London Urban Legends (10 page)

In earlier, less certain centuries, the fate of the nation and its people depended far more greatly on the monarch than now. It may be possible to think that the link between the lions’ lives to that of the king transferred itself, once the lions left in 1835, to concerns about the nation connected to the ravens.

Once the lions had moved out of the Tower, they still managed to be an attraction there. Once a year, tickets would go out to people inviting them to the Tower to witness the washing of the lions. The invites were sent out in error in 1860, long after the lions had left the Tower, and the day of the ‘annual ceremony’ became 1 April. The meeting place was the fictional ‘White Gate’ to the Tower, and
The Chambers Book of Days
reported that on the day, cabs ‘rattled about Tower Hill all that Sunday morning, vainly endeavouring to discover the White Gate’.

London is a wide place and a long, but rumour
has a wider scope and a longer tongue.

J. Fisher Murray, Physiology of London Life

W
ILLIAM KENT, IN
his 1951 book
Walks in London
, recounts a story related to one of London’s top tourist spots, St Paul’s Cathedral. A boy from Snowdon was at a job interview at local textile manufacturers Hitchcock, Williams & Co., who were founded in St Paul’s churchyard. The interviewer asked him if he had ever climbed to the top of the mountain. The boy said he had not, and was told there was ‘no vacancy for one who was so unenterprising’. The next day, the boy returned and told his interviewer that he had just climbed up to the ball of St Paul’s Cathedral. He asked the man, who worked for years in the shadow of St Paul’s dome, whether he had ever done so, and the interviewer had to admit that he had not. The boy’s point was taken; he was employed and was ‘proved a most profitable servant’.

A nice story about how Londoners, like most people, often don’t visit the wonders on their doorstep. Londoners I’ve known almost take pride in some of the London landmarks they have not visited, although these are often seen as lowbrow tourist places such as Madame Tussauds, the Trocadero and Covent Garden Market. They would be less likely to admit to never going to the Victoria & Albert museum or the Globe. Like the St Paul’s story, there is probably a busy life involved too – Londoners live and work in London, and sometimes something in your immediate locale just doesn’t seem like a priority. Stories that tell of success from unconventional ingenuity in job interviews always touches anyone who has had to undergo the rigours of interviewing for a position. This is a successful story. So successful, in fact, that it’s had an American remake.

Kent goes on to repeat another story which appeared in
The Times
on 19 August 1950. It told of a Londoner visiting New York for the first time, who was early for meeting a friend. He nervously took the express elevator to the top of the skyscraper his appointment was in and was rewarded with an amazing vista of the city from the roof. Full of admiration, the Londoner told his friend about the view but the friend, a busy ‘New Yorker born and bred’, smiled superciliously and snapped that he didn’t have the time ‘for such rubber-necking’.

The Londoner didn’t back down and told his friend that he should be ashamed of not taking advantage of the fine things on his doorstep. The New Yorker, with a broader smile, asked his Londoner pal how the view was from the top of St Paul’s. It was the Londoner’s turn to smile, the story says, as he had passed the cathedral every day on the way to work and had never gone beyond the Whispering Gallery.

Kent doesn’t spot this as an urban legend; the term and concept was not around when Kent was writing
Walks in London
. He does point out that his first story of the Snowdonian interviewee had been published, by him, some time before the New York version appeared. Perhaps other versions existed before the Snowdonian story that tells of the busy lives of Londoners and the things they do not get to do.

Neil? Kneel!

On 1 September 1983,
Los Angeles Times
columnist Jack Smith recounted a story of American tourists visiting the Houses of Parliament on a holiday in London. The story goes that they encountered Sir Quentin Hogg, Lord Hailsham, the Keeper of the Woolsack, ‘resplendent in the gold and scarlet robes of his office topped by a ceremonial wig’. The pomp of the Houses of Parliament is intimidating to Londoners, so the effect on a corridor of American tourists by this visitation must have been great. Then Lord Hailsham sees, beyond the tourists, his friend the Hon. Neil Matten MP. He shouts his friend’s name: ‘Neil! Neil!’

The crowd of tourists fall into embarrassed silence and then fall to their knees.

While this story very clearly illustrates American confusion and awkwardness when faced with British parliamentary pomp, it does not illustrate life in the Palace of Westminster. There is no Keeper of the Woolsack in UK Parliament; Sir Quintin Hogg was Lord Chancellor, who sits on the woolsack in the House of Lords and is custodian of the Great Seal, a symbol of the sovereign’s approval of state documents. The Lord Chancellor is responsible for the Great Seal unless a Keeper of the Great Seal is appointed. Parliamentary process can baffle anyone beyond its sphere, so there is no shame in confusing the details, but it does put doubt on the story.

There has also never been a Neil Matten in the House of Commons. Neil Marten was the Conservative MP for Banbury between 1959 and 1983. According to Andrew Roth’s
The MPs’ Chart
, Marten was a ‘pro-commonwealth, anti-EEC … witty, sharp, tense, neat, balding, wartime agent’. Hogg and Marten were Conservatives together and certainly knew each other. The story, with its confused titles and ‘scrawled on the back of a beer mat’ – misspelling both men’s names – has the air of a story told verbally, hastily written down and then repeated without checking any details.

In his
Los Angeles Times
column, Jack Smith was using this story as a way of tracing an American urban legend. A tale titled ‘The Elevator Incident’ by Jan Harold Brunvand in
The Choking Doberman and Other ‘New’ Urban Legends
, describes a small group of women getting into an elevator in New York. A man gets into the elevator with them and makes the command to ‘sit’. The women sit, causing the man to apologise, as he was talking to the dog. At this point the man is revealed to be a celebrity who treats the women to dinner.

The Waters of Senate House

The imposing University College of London building Senate House keeps going below ground level. Standing at its base, in several places, is a drop showing lower levels of the building created to bring natural light into the basement levels. This gully has water gushing out of it in numerous places, giving it the name of ‘the moat’. Researching Senate House folklore for her project ‘The Ghosts of Senate House’, the artist Sarah Sparks recorded stories of a spring, lake or pond beneath the building. John Stone, the Building Services Technical Officer, took her into a lower basement to show the source of the water.

Water is flowing through a fissure in the wall and collecting on the floor. The duck boards dotted along the tunnel serve as stepping stones and were placed there when the building was first constructed showing that the water was always present. A channel two inches by two inches has been carved into the stone floor to allow the water to flow into a sump pumping the water up to The Moat above.

She then goes on to speculate that:

Geologists, employed to investigate the water, suggest that a spring up to a mile away has been diverted by building work however, this does not account for the fact that the water has been present to a greater or lesser extent since the buildings construction. I speculate that this water may originate from one of the lost rivers of London, possibly the Fleet. John agrees that there may be some truth in this citing that recent excavations of North Block Green unearthed an old conduit.

The Fleet is a mile or two away from Senate House, slurping under Farringdon Road and Farringdon Street through the Fleet Sewer. Speaking to Sarah about the water some months later, she told me an investigation had found that the water was coming from a leaking water main and not some lost spring or river. However, by September 2013 the leak has yet to be found.

The water has been there since before Senate House. Charles Holden, the architect, reported that one of the few problems he had with the construction of the building was a large pocket of water in the building’s foundations. It was decided it should be left, as pumping it out could destabilise surrounding buildings as the ground moved to fill the gap left by it. The joists are said to pass through the water and into the clay beneath.

Londoners love the idea of our lost rivers, so it may not be surprising that another one is being used as a way of drawing people into a building. In his book
London’s Lost Rivers: A Walker’s Guide
, Tom Bolton described the River Tyburn’s appearance in the basement of Gray’s Antique Market on Davies Mews off South Molton Lane. The market owners moved into the building in 1977 and found the basement flooded. Claiming the water was the Tyburn, they channelled it into a twee model river with a small bridge and goldfish. The owners of the building take their attraction seriously, putting signs up instructing visitors to not touch the waters of this working river. Tom is not so sure, pointing out that while the Tyburn does flow under South Molton Lane, the river flows through a sewer so would not be fit to be channelled through a building. The water is possibly from groundwater springs that may have fed the Tyburn before it was buried and enclosed.