Newington Green to Smithfield

If you can tear your eyes away from Maggie Hambling’s controversial creation of Mary Wollstonecraft, turn towards the row of shops, past the café, on the western side of the Green, opposite the zebra crossing. Looking at the centre of the red brick terrace you’ll notice that the older middle portion differs from the rest.   Built 1658 this is the oldest surviving brick terrace in London and originally would have stood in rural isolation, and in towny stylistic contrast to the surrounding fields and farms.

The Terrace was already 100 years old when number 54 had its most influential inhabitant, Dr Richard Price, whose networking among reformers cemented the village’s reputation as a centre for radical activism. Price can be credited with developing the Green’s association with a growing and historically influential ‘Awkward Squad’ of whom we shall hear more throughout the walk.

Now looking north: 50 years after the building of the Terrace the modest Unity Church  was established and together with its preacher became a focus for opponents of political and religious tyranny.  Drawing around them a tight group of dissenting radicals, Reverend Price and his wife Sarah provided a base for new, and dangerous, political thinking.

Among their early guests at 54 were some of those who would soon become the ‘Founding Fathers’ of the United States: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John and Abigail Adams. As they dined and debated, they forged the foundational thinking behind both the American Declaration of Independence (1776) and later the American Constitution.  If this building were in America it would have its own museum and celebratory theme park, whereas we give it a happy anonymity above a cheese shop and a cobblers.

The pulling power of the terrace remained strong throughout the French Revolution when Robert Priestley – Brummie, radical, scientist – was forced to flee his home after publicly declaring for the Revolutionaries. In what became known as the ‘Priestley Riots’ his opponents went on the rampage burning down houses, businesses and looting chapels – presumably because they didn’t approve of radical disorder. Priestley found sanctuary at number 56, handily next door-but-one to those troublemaking Prices.

Imagine that:  discovering oxygen and then having a riot named after you.

Cool…

As the Green’s radical revolt against class and clerical tyranny grew, it wasn’t long before battle was opened up on another front, one which caught even some of the most vociferous revolutionaries off guard, especially the blokes: feminism…

In the centre of Newington Green you will find Maggie Hambling’s (in)famous Mary  Wollstonecraft statue…

“The best way for a woman to acquire knowledge is from conversation with a father, or brother, or friend” wrote Anna Barbauld, aristocrat and writer.

It was against such mush that Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 to 1797) – writer, philosopher, educator and one of the founding feminists  – lived her extraordinary life. It is in tribute to their famous congregant that the Unitarian church in Newington Green proudly declares itself to be – ‘the birthplace of feminism’.

Despite a dysfunctional upbringing under the tyranny of her violent and drunken father –  or perhaps because of it – the self-propelling Mary formed strong attachments to both men and women in adult life, which raised eyebrows even further than they still do now.

Establishing a girls’ school in Newington Green (see the plaque on the school façade to your right) her determined views on women’s rights found a ready home among the local ‘difficult people’.

“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.”

When in 1790 Edmund Burke denounced the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft responded,  first with A Vindication Of The Rights Of Men, supporting the revolutionary overthrow of tyranny, and then later, A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman arguing for female equality.

Mary’s turbulent personal life has, for many years, overshadowed her political thinking, while the pathos of her death aged 38, days after giving birth to her second daughter Mary Shelley (later, the author of Frankenstein), has tended to eclipse her political activism.

Fortunately, Mary’s significance is now being recognised; part of the Wollstonecraft revival is captured in the statue by Maggie Hambling, unveiled in 2020 to what we can confidently say was a mixed reception.

Wollstonecraft’s reknown has definitely not suffered.  The Unity Church Minister, Rev. Andy Pakula, atheist, impishly tweeted that, following the unveiling, Wikipedia page views for the name ‘Mary’ showed ‘Mary, Mother of Jesus’ numbered a distant second to ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’.

Tudor footnotes
In 1523, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, lived in Brooke House a grand mansion on the north side of the Green. Percy made an illicit engagement to the young Anne Boleyn against both his father’s wishes and those of Cardinal Wolsey for whom he worked as a page. The young lovers were never married, and their final encounter cruelly unromantic. Percy, as a member of the jury at Anne’s later trial for adultery against Henry, helped to secure conviction, and thus her execution.

Just opposite on the south side (now a block of un-regal flats)  Henry VIII used a mansion  as a base for hunting the wild bulls, stags and boars which roamed the nearby forest.

Before you leave the Green note in the north-west corner to the right of the old Terrace:

China Inland Mission
In the north west corner of the Green the tall redbrick building – now flats – was once the HQ of the China Inland Mission, established. in 1865 by James Hudson Taylor, with a Christian mission to evangelise the whole of China.  Scores of young missionaries were sent from here including, unusually for the time, the recruitment of single women. The recruits were encouraged to ‘go native’ by living among the locals, and adopting their lifestyle including wearing the ‘Qu’ – a waist long, braided pigtail.   More cool…

Although relatively modest this corner cottage has been the keeper of one of the best kept secrets, and scandals, of the Victorian era.

In 1857 Dickens was a mega celebrity; his productions toured the country. In one such production in Doncaster, the 45-year-old Dickens spotted Nelly Ternan – Nelly  was just 18.  Dickens was smitten.  Nelly, together with her mother Frances and her teenage sister Maria, were a minor theatrical  trio living at Park Cottage.

As Dickens began paying regular visits to Nelly the relationship developed into a secret affair with the teenager becoming Dickens’ “magic circle of one”.    However an accidental delivery to his long suffering wife of a gold bracelet with a note from Dickens intended for Nelly,  precipitated divorce after 22 years of marriage.

For the best part of the next decade, desperate to avoid scandal yet equally avid to keep Nelly by his side, Dickens lead a double life:  man of glowing hearth and home in public while in private maintaining a succession of what today’s newshounds might call ‘secret love nests’.

Living under false names the couple maintained their clandestine life until, while returning from a trip to France with Nelly and her mother, their train crashed at Staplehurst. Clambering from the wreckage Dickens was recognised; the rumours went ‘Victorian viral’.  Dickens’ celebrity teetered on ruin.

Forced to respond, Dickens published a press statement vociferously denying everything. The rumour divided the public: his fans still attended his public readings, weeping and cheering  along with his tales, but for others the scandal endured. His daughter Kate, herself only slightly older than Nelly, later described her mother’s humiliation while her father behaved “like a madman”.  

Dickens, in part seeking to divert attention, launched a weekly magazine All Year the Year Round – perhaps a better title than the one he originally proposed: Household Harmony…

The rumours and gossip trailed Dickens, seemingly without lessening his reputation, celebrity or income until his death in 1870. 

Nelly went on to remarry and have children of her own and is reputed by Dickens scholars to be the basis of any one of several characters, notably the idealised young girl Lucy Manette in a A Tale of Two Cities; others opt for the more complex Estella in Great Expectations.

Neither new nor a river’.  By the early 1600s, the supply of safe, fresh water to the City was limited. In response The New River was a bid by the wealthy Sir Hugh Myddleton to divert fresh water from distant Hertfordshire via a chain of carefully laid pipes into the City via the Lea Valley.

After crossing Clissold Park the river ran along the green central strip of nearby Petherton Road to this, the relatively newly landscaped and reworked, route of New River Walk. A signboard at the southern end gives more info.  Look out for the quirky landscaping mix of boulders of wild Westmoreland stone set amongst an almost permanently green and shady bower, including two Dawn Redwoods. Easily spotted, they’re the tall trees: reddish and wooden.

Footnote:  King James I was so proud of the venture that he had rescued from financial ruin that he rode from his country home to see the ice on the New River. He promptly fell in head first. Visible only by his boots, he was rescued by a nobleman.

Half way down New River look out for…

40 Douglas Road designed by Future Systems and described admiringly in the Independent in 1994 as a ‘Space-age Greenhouse’.  Those of you who are frequent diners at the Caprice and Ivy will have instantly recognised the designers’ distinctive styling in the restaurants’ champagne buckets.

For an historical feature which is more observed than visited this place deserves a little of our attention.

Built in the early 1500s, the oldest building in Islington, the Tower is all that remains of an extensive House erected for the Canons of St Bartholomew’s Priory – hence Canons’ Burgh now Canonbury. No doubt they would have appreciated the distant, airy relief from the meaty stench of Smithfield.

In the late 1530s, with the dissolution of the monasteries, the Priory was forcibly donated to the Crown and soon after became a handsome reward for the Dissolution’s chief strategist, Thomas Cromwell.  However, within the year the political intrigue overtook even this master tactician: Cromwell, following the fate of those Priors who had resisted the King and Cromwell’s plans, was in turn executed.

A few years later the manor was granted to John Dudley, by the ‘boy King’ Edward VI. Dudley worked hard for the Crown proving a loyal and brutal enforcer.  However, when King Edward died, aged just 15, Dudley made a daring move backing his own daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, against Mary Tudor as the next Queen. He succeeded. Queen Jane ascended to the throne. She was soon captured by Marys’ forces. Dudley and the 16-year-old Jane, ‘Queen for Nine Days’ were executed.

In the 1590s the Priory, now a house, seemed to cast off its ill-fated history, becoming the home of Sir John Spencer, Lord Mayor of London, giving rise to one of its best-known intrigues.

‘Rich’ Spencer’s daughter Elizabeth fell in love with William, Earl Compton, gambler and profligate spendthrift. William had previously borrowed from Spencer while also blowing his own inheritance. Spencer, unimpressed by the young buck, intervened in their romance locking Elizabeth in the Tower. However the spirited Elizabeth lowered herself out of the window on knotted sheets where that bad dude William, who had driven a cart across the fields of Islington, was waiting dressed as a baker; they eloped and were married.

Spencer disowned his daughter, but despite William’s reputation, the young Compton’s stock rose, becoming Lord Compton, courtier to Queen Elizabeth I. The story has it that a sympathetic Elizabeth persuaded Lord Spencer to act as a godfather to an unnamed ‘disowned child’ but at the christening, encountering his own daughter with William and their baby boy, Spencer relented, and the family were reconciled. A lovely ending…

Or not quite, yet.

On Lord Spencer’s death his vast fortune passed on to William and Elizabeth causing the unreformed gambler William to go on a magnificent, semi-deranged spending spree.
A contemporary wrote that he was, “ in great danger to loose his witts” spending “within lesses than eight weekes…£72,000, most in great horses, rich saddles and playe”.

In case you were wondering: £72k in today’s money would be just under £10 million!

Eight weeks…?

However, heroically overcoming his witless profligacy, Compton managed to retain a footing among the priveleged, later becoming the first Earl of Northampton; the family still own the Tower and local land. So, despite being quite clearly an idiot, we have to admit, the boy done well.

Northampton, Spencer, Compton… you might still spot these names around the area. Later illustrious tenants of the Tower included Sir Francis Bacon (1616), ‘father’ of the scientific method, and by contrast Rip Van Winkle’s creator, Washington Irving. Rip Van Winkle fell asleep for 20 years; his creator was not so blessed. While living in the Tower Irving found himself constantly “stunned with shouts and noises from the cricket ground” while also being harassed by his landlady who insisted on showing visitors into his room to watch him write. He locked himself in, only to hear the indomitable but perplexed landlady encouraging visitors to spy on him through the keyhole, describing him as the “author who was always in a tantrum when interrupted.”

Irvine left after a couple of days…

Over the last century the Tower has been variously a youth club, headquarters of the Francis Bacon Society, home of a local amateur theatre group and also the much misunderstood Flat Earth Society – currently enjoying a resurgence in membership following its endorsement by the US rapper Bobby Ray Simmons and other leading scientific authorities.

Sadly, the Tower is now largely empty and underused. There are no signs that the current Marquis of Northampton has any intentions to change this situation, though it is apparently still used as a centre for something called, ahem… ‘Masonic research’…

This corner plot, recently the wasteland remnants of a bombed-out end of terrace, is now home to upmarket design store, Aria. Completed in 2019 the building has proved controversial from the inception– perhaps deliberately given the architect Amin Taha’s other work which you will encounter later in the walk.

With the surviving other end of the Terrace as a template, Taha’s studio Groupwork used laser survey, archival photographs and digital mapping to create a virtual model which they then distorted and amended to create the current version- a ‘misremembered copy’ of the lost four-storey building. While most of the original details were kept, other aspects were changed or moved; even some of the concrete casting was kept imperfect.

The designers somewhat sniffily described the previous version as, “something even the original Victorian pattern-book builders would have regarded as a watered down and weak interpretation of a Palladian Palazzo…”

Like it? Suspend your critique; walk on to see the original end of the Terrace on which the Aria building was modelled and ‘misremembered’.

Compare and contrast…

You will encounter more of Amin Taha’s disruptive styling later in the walk.

No walk along Upper Street could ignore the Screen on The Green.

Opened in 1913 by enterprising Italian Pesaresi brothers as The Empress Picture Theatre (Later The Rex) showing animated films, now with its vivid neon sign, the Screen is a local cultural landmark.

On the 29 August 1976  the venue took its place in pop musical history when punk impresario Malcolm Maclaren organised the now infamous ‘Midnight Special’ gig: The Clash (in only their third ever gig) and the Buzzcocks supporting The Sex Pistols.

The following year, after the Pistols’ firing of Glen Matlock, The Screen became the venue of another punk first:  the first performance by the band with Sid Vicious.

As they sung at the time, “God save the Queen, she ain’t no human beeeeeeeeeen’ ” …as political analysis goes, not quite up there with the thoughts of Paine and Wollstonecroft but belonging in that culturally disruptive tradition. Perhaps.

The venue, now part of the Everyman chain, looks set to continue post-Covid, unlike many film theatres.

Pondering this thought, across the road from the Screen on the north of Islington Green we can also gaze upon Waterstones, formerly Collins Music Hall (1863). This is one of former several music halls in Islington which have now been repurposed, as tastes and interests have done what they always do – moved on.  A photograph of its early days advertises: ‘Dramatic Plays Twice Nightly – 6/3d’ where they offer an alluring show, breathily titled, ‘The Plaything of An Hour’.

The topography at the junction of The Angel reminds us that we are on a rise looking down toward the old City with, in previous times, Islington as a rural village surrounded by fields and open countryside, Highgate village prominent to the north and, to the south and ahead, St John Street as a country lane.

In 1666 London inhabitants fleeing the Great Fire encamped on Highbury Fields, from which height they had a clear view of the inferno engulfing London, perhaps taking a moment to check their insurance cover.

From mediaeval times onwards, Islington became a wide patchwork of pastures and pens driving a boom in coaching inns to accommodate the drovers and merchants. The terracotta coloured Co-op Bank at the junction with Pentonville Road marks the site of the Angel Inn, known to have existed since the early 1500s. Originally the largest of several coaching inns on Upper Street, the Angel has had many incarnations, only surviving in its current form because of fierce local resistance to a 1970s’ demolition plan aiming to create a traffic enhancing, soul numbing, miserable replicant of Old Street roundabout. 

Trivia fans note: which two Monopoly board squares are connected to this junction?  Answers on a post card, please, to someone equally sad…

The location of both fields and freshwater in the local wells made the area from the village down to the ‘Smoothfield’ Market an ideal place for animal trading and slaughter, giving rise to local trades still reflected in place names and streets hereabouts: Leather Lane, Clerkenwell, Amwell and Goswell Road (God’s Well).

With valuable livestock flowing into Smithfield so the cash flowing outward made the merchants and their wealthy backers heading north, through the forests and open heaths around London, a tempting target for highway robbers – including the legendary Dick Turpin and his gang. Travellers that could afford them employed armed guards as escorts.

[IMAGE: Sadler’s Wells and Old Red Lion painting by Hogarth]

The “Redde Lyon” as it was originally known in 1415 is one of the oldest pub sites in London and, like The Angel, was a popular drovers’ Inn.

Here we again encounter that irrepressible lifelong member of the Newington Green Awkward Squad:

 “A few houses further on towards Islington stands a public house called the ‘Red Lion’. It is a small old brick house, having two or three tall trees in front. In this house was written that curious engine of political mischief ‘The Rights of Man’ by the notorious Thomas Paine’.   (Reverend Nightingale 1815)

Thomas Paine: “A corset maker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination”

Born in the UK, Paine migrated to America in 1774 with the help of fellow Newington Green radical, Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to cause even more trouble in the American revolution where his best-selling political tract Common Sense had become essential rebel reading.

Paine’s writings drew the wrath of William Pitt the Younger and later a trial, in his absence, for seditious liable. Paine fled to France where, despite having no French, he immersed himself in revolutionary politics and, despite the obvious dangers, somehow managed to get elected to the turbulent French National convention. Like you do…

Here he quickly drew the attention of a fellow revolutionary leader, though one who was perhaps less to his taste –  the tyrant Robespierre.  Paine was promptly thrown in prison; luckily James Monroe, a future US  president, intervened on his behalf to secure his return to America. One wonders if Monroe might have regretted his kindness when he discovered that Paine was intent on writing pamphlets advocating against Christianity, organised religion and inequality in property rights while proposing taxation of inherited land. Not surprisingly this did not make him popular in more conservative quarters, which in America, was everyone. His friends might have considered toning Tom down as reasonable cause for a group ‘intervention’.

However such friends were few and far between; Paine died in 1809, his funeral attended by just six people.

On a lighter, though still criminal note, by the middle of the 1800s the Red Lion pub had earned the nickname ‘The In and Out’, owing to having a front and rear entrance through which Hackney cab customers could dive to escape paying their fares.

The pub’s association with left leaning politics and intrigue continued through the early 20th Century when the upstairs rooms became a meeting place for communist splinter groups, of which there is usually no shortage. It is said that to keep up with the scheming Vladimir Lenin, who worked nearby, people would tip the Red Lion’s landlord to open the doors of the dumbwaiter to eavesdrop on the heated debates above.

The origins of this theatre lie in a curious collision of local resources: abundant spring water and popular showmanship. After the discovery of a mineral spring in 1683 Richard Sadler, aiming to rival other fashionable spas, built a house for popular entertainment, both spectacular and bizarre, staging sea battles and “jugglers, tumblers, ropedancers…wrestlers, fighters, dancing dogs and even a singing duck.”

Later the young William Wordsworth described visiting “half-rural Sadler’s Wells ” where “amid the uproar of the rabblement…” he saw … “ Giants and dwarves , clowns, conjurors, posture makers and harlequins”.

One of these harlequins would’ve been the most famous in the world: Joseph Grimaldi. From child actor to national celebrity, Grimaldi was in such demand that at the height of his career he would perform several shows daily across London. It was observed that when his wife Mary and their unborn daughter died in childbirth in 1800 Grimaldi buried his grief in extra performances and could be seen running in full costume and make-up from Sadler’s Wells to Drury Lane – the tears of a clown indeed.

Perhaps he has had the last laugh in that Grimaldi is remembered in an annual service held at the Holy Trinity Church in Hackney, where hundreds of clowns attend dressed in full clown costume. In 2010 a coffin shaped memorial made of musical floor tiles was installed in a local Islington Park named after him. The tiles are tuned so that when danced upon they play one of Grimaldi’s favourite numbers.

Clearly Sadler’s Wells wasn’t always the high tone place it is now.  As Dickens later noted, “The theatre was in the condition of being entirely delivered over to as ruffianly an audience as London could shake together…Fights took place anywhere, at every period of the performance.”

[IMAGE: Spa Fields in the 1780s]

As the signboard indicates, once the sight of a gruesome boneyard, the spirit of rebellion and radicalism resurfaces here with arrival in the area of Thomas Spence. In the 1780s Spence had visited a cave home in the sea cliffs near Sunderland which had been literally detonated into defiant existence by a former miner, ‘Jack the Blaster’.  The cave, part rent-free seaside home, part protest movement, was created by Jack after having been rendered homeless by land enclosures.

In honour of Jack’s spirit, Spence was inspired to write above the cave’s fireplace,

‘Ye landlords vile, whose man’s peace mar,
Come levy rents here if you can;
Your stewards and lawyers I defy,
And live with all the RIGHTS OF MAN.’

That last phrase was, as we have previously discovered, picked up by Paine and then Wollstonecroft, and now embedded in political history.

Serving time in prison for sedition, Spence became a focus for the Spenceans – supporters of his wildly radical ideas: universal basic income, women’s rights and the end of aristocracy and landlords

In 1816, with mass unemployment and widespread poverty, the Spenceans gathered on Spa Fields. The restless and increasingly angry crowd grew to 10,000.  A militant faction rioted, breaking into a gun shop then heading for the Tower with the intent of overthrowing the government. The riot was quelled but became the first of a series of popular insurrections over the next three years culminating, and ending, in the Peterloo Massacre three years later.

It was here that in 1632 Thomas Rolfe, son of Pocohontas, married Elizabeth Washington.

Pocohontas, a Native American was the daughter of Chief Powhatan of the Powhatan people of Virginia.  Having been captured by the colonists and converted to Christianity, Pocohontas married John Rolfe, plantation owner. Despite, or perhaps because of, being presented as a ‘civilized savage’, she became a sought-after celebrity and a big hit at masqued balls.

Sadly she died after little more than a year in England, aged just 21, before she could return to her homeland, and was buried at Gravesend.

St James is also the site of the grave of Matthew King, young highway man, accomplice of Dick Turpin, who was buried here in 1737 after being ‘accidentally’ shot by the ruthless Turpin during a robbery.

I’d like to hear Mathew’s version…

A building that rewards study from distance as well as close up.

Amin Taha’s RIBA Award winning design, in which stone age sarsen blocks meet glazed modernity, is fortunate to be still standing. In September 2018 a bitter dispute about the façade led to two applications by Islington Council to have the building demolished. In fact there were two demolition orders, one being withdrawn only to be replaced.  The Council wanted a brick facade; they ended up with chunky, raw quarried limestone dotted with fossils.

Taha’s practice succeeded in overturning the application amid claims that the Council had deliberately redacted important evidence. In a humiliating climb down the Council agreed to leave the design, as is, save for some minor changes – prune some trees, polish up some surfaces. 

The various comments about the design as posted on architectural design website, Dezeen, in early 2021, can’t be faulted for ambiguity:

”…the ugliest building ever in all of London.”…

“…a beautiful addition to the fascinating architectural history of a fascinating city.”…

“I would have been quite happy to see it torn down… I flinch every time I have to walk past it.”

Groupwork’s current  plan for adding to London’s ‘fascinating architectural history’  is a  30-storey stone skyscraper… Personally I can’t wait, even if only for the indignant shrieks of the offended.

Whatever views we might have of 15 Clerkenwell Close, Amin Taha is clearly a fan: he lives there.

On leaving Jerusalem Passage and encountering the small, irregular ‘square’, and beyond it the medieval gate, the associations with the Holy Land become clearer. The modest red brick building on your left – a small museum worth a look if it’s open – commemorates the existence of the Clerkenwell Priory which from the late 1100s became a major base for the Crusades. From here Knights, drawn from all over Europe, gathered to have their journey blessed before passing through John’s Gate on their way to Jerusalem.

The historian Monk Mathew Paris witnessed such a departure in the 1230s:

‘They… set out from their house at Clerkenwell… in good order with about thirty shields uncovered, with spears raised, and…their banner, through the midst of the City, towards the bridge, that they might obtain the blessings of the spectators…  And bowing their heads with their cowls lowered, commended themselves to the prayers of all.’

The only significant part of the massive Priory that remains now is St John’s Gate across the road, itself a largely Victorian recreation. However its location is accurate and, as its south entrance, manages to capture some of the Priory’s scale and significance.

St John’s Gate –after the original Gate was burned down by Wat Tyler in the Peasants Revolt of 1381, the rebuilt Gate went on to become the childhood home of William Hogarth and also a workshop for Samuel Johnson. In a curious commercial proposition, Hogarth’s father opened his coffeehouse here offering Latin instruction with the coffee.

Baffle a barista: next time in Costa, order your favourite brew in Latin.

After the confident modernism of 15 Clerkenwell Close, take a few minutes to explore this Square noting the interestingly eclectic range of architectural eras which surround you.

On this site in 2014, workers from the Crossrail project found confirmatory evidence of the largest plague site in London. In terms of pandemic scaling it is sobering to note that the  bubonic pandemic of mid 1300s killed around half the population of England.

Notwithstanding the site’s grim history, a Carthusian Monastery was built here in the late 1300s,  later becoming home to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.

Howard, having already sadly lost three wives, set his sights on a fourth. His choice was nothing if not ambitious: Mary Queen of Scots, who was then embroiled in a deadly battle with her sister Queen Elizabeth I.

Elizabeth’s men uncovered Howard’s plot to murder the Queen and replace her with Mary. Howard was executed on Tower Hill in 1572; Mary, imprisoned for many years, was beheaded later.

Despite this early setback, the Norfolk lineage has subsequently done extremely well, owning prime land in much of central London and across the UK, making them one of the richest families in the UK.  So, on balance, the Norfolks are quids in.

The Charterhouse still retains some of its original mediaeval buildings, though now only occasionally open to the public. It currently serves largely as an Almshouse for ‘military men, schoolmasters, clergy, artists, musicians, writers and businessmen’.

Might you be in with a chance?

The origins of the market are well explained on the relevant signboard inside the great arch. By contrast Smithfield Square has a role in history which belies its current ill-considered appearance as an incoherent, stunningly misplaced car park.  

Scene of mediaeval fairs, joustings and numerous executions, we can say that Smithfield is drenched with alliterative history: merry making, murder and martydom

From the Middle Ages onwards the world famous Bartholomew Fair was held here; two weeks of revels, drunkenness and an impressive range of entertainment – acrobats, musicians, freaks, wild beasts, puppets and prize fighters.  

The Newgate Calendar, reviled the event as a “school of vice which has initiated more youth into the habits of villainy than Newgate itself.”  

Following such one star reviews, the Fair was suppressed by the City in 1855.

As you cross the square, note the Tudor arch of St Bartholomew the Great Church (built 1123) over to your left. Benjamin Franklin, one of Rev Price’s illustrious dining guests, worked here as a typesetter.

For the final scenes in this trail we will take our time to focus on just two characters.

Take two rebels:   William ‘Braveheart’ Wallace and Wat Tyler.

William Wallace’s fame as a Scottish leader is probably best known through Mel Gibson’s ‘imaginative’ portrayal in the 1995 film Brave Heart.  Wallace’s real story is worth the telling.

By the late 1290s Edward I, conqueror of Wales, expeller of Jews, ‘Hammer of the Scots’  – “A man does good business, when he rids himself of a turd” –  believed he had conquered his troublesome northern neighbours.

However, the ‘turd’ had other ideas.

In 1297 Wallace’s rebel Army defeated the numerically superior English troops at the Battle of Stirling Bridge.  Wallace fought on, rallying more support, while evading capture for another eight years before finally being imprisoned and taken to London for trial.

To the charge of treason, he answered with impeccable nationalist logic:

“I could not be a traitor to Edward, for I was never his subject.” 

Mockingly garlanded with oak leaves as King of the Outlaws, he was hung drawn and quartered at Smithfield.  However his modern symbolic significance to many independence-seeking Scots is growing as the flags and other memorabilia draped around the plaque reveal.

Wat Tyler

“When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the Gentleman?’”
John Ball’s famous lines are well known but the subsequent lines, part of his open air address to the rebellious Peasants gathered at Blackheath in 1381, went on to enthusiastically recommend,

“…first killing the great lords of the realm, then slaying the lawyers, justices and jurors, and finally rooting out everyone whom they knew to be harmful to the community in future”.

Wat Tyler and his followers liked what they heard. Following the Black Death and subsequent shortage of serf labour, the long suffering peasants, finding their lowly bargaining power much increased, demanded a revolutionary shift in economic influence.

In June 1381 Tyler and his rebels from Kent reached London Bridge. Burning and murdering as they progressed, they crossed the River and attacked the City, destroying all symbols of tyranny, including the Savoy Palace, the Temple Law Buildings and St John’s Gate.  By the time they had attacked the City they had already murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury and the King’s Treasurer. The King, Richard II, went into hiding.

Tyler demanded a face-to-face meeting with the King who, surrounded by advisers, agreed. The delegations met the following hot June day here at Smithfield; each on horseback, with the King accompanied by William Walworth, Lord Mayor of London .

What happened next is unclear. Tyler allegedly demanded a flagon of water; taking the flagon, “he rinsed his mouth in a very rude and disgusting fashion before the King’s face“.

Swords and daggers drawn, Tyler and Walworth grappled with each other; Tyler received blows to the head and neck from Walworth and others. Now badly wounded, Tyler tried to rally his side only to fall from his horse; the peasants dragged him away to safety.

But Walworth wasn’t finished, hunting Tyler down, he hauled him back to Smithfield, decapitating the Peasants’ leader and displaying his head on London Bridge.

The leaderless rebels, promised no recriminations by the King, slowly dispersed.

However, Richard soon defiantly promised class war without end.

“Rustics you were and rustics you are still:  you will remain in bondage not as before but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live, we will strive to suppress you, and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity.” 

The subsequent executions of local leaders – including John Ball – crushed the revolt, placing Richard and his kind firmly in the ascendancy.

Not bad for a boy-King, 14 years old.

Footnote: Richard, believing he was raised closer to God than to mortals, demanded to be a called his ‘His Royal Highness’ – a handy label which has not outlived its usefulness.

In the National Gallery, look out for the Wilton Dyptych: the young King kneels among Saints before Mary and her angels – the latter all respectfully wearing the White Hart, the King’s personal emblem

But what goes around comes around: in 1400, outmanoeuvred and surrounded by intrigue, Richard was imprisoned by his enemies in Pontefract Castle, where he is believed to have starved to death.

Perhaps for the sake of this walk we should give the final word to that admirable, imperturbable contrarian who has followed us all the way from the Green to Smithfield: Tom Paine.

His thoughts are etched on the tiny bronze epitaph low down on the Smithfield Wall:
“If the Barons merited a monument at Runnymede, then Tyler merited one at Smithfield.”