Points of View

London 1870s and now - 9: Brewer St, Soho

This is the ninth in a series of posts comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s and 80s with the same view today.

Use our Google map to see where they were taken.

It shows the corner of Brewer St and Lower James St, Soho, in the warren of backstreets just north-west of Piccadilly Circus.

The top picture is Dixon's. A zoomable version of this image is on our Online Gallery. Writing about the building in 1880, Alfred Marks commented: "The photograph shows an old-fashioned shop, dated early eighteenth century, of a style very few examples of which are now left. Brewer Street was built about 1680, Soho being then, as it long remained, a fashionable part of the town."

Below it is the same view as it appeared in August 2009. The 18th-century front is long gone, and the shop which apparently used to sell technical equipment is now, like so many London locations with a heavy footfall, a coffee shop. (The Yellow Pages list nearly 1,900 in London.)

The preponderance of such places in the capital is nothing new: the first London coffee shop opened in 1652, and a decade later there were over 80. One coffee shop, which started in 1688, proved a useful meeting place for merchants dealing in marine insurance, and subsequently became Lloyd's of London.

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London 1870s and now - 8: Gatehouse, Inner Temple

This is the eighth in a series of posts comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s and 80s with the same view today. Use our Google map to see where they were taken.

Inner Temple, on Fleet St, is one of the four Inns of Court in central London: associations which since the 14th century have played a central role in recruiting and training barristers. The Inns of Court (Inner Temple, Middle Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn) hold the exclusive rights to call candidates to practise law at the bar of England and Wales. Many of their picturesque quadrangles and courts, just a few yards from busy thoroughfares, are surprising havens of quiet, lacking any modern buildings.

The top picture is Dixon's. A zoomable version of this image is on our Online Gallery. Writing about the building in 1880, Alfred Marks commented: "The plumes of feathers in the panels between the first and second floors were intended as a compliment to Henry, Prince of Wales". The unusually bold advertisement linking the hair-cutting salon with Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey "...can only be accounted for by supposing that the author of the inscription confused this Gatehouse with that of the Middle Temple, with which... Wolsey's name is indeed connected."

Below it is the same view as it appeared in August 2009. The shop next to the gateway is still a hairdresser, just as it was in the 1870s. However, then you could have a trim for sixpence, roughly a tenth of a decent day's wage for a labourer. Similar cut-price tonsures can be had today for £7 in many places in London; but the Inner Temple salon of 2009 is a little more upmarket, with prices ranging from £35-£70.

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London 1870s and now - 7: Austin Friars, the City

This is the seventh in a series of posts comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s with the same view today. Use our Google map to see where they were taken.

Austin Friars is a narrow, winding, cobbled cul-de-sac in the City, just behind the Bank of England. It was named after the leading Augustinian monastery in England, founded in 1253 by Humphery de Bohun.

The top picture is Dixon's. A zoomable version of this image is on our Online Gallery. Writing about the building seen in the photograph, Alfred Marks commented: "The house, No. 10, is a good example of the genuine Queen Anne style; its date, 1704, is seen on the rain-pipe... At the dissolution the house was bestowed on William Paulet, the first Marquis of Winchester, and from the residence built by him on the site of the Friars' house, cloister, and gardens, Great Winchester Street took its name."

Below it is the same view as it appeared in August 2009. All the original buildings have gone, and only the tiny alley of Austin Friars Passage off to the left confirms that the two photos were taken from the same spot. The Dutch church behind the photographer and to the right remains, however, and the street - still accessed from Broad St through an old archway and still with at least three 90-degree bends in its short span - retains much of its quirky old charm.

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London 1870s and now - 6: Bevis Marks/St Mary Axe

 

This is the sixth in a series of posts comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s and 80s with the same view today. Use our Google map to see where they were taken.

The top picture is Dixon's. A zoomable version of this image is on our Online Gallery. Writing about the building in 1880, Alfred Marks noted: "This overhanging gabled house, of a kind fast becoming very rare in London, was destroyed in the course of last year." The rather grim-looking corner housed a pub, the 'Golden Axe Tavern'.

Below it is the same view as it appeared in August 2009. A visitor from Dixon's time would be astounded and disoriented by the 180m-tall curved figure of 30 St Mary Axe, 'the Gherkin', opened in 2004. It dominates a financial district whose architectural look and feel is constantly being reinvented.

But tucked away between the slabs of steel and glass, a few religious buildings around here would be familiar to the folk of 140 years ago. Just around the corner from here is Bevis Marks Synagogue, which has been a place of continuous worship since 1701, for example; while a few dozen metres away to the right is the church of St Helen's, one of the few City churches to survive (with restoration) the Great Fire and the Blitz, dramatically dwarfed by the Gherkin.

London 1870s and now - 5: Macclesfield St, Soho

This is the fifth in a series of comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s and 80s with the same view today. There's a new post every Tuesday. Use our Google map to see where they were taken.

Macclesfield St is a short thoroughfare in Soho, part of today's Chinatown district. The top picture is Dixon's, and shows the shopfront of No. 10. A zoomable version of this image is on our Online Gallery. Writing about the building in 1880, Alfred Marks commented: "The shop, well-known to architects as 'the oldest shop in London,' was probably built about 1690."

It is impossible to locate the No. 10 of Dixon's photo in today's Macclesfield St. The picture below it, from August 2009, demonstrates how different the street looks now. No doubt it would bewilder the lady in the top photo.

As with the other streets in Chinatown, the street sign carries a version of the name in Chinese characters. The last of the four characters means 'street', and the third '[rice] field'.

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London 1870s and now - 4: Ashburnham House, Westminster

This is the fourth in a series of posts comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s and 80s with the same view today. Use our Google map to see where they were taken.

Ashburnham House stands in Little Dean's Yard, a secluded private square off picturesque Dean's Yard (pictured below) behind Westminster Abbey. It is part of Westminster School. A zoomable version of the top image is on our Online Gallery. Writing in 1880, Alfred Marks commented: "The house is supposed to have been built for one of the Ashburnham family, probably for John Asburnham, the attendant on Charles I from Oxford to the Scotch army, and from Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight. At all events it was in possession of the family at the beginning of the eighteenth century (Hatton's New View, II., 623), and so remained till 1730, when it was purchased by the Crown, of John, the third Lord and first Earl. The Cottonian Manuscripts were kept here, when in October, 1731, a fire broke out which nearly proved fatal to the entire collection."

The Cotton collection was donated to the nation and so came to the British Library. Among its most celebrated items are Beowulf and one of the four surviving copies of the 1215 issue of Magna Carta. Only just surviving though: the damage it sustained in that fire of 1731 is all too evident. Many items from Cotton's collection are are on display in the Library's John Ritblat Gallery of treasures.

The photograph beneath it shows Ashburnham House as it appeared in August 2009. The tree is the same tree; the front wall from the 1870s however - said to have been erected on the orders of the House's owner to block out the view of Westminster School's students running around in the playground - is no more.

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London 1870s and now: a Google map

I've been stung into action by a comment suggesting that we build a Google map, so that you can easily find the buildings featured in the 'London 1870s and now' posts (appearing each Tuesday).

So now there is one. Here it is. We'll update it once a week, so as to retain the tingle of suspense. These map pins indicate the three posts we've put up so far. Where to next?

 

I was going to do it anyway, honest.

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London 1870s and now - 3: Temple Bar, Fleet St

This is the third in a series of posts comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s and 80s with the same view today.

Temple Bar was a gateway to the City of London, marking its western edge on Fleet St. Wren's construction was taken down in 1878, shortly after the top photograph was taken. A zoomable version of the image is on our Online Gallery.

Writing in 1880, Alfred Marks commented: "The photograph shows the west side of Temple Bar... shored up with timber to counteract the effects of the excavations for the New Law Courts...The Bar as we saw it till it was replaced by the 'Memorial' and its famous 'Griffin,' was built from Wren's designs in 1670...The statues on the west side, shown in our photograph, were of Charles I and Charles II in Roman habits."

The photograph beneath shows same view as it appeared in August 2009, with the griffin - the symbol of the City, which also appears at other boundary points round London - in silhouette. The northern (left) side of Fleet St was radically changed after the removal of the Bar, with the building of the new Law Courts.

Temple Bar was not destroyed, and in fact survives today intact. After its 1878 dismantling, it was bought by brewing magnate Sir Henry Meux and reconstructed in his Theobalds Park home in Hertfordshire. In 2003 it was moved piece by piece to Paternoster Square (below), next to St Paul's Cathedral, where it was restored and re-reconstructed. It opened in 2004.

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London 1870s and now - 2: Staple Inn, Holborn

This is the second in a series of posts comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s and 80s with the same view today.

Staple Inn was originally attached to Gray's Inn, one of the four Inns of Court. The original building dates from 1585, but after heavy damage from a German bomb in 1944, it was extensively restored - making it a far more splendid front today than that seen by the 19th-century shoppers of Holborn.

The top picture is Dixon's. A zoomable version of this image is on our Online Gallery. Writing about the building in 1880, Alfred Marks commented: "This is in truth one of the most picturesque groups of Old London houses. They are also among the oldest, dating apparently from the time of James I., or perhaps somewhat earlier... The obelisk, topped by a lamp, marks the City boundary. Just here, opposite to Gray's Inn Lane, stood, till a few years back, Middle Row, narrowing the thoroughfare and blocking the traffic."

Below it is the same view as it appeared in August 2009.

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London 1870s and now - 1: George Inn Yard, Southwark

This is the first in a series of posts comparing photos of London in the 1870s and 80s with the same view today.

The pictures taken by Henry Dixon were to document parts of London already considered old. Some were about to be demolished, such as the row of decrepit houses in Wych St (now Aldwych); others were destined to be preserved, such as the gatehouse of Lincoln's Inn.

The feted south-bank pub above, the George, is the only surviving example of a pre-1880s London galleried coaching inn. Dixon and others photographed many such inns (such as the White Hart Inn, mentioned in Shakespeare's Henry VI; and the Oxford Arms) just before they were demolished in the pub boom of the 1880s and 1890s. Heavy commercial investment saw every likely pub in London undergo major refurbishment in the ornate, high-Victorian style of the period (of which the best surviving example today is the Princess Louise on High Holborn).

The George, perhaps because of its marginal position on the unfashionable south bank, survived the redevelopment frenzy. It is now a tourist attraction in its own right.

The top picture is Dixon's. A zoomable version of this image is on our Online Gallery. Writing about the George in 1880, Alfred Marks lamented that it had been "a good deal modernised since its re-building after the fire of 1676. Its large courtyard is now used as a railway goods office. The east and north galleries have been so boarded up as to lose all their old character."

Below it is the same view as it appeared during a 'thorough research trip' in August 2009.

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