Ludgate Circus in Illustration and Postcard

This unsigned illustration comes from an Ernest Nister illustrated children’s book, The Scrapbook of Trains (c.1900). An atmospheric rendering of a busy Victorian street scene populated by some unconvincing rigid figures. When the railway bridge in these views was constructed in 1865 there was a storm of protest from the Victorian public angry at losing the view of St Paul’s up Ludgate Hill. All to enable the London, Chatham & Dover Railway to extend its services into the City of London. The line formed a link with the Metropolitan Railway near Farringdon and much later was used by Thameslink for cross-London services. Ludgate was one of the 6 gates in Roman London’s city wall. The bridge came down in 1990 when the Thameslink tunnel was completed, thus restoring the lost view of St. Paul’s after 125 years.

The King Lud pub (left) opened in 1870 and would finally close after various changes of identity in 2005 - the building remains and the ground floor is occupied by a Leon restaurant. Among a number of reminiscences on the Closed Pubs website is a recollection of a lively performance by the famous Blues piano player Champion Jack Dupree. A minority of the many postcard views have chosen to capture the scene at ground level but most opted for an aerial view from the upper floors of neighbouring buildings - a few waited for a train to pass over the bridge. Businesses come and go, advertising signs are repainted while horse drawn buses are replaced by petrol driven vehicles. An archive search of commercial and property directories might enable them to be assembled in chronological order. To nobody’s surprise, when the bridge was demolished, for every voice greeting the newly restored sightline to St. Pauls, another was deploring the loss of a ‘much loved’ bridge.

There’s a fine contemporary diatribe quoted below that John Ruskin would have been proud of.

Of all the eyesores of modern London, surely the most hideous is the Ludgate Hill Viaduct– that enormous flat iron that lies across the chest of Ludgate Hill like a bar of metal on the breast of a wretch in a torture-chamber.

Let us hope that a time will come when all designs for City improvements will be compelled to endure the scrutiny and win the approval of a committee of taste. The useful and the beautiful must not for ever be divorced. The railway bridge lies flat across the street, only eighteen feet above the roadway, and is a miracle of clumsy and stubborn ugliness, entirely spoiling the approach to one of the finest buildings in London.

The five girders of wrought iron cross the street, here only forty-two feet wide, and the span is sixty feet, in order to allow of future enlargement of the street. Absurd lattice-work, decorative brackets, bronze armorial medallions, and gas lanterns and standards, form a combination that only the unsettled and imitative art of the ruthless nineteenth century could have put together. Think of what the Egyptians in the times of the Pharaohs did with granite! and observe what we Englishmen of the present day do with iron. Observe this vulgar daubing of brown paint and barbaric gilding, and think of what the Moors did with colour in the courts of the Alhambra!

A viaduct was necessary, we allow, but such a viaduct even the architect of the National Gallery would have shuddered at. The difficulties, we however allow, were great. The London, Chatham, and Dover, eager for dividends, was bent on wedding the Metropolitan Railway near Smithfield; but how could the hands of the affianced couple be joined? If there was no viaduct, there must be a tunnel.

Now, the bank of the river being a very short distance from Smithfield, a very steep and dangerous gradient would have been required to effect the junction. Moreover, had the line been carried under Ludgate Hill, there must have been a slight detour to ease the ascent, the cost of which detour would have been enormous. The tunnel proposed would have involved the destruction of a few trifles –such, for instance, as Apothecaries' Hall, the churchyard adjoining, the Times printing office– besides doing injury to the foundations of St. Martin's Church, the Old Bailey Sessions House, and Newgate.

Moreover, no station would have been possible between the Thames and Smithfield. The puzzled inhabitants, therefore, ended in despair by giving evidence in favour of the viaduct. The stolid hammermen went to work, and the iron nightmare was set up in all its Babylonian hideousness."

 

Postcard of the Day No. 114, Snake Handling

An adoring group of female admirers have gathered to pay homage to the courage and skill of the neighbourhood snake handler.  Look closer and all may not be as it seems - even though one of the group has fallen to her knees in homage, their expressions suggest they are less impressed and have sensed the defensive air of insecurity on the part of the snake handler.  A lack of confidence can be read in his facial tension and his audience appear to be close to dissolving into scornful mirth.  The stereotypical imagery falls clearly under the umbrella of Orientalism in its dependence on the exotic. I have another postcard of an Egyptian snake charmer that looks suspiciously like the same person - even the serpents look the same.  Other examples are from Myanmar, India and Sri Lanka. Closer to home is the demonic grin of Henry Brusher Mills (1840-1905), celebrity snake catcher of the New Forest, pictured here with a fistful of writhing specimens. Charming was not part of his act. Armed with a forked stick he offered his services to anxious homeowners and it has been calculated he caught over 30,000 snakes in his lifetime - some of which were rendered down to create various dubious potions, others were boiled to reveal their skeletons for sale to tourists. In a rare interlude when not snake bothering, he lit up a pipe and sat for his portrait - the result can be seen here. After his death in 1905 he was buried beneath a rather handsome headstone in the churchyard at Brockenhurst, where you can now take a drink at the Snakecatcher pub.

 

Great Railway Stations No. 21, Penzance

The westward rails run out at Penzance, there’s nowhere else to go except back.  After 326 miles from Paddington it’s the end of the line. A first station opened in 1852 and in 1859 it was connected to London with the opening of the Royal Albert Bridge across the River Tamar. In 1876 a new and larger station was built and for a century or so, the Cornish Main Line was the first choice of travellers and holiday makers heading for the resorts of the far South West. When traffic declined sharply as passengers piled into family cars for the journey west, rail managers responded by cutting services and track work to balance the books.  Today’s station is substantially the layout built by the GWR in 1937 but despite all the rebuilds and extensions nobody ever thought it worth providing the sort of grand entrance its importance might have merited.  The single modest entrance to the cramped concourse is via the side of the building.  Only the overall roof offers any sense of occasion.  If the Thatcher government had implemented the recommendations of the Serpell Report in 1983 there would now be no railway lines in Cornwall (or Devon and Somerset for that matter).

The overview below of Penzance Station approximates the vantage point of Stanhope Forbes when he painted "A Terminus in the West" in 1925 when it was a 2 platform station. The GWR commissioned Forbes to make paintings of Cornish subjects for publicity purposes and the Penzance station painting is now in the collection of the National Railway Museum. Forbes was born in Dublin where his father was manager of the Midland Great Western Railway of Ireland suggesting an affinity with railway subjects. He also produced poster designs for the LMS in his characteristically robust realism style, all of which brought some relief from the pilchards and fisherfolk.  Penzance is a station to be valued for its remoteness, its individuality - the only overnight sleeper train to run in England terminates here - and the blunt fact that there’s no further to go.