Welcome to London Discovery Tours

Posts Tagged ‘Aldgate’

London walks - Postman’s Park

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

The City of London walks that we offer include some great themes and visit some absolutely wonderful places.

A little way from St. Paul’s there is a lovely little garden known as Postman’s Park. At first glance it seems a peaceful and tranquil place until you take a closer look at the walls behind its bushes and plant beds and you notice that several have tombstones stacked against them.

This is because the garden was once the combined burial ground for several churches that stood hereabouts. Thee have been no burials here since the 1830’s and it has been a garden since the late 19th century so there aren’t actually any former Londoners lying beneath its lawns.

Until the 1980’s this lovely little garden was surrounded by postal buildings and the post men used to use the garden to relax in during their breaks and to eat heir lunches - hence its name Postman’s Park.

When we take people into the garden on our City of London walks we point out the church of  St. Botolph Aldersgate which can be seen in the north east corner of the garden. If the church is open we even go inside it, and it really is a high point on our London walks.

There are three churches dedicated to St Botolph in the City of London and the all stood next to a City gate, remembering the days when London was a walled city.

The other two churches to share this dedication are St. Botolph’s Aldgate and St. Botolph’s Bishopsgate.

The reason they were built by City gates is that St. Botolph was a patron saint of travellers and when, in the Middle Ages, people used to leave the safety of the City of London to Walk the dangerous highways and byways that stretched away from the walls, they would stop off at the churches to say a prayer to St. Botolph for protection for their journey.

Should they return safely to London then they would be sure to re-visit the church in order that they might say a prayer of thanks to St. Botolph.

So just an ordinary little church that stands on a busy London thoroughfare really does give you something to look at and provide you with a few nuggets of information that, although perhaps not earth shattering, are certainly interesting.

It’s the discovery of this sort of fact and building that makes our London walks such a great way to see so much more of the City.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in General Walking Blogs | No Comments »

London Wall and its Gates on our Walks.

Friday, July 31st, 2009

Our Walks in London range from Walks that include Roman London, Anglo Saxon London and medieval London.

On each of this City of London walks we encounter and discuss the wall that once encircled the City.

The City wall extended from Aldgate to Bishopsgate, which guarded the Cambridge Road.
Bishopsgate was built about the reign of Henry II, for the purpose of making a new entry to the City between Aldgate and Aldersgate.

From the time of Edward VI to, that of James I, Bishopsgate was continuously in a ruinous state. James I, who was ever nervous for his crown, had a new gate built.

Moorgate was built or renewed about the year 1415 by Henry V, Stow, the London historian, says that no gate was here previous to this date, but there are reasons to believe that he was wrong.

Moorgate was rebuilt in 1472 and taken down about 1750, the stones being used to repair London Bridge.

Cripplegate was one of the minor entries into London, but was certainly one of the most ancient, and was rebuilt many times.

Stow records that it received its name through the many cripples who sat and begged there.

In 1010, when the Danes were approaching Bury St. Edmunds, the body of Edmund the Martyr was brought to London, and as it passed through Cripplegate it is said that many persons rose upright and began to walk.

Cripplegate was rebuilt by the brewers of London in 1244, and again, in 1491 at the cost of 400 marks left by Edmund Shaw, goldsmith and ex-mayor.

In the reign of Charles II it was repaired and made more elaborate.

All the country outside the wall between Bishopsgate and Aldersgate was a marsh. This gave rise to the names Moorfields and Finsbury (Fensbury).

Aldersgate or (Elders-gate) was one of the largest of the gates of London. It had crumbled into uselessness by the time of James 1, and was replaced by a new one.

In the early part of the 11th century there were only three gates to London — Aldgate, Aldersgate, and Ludgate.

Newgate was built at the time of Henry I. In common with the others, this was rebuilt many times, but final-1Y destroyed in the Gordon riots of 1780.

The prison, which met a similar fate, was rebuilt, but no steps were taken to replace the gate.

Ludgate had more history associated with it than any other . It is said that this was taken down in 1760 at the request of the inhabitants of the Farringdon wards.

According to tradition, this gate was built by the famous King Lud, in 66 B.C.

But a more feasible explanation of the name is given by historians, who suggest that its original name was Flood or Fleet.

Lud Gate was another through which the Barons entered London in the reign of King John. Once inside they appear to have raided the houses of the Jews, pulled down their buildings and used the stone for rebuilding Lud Gate.

Lud Gate was again repaired in 1260, and decorated with images of King Lud and other monarchs.

During the reign of Edward VI, when England was developing a conscience against idolatry, the heads of Lud and his family were cut off. Queen Mary, however, restored them.

In the reign of Elizabeth (1586) the old gate was pulled down and rebuilt, with images of Lud and a statue of the Queen. It cost £1500.

During the demolition a stone was found with the inscription: “This is the ward of Rabbi Moses, the son of the honourable Rabbi Isaac.”

When old Lud Gate was pulled down the statues of Lud and his sons were thrown into the parish bone-house.

They were eventually bought by the Marquis of Hertford and placed in Regent’s Park at Hertford Villa.
‘
The statue of Elizabeth was placed in a niche of the wall of old St. Dunstan’s Church on Fleet.She can still be seen in a niche on the wall of St Dunstan’s Church, whilst the statues of King Lud and his sons are also now located in a recess in the porch of this same church.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in General Walking Blogs | Comments Off

London Gates On Our Walks.

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

On our City of London walks we wander through streets with names such as Bishopsgate, Aldgate and Newgate Street. Every so often we encounter plaques, such as one on the wall of the Old Bailey which tells passersby that this was the site of Newgate Demolished in 1780.

Other streets and places encountered on our London walks also remember the long vanished gates of London. Our Jack the Ripper Tour, for example starts at Aldgate East Underground Station, which remembers Aldgate, the eastern gate into the City of London.

These gates remember the long ago days when a wall encircled the entire City of London and people had to Walk in and out of these gates to gain admission to the capital or to leave it behind. Each of these gates has a tale (several have many tales to tell) of the people and events that were connected with them.

Those who join our historical City of London walks learn about these  tales.

For example we tell how on July 30th, 1760 three old London gates  -  those of Cripplegate, Aldgate, and Ludgate - were sold to a Mr. Blagden, a carpenter, of Coleman Street, City, for a total of £416 10s.

He gave an undertaking to remove the gates and the “rubbish” connected therewith, by the end of September.

The contract was carried out, and the autumn of that year saw the end of all the London gates except Newgate.

Newgate survived for another twenty years, when it was demolished by rioters.

These gates, of course, were not the original barriers of London. They had been renewed at various times.

The earliest gate in the walls of the City was Aldgate, or Eldgate as it was called in Saxon times.

This was hastily constructed to prevent invaders entering the City from the great Essex road.

During the war between King John and the barons it, was through this gate that the citizens of London let in the latter.

It suffered a good deal in the early part of the 13th century through civil wars,and the wood was replaced by stone.

It existed until the time of Elizabeth 1st, when a more ornamental one was put up in its place. This was the one sold in 1760.

Aldgate, being the nearest point in the City to the East Coast, was assaulted more than any other of the gates of London.

In 1471 Falconbridge, who had raised a force of seamen in Essex and Kent, came up the Thames with his ships and anchored near the Tower. The Mayor and Aldermen of the City fortified the Thames shore. Finding that London was not to be approached from the south side, the invaders attacked Aldgate with 5000 men.

The citizens dropped the portcullis of the gate, and cut off many of the assailants. When Earl Rivers and the Constable of the Tower arrived with reinforcements, London’s citizens counter-attacked and drove the besiegers as far as Stratford.

Aldgate was acquired from Blagden, the carpenter, by a Mr. Mussell of Bethnal Green, who had the gate rebuilt on the north side of his mansion, which was afterwards named Aldgate.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in General Walking Blogs | Comments Off

Walks of London’s Jewish History

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

In an earlier post where we talked our our Jewish East End London walks we traced the history of Jewish London up until the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290.

In this post we follow London’s Jewish history through to the time of Cromwell and the resettlement of the Jews. Our City of London walks that cover the City’s eastern section is steeped in the capital’s Jewish history and this is a foretaste of the type of in depth detail we like to present on our walking tours of London.

For nearly four centuries after the expulsion it was held that beginning it was illegal for a Jew to reside in England, yet they were here. Successive governments found it expedient to ignore the presence of traders with international experience especially if they were profitable to the crown.

During these centuries the Jews in England were either ‘conversos’(converts to Christianity) or ‘Marranos’ (Jews publicly professing Christianity but privately practising Judaism).

An early example is Dr Roderigo Lopes, personal physician to Queen Elizabeth I, executed on patently false charges of treason (there is a list of famous trials displayed in the City of London Guildhall, which we cover on our historic City of London walks, which includes that of Dr Lopes’).

The Puritan revolution in England, culminating in the English Civil War of 1642-48, radically altered the position of the Jews vis-à-vis England.

The revolution, itself an extended process through the reigns of Elizabeth, James I and Charles I, involved a search for purity in religion and, above all, a return to the Bible as a source of authority.

Translations of the Bible into English were now available and printing made them widespread. Puritans reading their Bibles were impressed with the religious rigour of the Old Testament prophets and became increasingly interested in Judaism.

A chair in Hebrew studies at Oxford was founded to facilitate the more accurate translation of the Bible and soon pamphlets were circulating questioning the exclusion of Jews from England.

Suggestions were made that the problems that beset England (as far as the Puritans were concerned, this meant the King and the established church) were God’s punishment for the way the Jews had been treated.

The Civil War led to the execution of the King and to England becoming a republic from 1648-1660. The Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell was interested in developing overseas trade, particularly at the expense of the Dutch Republic and the Spanish crown.

The presence in Amsterdam of a wealthy and talented group of international merchants and financiers of Spanish and Portuguese descent was an attractive prize — if they could be persuaded to come to England…. The process was long and at first furtive, beginning about 1650.

The first Marrano (for they were to remain such for a while) to arrive in London appears to have been Diego Rodriguez Arias in 1651, followed in 1653 by Duarte Henrique Alvarez and his nephew Antonio Rodriguez Robles, who lived in Duke’s Place at Aldgate, on the eastern edge of the City, which you cover on our Eastern City London walks.

In 1654, a future leader of the London Jewish community arrived — David Abrabanel (also known as Manoel Martinez Dormido). Dormido came from Andalusia where he had been a city treasurer and customs and revenue officer.

Tortured by the Inquisition, he went to Amsterdam in 1640, becoming a merchant and an intelligencer (i.e. a spy) for Oliver Cromwell.

In 1654, Dormido lost his business in Recife due to the exigencies of war and came to live in Great St Helens, London (not far from Aldgate). Dormido formed a minyan in his house and in the year of his arrival petitioned Cromwell for the resettlement of the Jews in England.

The following year (1655) two other future leaders arrived in London — Simon (Jacob) de Caceres and Antonio Ferdinando Carvajal (also known as Abraham Hisquiau Carvajal).

Caceres was a merchant and shipowner with interests in the sugar trade and land in Barbados and was a Sephardi, originally from Hamburg. Carvajal was a shipowner and gold bullion merchant born in Portugal at Fundao. He fled to the Canaries in 1630, later joining a Marrano group in Rouen where he was denounced by a certain Diego Cisneros. Carvajal escaped to England in 1655, and settled in Leadenhall Street in the City of London.

Walks of ours that include this area include the Historic City, The Secret City and the Jewish East End London walk.The same year Carvajal, along with his sons Alonzo, Jorge and Joseph, was endenizened (naturalized) by Oliver Cromwell.

Carvajal like Dormido had a minyan at his house but pursued the rather odd disguise of being a Roman Catholic (in a fiercely Protestant country!) by attending mass at the Spanish Embassy.

He was fined as a recusant (a persistent Catholic) in 1655. It is difficult to explain Carvajal’s behaviour unless it is connected to the fact that he and Caceres, like Dormido, were also intelligence officers for Cromwell.

Now events were to conspire to bring three separate interests to pursue the same objective. In late 1655 England declared war on Spain, and in March the following year the Council of State ordered the seizure of goods of all Spanish subjects.

On 14 March two ships belonging to Antonio Robles (Carvajal’s nephew) were seized. Robles immediately petitioned the Commissioners of the Admiralty for return of his property on the grounds that he was neither Spanish nor Catholic, but Portuguese and Jewish.

For the first time since 1290 there was an acknowledgement in print that a Jew was living in England!

More on Lodnon’s jewish History will follow soon and we will be adding one of our free London walks around the east End history later on this year. So keep checking back to our daily blog to learn more of the history of this wonderful city that spent 2,000 years preparing for you to explore it.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in General Walking Blogs | No Comments »