaching time you’ll ever have.

Independent: Book of a Lifetime

I wrote this for the Independent this weekend, on my choice for a Book of a Lifetime.

As a historian of eighteenth century London, it would be too predictable to choose Samuel Johnson’s great Dictionary of 1775 as my choice for a book with enduring impact. There’s no doubt that Johnson’s work had a pivotal role in defining our modern language, but in terms of cultural significance, there’s another book which is almost equally important: Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia. 

In the intellectual crucible of late seventeenth-century Europe, texts on science, astronomy, philosophy and the natural world proliferated, but many were too specialized for the ordinary reader. Gottfried Leibniz, German mathematician and philosopher, described them in 1680 as ‘the horrible mass of books which keeps on growing’. The same year, Ephraim Chambers was born in Kendal. Gifted but poor, he was apprenticed to a London mechanic, ‘but having formed ideas not at all reconcilable to manual labour he was removed from thence and tried at another business’. This attempt also failed and ‘he was at last sent to Mr Senex, the globe-maker’. 

Senex globes are now prized for their astronomical accuracy, although his maps are equally prized for showing California as a large island. Ephraim was no ordinary apprentice; Senex, a man from Shropshire turned Royal Society Fellow and Freemason, was only two years older than his charge, making Chambers one of London’s oldest apprentices at the age of about thirty-four. Ephraim spent his time studying, and a friend noted that he left the apprenticeship ‘a very indifferent globe-maker’. Instead, he had decided he was going to curate all the most important knowledge in the world. It seemed a crazy idea.

In 1728, his Cyclopaedia appeared, modestly subtitled, ‘An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences’. Chambers died in 1740, still working on another edition. There were rumours of trouble amongst the collection of publishers who had undertaken to produce the massive Cyclopaedia but the only one mentioned specifically after Ephraim’s death is Longman, who ‘in particular used him with the liberality of a prince and the tenderness of a father’. Longman’s of Paternoster Row went on to publish Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary. By then, the first edition of the Cyclopaedia had reached Europe, where Denis Diderot was engaged to translate it. Diderot seized upon the material, adding to it from the burgeoning Republic of Letters, and it was published in 27 volumes from 1751 to 1772 as the famous Encyclopédie. 

Diderot’s Encyclopédie was suppressed at stages during its publication, accused of seditious content for asserting that knowledge and not social class or religion lead equated to true status. This monumental work was a core text of the Enlightenment, but it was inspired by a boy from Kendal, determined to write ‘the best Book in the Universe’.

Georgian London: Into the Streets

Yes, it’s finally here. Georgian London: Into the Streets is now on the streets (via your preferred book purchasing method).

Publication day blogging is a bit like arriving at an exam and being given a blank sheet of paper and the last few weeks have been emotional, in more ways than one. I had this post prepared last week, but on the big day, just didn’t want to put it up. If you read it, you’ll know why. Here goes!

It’s been an incredible journey, from the first post on the blog in 2009, to holding the finished hardback in my hand a little over a month ago. There have, of course, been bumps in the road and I need to thank everyone involved with the book for their patience, skill and enthusiasm. Thank you Eleo, Jillian and Ben and Lija, and Kirsty and Heather, and everyone at Viking and DGA who has worked on Georgian London.

A great big thank you to all the people who have given me so much help throughout the writing of the book. Reading chapters, listening to my worries, sending me videos of Henry Cavill’s Superman workouts. The latter were particularly helpful if only for seeing what a serious work ethic looks like, but thankfully there aren’t that many egg whites involved in writing. 

Some of you do know, but most of you won’t, that through the book’s entire gestation period, and for much of my time studying the eighteenth century, Mr I Snr was suffering from terminal cancer. And next week I have to talk about the writing of the book, and it’s easier to write this and then not have to say it. I’ll just raise a glass. He decided, typically, to live far longer than the weeks he was given seven years ago. To the best of our knowledge, this was achieved mainly through pork crackling stolen from someone else’s plate, oysters, wine and willpower. When the proof of Georgian London finally arrived, he read it even as his sight failed, and he got to hold the finished edition although he could no longer really see it: ‘The dust jacket feels simply lovely.’ He died at home just over two weeks ago with the book by his bedside. And Bridie the border terrier on his bed. He leaves a big space in our lives and the world will be a less colourful place. It was he who made me a member of the wondrous London Library all those years ago, setting me on this course through a mutual love of life in another century. I also need to thank him for being half-responsible for my husband, the legendary Mr I, to whom Georgian London is dedicated. 

The final and very real thank you goes to all the readers of this blog over the past four years. Your support, comments, messages, likes and even your stats (yes the regular in French Guiana, you especially) have meant everything; the book has come directly from the strength of your interest in eighteenth century London. Thank you. THANK YOU.

This blog will go on, of course, and soon in a new and really quite glamorous home. I’d hoped it would be built already. But now I know you know why. And I know you know too, that I’m nowhere near done with the eighteenth century yet. 

p.s. If there isn’t a kindle sale in French Guiana, I’ll assume you’ve emigrated. 

In The Dark

What a week. When the estimable Adrian Tinniswood suggested I take a group of visually and hearing impaired students on a week’s tour around Georgian London there was no way to know what to expect. I mean, I sort of knew what to expect in terms of guide dogs (and Poppy, Lyle and Ice defied all expectations) but in terms of student ability and their expectations, I was a bit lost. 

Well, they soon set me straight on that. Eighteen students, eighteen guides, various guide dogs. We started out with,’ You’re speaking too fast! Are you wearing the transmitter?’ ‘Where are you sitting? I don’t know where you are!’ 'You have a nice voice but it’s NOT VERY LOUD. Speak up, not all of us have hearing aids, you know.’ I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a situation where not having to wear a hearing aid is a disadvantage. Yet soon I learned that this group haven’t only been to more museums than I’ll ever go to in my lifetime, but they overcome more obstacles in order to just get to those museums than most of the rest of us can understand. Yesterday, the heat and rain in London combined to make the bus changes we had to take to get to Kensington Palace for the special tour beyond minging. We worked out a Tube route. Only some of the group felt confident enough to take it, even with guides and guide dogs. But others, most of them unfamiliar with London, launched themselves onto the Underground with cheerful abandon. I was struck, constantly, with how the visually impaired trust the goodness in others. And how they attract that goodness.

I must extend a special thank you to Goldsmiths’ Hall, particularly Richard McCrow, Sophia and Claire, who guided us brilliantly and wore the court robes and let themselves be felt up, as well as all the furniture, wall coverings, chimney pieces and decorations. And the summer restorers who manned the lifts and took such good care of us. The Foundling Museum found a place in the heart of everyone who attended on Wednesday afternoon, as did Julian at Kensington Palace who had everyone howling with his talk including well-endowed herms and how to take a leak in the presence of the king.

Last night we were lucky enough to have Amy Kavanagh speak to the group about the experience of being a visually impaired historian. 

I woke up this morning with the final session’s lecture in my head and on my laptop. And a real sense of sadness that I wouldn’t be working with such a committed and informed group after today. So I ditched the lecture and took questions from the floor. We covered interiors, the tactile exhibitions at European museums, childbirth and menstruation in the eighteenth century (that was in a corner during the coffee break), the trouble with hearing loops in echoing rooms, and finally, Barbara Hepworth.

I only hope my students got as much out of it as I did. 

This week I taught a course on Georgian London for Add-Venture In Learning.

On Heroes

This post is off topic for Georgian London, so I totally understand if you don’t read on from here!

The recent abuse suffered on Twitter by feminist Caroline Criado-Perez is abhorrent. Disgusting, vile, wrong. But I won’t be taking the #trolliday on August 4th, or campaigning for Twitter (the business, not the users) to ‘behave’ better, or boycotting the service. I’m not in favour of women being abused, obviously. But it’s just not as simple as that, is it. There’s too much shouting on Twitter about things like this at the moment, by women who want to be seen as feminist icons and men who want to cement their ‘liberal’ status. And the outragemongers. 

This seems to come from a fundamental missing of the point that stupid and/or socially inadequate men are frightened by intelligent and therefore (in the land of these new, free, internet platforms) powerful women. Or about the fact that even more allegedly competent men such as certain American politicians currently in the news have some very peculiar ideas about what constitutes a normal way to address women online. Do people really imagine that these men, or groups of men are going to think, ‘Oh, an online petition shows that xx thousand people don’t like that I said I wanted to rape and sodomise a stupid bitch and show her who’s boss, so I’ll stop that now and never look at extreme porn or leer at a woman in the street again’. I don’t think so.

This is a post about men and women. As much as we want to believe we’re all people, until we admit the differences, we can’t address them and make them work for all of us. I’ve tried to work out what I think about the whole situation, and I remembered something that happened a long time ago. It’s a nice story with a good ending. A reason to be cheerful. So I thought, maybe you’d like to hear it too.

When I was sixteen I had a boyfriend. No really, I did. He was and is, lovely. Then he went off to university and I had to get the train halfway across the country to see him. I know, young love. You wouldn’t know it now, but I was exceptionally shy. On the train, at night, somewhere in Middle England, a man in a black poloneck (*obvious villain klaxon*) sat down opposite me and starting asking if I understood about what God wanted a woman to do with her life, and if I wanted a Coke and where was I getting off and who was meeting me. I knew this was a Very. Bad. Thing. Total Stranger Danger. And I’d seen those videos, a lot (remember The 90s). But I was too politely-brought-up, and too afraid to do anything. I was so afraid that I was still sitting there like a rabbit in the headlights, when the train divided and I was in the front end, the wrong end, and not stopping at the station where my boyfriend was waiting in his Ford Fiesta. But far, far worse, I was with a man who had sat there and talked me into it happening. Without a doubt, he knew exactly what he was doing. 

What did I do? Was I some sort of teenage ninja? Did I ask for help from the people walking through the night-time carriage? No, obviously not. I wanted to. A couple of times I almost did. But I didn’t. And these were the days before mobile phones, Twitter and certainly before modern journalists were empowering teenage girls. 

So I sat there, with tears leaking from my face, looking out of the window as this man continued to speak to me about God. And the importance of ‘special relationships’. He had a black blazer in his lap with one of those fish badges on it. But he wasn’t a Christian. Christians don’t talk to lone girls about what ‘God’ wants from them. They don’t reach out and try to touch their hands across the table. He was an unpleasant, opportunistic creep at best. At worst, I was in a lot of trouble. 

ENTER STAGE LEFT (from the next carriage): Our Hero. He was probably in his early twenties, with brown hair, a bit squinty with tired, wearing a navy t-shirt, board shorts (it was the 90s, people) and carrying a vast rucksack. He stopped, exactly at the end of the table, where so many others had walked by in the previous forty minutes.

‘Are you okay?’

Poloneck: ‘She’s fine.’

Long pause. ‘I wasn’t asking you.’

Poloneck: ‘I told you, she’s fine.’

‘And I said I wasn’t asking you.’

Like your true modern feminist, I started to sob. How on earth could I say I didn’t know this man at all and that I had missed my change and was incoherent with fear?

Our Hero dumped his bag against the table and sat down next to me, smiling.

Poloneck: We were having a conversation.

Our Hero: Don’t let me stop you.

Poloneck: It was a private conversation.

Our Hero: I don’t mind.

After ten very silent minutes, (it may have been two or one and a half; it felt like a lifetime) of staring amongst them and me sniffing, The Poloneck got up and went to sit a few rows away, glowering.

Our Hero’s name was Peter. He was on his way back home after backpacking, somewhere. I don’t remember where. I told him I’d missed my connection. He jumped up and found the conductor. Remember those? I sat, petrified in the half a minute Peter was gone, The Poloneck being no more than a few yards away. Peter came back with an extremely tall Sikh in a plum-coloured turban with the big grey machine strapped around his neck like a cinema ice-cream girl. He had already passed me twice. He’d checked my ticket while tears ran down my face. 

But now, because of one young, self-assured man, everything was going to be okay. They had a plan.

Peter had brought back with him a very cold Coke (yes, really, but remember it was the 90s), and did that cool thing with the ring pull and a straw. Then we shared it because he thought I was frightened about it being drugged and this whole thing being some sort of plot. That hadn’t crossed my mind. I can’t remember what we talked about and the Coke made my head ache. A few minutes later, he jumped up and grabbed my bag, and we went to the door. The conductor stood there, waiting. The train slowed, then stopped, at a tiny station. The platform was completely empty apart from a red geranium and an orange overhead light.

The conductor smiled. ‘Your train will be along in a couple of minutes. Stand in this spot and get on quickly. They are stopping it just for you.’ I didn’t register until a long time later that they were stopping not one, but two Intercity trains for me. He opened the doors and Peter jumped out, put my bag on the ground, and got back onto the train. They both waved, through the glass. It pulled away.

As it charged off into the night, I remembered I’d forgotten to say thank you. Or goodbye. Or, in fact, anything. And I’m sorry about that.

A few anxious minutes later, there were the headlights of another train in the distance. It careered to a halt on the platform, the doors opened and I stepped out of the night air and into the carriage. There was no one there, no one to thank. Soon after that, I was climbing into the passenger seat of a Ford Fiesta, only a little late. My boyfriend leant across me to check that the cranky door was shut. ‘Are you okay?’ he said, ‘you look as if you’ve been crying.’

What happened to me that night? Nothing. I had a crap train journey, an indifferent pizza and slept in a single bed with a young man who suffered from the worst hayfever I’ve ever encountered. But what might have happened?

And that’s my point. Being well-meaning in a tweet or an online signature isn’t enough. And all the loud online posturing in the world is not going to take the place of that one good deed. The one moment where we should act in real life, and don’t. And then that moment changes someone else’s life. After all, bad men don’t have to be yelling rape abuse. 

Twenty years on, I’m not a frightened little girl any more. I’ve lived in London for most of that time, and I’ve been jostled, pushed, spat on and called all the choicest names for female genitalia by men I don’t know. (If you’re interested in this, you don’t have to go to specialist clubs and pay or anything, just travel by Tube or bus for a month. Or cycling. That really brings out the best in some men. Every journey a joy.) But I try to stick up for myself out there in the world, and for anyone else, man, woman or animal, if I think they need it. Yes, it’s not always that simple. Sometimes it’s frightening. Assistance isn’t always welcome. You have to pick your fights and you can’t always get it right: taking on the mob at Gatwick Wetherspoons at 0630 over a small matter of etiquette probably wasn’t my finest call. What I have learned in those years is that there are a lot of good men out there, and it just takes one of them to see a woman in distress and change the outcome of that situation. There are also lots of not so nice men, but not one, not ten online campaigns are going to take the place of the person on the street, at a party, on the train, or in the office who steps in and says, ‘This is not okay’.

I don’t remember the many people who walked past a tearful teenage girl in the train carriage that night. But I remember the one who didn’t. 

The Origins of St James’s

St James’s Square has now been a bastion of London clubs and institutions for over a century. But at the time of the Restoration when Charles II, not wanting to live in the Whitehall that had witnessed his father’s miserable last years, chose St James’s palace as his residence, it was not such a desirable residence.

‘St James’s Palace, where the royal family now resides in the winter season, stands pleasantly upon the north side of the Park, and has several noble rooms in it, but it is an irregular building, by no means suitable to the grandeur of the British monarch its master.  In the front next St. James’s street, there appears little more than an old gate house, by which we enter a little square court, with a piazza on the west side of it leading to the grand stair case; and there are two other courts beyond, which had not much the air of a prince’s palace.’ (Look’s fine to me, for a little place in town.)

The history of the square is a snapshot of London in her prime: Henry Jermyn, Duke of St Albans was to build what is arguably London’s finest square, and also cut the ribbon on the race for London’s aristocrats to become hereditary landlords. Jermyn was described by a contemporary as ‘a man of pleasure….and entertains no other thoughts than to live at ease’. Perhaps the ideal qualifications for a man to build a garden square designed to house London’s wealthiest families.

Fire and plague was spurring the building craze in London’s second city.  When Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660, he was determined to rule in style completely opposed to that of his father: relaxed and accessible, he worked hard to please his people and reward the friends who had remained loyal. Henry Jermyn, the Duke of St Albans was allowed to start building in St James’s Fields because, as he put it, ‘Ye beauty of this great Towne and ye convenience of your Court are defective in point of houses fitt for ye dwellings of Noble men and other Persons of quality’. Like most aristocratic landlords of his time Jermyn was no architect, but he did have a vision for his development and laid out the square in plots which were to be leased to builders who were to build houses of ‘substantial character’. He worked with Sir John Coell and Sir Thomas Clarges to make a plan, all overseen, in theory, by the King himself. The City, protective of its water supply and alarmed by the expansion of London, were not so keen, as Samuel Pepys recorded on September 2nd, 1663:

‘The building of St. James’s by my Lord St Albans, which is now about, and which the City stomach, I perceive, highly, but dare not oppose it.’

By 1666 St James’s Square had its first resident - Sir William Stanley, who was living on the north side of the square. The rate books record him as owing a solitary pound, on which he defaulted. By 1667, Henry Jermyn was living in a house on the north-west corner of York Street, later to become Chandos House. From there, he could watch over his blossoming development, both in the square, and north towards Piccadilly.

In 1676, St James’s Square first appears as a separate place of residence, by which time the King’s ex-mistress Mary, or ‘Moll’ Davis was living in the south-west corner. Elizabeth Pepys called her ‘the most impertinent slut in the world’, which is presumably how she came by the £1800 she paid for the property, aged 29.

Nearby, St James’s Market was opened to serve the local population. Although Tobias Smollett was less than happy with some of the stall-holders: ’It was but yesterday that I saw a dirty barrow-bunter in the street, cleaning her dusty fruit with her own spittle; and who knows but some fine lady of St. James’s parish might admit into her delicate mouth those very cherries which had been rolled and moistened between the filthy, and perhaps ulcerated, chops of a St. Giles’s huckster?‘ 

(The market) SAUL’s, for all your drainpipe needs!

In the early part of the eighteenth century, the square retained its rural, though grand appearance, echoing the Rus In Urbe ideal of nearby Buckingham House. Although Jermyn had planned to pave the square early in its life, it never happened, and by the 1720s, the central space was overgrown and beginning to resemble a refuse tip, with garbage ditched there by all manner of residents and passersby. It was clear this could not continue and in 1726, the residents decided to clean up their act, asking Parliament for permission to rate themselves for enough funds to ‘cleanse, adorn, and beautify’ the square which ‘hath for some years past lain, and doth now lie, rude and in great disorder’. Worse than the filth, a local coachmaker had built a shed in the centre of the square in which to store timber. The bill whooshed through both Houses in two months. The new rules included the stipulation that hackney-carriages were not allowed to ply, or pick up in the square, but must drop off their fare and make the quickest exit.

The piles of rubbish were supposed to be replaced with a small ornamental lake and a fountain in 1727. The York Buildings Company won the contract to supply water and after 1734, the square was lit at night. Around this time the railings went in at their current positions to frame the water feature, and the rest of the square outside them was paved. From the middle of the century, the great buildings begin to appear. Matthew Brettingham’s Norfolk House (on the right in the top picture) on the south east side for the same Duke was finished by 1756, and whilst the reviews of its splendid interior (some parts surviving in the V&A) were favourable, the plain exterior was unpopular. Lichfield House, which has just undergone an extensive renovation, was built between 1746-6 by James 'Athenian’ Stuart, is still standing in the north east corner, next to the wonderful London Library. 

(Image courtesy of English Heritage)

There are a couple of other survivals, including the link (torch) extinguishers outside Ormond House on the north side*, but change has been part of the life of the square. The water feature was filled in with the first cholera outbreak in 1832. The market was demolished in 1918. Norfolk House remained until 1938 when it was pulled down to make the current offices. The little house at the back where George III was born was being used as a storeroom at the time.

*That’s Berkeley Square but the St James’s ones are similar.

Lost London - The Egyptian Hall

Eighteenth century Piccadilly was a place for all sorts of curiosities to be displayed. Almost opposite Burlington House, at 170–173 Piccadilly, a Starbucks coffee shop now sits where William Bullock’s Egyptian Hall once stood. From 1798, when Nelson triumphed at the Battle of the Nile, English interest in the ‘East’ began to soar. While obelisks and other monumental pieces had been leaking out of Egypt for a century, Napoleon’s heavy thieving from Luxor and Karnak made Egyptian objects desirable amongst the European elite. The victory of the Battle of the Nile also coincided with a period in which an extended grand tour took in Turkey or Egypt. The romance of the East rapidly took hold of the English upper-class imagination, with books, prints and Eastern costume all the rage.

In 1809, Bullock’s Museum arrived in London from Liverpool. The following year, Bullock turned down the opportunity to display the Hottentot Venus, Saartjie Baartman. His reasons are not recorded. In 1812, the Egyptian Hall was ready for occupation. It must have appeared quite surreal to the man on the street. The grand hall of the interior was an extraordinary replica of the avenue at the Karnak Temple complex, near Luxor. By 1819, Bullock was ready to sell his collection of real and spurious objects, and did so in an auction lasting twenty-six days. It was dispersed all over the world. Emptied of its original tenant, the Egyptian Hall received a new and rather more suitable guest: Giovanni Battista Belzoni, known to his English friends as ‘John’.

An Italian strongman and performer, with an English wife, Belzoni was a true adventurer: in 1817, he travelled to the Valley of the Kings and broke into the tomb of Seti I. From Seti’s tomb, Belzoni took a sarcophagus of white alabaster inlaid with blue copper sulphate of great beauty. The retrieval of the sarcophagus, however, was not without peril: the tomb was located in the catacombs, a maze of traps and dead ends, dug to confuse grave robbers. The French interpreter panicked and an Arab assistant broke his hip in a booby trap. Undeterred, Belzoni retrieved the sarcophagus and brought it to England along with the head of the ‘Younger Memnon’. Belzoni suffered constant vomiting and nosebleeds in Egypt, whilst Sarah was unaffected by so much as a case of sunburn – much to her husband’s chagrin. 

London eagerly anticipated the imminent arrival of these treasures. Shelley’s famous poem of 1818, ‘Ozymandias’, was written for a newspaper competition held by The Examiner in advance of the arrival of Belzoni’s treasures. The exhibition opened at the Egyptian Hall in May 1821, but a year later the collection was put up for auction. The sale drew two of the greatest collectors of the day: the British Museum and Sir John Soane. The Museum acquired the colossus and Soane the sarcophagus. John Belzoni, financially if not spiritually satisfied, handed in the manuscript of his travels to his publisher, John Murray, and set off for Benin. He died of dysentery one week after arriving there. 

Before long, the Egyptian Hall moved on to displaying real-life Laplanders, who gave sleigh rides up and down the central space. It continued on as an exhibition space until redevelopment in 1904, when this extraordinary Georgian flight of fancy was replaced with offices as part of the great slum clearances. 

Georgian London Rides Again!

As some of you will know, Posterous turned up its toes earlier this year, and it’s taken a while to get the blog back up and running in any format. Things are busier than ever, and we’re less than two months from Georgian London: Into the Streets, being on the shelves. 

So now that I’ve got the platform back and am starting to knock the issues on the head, it’s time to start bringing out all the material that simply wouldn’t fit into the book. Looking at everything from hernia corsets to dockside prostitution, Georgian London is on its way back and I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

In the meantime, here’s the cover of the book! I’m unspeakably excited, obviously. It’s available to preorder via this link, or at your local bookshop. Thanks for all your support over the last four years, and as I start the research for my next book, I’m looking forward to bringing you lots more tales from my favourite century.

Lucy 

xx