Dickensian London

[DaveBrigg]

The first year of our 'A' level English Literature syllabus is devoted to Victorian literature. Lots of Dickens, Hardy, Wilde, Rossetti etc. There is also non-fiction, with articles giving opinion about the new railways, marriage roles, education, the monarchy and so on. The student therefore need a reasonable understanding of Victorin life and culture to give a context.

We are considering taking them on a visit to London, to look at any surviving examples of Victorian streets or significant buildings, and would appreciate suggestions of where to visit. We'll arrive at King's Cross, which is a good start. The Natural History Museum is probably on the list, and the Albert Memorial, but is there anywhere in London suggestive of Oliver Twist, or places which Dickens would still recognise? If time we may also hunt down a few blue plaques for the homes of famous writers.

 

[Nigel Watts]

Joce is the literature expert but you could have a look at this:

http://www.britannia.com/hiddenlondon/dickens.html

The Borough (Southwark) could be promising. Site of the Winchelsea prison (little Dorrit) and a great old coaching inn (the George) which Mr Pickwick would have felt completely at home in. The Inns of Court have lots of Dickens connections, the Temple and Inner Temple are especially atmospheric (great crusader church as well).

There are a few streets and alleyways that feel very Dickensian but they are rather dotted around. London has been so mucked about with since his time. I dont know most of them by name but will try to remember some.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

There are bits of the East End, like Brick Lane, that are probably as bewildering and exotic today as London would have seemed to a newly arrived country mouse in the 1840s. Depends how many are going, but Denis Severs' house in Folgate Street might appeal - it's a fictional, but definitely not Disney, history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which does require concentration. http://www.dennissevershouse.co.uk/#

Clerkenwell, St John's, Farringdon, Smithfield and St Bart's. If you know where to look, there's an alleyway off Turnmill Street which was once the bank of the Fleet River, still audible flowing beneath.

Or Borough Market and the area round Southwark Cathedral, then walk downstream to Rotherhithe along Shad Thames and Bermondsey Wall - but it's very bitty and much gentrified. Avoid anything with the word "Experience" in the title.

PS- for the late Victorians, and regardless of whether it's on the syllabus, Diary of a Nobody explains the Victorian lower middle class and its suburbs better than anything else.

 

[Flyfisher]

This might be of interest: http://www.dickens-and-london.com/Walks.htm
The Fleet Street & Alleyways walk looks quite promising.

But this is an interesting reminder of what a grim place Victorian London could be in practice:
http://www.fidnet.com/~dap1955/dickens/dickens_london.html

 

[dog]

If they're old enough you could finish off in the Cheshire Cheese just off Fleet Street. Built 1666 after the great fire. It has a photo of Dickens who was one of the clientele (as was Dr Johnson). Nice open fire and cheap ale.

 

[Nigel Watts]

places which Dickens would still recognise?

To answer this literally, surviving Georgian streets could be your best bet. Gareth is right that some bits of the Clerkenwell/Farringdon/St Johns area are great (Bart's hospital, the Charterhouse, the gateway of St John, the Sessions House, but apart from the streets around Clerkenwell church the the prevailing streetscape is late 19thC commercial.

For good early Georgian streets the area around Christchurch Spittlefields (Wonderful Hawkesmore Church) is great,Turnmill street included, and Brick lane for fun if your'e there. I definitely agree with Gareth on this. Lahore Kebab House off the Commercial Road for an authentic and good value North Indian meal http://www.lahore-kebabhouse.com/

Bedford Square in Bloomsbury is probably the best preserved Georgian square in London, close to the British Museum. Regent's Park, of course, for Nash Terraces (I currently work in one, but not for much longer I fear). None of these though has what you might call a Dickensian feel.

If you go to the Temple, you could also look at Chancery Lane, Lincoln's Inn. I agree about the nearby alleyways off Fleet Street (I used to work around there). Samuel Johnson's House in Gough Square can be visited. Ye Old Cheshire Cheese is nestled under the granite cliff of that Temple of Mammon, Goldman Sachs' European headquarters, but you wont bump into many bankers - they are worked far too hard and have far too puritan a culture to go to the pub at lunchtime.

 

[another_richard]

Hello.

Shopping:
You might want to try: Yee Olde Curiosity Shoppe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Curiosity_Shop "A shop named 'The Old Curiosity Shop' can be found at 13-14 Portsmouth Street, Westminster, London, WC2A 2ES"

Living:
And (although not strictly Victorian wee tad earlier the fantastic Sir John Soane's Museum http://www.soane.org/

Social/class:
"The Maps Descriptive of London Poverty are perhaps the most distinctive product of Charles Booth's Inquiry into Life and Labour in London (1886-1903). An early example of social cartography, each street is coloured to indicate the income and social class of its inhabitants." http://booth.lse.ac.uk/static/a/4.html
And where it all ended Highgate Cemetery http://www.highgate-cemetery.org/

 

[Nigel Watts]

Sir John Soane's Museum

Ecstacy in built form.

 

[JoceAndChris]

I took my gals to Severs' house - only la creme de la creme though- they loved it. It has very narrow routes over its 5 rambling floors though, and is crammed with stuff, like 18th century frocks flung over the back of a chair, so perfect behaviour is called for!

I agree with all of the above, but would also say if you could give your day trip the unforgettable ending of a show at the eerily dilapidated Wilton's Music Hall, the only surviving music hall theatre in London, (http://www.wiltons.org.uk/history), that would really be the icing on the cake!

Thanks for the compliment regarding literature Nigel but I bet if we were to have a Dickens quiz Dave would win it. I have read the complte works of Dickens, Hardy, Eliot Thackeray etc etc but all of that information has been obliterated by thoughts of frocks.

 

[Moo]

Booth's maps are wonderful, and it would be well worth investing in a set for your students to examine.

Of even more interest, I think, are the notebooks on which the maps were based, written by the inspectors who Booth employed to survey the streets accompanied by someone (vicar or policeman, usually) who had pretty intimate local knowledge. You can see them all on-line at the LSE site, and (a great bonus) you can download and print them free of charge.
Would you have time to provide these wonderful resources for your students so that they could study them before (and after) the trip?



(I discovered them when I was researching my grandfather's early life. He was born in 1881 in a very poor part of London indeed, and they brought the whole thing to life for me.)

 

[Carol]

Agree wholeheartedly about Dennis Severs house-a wonderful experience, but do prime the students beforehand, you need to go in the right frame of mind! A good walk in the backstreets of Spitalfields on the way there would also be good. My dad used to walk me around bits of Bermondsey as a child which seemed completely Dickensian then but have probably come up a bit since.

The Booth maps are brilliant, also what about looking at some of the 1881 census files for these areas, four families to a house with at least six children each (these also discovered doing genealogy for London forebears, Moo!) and the most menial of jobs, if jobs at all.

(My top Victorian novels are gritty grimy Mancunian, Mary Barton and N&S)

 

[dog]

I was thinking about this yesterday evening and it struck me that you have some great ideas, the real issue will be how to put them together. Here is my suggestion.

1. Arrive Kings x
2. St Pancras merits a look
3. Walk along Euston Rd to Southampton Road and turn left
4. Nice row of Georgian shopfronts on left
5. Carry on down Southampton Row. Have a look at Tavistock garden and the peace garden
6. Coram House - it has the original Hogarth's, foundling stuff and so on. Not cheap but right at the heart of what Dickensian London is about plus there's the Handel collection
7. Into Queen square exit right (beautiful buildings and another nice row of shopfronts) back onto Southampton Row an dup to Bedford Square.
8. Top right hand corner (near Institute of Education) is T S Eliot's Faber and Faber offices (with brown plaque)
9. Circle round and take exit in South West corner to back entrance of British Museum.
10. Walk straight through British Museum (you have to go up a few steps and shimmy around some gamelans)
11. Into reading room. Marx did his writing here.
12. Carry on and exit South (main forecourt). If you've got time the recently discovered gold hoard's worth a look by the way.
13.Carry on to Covent garden. Gives a sense of what street markets were like. Exit East past coffee houses (literature connections there).
14. Old Bailey
15. Have a look at Soames museum as was suggested. Invented milk chocolate and endowed Britich museum.
16. Make way to Fleet street walk down.
17. About half way down is El vinos - Rumpole's watering hold and very period.
18. Carry on down Fleet street and have a look at the Cheshire Cheese (mentioned in an earlier mail).
19. Back up North to Smithfield. Period Market, church, hospital and pub interest.
20. On to the London museum.

I've incorporated some other people's ideas and there might be some sights I've missed out en route. I quite agree that Wilton's is a wonderful place, but it is off the beaten track. I've also omitted anything in South London (George, Mayflower, Greemwich, through Brunel's tunnel, then on the North bank Prospect of Whitby with the gallows and Brick lane). That seems more like a summer tour than one for this time of year.

 

[Moo]

I still think it would be worth while using Booth and the census. For example, you mention Covent Garden but only as an example of what the market was like. But the now-fashionable streets around there were pretty horrible multi-occupied slums in Dickens's time (I know, because that's where my grandad lived) and, armed with a little background knowledge and encouraged to look above the shop-fronts, it's possible to get a real flavour of what life there was like.

ps A couple of Grandad's observations -
After a nostalgic wander around his old haunts, comparing the London he grew up in with London in the 1960s ("Didn't you find it terribly noisy and dirty?")" he considered the modern city a great improvement. Apparently the noise of horses' hooves and iron-shod wheels was deafening, and the streets were filthy with dung.

Crossing-sweepers were a necessity if ladies were to be able to keep their dresses clean. Women lower down the income scale wore their skirts a bit shorter and would tack a binding of brown paper to their hems; this was removed every evening and replaced every morning.

 

[judrop]

I am no use on this topic . however would like to say how much I have enjoyed reading all the replies and the wonderful web sites, delightful , thank you all Ju

 

[Penners]

If you want them to see some accurately reproduced Victorian (and other) interiors, The Geffrye Museum is well worth a visit.

http://www.geffrye-museum.org.uk/

 

[Moo]

suggestive of Oliver Twist, or places which Dickens would still recognise?

More from my grandad (a great one for progress)-

When he told me that masses of really old streets* were swept away to make room for Aldwych and Southhampton Row I said it was a shame that so much history was lost. He said they were nothing but slums and well rid of.


* The building on which the Old Curiosity Shop was based was one of them, according to grandad.

 

[DaveBrigg]

Many thanks for such wonderful ideas, most of which I had never heard of before. The census aspect had crossed my mind, since I have ancestors who lived in Fulhan in 1901, but had not come across Booth's maps before. I also discovered from one link that part of the prison which held Dickens' family still stands.
Fortunately the need for cheap train fares means that we will not be leaving London until the evening, so a trip to the theatre may be on the cards. We'll probably try out that subterranian railway thing too.The next step is to get an A to Z and plot out a route, although the one suggested sounds like a good start.Train tickets can only be bought three months in advance, which should just give enough time to fill out the risk assessments.
If any more good ideas crop up, please feel free to add them. If the trip gets the go-ahead, I promise to take plenty of pictures.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

suggestive of Oliver Twist, or places which Dickens would still recognise?

More from my grandad (a great one for progress)-

When he told me that masses of really old streets* were swept away to make room for Aldwych and Southhampton Row I said it was a shame that so much history was lost. He said they were nothing but slums and well rid of.


* The building on which the Old Curiosity Shop was based was one of them, according to grandad.

It's still there http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1125558 - its actual connection with Dickens is a bit dubious (even though he did live a ten minute walk away).