Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Wikipedia
Coordinates: 51°30′41″N 0°07′08″W / 51.511389°N 0.118889°W / 51.511389; -0.118889
Strand is a street in the City of Westminster, London, England. It is just over 3/4 of a mile long.[1] It currently starts at Trafalgar Square and runs east to join Fleet Street at Temple Bar, which marks the boundary of the City of London at this point, though its historical length has been longer than this.
At the east end of the street are two old churches, St Mary-le-Strand and St Clement Danes which are now, due to road-widening, situated on islands in the middle of the road. The length of road from St Mary's church eastwards up to St Clement's was widened in 1900 and subsumes the former Holywell Street which forked from the Strand and ran parallel with it to the north.[2] In former times the eastern part of Strand was part of the Liberty of the Savoy and had administrative autonomy, distinct from both the City of London to the east and the City of Westminster to the west.[3]
Two tube stations were once named Strand: the former Piccadilly line Strand tube station, now called Aldwych but no longer in use, and the former "Strand tube station" on the Northern Line now part of Charing Cross tube station. "Strand Bridge" was also the name given to Waterloo Bridge during construction, it was renamed for its official opening on the second anniversary of the victory.
[edit] History
[edit] Origins
The name Strand is derived from the Old English word for "shore" or "river bank"; note the term "stranded" from the same Germanic root. Many Germanic languages and languages in close contact with them, such as Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Finnish, German, and Dutch, have all derived their word for "beach" from this root. Many beaches in Ireland are still called "strands".
The official City of Westminster name for the street, and associated signage, does not use the definite article, but common usage often refers to the street as 'the Strand'.
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The modern Strand follows the course of Akeman Street, a Roman road running parallel to the river, towards Chiswick from Roman London.[4] Together with Aldwych, it has been a major settlement area since Saxon times outside of the old Roman city walls. In the Middle Ages it became the principal route between the separate settlements of the City of London (the civil and commercial centre) and the Royal Palace of Westminster (the national political centre). In the archaeological record, there is considerable evidence of occupation to the north of Aldwych, but much along the former foreshore has been covered by rubble from the demolition of the Tudor Somerset Place, a former Royal residence, to create a large platform for the building of the first Somerset House, in the 17th century.[5]
[edit] Palaces
From the twelfth century onwards large mansions lined the Strand including several palaces inhabited by bishops and royal courtiers, mostly located on the south side, with their own river gates and landings directly on the Thames.[6] Those on the south side of the street were, from east to west:
- Essex House, built around 1575 for Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and originally called Leicester House. Re-named Essex House after being inherited by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex in 1588. It was demolished some time between 1674 and 1679 and Essex Street, leading up to the Strand, was built on the location by property speculator Nicholas Barbon.
- Arundel House, originally the town house of the Bishops of Bath and Wells, later in the possession of Earls of Arundel. It was demolished in 1678 and Arundel Street, adjoining the Strand, built on the site.[7] The supposed Roman Baths, Strand Lane are in the former grounds of the House and are probably associated with it.
- Somerset House built by Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, regent of England 1547-49, and rebuilt in the eighteenth century.
- Savoy Palace, the London residence of John of Gaunt, Richard II's uncle and the nation's power broker. In the 14th century the Savoy was the most magnificent nobleman's mansion in England. However, during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, rebels, led by Wat Tyler, inflamed by opposition to the poll tax promoted by John of Gaunt, systematically demolished the Savoy and everything in it. In 1512 it was rebuilt as the Savoy Hospital for the poor. However it gradually fell into dereliction and was divided into multiple tenancies, eventually being demolished in the nineteenth century.[8] The Savoy Hotel now occupies the site.
- Worcester House, formerly the Inn, or residence, of the Bishop of Carlisle[9]
- Salisbury House. The site is now occupied by Shell Mex House, 80, Strand.
- Durham House, the historic London residence of the Bishop of Durham, built circa 1345 and demolished in the mid seventeenth century, it was once the home of Queen Anne Boleyn. Durham Street and the Adelphi Buildings were built on its site.
- York House, Strand, built as the London home of the Bishops of Norwich not later than 1237. At the time of the Reformation it was acquired by King Henry VIII and came to be known as York House when he granted it to the Archbishop of York in 1556. In the 1620s it was acquired by the royal favourite George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham and after an interlude during the English Civil War it was returned to George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, who sold it to developers in 1672. It was then demolished and new streets and buildings built on the site, including Villiers Street which here connects Strand with The Embankment to the south.
- Hungerford House. Demolished and replaced, in turn, by Hungerford Market and Charing Cross railway station.
- Northumberland House, a large Jacobean mansion, the historic London residence of the Dukes of Northumberland; built in 1605 and demolished in 1874. Northumberland Avenue, leading to the Embankment, occupies the site.
On the north side of the street were:
- Cecil House, also called Exeter House or Burghley House, was on the north side of the Strand; it was built in the 16th century by Lord Burghley as an expansion of an existing Tudor house. Exeter House was demolished in 1676 and Exeter Exchange built on the site. It was most famous for the menagerie that occupied its upper floors for over 50 years, from 1773 until 1829, when Exeter Exchange was demolished. It was replaced by Exeter Hall, noted for its Evangelical meetings. This was torn down in 1907 and the site is now occupied by the Strand Palace Hotel.
- Bedford House.
- Wimbledon House.
Apart from the rebuilt Somerset House, all these grand buildings are now gone, and are overlaid by later streets lined by humbler tenements. These were built by property developers on the sites of the old mansions, from the seventeenth century onwards. A New Exchange was built on part of the gardens of Durham House, in 1608-9, facing the Strand. This high-class shopping centre enjoyed considerable popularity but was eventually destroyed in 1737.[10]
[edit] Churches
The church of St. Clement Danes is believed to date back to the 9th century, but the present building is mainly a 17th century work by Sir Christopher Wren. Here is buried one of England's lesser known kings: Harold Harefoot (reigned 1035-40). St Mary-le-Strand was designed by James Gibbs and completed in 1717, to replace one demolished by Protector Somerset for building material for his adjacent Somerset House.
[edit] Decline
After the demolition of most of the grand mansions and departure of their aristocratic residents for the West End the area acquired a dissolute but lively reputation and became notable for its coffee houses, low taverns and cheap women. The Dog and Duck tavern on the Strand was famed as a venue for the conspirators involved in the Gunpowder Plot.[11] And, in the time of the English Civil War, the Nag's Head tavern was the venue of a meeting between Henry Ireton and some of the Levellers which resulted in the production of a document called the Remonstrance of the Army which demanded the abolition of the monarchy and the trial of Charles I.[12] In the nineteenth century the Coal Hole Tavern, under the management of Renton Nicholson, was notable for song-and-supper evenings, tableaux vivants of scantily clad women in poses plastiques, and a ribald "Judge and Jury" show.[13]
[edit] Literary life
In the 19th century much of the Strand was rebuilt and the houses to the south no longer backed onto the Thames, separated from the river by the Victoria Embankment constructed 1865-70. This moved the river some 50 metres (164.0 ft) further away. The Strand became a newly fashionable address and many avant-garde writers and thinkers gathered here, among them Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer and the scientist Thomas Henry Huxley. 142 Strand was the home of radical publisher and physician John Chapman[14], who not only published many of his contemporaries from this house during the 1850s, but also edited the Westminster Review for 42 years. The American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson was also a house guest. A lower grade of publishing was promoted at the east end of Strand where Holywell Street was the hub of Victorian pornography trade, until the street was physically eliminated by the Strand road widening in 1900.[15] Virginia Woolf also writes about Strand in several of her essays, including "Street Haunting: A London Adventure." T.S. Eliot alludes to The Strand in his 1905 poem "At Graduation" and and in his 1922 poem "The Waste Land" (part III, The Fire Sermon, v. 258: "and along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street") John Masefield also refers to a "jostling in the Strand" in his well-known poem "On Growing Old".
[edit] Theatre
The Strand was the hub of Victorian theatre and nightlife. However, redevelopment of the East Strand and the construction of the Aldwych and Kingsway roads in the 1890s and early years of the twentieth century led to the loss of the Opera Comique, the Globe, the Royal Strand Theatre and the nearby Olympic Theatre. Other lost theatres on Strand include the Gaiety Theatre (closed in 1939, building demolished in 1957), Terry's Theatre (converted into a cinema 1910, demolished 1923), and the Tivoli (closed 1914 and later demolished; in 1923 the Tivoli Cinema opened on the site and was closed and demolished in 1957 to make way for Peter Robinson's store).
Surviving theatres include the Adelphi Theatre, the Savoy Theatre and Vaudeville Theatre and, closely adjacent in Wellington Street, the Lyceum Theatre.
[edit] Connections
Charing Cross railway station built on the Strand in 1864 provided a boat train service to Europe. This stimulated the growth of hotels in the area to cater for travellers. These included the Charing Cross Hotel, attached to the station itself. Today, luggage outlets and tourist agents on the Strand testify to the former international connections of the area. Also symbolic of world travel are the old postage stamp dealers on the Strand, including that of Stanley Gibbons.[16]
[edit] Popular culture
The Strand is the subject of a famous music hall song Let's All Go Down the Strand (words and music by Harry Castling and C. W. Murphy). The song opens with a group of tourists, staying the night at Trafalgar Square about to embark for Rhineland - presumably via the boat train from nearby Charing Cross railway station:
One night a half 'a dozen tourists Spent the night together in Trafalgar Square. A fortnight's tour on the Continent was planned, And each had his portmanteau in his hand. Down the Rhine they meant to have a picnic Til' Jones said, "I must decline--" "Boys you'll be advised by me to stay away from Germany-- What's the good a' going down the Rhine." Let's all go down the Strand -- Have a banana! Let's all go down the Strand! I'll be the leader, you can march behind. Come with me and see what we can find! Let's all go down the Strand -- Have a banana! Oh! What a happy land. That's the place fer fun and noise, All among the girls and boys. So let's all go down to the Strand.
The song has inspired a version by the group Blur[17]. The lines "Let's all go down the Strand" and "Have a banana!" are also referenced by English comedian Bill Bailey during his stage routine on Cockney music[citation needed].
Art-Rock group Roxy Music took the Strand as inspiration for their 3rd single "Do the Strand", from the 1973 For Your Pleasure album.
John Betjeman used the title of the song for a television documentary made for Associated-Rediffusion in 1967,[18] and in the same year Margaret Williams for a stage comedy.[19] The Strand was also the locale where Burlington Bertie, the hero of another popular music hall song, sauntered along "like a toff".
The Strand Magazine was named after the street, and began publishing in 1891. A BBC World Service arts and culture radio series is called The Strand.[20] The World Service broadcasts from Bush House situated on Strand.
[edit] Other notable buildings
- Australia House
- Courtauld Institute of Art (at Somerset House)
- King's College London, whose main campus (called the Strand Campus) is located off this street, next to Somerset House
- Royal Courts of Justice
- Simpson's-in-the-Strand
- Strand Palace Hotel
- Twinings
- 440 Strand, headquarters of Coutts & Co Bank
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert (1983) The London Encyclopedia: 829
- ^ Harold Clunn (1970) The Face of London: 125-6
- ^ John Stow (1598) A Survey of London. Republished by Sutton 1994: 399-404
- ^ Archaeology: The Romano-British Period, A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 1: Physique, Archaeology, Domesday, Ecclesiastical Organization, The Jews, Religious Houses, Education of Working Classes to 1870, Private Education from Sixteenth Century (1969), pp. 64-74. Date accessed: 22 July 2008.
- ^ The Strand (southern tributaries)', Old and New London: Volume 3 (1878), pp. 63-84 accessed 22 July 2008
- ^ Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert (1983) The London Encyclopedia: 829
- ^ Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert (1983) The London Encyclopedia: 28
- ^ VCH: "Hospital of the Savoy"
- ^ Inn of the Bishops of Carlisle (London Online) accessed 22 July 2008
- ^ Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert (1983) The London Encyclopedia: 539
- ^ Tim Moore (2002) Do Not Pass Go: From the Old Kent Road to Mayfair. London, Yellow Jersey Press: 197
- ^ Christopher Hibbert (1993) Cavaliers and Roundheads: The English at War 1642-1649. London, Harper Collins: 280
- ^ Cyril Pearl (1955) The Girl With The Swansdown Seat. London, Frederick Muller: 180-7
- ^ Rosemary Ashton, 142 Strand: A Radical Address in Victorian London, (2006)
- ^ H. Montgomery Hyde (1964) A History of Pornography: 167-82
- ^ Tim Moore (2002) Do Not Pass Go: From the Old Kent Road to Mayfair. London, Yellow Jersey Press: 200
- ^ See Sunday Sunday.
- ^ Betjeman's London: Let's All Go Down the Strand (BFI) accessed 18 December 2008
- ^ Margaret Williams Let's All Go Down the Strand (Evans Plays, London 1967)
- ^ Arts and Culture ((BBC World Service) accessed 18 December 2008
- Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson (1968) The Lost Theatres of London. Rupert Hart-Davis.
Annotations
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Strand, L. It reaches from Temple Bar to Charing Cross, and hath two Churches in it, called St. Clement Danes, and St. George. It is also adorn’d with the Royal Palace of Somerset House, in the Stable Yard whereof is a great Plying-place for Watermen; also Wimbleton House, and Northumberland House; which last belongs to the Duke of Somerset : Also here is a Quakers Meetinghouse, betwixt the great and little Savoy Gates, next to which latter dwells Mrs. Cowper, who is at present the King’s Distiller.
W. Stow 1722 -
I think I remember hearing or reading that “The Strand” used to run alongside the Thames. Is this true? (It would make sense, since one of the meanings of “strand” since at least Chaucer’s time has been “beach”.) If it is true, did it run along the Thames in Pepys’ time? Are there any maps showing it? And when was the land between The Strand and the Embankment filled in?
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The Strand, c. 1746
The Strand runs along the bottom of this part of the map of London made in 1746. (The street is longer than this section, but can be followed using the links on the page.) This is the section of the street near Somerset House:
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Somerset House’s own website includes this information on the construction of the Thames Embankment:
“By the second half of the nineteenth century, London’s roads [were] becoming increasingly congested and its sewers unable to cope with the needs of a rapidly growing population. As a part of its activities to modernise the infrastructure of the city, the Metropolitan Board of Works undertook to make new roads, construct the Victoria, Albert and Chelsea embankments, and lay a vast, new drainage system.
“The Embankment was intended to carry a new road along the edge of the Thames from Westminster to the City of London and, below ground, to accommodate large sewers and a line for the Metropolitan and District Railway. Construction of the Victoria Embankment to the designs of Sir Joseph Bazalgette began in 1864 and was completed in July 1870.
“The introduction of the Embankment had the effect of distancing the river from the buildings along its north bank, particularly significant for Somerset House, which had been designed to rise directly from the water…. The dramatic waterfront design of Sir William Chambers’ Somerset House had effectively been destroyed a little more than a decade since the building of the New Wing had seen its completion.” (From: http://www.somerset-house.org.uk/history/18thcentury/ )The upshot of this was that the Thames now became too deep for the water to freeze solid, so the frost fairs that had occurred in the past, which Sam Pepys himself may well have known, were no more.
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According to the “Paranormal Database” the ghost of SP has been haunting his old house on Buckingham Street, Strand.
“his blurred, smiling phantom has been reported near the staircase of the building”.
http://www.paranormaldatabase.com/london/lonpages/wc2lon.htm