Street furniture
the sphinxes, camels, cattle troughs, cannon and torch snuffers nobody looks at
Street furniture is the part of London nobody photographs and everybody leans on. It is also unusually well documented, because a surprising amount of it is listed : the bench you are sitting on may have a national heritage list number. Nine things here, all free, all visible from a public pavement, and several of them explained wrongly everywhere else.
The Embankment is a single design scheme
When the Metropolitan Board of Works finished the Victoria Embankment it furnished it as one piece of work, and the man responsible was George John Vulliamy, its superintending architect. He chose an Egyptian theme to match Cleopatra's Needle, which arrived in the middle of it, and had cast-iron benches made by Berry and Son of Regent Street. The Westminster stretch got winged sphinxes for armrests; the City stretch, opposite Temple Gardens, got crouching camels. The dating is not quite settled: the statutory entry says 1872 to 1874 while every other source says installed 1877, so call it the 1870s.
Two warnings. Most of the benches in place today are reproductions, faithful but not original. And the listing entry itself notes that the bench opposite Horse Guards Avenue has camels, not sphinxes, so the neat sphinxes-west-camels-east rule has exceptions.
Water, and why it was a moral question
In 1859 Samuel Gurney, a Member of Parliament, founded the Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain Association with the barrister Edward Thomas Wakefield. The point was not thirst but drink: for a great many Londoners beer was the only reliably sterile thing to swallow, so free clean water was a temperance measure as much as a public-health one. The first fountain went up that April and was serving seven thousand people a day.
In 1867 the association added cattle troughs to its work and to its name. Cattle were still being driven through the streets to market on their own feet, and by 1885 London had more than fifty thousand working horses, so there was a real animal-welfare need behind it. It still exists, as the Drinking Fountain Association.
The cannon bollard story, half true
Old iron cannon really were sunk breech-down as bollards, particularly around docks and naval yards, and the bore really was often sealed by hammering an oversized ball into a heated muzzle so it shrank tight. A Clerkenwell workman described doing exactly that in 1910. So the practice is genuine.
The version you will be told is not. These are almost never French guns captured at Trafalgar, for the plain reason that no French-built Trafalgar prize ever reached England. The prizes that did were the English-built Swiftsure and two Spanish ships. And a great many cannon-shaped bollards around London were never guns at all: commercial foundries cast them in that shape from new, because it looked right.
The entries
The sphinx benches, Victoria Embankment
Victoria Embankment WC2R 0BL Nearest station: Embankment George John Vulliamy
Cast-iron benches with winged sphinxes for armrests, Grade II listed, on the Westminster stretch of the Embankment. Part of Vulliamy's Egyptian scheme for the new riverside, made by Berry and Son of Regent Street. The statutory entry dates them 1872 to 1874 and misspells the architect as G. F. Vulliamy, a legacy error in the record; every other source gives George John Vulliamy and an installation date of 1877.
The camel benches, Victoria Embankment
Victoria Embankment EC4Y 9AY Nearest station: Temple George John Vulliamy
The same scheme, the other animal, and a separate listing. Crouching camels take over the armrest duty on the City of London stretch, opposite Temple Gardens. Grade II. If you want to see both kinds in one walk, start at Temple and go west, and do not be surprised by camels turning up opposite Horse Guards Avenue, because the listing records that one too.
Cleopatra's Needle
Victoria Embankment WC2N 6PB Nearest station: Embankment George John Vulliamy
Cut for Thutmose III at Heliopolis around 1450 BC and put up here on the 12th of September 1878, which makes it the oldest man-made object standing in the open in London. It is not the oldest structure in London, whatever the guides say: the Roman city wall was built here around AD 200 and is still standing. Grade I listed, and the listing covers the two bronze sphinxes flanking it, which are Vulliamy's, modelled by C. H. Mabey and cast at the Eccleston Iron Works in Pimlico in 1881.
The Millbank buttress
Millbank SW1P 4RL Nearest station: Pimlico
A lump of brickwork on the riverside pavement almost opposite the entrance to Tate Britain, with a grey plaque the Greater London Council put up in May 1965. It reads that near this site stood Millbank Prison, opened in 1816 and closed in 1890, and that this buttress stood at the head of the river steps from which, until 1867, prisoners sentenced to transportation embarked for Australia. All four dates check out; the last convict ship left Britain in 1867 and reached Western Australia in January 1868. The buttress itself is not listed, which surprises people.
The Morpeth Arms
58 Millbank SW1P 4RW Nearest station: Pimlico Thomas or Lewis Cubitt
Across the road from where the prison walls were, and worth naming precisely because its own story about itself is wrong. The pub says it was built for the prison warders; its listing puts it at about 1845 as part of Thomas Cubitt's Pimlico development, designed by Thomas or his brother Lewis. Grade II. So it opened while the prison was still working and across the road from it, which is a smaller and truer claim. The tales of haunted holding cells and tunnels beneath it have no source at all, and the same page that tells them also says Jeremy Bentham designed the prison, which he did not.
The first public drinking fountain
Giltspur Street EC1A 7AA Nearest station: City Thameslink attributed to the Wills Brothers
Set into the churchyard railings on the Giltspur Street side of St Sepulchre's, and the first fountain the Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain Association ever put up and Historic England's own entry for the railings says so. It opened on the 21st of April 1859, paid for by Samuel Gurney, and is inscribed THE GIFT OF SAML. GURNEY M.P. 1859, with REPLACE THE CUP on the base. Two iron cups still hang on their chains. Grade II, listed as part of the railings and dwarf wall. It is not quite where it started: it was taken out in 1867 for the building of Holborn Viaduct and reinstated in 1913. The design is attributed to the Wills Brothers.
The West Smithfield cattle trough
West Smithfield EC1A 9HX Nearest station: Barbican
A double granite trough of the 8th of May 1881, with a fountain for people at one end and a dog trough underneath, inscribed in memory of Philip Twells, Member of Parliament for the City of London, and with the association's full name after the 1867 change. Grade II. It is the clearest single object for explaining what the association actually did, because all three animals it served are on one piece of stone.
The four cannon bollards, Deptford
Grove Street SE8 3AY Nearest station: Surrey Quays
Four genuine late eighteenth-century cannon, balls cemented into their muzzles, standing in front of the entrance to the Royal Victoria Yard on the east side of Grove Street. Grade II, and the listing says 4 genuine late C18 cannon in as many words, which is why these are worth the journey when most cannon-shaped bollards in London are foundry castings. The gateway behind them is separately listed, of about 1768 and probably by Samuel Wyatt. Note the geography: this is Deptford, in Lewisham. Guides that place it in Rotherhithe, including the one this page replaces, have the wrong side of the creek.
The link extinguishers, Charles Street
40 Charles Street W1J 5EF Nearest station: Green Park John Phillips and George Shakespear
The iron cones on the railings are for putting out torches. Before street lighting a Londoner walking home at night hired a link-boy to go ahead with a burning link, a torch of pitch and tow, for a farthing; wealthy households kept liveried servants who did the same job and carried staffs and weapons with it. The cone at the door is where that torch was snuffed, the household's own, strictly, because a hired boy kept his alight and walked on to the next customer. Number 40 has them on its railings with twin lampholders, Grade II*, built about 1750 to 1753 by John Phillips with George Shakespear. For the grandest set, 44 Berkeley Square is Grade I, William Kent's of 1742 to 1744, and several of its neighbours carry them too.
The policeman's hook, Great Newport Street
4 Great Newport Street WC2 Nearest station: Leicester Square
A wrought-iron hook on the wall at number 4, at what was a six-way junction policemen had to direct by hand. They hung their capes on it: the 1930s uniform cloak was heavy wool and unbearable in summer, and before the hook there was reportedly just a nail. Thousands of people pass it daily without seeing it, which is the whole appeal. Two cautions. The story that the nail's importance was explained to a surveyor by a passing policeman during redecoration, and that this elegant hook was the result, is charming and appears in no source, so it is not stated here as fact. And nothing establishes that the hook is listed, so do not assume it is protected.
The blue police lamp
Victoria Embankment SW1 Nearest station: Westminster
The blue lamp over a station door is the most recognisable piece of police street furniture in Britain, and the interesting thing about it is the exception. Bow Street had a white one, alone among London stations, and that much is documented. The reason is not. The story is that Queen Victoria took exception to the blue lamp when visiting the Royal Opera House opposite, because Prince Albert had died in the Blue Room at Windsor in December 1861, and the sources that repeat it say plainly that there is no evidence for it. One account places the royal objection somewhere between 1847 and Albert's death, which would also mean the lamp was already there, so the claim that blue lamps only appeared in 1861 does not hold either. A good story, an undocumented reason, and a real white lamp.
The sewer gas lamp, Carting Lane
Carting Lane WC2R 0BN Nearest station: Embankment Joseph Edmund Webb
A late nineteenth-century cast-iron lamp standard on the alley beside the Savoy, Grade II, and believed to be the last of its kind in Westminster. Get the mechanism right, because the nickname gets it wrong: it burned ordinary town gas, and the flame created a draught that drew sewer gas up the hollow column and burnt it off overhead. It was not powered by sewage. Joseph Edmund Webb of Birmingham patented the design in 1892. One caution: it was knocked over by a reversing lorry and restored, and while the listing still describes the original lantern and burners, some accounts call what stands there now a replica.
Wooden block paving
Chequer Street EC1Y Nearest station: Old Street
The Victorians paved in wood because it was quieter under iron-rimmed wheels and safer for iron-shod horses than stone, particularly on a slope. It also absorbed smells, was hard to keep clean and took real skill to lay, which is why almost none of it is left. This short stretch is usually called London's last, and that is worth qualifying: another survives on Belvedere Road behind the London Eye.
Yorke Street 1636
34-36 Tavistock Street WC2E Nearest station: Covent Garden
Set high above numbers 34 to 36 is a street name a century older than the terrace carrying it: the houses are Grade II listed and about 1733, the stone reads 1636, and the street has been Tavistock Street ever since. It is among the oldest street name markers in London and thousands of people walk under it every day.
Public shelter direction sign
Lord North Street SW1P Nearest station: Westminster
Painted at eye level between numbers 7 and 8 and faded nearly into the brick: public shelters in vaults under pavements in this street. It was lettered for the Blitz, and it is one of very few wartime direction signs in central London still original, not repainted. The inherited note put this one in Smith Square itself; it is on Lord North Street, which runs off it.
Coal holes and their plates
Gordon Square and surrounding streets WC1 Nearest station: Russell Square
The round iron discs set into pavements all over Bloomsbury, Kensington and Islington are coal plates, and each one is the lid of a coal hole: a chute into a cellar under the pavement. Coal arrived by cart in sacks and went straight down the coal hole, so nobody carried it through the house. A disc was used rather than a square lid for a plain mechanical reason: a circle cannot fall through its own opening, and it can be rolled rather than lifted. The patterns are the interesting part. Every plate was bought from a local founder or ironmonger, whose name and design are usually cast into the face, so a single terrace can carry half a dozen different ones according to when each house was built or repaired. Gordon Square and the streets around it are the usual place to look, and reading them means looking down, which is why almost nobody does.
Questions
Is Cleopatra's Needle the oldest thing in London?
It is the oldest man-made object standing in the open in London, cut for Thutmose III around 1450 BC. It is not London's oldest structure, which is the usual claim: the Roman city wall was built here around AD 200 and substantial stretches of it are still standing at Tower Hill and elsewhere. The Needle only arrived on the 12th of September 1878.
Are the cannon bollards really old cannon?
Some are, and the four in Grove Street in Deptford are, and the listing calls them genuine late eighteenth-century guns with balls cemented into the muzzles. But most cannon-shaped bollards in London were cast in that shape from new by commercial foundries, and the story that they are French guns captured at Trafalgar is a myth: no French-built Trafalgar prize ever reached England.
Why did Victorian London build drinking fountains?
Because beer was safer than water. For a great many people it was the only reliably sterile thing to drink, so free clean water was a temperance argument as much as a public-health one. Samuel Gurney MP founded the association in 1859 with the barrister Edward Thomas Wakefield, and the first fountain was serving seven thousand people a day.
What are the iron cones on old railings?
Link extinguishers, for putting out a torch at the front door. A link was a torch of pitch and tow, and a link-boy hired to light your way home cost a farthing. Grand houses kept their own liveried servants for the job, who carried staffs and weapons as well as the torch, and it is their torches these cones were for.
Which of these are listed?
Most. The sphinx benches, the camel benches, the Smithfield trough, the Deptford cannon, the Morpeth Arms and the sewer gas lamp are all Grade II; the Charles Street railings are Grade II*; 44 Berkeley Square is Grade I; and Cleopatra's Needle is Grade I. The exception is the Millbank buttress, which has no listing at all.
Are the Embankment benches original?
Mostly not. The design is Vulliamy's and the survivors are listed, but a large share of the benches standing on the Embankment today are faithful reproductions and not 1870s castings. That is worth knowing before anyone tells you they are sitting on the original.
Elsewhere on this site: London oddities, post boxes and how to date them.