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St Andrew's Club - 150th Anniversary, October 2016

The Thorney Island Society has just celebrated its 30th anniversary, so it was with a due sense of humility that we visited our next door neighbour, the Saint Andrew's club, on the occasion of the President's Reception to mark its 150th anniversary. St Andrew's is the oldest youth club in the world. It pretty well invented them at a time when the social effects of the industrial revolution made life very difficult for young people. This was especially true in the area of Old Pye Street - which had been dubbed "The Devil's Acre" by Charles Dickens - and to which the club eventually moved (much later) from its first home in Soho.

Today it is a thriving organisation, much bigger than a cursory look inside the door would suggest, occupying several storeys with a football pitch on the top floor. It engages 700 members in a variety of activities including boxing, football, karate, judo, cooking, graffiti art and theatre. Women make up around 25% of membership but have a much higher participation rate than the boys.

The club is located in Old Pye Street at the junction with St Ann's Lane - just as we are - but is not tied to any of the local estates. It aims to give any youngsters confidence and self-respect, opening their lives to new options. It has nurtured plenty of successes including one youth, Ramsey, who told the gathering that St Andrew's turned his life around and enabled him to become a cameraman with Sky News.

Compared with St Andrew's, our archive is a tiny space. One of the women at the celebration remembers buying sweets from there with her 50p a week pocket money when it was a sweet shop.

Although the club is thriving at the operational level, it also faces challenges as so many voluntary organisations do these days. It gets no financial assistance from government or local councils and is always looking out for new sponsors and donors. If you are interested contact them or donate via their website standrewsclub.com

With the help of a Heritage Lottery Fund grant the club is in the throes of digitising its archive including the history of youth clubs in general and all the issues of its own newsletter, The Chronicle, going back to 1883! The archive can be found at standrewsclub.com/heritage

We wish our neighbour every success for the future.

Henry V's Chantry Chapel Visit, October 2016

When Henry V died in France in 1422 aged 36, he had left instructions for a Chantry Chapel to be built in Westminster Abbey so prayers could be said in perpetuity for the repose of his soul. It has only rarely been opened to the public but as part of the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, the Abbey kindly invited members of the Thorney Island Society to visit the chapel.

It was a delight worth waiting for. We climbed up a very narrow spiral staircase to the bijoux chapel situated immediately above Henry's tomb. It is open on three sides to the rest of the Abbey - though you would never know that walking around downstairs – and affords spectacular views of the other tombs and down the nave of the Abbey itself.

On the fourth side is the altar under which Henry's wife Catherine of Valois is buried - having been moved several times to different resting places in the Abbey on account of marrying beneath her station after Henry's death. Above are six resplendent statues of patron saints of England and France including St George (with his spear penetrating the dragon), St Denis of France and on the right St Edmund carrying his head in his arms having reputedly been beheaded by Ivar the Boneless. The blank plinth in the middle was probably of the Trinity but did not survive the iconoclasm of the Reformation. At the very top of the Chapel there is a shaft of light from Henry VII's Chapel illuminating a charming stained glass window of kings of England. Sadly, photos are not allowed inside the Abbey.

As if this was not enough our expert guide, the verger Ben Sheward, sprang a surprise - a visit to the Jerusalem Chamber, the actual place - if Shakespeare is to be believed - where the future Henry V tried on the crown of England thinking his father Henry IV was dying, only for him to wake up in anger. Father and son were reconciled and Henry IV realised that dying in this room fulfilled his destiny:

"It hath been prophesied to me many years,

I should not die but in Jerusalem,

Which vainly I suppos’d the Holy Land.

But bear me to that chamber, there I’ll lie,

In that Jerusalem shall Harry die."

Our thanks to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey for a most memorable visit.

Thorney Tales (10) - Oliver Cromwell v Charles I

Most Westminster walkers are familiar with the statue of Oliver Cromwell peering imperiously from his plinth on Cromwell Green, in front of Westminster Hall. It was erected in 1895 at a cost of £500 against furious opposition from Ireland. But not many people are aware of who is looking at him from immediately across the road. It is none other than a lead bust of Charles I, who was executed on Cromwell's orders. It is affixed to the side wall of St Margaret's Church. One of two busts of him found in a Fulham salvage depot in 1945 by Hedley Hope-Nicholson, secretary of the Society of King Charles the Martyr, one of which he donated to the church in 1950. The other is now at the Banqueting House further up Whitehall, where Charles was executed. Curiously, the statue of Charles I on horse back at the southern tip of Trafalgar Square is looking towards both his place of execution and the second bust of him. Cromwell is not being allowed to forget.

Fundraising Gala Dinner September 2016

Many thanks to all who attended and supported us on Monday 26th September at The Cinnamon Club, The Old Westminster Library. With special thanks to the Hon Jacob Rees-Mogg MP for his speech, describing growing up in Smith Square, using this building as a public library and the huge refurbishment project planned at the Palace of Westminster. Also many thanks to Colin Sheaf, Chairman of Bonhams UK & Asia who auctioned some unique lots and raised an excellent amount for our Archives refurbishment. Finally, thank you to all those who donated items for the auction, as follows :

Belgrave Communications - Tour of the Old War Office, Whitehall

Bonhams UK - Lunch and a glass of champagne for 2 at Bonhams Michelin starred restaurant in Mayfair

The Cinnamon Club - Champagne breakfast for 2

Claudia & Nobuko Bespoke Hair @ Headonizm, Page Street - 2 ladies or gents haircuts

M Wines, Victoria Street - £50 private wine tasting voucher

Joanna Moncrieff - Westminster guided walk

Catherine Slater - An illustrated history of your London house/flat and street

St James's Theatre, Palace Street - 2 tickets to 'The Pianist of Willesden Lane'

St John's Smith Square - £100 voucher for a SJSS Concert

Taj St James's Court Hotel, Buckingham Gate - The Shakespeariance Dinner for 2

The Royal Parks - Rare opportunity to feed the pelicans in St James's Park, a tour of Duck Island, Cottage & Duke of York's Column.

Old War Office, 57 Whitehall

Although, slightly out of our area, this prominent building may be of interest to many. The proposal is for conversion by 57 Whitehall Sarl to a hotel and apartments.

A public exhibition was held on 5th & 6th September. If you were unable to attend and have any questions, please contact Nick Dines

at Belgrave Communications at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or tel. 0203 170 7987

Our visit to Parliament's hidden medieval places, 28th July 2016

One of the joys of Thorney Island membership is visiting places normally inaccessible. Especially on Thorney Island ! We were all amazed when shown the main medieval remains within Parliament that somehow escaped the great fire of 1834. Most of us thought we were familiar with the Great Hall which was spared destruction by a sudden change of wind, only to be told by Dr Mark Collins, the Estates Archivist & Historian, that the inner wall was an addition and that to see parts of the six-foot thick original wall we had to look opposite the gift shop where there is a long arched wall built of stone from Reigate in Surrey and Caen in Normandy complete with the signature marks of some of the masons. Richard II was responsible for the rebuilding of Westminster Hall complete with the dazzling hammer beam roof made from English oak brought by river. In one of the ironies of history, Richard was deposed before reconstruction of the building was completed after a trial - in his own Westminster Hall.

Another magnificent survivor of the fire was the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft (completed by Edward III in 1298) which is normally closed to the public. Called an undercroft because it is situated underneath the rebuilt St Stephen's Chapel through which visitors walk to the central lobby of the Commons but it is not really one because it is at ground level and has windows on both sides. It is a mesmerising example of Victorianised Gothic and will look even better when a proposed revamp is implemented.

We were then treated to something hardly any of us even knew existed: a cloister around which the monks used to walk and pray whose vaulted ceilings are now occupied by staff of the Labour Party and Government whips. In the quadrangle of the cloister, shut off from everything around you, it is difficult to believe you are right in the centre of London. We thanked Dr Collins and his colleague, Tessa Blundy, deputy head of Architecture and Heritage, for this rare opportunity to visit three of only four major remains of the medieval palace. The fourth, the Jewel Tower, on the other side of the road near the Abbey, was outside the range of the fire. Which is just as well because the Domesday Book was one of the treasures housed there.

Thorney Tales (9) - Governor of Duck Island

One of the less well-known occupants of Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey - his monument is behind Shakespeare's memorial - is a Frenchman, Charles de Saint-Évremon (1613-1703) who has recently come back into the news as a result of the success of Britain's sparkling wine revival. Charles de Marguetel de Saint-Denis, Seigneur de Saint-Evremond, as he styled himself, fled from France in disgrace in the early 1660s after incurring the wrath of Cardinal Mazarin. He was warmly received by Charles II who made him Governor of Duck Island in the middle of the lake in St James's Park complete with a £300 a year pension. Charles was attracted to this soldier hedonist with literary leanings not least because he introduced the Court to the delights of Champagne to which Charles became very partial.

Thorney Tales (8) Westminster Opera House

What the Opera House would have looked like

When excavations were taking place during the 1870s to construct a new edifice on the site of what today is the Norman Shaw complex near Westminster station, the builders came across the bed of a creek that surrounded Thorney Island. The edifice was no ordinary building. It was planned by James Mapleson, an impressario, to be the grandest opera house in Europe. It was not only planned but it was largely completed until Mapleson ran out of money. The building then fell into disuse and was eventually demolished.

But not completely. The foundations were kept - and are still there today. When Scotland Yard took over in 1890 some of the rooms originally built for opera stars were converted into cells for prisoners. One of the subterranean passages built as part of the opera house was connected to a platform on the District Line at Westminster Station. Another passage was reported to go to Parliament to give peers and MPs easy access to the opera. The building was put to good use by the metropolitan police. But is is sad to think that Thorney Island missed out on an opera house of its own.

What is Thorney Island ?

As all members of the society know, it is an island formed when the Tyburn river - now lost among the submerged sewers - met with the Thames forming a delta on which Westminster Abbey and Parliament now reside. It is a seriously historic island.

Or is it ? A new edition of the celebrated book "The Lost Rivers of London", points out that no reliable maps existed before the seventeenth century and adds: " the island theory still has much to prove". The mainstream (so to speak) view is that when the Tyburn reached what is now Buckingham Palace from its source on the slopes of Hampstead, it bifurcated. One section flowed down to the Thames west of Vauxhall Bridge via Tachbrook Street while the other section flowed from the area of today's Palace along Petty France to the end of Tothill Street where it formed a new delta with one leg reaching the Thames after crossing Whitehall below Downing Street while the other leg meandered around the west of the Abbey wall to empty itself in the Thames at the end of Great College Street where the Abbey Mill was situated and after which Millbank is named.

Historical Publications £22.50

Millbank Tower grows taller