A long time ago, when Croydon was less a collection of indifferent office blocks and more green, it was also one of the more important residences of the Archbishop of Canterbury. A large – by the standards of the day -  Palace was constructed and a large chunk still remains to this very day, lurking largely unnoticed in a side street slap-bang in the centre of town.

Today, the buildings are occupied by a girls school,  but during the holidays the preservation society hosts guided tours of the buildings so I wandered down there earlier today for a look. The numbers on the tour seem to vary wildly, as they had 20 people yesterday, but today just five of us showed up. Better for me, but less so for them as the tour fee (£7) funds restoration work.

As the buildings are now a school the current paranoia about “nasty men” pervades and alas, no photography inside the buildings is permitted, even though there are no schoolchildren around at the moment. Personally, I think it is a silly rule so long as photos are limited to the architecture, but it isn’t worth arguing the point, and the guide was only following orders on the subject.

Anyhow, the Archbishops had their famous Palaces in Caterbury and Lambeth, but as it took a few days to ride between them, a string of Palaces were built, at Charing, Maidstone, Wrotham, Otford and Croydon. The Palace at Croydon was considered the most important mainly as it was within easy reach of Lambeth so it became a convenient weekend retreat away from London.

The Palace in 1785 – most of the buildings shown still remain – via Wikipedia

There has been something on the site since at least the 9th Century and various records of the history of buildings on the site exist. However, it wasn’t until sometime around 1443-52, during the time of Archbishop Stafford that a Great Hall of stone was constructed on the site – and apart from some remedial work in 1741 and damage from a fire in the 20th century, it is largely intact. The huge wooden beam roof is notable for being “golden oak”, that is not blackened as was the fashion in Elizabethan times. Although not as grand as the Hammer-beam roofs in Westminster and Middle Temple, it is still pretty impressive for a roof built over 500 years ago.

Illustrative photo, ahem borrowed from the Friends website.

Next is the Guard Room, built by the earlier Archbishop, Arundel – although the reason for its name is a mystery, which also has a wooden barrel roof, but alas all covered in plaster so it is impossible to see the detail. Lots of stonework is still visible though, and that is quite impressive.

The later Archbishop Morton turned out to be a bit of a privacy nut and resented dining with other people in the Great Hall so had his own private dining room built – and here you can see an original Tudor wooden roof, although it is spoilt by the modern lighting needed for the current occupants of the building. Then onto what was one of the more interesting parts of the building, which is a largely untouched Jacobean era staircase which also comes with its own ghost. An exorcism as recent as the 1920s seems to have been rather unsuccessful and the ghost of a lady who threw herself down the stairs in despair over a jilted lover still lingers – allegedly.

Passing the gruesome staircase you come though into the Archbishop’s own chapel with original wooden fittings. The stained glass is more recent, and would probably glow most ethereally on days somewhat less rainy and grey than when I visited.

A break for tea and cake – and as we were a very small group, an unusual detour into an office where a floor panel was lifted to reveal the original Elizabethan tiled floor under the modern flooring, along with the corpse of a dead mouse which had been there for at least 100 years, and will be left in peace (excepting gawping tourists) forever more.

After tea – upstairs to Queen Elizabeth’s Room, where the Queen would stay when visiting and while some of the wall panelling was visible and the Tudor ceiling still impressive, the modern occupants are definitely the dominant factor in here. Likewise for the Long Gallery, which is now split into two classrooms.

The undercroft, which contains most of the original Norman stonework is no longer available as it is staff offices. I seem to be having an unlucky patch at the moment with undercrofts being closed/off limits when I visit places. Damn.

A large parish church stands beside the Palace buildings and is looks like it will be worth investigating another day – especially as six of the Archbishops are buried in the cemetery. I told you the place was important!

The Palace ceased to be sanctified grounds around 1800 when the Archbishops moved to nearby Addington Palace which was their residence during the 19th Century. Modern transport now means that there is no need for overnight B&Bs for the Archbishops when travelling, and Addington Palace is now a leisure centre.

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Overall, it’s quite an interesting tour around the buildings, with the whole package lasting about 2 hours so it’s not bad value for money and you do learn about a bit of Ecclesiastical history which is not that widely known by us lay people.

The next set of tours in late May – details on my events guide.

DiamondGeezer had a visit to other notable venues in Croydon earlier this year.

I wandered along to a lecture this evening which was due to discuss the relationship between two of the great Diarists of the English Restoration period, being Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn. It was billed as Supper and a Lecture, and indeed there was a quite hearty supper, and unexpected glasses of wine (yes, plural) – but there was also much else which was not expected.

It was actually quite a bizarre evening all told.

I had been told about the series of talks by The Greenwich Phantom, and my initial reaction was to think that £12 was too much for an evening talk. It wasn’t until I reread the leaflet that I realised it included supper, which made it seem much better value for money. Personally, I am leery of paying above £10 for a lecture unless it is really good. Some commercial venues try to charge almost obscene fees for their talks, while the LSE seems able to pull in Presidents and Prime Ministers for free, which is frankly, damned impressive.

When I am adding events to the listings guide, part of my personal editing process is whether I feel it ticks the “value for money” box. Fortunately, most events and venues offer outstanding value, which then makes me shake my head in bewilderment when I get emails from people trying to charge upwards of £30+ for an evening talk or a guided walk.

I am not adverse to pay loads for a talk – but it has to be a talker who is amazing, such as William Hague MP who is a fantasitic “after dinner” speaker, and rightly commands the fees he earns.

Getting back to this evening, the supper was not bad at all, although it was served in those strange boxes that Americans seem to always be eating chinese food out of on TV shows. The portions were ample, and the food filling, so no complaints there at all.

I always like a glass of wine, and as the lecture was in a truly ancient church, glass of wine + lecture + old building is one of my favourite ways to spend an evening.

The talk was unexpectedly preceded by singing from the Stella Vocal Ensemble from Budapest, who sung the apt “Pepys Club” Grace (quite enjoyable), and then an introduction by The Rector of the church. Then the talk commenced, which I will mention later – a break for more wine, and then quite oddly from my experience, we all sung a Hymn.

What?

OK, we were in a church, but I have never been to a lecture given in a church which then proceeded to include religious events as well. As my singing makes a cat on heat wailing in the spring evening sound pleasant, I quietly mumbled along. The talk then carried on and we finished off with a couple more enjoyable choral style songs from the Stella Vocal Ensemble – and then the Rector asked us to stand and pray and then blessed the “congregation”.

Although I am not a Christian, I don’t object to the Hymns and prayer – it was just very unexpected and just felt slightly strange, although not unpleasant.

The talk though, was a bit of a let down – I am not sure if it was the subject being talked about, which has little supporting 3rd party information, or the speaker – although I think it was a mixture of the two.

What I personally love is to go to a talk and get more human background information and insights into a topic. Tonight’s, was supposed to be the relationship between the two great writers, and I would say that about 3/4s of the talk was reading overly long excerpts from the diaries themselves and very little insight into them outside what is written in those diaries.

I left with a couple of pages of notes of interesting things to research, but I felt that while the evening was genuinely enjoyable, even though my knowledge of the writers is limited, I hadn’t really learnt anything new, or gossip that I could sit back, remember and smile at.

The talker commented that John Evelyn is generally remembered as being the man who wasn’t Samuel Pepys, while I came away thinking that was lecture that wasn’t about the relationship between the two men.

I would hope that the nature of the topic, which has little supporting material outside the diaries is why the lecture seemed a bit of a let down, and will probably go back later this year for the Royal Society talk – as there is tons of outside documentation about the august organisation, so the talk should be a lot better.

The other issue I had was that the talker spent the evening reading almost verbatim from a script, which also made it slightly difficult to know when a “quotation” ended and the speaker started as it was all delivered in the same voice and from the same speech notes. Not the worst lecture style I have seen, but not particularly uplifting either.

Maybe in my trawling of the lecture circuit in London I have become a “lecture snob”, which would be a pity as being a former public speaker myself I know just how difficult it can be to give an interesting talk, particularly if you need to read quite a few verbatim quotes from a script.

That said, I did take write some notes for topics that caught my attention and which will result in further reading one day, and it is a very nice church, one of the few to survive the Great Fire of London – will go back to take photos one day.

Oh, the singing by the Ensemble was very good – and they are giving a lunchtime concert on Wednesday.  The church is St Olave’s Church, Hart Street – just round the corner from Tower Hill tube station.

A brief comment has been released on part of the redevelopment proposals for the land which will be cleared as a result of the Crossrail developments at Tottenham Court Road tube station. As the buildings on the corner will be completely demolished, an opportunity exists to not just redevelop the site, but hopefully also widen pedestrian access down what has been a ridiculously narrow pavement.

The site is currently made up of two blocks of buildings separated by a rather dank road. Under the initial proposals – and these are just indicative ideas – it seems that the replacement buildings will be set further back from the main road, and hence widening the pavement.

The more interesting aspect though is the currently narrow side street will be opened up and a wide pedestrian avenue will be created leading towards Soho Square and creating a plaza around St Patrick’s Church.

The developers are Derwent London, and the graphic was released in the presentation to investors for their financial results.

Although it is just an initial proposal, I quite like the changes – especially the opening up of the side street leading down towards Soho Square.

Via SkyscraperCity

Lurking in a little nook on one of the many streets around the back of Covent Garden you may spy what looks like a church trying to squeeze its way out between more modern buildings. Here you may notice if you look a stone sign explaining that this building is just the vicarage of St.Michael’s Church, which had originally been consecrated in 1833, but then torn down in 1906.

The church itself sat just a few feet away on the corner of Exeter and Burleigh Streets – which mark the former site of the London house of Sir William Cecil, the great Lord Burghley of Queen Elizabeth fame and his son, the later Earl of Exeter.

There seems to be some confusion as to why a church was built on the spot as the area was already well served by churches, and the church was described in the Oxford Journals of 1906 as being quite plain of design, although having gothic hints.

According to the Survey of London, Volume 36 – the church was designed by James Savage in a style he described as fourteenth-century Gothic. The body of the church was faced with white brick, with a corner spirelet and dressings of Bath stone. A brick tower at the south-east corner was surmounted by a Bath stone spire. Inside, the north, south and west galleries were supported by cast-iron girders, the aisle floors were paved with Yorkshire stone, and the pews, pulpit and desk were of painted deal.

The church was initially intended to accommodate 934 adults and children, but cost cutting shrank the church down to 877 persons.

The Duke of Bedford – who was largely responsible for the construction of Covent Garden donated the land for the church and a large stained glass window was commissioned later in memory of the Duke of Wellington. A notable friend of the church was the Prime Minister, Mr Gladstone. I have presumed that the church had a notable Organ as there is a reference to it in the Hopkins & Rimbault publication of 1855.

The last service was held on Sunday, 10th September 1905 – and the fixtures were sold before the church was torn down, although I couldn’t find out what happened to the stained glass window. Its site now forms part of the Strand Palace Hotel – the freehold having been sold for £20,500 according to a report in The Times of 29th March 1906. Unlike modern times where if a Church is sold it is usually required to be preserved in some way – typically as a fashionable conversion into flats – on this occasion it was actually part of the sale conditions that the new owner not only demolished the church, but also built something that in no way resembled a church. So now it is a hotel.

However, this small fragment of the vicarage remains to remind us of the long lost church, and one of the very few to be demolished in London for reasons other than the result of German bombs.

Today I wandered over to Goldsmiths Hall in the City to visit an exhibition which opened only yesterday of Church silver and gold plate and vessels. The exhibition is said to the be the largest collection of religious metal work ever assembled and has a very impressive 300+ items on display ranging from the 10th century to modern times.

Goldsmiths Hall, one of the livery companies of the City of London is just round the corner from St Pauls and the very grand building is sited on a small side road – and I can only presume that the road must have been a bit larger in the past.

I met a friend outside and on going inside you are faced with the impressive grand staircase – and we actually did the tour somewhat backwards, so what you should do is go up the staircase and stop on the landing to admire the huge Primate’s processional cross currently used by the Archbishop of Canterbury – and then look up to notice the ornate ceiling of the building. Going up to the right (we went left) you then go into the main exhibition and it is laid out in a mixture of mainly historic timeline, but also thematically.

Going around the room you start with the medieval period and some of the oldest gold vessels known to exist and then moving through the civil war, the commonwealth and then on to the restoration – followed by Georgian and Victorian high Anglican.

There are some quite informative boards dotted around the place and it was interesting to learn that much early silverware was simply unfashionable domestic plate/vessels which are then donated to the local churches when the families upgraded to more fashionable pots and pans. Indeed, in the 18th century, there was a trend towards baptizing babies in bowls as opposed to fonts – leading to a spate of donations to churches of – of all things – punch bowls.

I know the Church and wine are common bedfellows, but being baptized in a punch bowl is taking it a bit far!

Once you have worked your way around the exhibition, going back down to the ground floor are two more areas set aside to show off modern church commissions.

As an exhibition it works on quite a few levels – there is the historic aspect of the displays. Also, you are learning some quite interesting history about church silver and gold – but also this works as a visual treat as the range of metal work is quite considerable. Indeed, some of the 17th century silver is so austere that it almost looks modernist in style – which is contrasted by the completely over the top gaudy gold work of the restoration period.

The only criticism of the display I would make is that there is a presumption that the viewer will understand some of the terms used to describe the items. A couple of bowls were displayed with a technical name, and frankly I have no idea what they are in actual fact. Most of the items have an obvious use, but there is the odd bit of head scratching at times.

There is also a rather good guide book available for a mere tenner at the front door, which has a lot of photos of the silverware we just looked at. While the photos in the book are very high quality, there is a slight issue as each item is photographed on its own, so it is not possible to know the scale of the items – and a tiny pocket sundial is shown larger than a plate which in real life is huge. Nevertheless, the book is a visual feast and the text adds quite a lot to what I had just seen in the displays.

We managed to spend about an hour and a half in the exhibition all told, which is not bad – especially as it is completely free of charge.

The exhibition is only open for a couple of months though – so you need to get down there before July 12th.

http://www.thegoldsmiths.co.uk/events/

They also play suitable ecclesiastical music in the background which adds to the atmosphere.