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Fleet Street is a famous street in London, England, named after the River
Fleet. It was traditionally the home of the British press, up until the
1980s. Even though the last major British news office, Reuters, left in
2005, the street's name continues to be used as a synonym for the
British national press.
Present day
It is now more associated with the Law and its courts
and barristers' chambers, many of which are located in alleys off Fleet
Street itself, almost all of the newspapers that formerly resided
thereabouts having moved to Wapping and Canary Wharf. The former offices
of The Daily Telegraph, drawn upon as a source by Evelyn Waugh in his
comic novel Scoop, are now the London headquarters of the investment
bank Goldman Sachs. An informal measure of City takeover business
employed by financial editors is the number of taxis waiting outside
such law firms as Freshfields at 11pm: a long line is held to suggest a
large number of mergers and acquisitions in progress.
The French owned international news and photo agency Agence
France Presse are still based in Fleet Street, as is the London office
of the venerable comic The Beano. In 2006 the Press Gazette returned to
Fleet Street. The Jewish Chronicle offices remain close by. The Daily
Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph have recently returned to the centre of
London after an unhappy exile downriver in Canary Wharf.

Culture
The term Fleet Street is also used to indicate that a
journalist is a member of the generation that worked on newspapers prior
to their move away from its vicinity, and is synonymous with a bibulous,
collegial tradition characterised by such figures as Paul Callan and
Brian Vine. Gossip was exchanged over liquid lunches at such hostelries
as El Vino, now a haven for lawyers of the Rumpole school. Liquid
dinners were equally familiar, editors often dining in the Grill of the
Savoy Hotel, returning about 10pm to see the first editions of their
papers roll off the presses. These were then transported by road to
railway stations to catch the night mail expresses to far-flung corners
of England.
A significant mythology has accreted around Fleet Street, its
characters, their scoops - and imaginative expense accounts. The most
durable of these concern, however, stories that were not printed,
usually on account of Britain's strict libel laws. Few of the novels
referenced below constitute exaggerations, the truth being, in the
untiring cliché of the sub-editors on the back benches, "stranger than
fiction". According to journalistic lore it was not the editors who
constituted the heart of Fleet Street, but the diary writers and gossip
columnists, whose stories would often make the front page: the exploits
of the late Diana Princess of Wales provided frequent examples of diary
stories transmuted into news and and even news features.
Journalists
The content of a Fleet Street newspaper is influenced by
its proprietor, editor, journalists and columnists. Many of the owners
achieved public notoriety, notably Lord Northcliffe, Lord Beaverbrook
and the fraudster Robert Maxwell, all of whom used their papers to
support their own political agenda, an approach still employed by some
present day proprietors. Generally newspapers are run on more
business-like lines today, with some expectation of profit, or at least
manageable losses. Ownership was long considered an honour for which the
proprietor was expected to pay: with it came influence, and if exercised
responsibly, an honour usually followed.
A number of great editors are still recalled and their dictates
followed long after being summoned to the "great newsroom in the sky" as
one obituarist put it. They include Arthur Christianson of the Daily
Express and Sir John Junor of the Sunday Express. Of living editors the
brief reign of Janet Street-Porter at the Independent on Sunday is still
the subject of many anecdotes, some of them true. Each editor is
supported by department heads such as the Foreign Editor, News Editor,
Picture Editor and Chief Sub-Editor, all of whom will attend the morning
Conference to determine the day's news agenda. Rule number one of Fleet
Street journalism is that "The Editor's decision is final". Unless, of
course, the proprietor intervenes, as Rupert Murdoch is recorded by his
biographers as doing on a number of occasions.
By common consent the elite of journalists are its foreign and
war correspondents, of whom there are many fewer than formerly. There is
also a highly paid category of experienced writers, the "firemen", who
are dispatched to crisis venues to report, these days often via
satellite telephones. The stock of Political Editors presently stands
lower within the profession than hitherto, having been the subject of
both political and academic criticism for becoming too close to
government press officers, notably Alastair Campbell. The latter are
accused of manipulating the political news agenda - "spinning" - by
feeding stories, sometimes slanted, to certain favoured newspapers and
sympathetic correspondents thereon. Some of the most highly paid
journalists are the diary editors and show business reporters, whose
contacts are highly valued. Crime correspondents rank lower in the
heirarchy along with sports reporters, and are remunerated accordingly.
Certain reporters have achieved legendary status, their
adventures still recounted admiringly. They include Bill Deedes,
immortalised by Evelyn Waugh, the Anglo-Indian gossip columnist, Nigel
Demptster, who purported to be an Australian, fellow diarist Jan Reid
who claimed to be the grand-child of Queen Victoria, the Daily Express's
New York correspondent Brian Vine, known as "El Vino", showbiz
interviewer Paul Callan who slept, inter alia, with his little black
book containing the private telephone numbers of Cary Grant and the
Pope, and profiler Geoff "The Hatchet" Levy who according to Fleet
Street phantasy is only let out at full moon.
Columnists are not necessarily journalists, some being TV
personalities like Terry Wogan, retired police chiefs, or politicians
who have failed to achieve the highest office. Examples of the latter
would be the self-confessed "Champagne Socialist" Woodrow Wyatt and the
unsuccessful Conservative leadership candidate Michael Portillo. Each
newspaper will also usually have as columnists one perky blonde
housewife, and a polemicist tasked to take a contrarian view on the
week's events, plus an agony aunt to advise readers on their sexual
problems, preferably in explicit detail.
There is a longstanding Fleet Street tradition of retaining a
corpus of outside experts to pontificate on major issues. Among the most
frequently employed are military historians like Corelli Barnett and
Nigel West whose specialism is security and intelligence. Leading
academics like the historian Niall Ferguson and the philosopher Roger
Scruton are valued for their ability to summarise both sides of an
argument and reach a persuasive conclusion compatible with newspaper's
standpoint - all within a thousand words.
Editorial policy
Unlike the United States where national newspapers do
not exist in the European sense, and the liberal or conservative
perspective of some major newspapers is not openly declared, Fleet
Street has enjoyed the diversity of over a dozen national daily and
Sunday newspapers with differing political stances. Indeed these
newspapers are quite open about their biases: a reader of the Guardian
would be well aware of its socialist sympathies, that of the Daily
Telegraph of its support for Conservative policies. Other right-leaning
papers include the Daily Mail and more recently the Daily Express,
whereas the Independent is considered to follow a more politically
correct line. The Daily Mirror aligns itself with the trades unions and
Labour-supporting working classes. The positions adopted by the Times
and, more surprisingly, the Financial Times have in recent years been
centre-left and generally supportive of New Labour. The policy of the
Daily Sport was characterised by one commentator as "pro-nipple".[2] The
Sunday versions of these papers follow the editorial line of their daily
sister.
History and location
Fleet Street began as the road from the City of London
to the City of Westminster. The length of Fleet Street marks the
expansion of the City in the 14th century. At the east end of the street
is where the river Fleet flowed against the mediæval walls of London; at
the west end is the Temple Bar which marks the current city limits,
stretched to that point when the land and property of the Knights
Templar were acquired.
To the south lies the complex of buildings known as The Temple,
formerly the property of the Knights Templar, which houses two of the
four Inns of Court, the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple. There are
many lawyers' offices in the vicinity.
Publishing started in Fleet Street around 1500 when William
Caxton's apprentice, Wynkyn de Worde, set up a printing shop near Shoe
Lane, while at around the same time Richard Pynson set up as publisher
and printer next to St Dunstan's church. More printers and publishers
followed, mainly supplying the legal trade in the four Law Inns around
the area. In March 1702, the world's first daily newspaper, The Daily
Courant, was published in Fleet Street from premises above the White
Hart Inn.
At Temple Bar to the west, as Fleet Street crosses the boundary
out of the City of London, it becomes the Strand; to the east, past
Ludgate Circus, it evolves into Ludgate Hill. The nearest tube stations
are Temple, Chancery Lane, and Blackfriars and it is very close to City
Thameslink station.
Fleet Street is a location on the London version of the Monopoly
board game.

The Fleet Street dragon
Fiction and drama about Fleet Street
A. N. Wilson: My Name is Legion (2004).
Amanda Craig: A Vicious Circle (1996) (about a fictitious British
newspaper tycoon and the world of publishing in general).
Michael Wall: Amongst Barbarians (1989) (Similar to Lily d'Abo in
My Name Is Legion, a white British working class couple takes money from
a tabloid in order to be able to help their son).
Howard Brenton and David Hare: Pravda (1985) (about a Rupert
Murdoch-like character).
A. N. Wilson: Scandal (1983) (About how a political scandal is
created by the tabloid press).
Michael Frayn: Towards the End of the Morning (1967) (a comic
novel about failed and failing journalists in a 1960s newspaper)
Evelyn Waugh: Scoop (1938) (about a thinly disguised British
Newspaper, The Daily Beast, and one of its contributors who is sent to
an African country at war called Ishmaelia, based upon the author's
experiences in Abyssinia)
Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler: Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber
of Fleet Street (Fleet Street is the setting of the operatic musical,
which is fictitious, though possibly based on a true series of
incidents.)
Pete Townshend: "Street in the City" (song)
The Day The Earth Caught Fire: A 1961 science fiction film,
starring Janet Munro and Leo McKern where concurrent Russian and U.S.
nuclear tests alter the Earth's orbit, sending it spinning towards the
Sun. Much of the impending disaster is seen from the perspective of
staff at the Fleet Street office of the Daily Express.
Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities: (Setting of the Tellson's
Bank is on Fleet Street).
Non-fiction
Fritz Spiegl: Keep Taking the Tabloids. What the Papers Say and
How They Say It (1983).
A. N. Wilson: London: A Short History (2004).
Alan Watkins: A Short Walk Down Fleet Street.
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A Walk down the Strand and Fleet Street
This walk starts from Charing Cross, and proceeds down
the Strand and Fleet Street to reach St Pauls. The walk is best done at
the weekend or at a low-traffic time. The walk is in several stages,
each ending with some sculpture. The reason for the walk is largely
because visitors to London are likely to take some of this route to
reach various museums/sites rather than because of the quantity of
sculpture along the way. Even so, there is opportunity to see 16th-20th
century statues, and architecture including Street's Law Courts, one of
the last of the great Gothic buildings built in England. As the main
connection between the cities of London and Westminster before they
merged, the route has many historical associations, and a few of these
are noted on the way.

West Strand improvements, 1830
The walk starts by Trafalgar Square, more or less opposite
Charing Cross, and proceeds mainly on the left hand side of the Strand,
walking the same direction as the traffic. Our first historical
connotation, almost immediately on the left, is Coutts, the bankers, of
relevance to these pages because a grand-daughter of the founder was the
philanthropist Lady Burdett-Coutts - a church of hers is described on
these pages. The bank takes a chunk out of the otherwise largely extant
West Strand Improvements of 1830-32 by William Herbert. The picture
above shows them in their unspoilt state - the accompanying article
wrote of:
'a handsome centre, the first and second storeys of which are
ornamented with columns with rich capitals, while the attic story is
raised above that of the wings by balustrades. The ends have two columns
only. The somewhat overloaded style of the circular terminations,
however, compensates for this plainness; but we suspect their ornamental
character will frighten the propriety of architectural critics.'
The first actual building of its sculptural interest is number
429, by Charles Holden for the British Medical Association, now the
Zimbabwe High Commission. High up are early figures by Epstein, headless
and much defaced, and not obvious as his work. The story is that
students vandalised them soon after they were put up, apparently due to
prudishness at their nakedness.
Proceeding, in passing we may note buildings on the right, best
observed though from across the road on the left. Numbers 77-88, Shell-Mex
House, was built as the 800-room Cecil Hotel, the largest in Europe, in
1886 by the architects Perry and Reed. Adjacent is the Savoy Taylors'
Guild, with ornate wooden accoutrements on the ground floor, and a nice
dome on the corner matched by the Savoy Buildings (by C. J. Phipps,
1881) on the next corner. Between is the Savoy Hotel itself, with a
turn-of-the-century gilt statue of a knight by the sculptor Frank Lynn
Jenkins, and other figures higher up and further back on an older block.
That block is of 1884, by T. E. Collcutt, and the one on the Strand
(Savoy Court) is by Richard d'Oyly Carte and dates from just past the
turn of the century. The creamy matt terra-cotta is a product of
Doulton's, and is called Carrara Ware.
Not of our period at all, but notable for its 1930 lamps, just
past the Savoy on the left hand side is the Strand Palace Hotel.
Continuing on the left hand side, crossing over the busy road, to
the left is Wellington Street and the Lyceum Theatre, a classical
building with big portico and pillars dating from the 1830s. Next on the
left is Aldwych, down which a brief diversion of few paces is the Strand
Theatre, with lots of figures facing onto Aldwych, and more easily
appreciated on a side street. Four pairs of girls and cherubs on each
side in marble, with round faces in the style of the first half of the
19th Century. On the pediments above, actors, with rather woodenish
composition. Adjacent is the Waldorf Hotel with more, heavier cherubs.
Alas, I have not identified who did the figures on either of these
buildings.
Head back to the Strand. Before proceeding to Somerset House and
adjacent sculpture, a word on the street lamps, dating from 1902 (some
replacements of 1928 and 1997). The original design shows a knight on
horseback with a girl, and a castle portcullis. Harmless? Yet they
attracted much adverse comment at the time, for example:
'At this moment an illustration of the perverted beliefs of our
lesser officials may be studied in the London Streets. The Vestry of St
Martin's has been erecting in its district a number of standards for
electric lighting, and it has chosen a type of lamp-post that represents
the very latest embodiment of all the peculiar endowment of many
generations of vestrymen. Nothing more hideous in its abject
tastelessness has ever been inflicted upon long-suffering Londoners.
Without proportion, character, or decorative fitness, without even a
rudimentary suggestion of thought or intention in design, these
standards permanently disfigure one of the busiest and most important
districts of London, and bear lasting witness to the incapacity of the
people who are entrusted with the management of our municipal affairs.'
Somerset House

View of Strand, Somerset House on right
Somerset House shows the sheer scale of the great palaces along
the Strand of the Thames when the river was much wider (the parallel
walk along the Victoria Embankment passes the Water Gate showing just
how wide the river was). Other palaces were Essex House, Arundel House,
York House, and so forth. All are gone, and the present Somerset House
is actually an 18th Century construction on the site of Protector
Somerset's house, mostly due to William Chambers, with western extension
by James Pennethorne in the same style in the mid-19th. Once Government
offices, it has been gradually transformed into an excellent centre for
the arts - the Courtauld, the Barnes collection, an outpost of the
Pushkin, and the important Witt and Conway libraries.
The sculpture on the frontage of Somerset House includes
ballustrade vases of Coade stone. To left and right are rather worn,
rather unexciting 18th Century figures - Kings? Knights? Better are the
two angels, gracefully draped, supporting the coat of arms of Somerset
House at the centre - they are Fame and Genius, date from 1778, and the
sculptor was Bacon. These may be compared to the prolific mourning
female figures on 18th and early 19th century monuments in many
churches. In the courtyard, a bronze group, again by Bacon, but dating
from a decade later, showing the River Thames and George III.
Facing Somerset House is Marconi House, a BBC building by the
architect Norman Shaw - the panels high up showing arts and crafts
heroines etc are by H. C. Binney. St Mary le Strand is in the centre of
the road - an early 18th century effort by Gibbs, rather plain inside.
It is central in the 1830s picture above, with St Clement Danes behind.
Continuing, just past the church on the right is the former Strand
Station, with characteristic maroon tiles.
Australia House
Carrying on, where Aldwych loops round and meets the
Strand again, and Arundel Street goes off to the right, is an open space
in front of St Clement Danes church. Here are various sculptural works,
including on Australia House, which faces the church. Unfortunately, the
space as a whole is ruined by the traffic scheme and the hideously out
of place modern buildings.
A passing word on the church itself - it is one of Wren's, dating
from 1680-2, though the tower, apparently, may remain from the 15th
Century. It was gutted in World War II, and although restored, the
interior has nothing of sculptural interest so far as these web pages
are concerned.
In the space in front of the church is an important monument -
the Gladstone Memorial. The sculptor of the whole edifice was Hamo
Thornycroft, and the work was completed in 1905. The figure of Gladstone
shows Thornycroft's skill as a portraitist, and below are four
allegorical groups which are worth some study. Front left is Brotherhood
- a matronly woman with two boys. To the right is Education - a woman
with child, excellently posed and draped, and with characteristic
features. To the rear right is Courage - a woman killing a snake with a
scythe, dramatically posed and with the scythe making an excellent
silhouette, but she rather too calm-looking. The child with her, though,
is suitably lively and frightened. Finally, rear left is perhaps the
least successful group - Inspiration, where a woman gazes heavenwards
while holding a bible.

Courage, on the Gladstone Memorial
Also in the open space may be mentioned in passing the two rather
stiff modern military statues, both dated 1998, by Faith Winter - Lord
Douding and Arthur Harris.
Looking back towards Charing Cross, to the right in Aldwych can
be seen interesting figures on the block of the London School of
Economics, dating from about the same time as the Gladstone. Below the
top of the portico, four bronze figures are on inner pillars, two female
in flowing and clinging drapes owing something to the Greek naiads in
the British Museum, and two knights with swords. All in the best taste.
Left and right, minor entrances have two pairs of helmented cherubs,
shields, and pots. Above centre behind the tree are two more feminine
figures, with a child on the left hand side, and that on the right
bearing a torch. Higher up, a bit small for the height above ground, a
matched pair of reclining nudes. The whole lot, I believe, by the
sculptor A. H. Hodge. (The other end of Aldwych is described as part of
a walk starting from Holborn Station, Kingsway.)
Now to Australia House, which gives a chance to see Australian
sculpture of the early 20th century. The architect was Marshall
Mackenzie, working 1912-1918. The sculpture is excellent. To left and
right of the main entrance, figural groups in stone, monumental in size,
and with nice pyramidal compositions. They are called Awakening of
Australia and Prosperity of Australia, confident work by the sculptor
Harold Parker, and dating from 1918.
Above and central is a bronze nude male heroic figure, with cloak
and crown, arm raised, and front halves of four rearing horses. He is
Phoebus Driving the Horses of the Sun (1923), by Bertram Mackennal.
Both sculptors show links to both Australia and Britain - Parker
was born in England but went to Brisbane as a very young child, studying
there and then back in Britain, establishing himself here and winning
the accolade of a statue being bought for the Chantrey collection.
Mackennal came the other way, one of a line of artists born in Melbourne
who went to Paris to study, then to London to sell, and then had a
varied but ultimately highly successful career as an establishment
figure in both England and Australia.
Proceeding past the church, behind it is the unfortunate statue
of Samuel Johnson as a troll, by the artist Percy Fitzgerald, dating
from 1910. Then to the left, the last of the great Victorian Gothic
buildings in London, the Law Courts by G. E. Street. As they went up,
The Times described the buildings as follows:
They are of Gothic design, and, viewed by non-professional eyes,
might be set down as somewhat irregular examples of the Decorated or
Second Pointed style. But their architect has embodied in his designs so
much of modern improvements, and has so thoroughly studied the
adaptation of the architecture of the Edwardian period to the
requirements of our age, that we fancy he would prefer to call the
structure a specimen of the 'Victorian style'... The southern, northern
and western fronts will be of Portland stone, while the eastern front
will present a combination of Portland stone interspersed with red
bricks, as will be the case with the interior courts and quadrangles.
... Each front is to be relieved by dwarf towers, arches, and other
features; and there will be two high towers... the whole edifice will be
three, four, and five storeys in height in different parts, and its
lofty pitched roofs will be relieved by the insertion of gables,
dormers, and pinnacles, in great variety... the architect has given
accommodation to no less than 18 distinct courts, each with it sown
entrance and staircase, with separate approaches and doors for the
judges, the jury, the witnesses, the Bar, and the public, together with
rooms for clerks, secretaries, and registrars, and also
waiting-rooms...'
And another account, regarding those roofs:
'Nothing is more welcome than the detail of small slates, which
cover the roof like a woven texture, while each slate becomes encrusted
in the rest. The effect, as can be seen in the high roofs, is most
picturesque; we feel that it is the true system, and so Mr Street has
adopted it for his Law Courts.'
But of the clock:
'Mr Street's new clock at the Law courts, hung out in the
picturesque style of Bow Church, is surely too trivial and small. The
fine massive tower behind seems to be holding out a watch instead of a
clock, and is thus actually robbed of its own majesty... Most passers-by
will see that something is wrong, but perhaps may not recognise the
principle, that where an object is out of proportion to the function set
to it, either in excess or deficiency, it will appear grosser or smaller
than it is actually.'

Law Courts
The picture above (from when the Law Courts first went up - note
the scaffolding in the background) seems to emphasises the smallness of
the clock.
We must note that the 8-acre site involved the removal of 'no
less than thirty close, foul, and filthy courts, yards, lanes, and
alleys,' of which a less contemporary account has the following to say:
'It is unquestionably true that any great public good can only be
achieved at the cost of much private inconvenience; and the New Law
Courts cannot claim to be any exception to this general rule. No
sensible man can doubt that the destruction of so many filthhy slums
must ultimately prove a gain to the community at large; yet it is also
undeniable that the first effect of the work of demolition was to render
4,000 persons homeless, and subsequently to drive three-fourths of them
into other courts and alleys not far away, which, being previously well
filled, were speedily, from the overcrowding consequent upon so enormous
an influx, rendered as unhealthy as the squalid dens from which the
immigrants had been routed.'
So much for the Law Courts. Opposite, we may mention the
Lloyds/TSB branch, no. 219, for its fishes and balcony, and interior
with Doulton's tiles painted by J. H. McLennan. Formerly a restaurant
and built as the Palsgrove Hotel, this is the work of the architect G.
Cuthbert, and dates from 1883.
 
Old Temple Bar, and its removal
Also by the Law Courts is the point at which the Strand ends and
Fleet Street begins, marked by the Temple Bar monument in the centre of
the road. Formerly, Temple Bar, a construction of Christopher Wren's,
stood here. It had statues of Charles 1 and Charles II to the west, in
Roman costume, and on the east side, James I and Elizabeth, all four
being the work of 'a vain, half-crazed sculptor named Jonn Bushnell, who
died mad in 1701'. When the new Law Courts were being put up, the Temple
Bar was taken down and rebuilt as an entrance to Sir H Meux's park at
Cheshunt, Theobald's Park, Hertfordshire. The whole has now returned to
stand just by St Pauls, on the Paternoster Square side, very
cleaned-looking.
On the site of that monument then, came the extant monument,
designed by the architect Horace Jones and put up in 1880. It has on top
a marvellously spiky griffin rampant by the sculptor C. B. Birch. Much
decried at the time, a Birch apologist writing a few years later felt
that
'The real facts of the case were that the City Architect made the
inexcusable blunder of treating the 'Dragon' supporters of the city
arms, or rather one of them, as if it had been the portrait of some
illustrious personage, placing it on the top of the pedestal without its
indispensable brother dragon... Birch was in no wise responsible for
that unfortunate crime against good taste.
Beneath the crime against good taste, statues on each side of the
monument by J. E. Boehm depict Queen Victoria and Prince Edward.
Fleet Street
Onwards into Fleet Street. As we proceed along, there
are a variety of interesting and picturesque buildings on the right hand
side, as usual, best viewed from the left. No. 9 is the gateway to
Middle Temple, dating to 1684 and with a carved sheep above the door
(Inner, Middle and the long-gone Outer Temple were the abodes of the
Knights Templar, and are now Inns of Court). No. 17 forms the earlier
timbered Prince Henry Rooms, above the gate to Inner Temple. No. 21 is
the photogenic and unbelievably narrow Old Cock Tavern, again somewhat
of the 17th Century, and with 19th Century interest to these pages in
its association with Tennyson, who composed poetry about it.
From the 19th Century, no. 29 is by some architect called Bartlet,
dates from 1860, and has tiny half-figures to hold up the narrow
balcony. Almost directly opposite is the third church along the route -
St Dunstan in the West, put up in 1829-33 by the architect John Shaw,
and completed by his son. The tower and the clock is older. In fact
there is a very old sculptural connection here. Lud Gate, one of half a
dozen gates to the old City of London, was a 13th Century construction,
rebuilt by Queen Elizabeth in the late 16th Century, when statues of
King Lud and his sons were added, and one of the Queen herself, the
latter apparently by the sculptor William Kerwin. An insensitive 18th
Century traffic improvement scheme saw the removal of the gate, and the
Marquis of Hertford rescued the statues for his villa in Regents Park.

Old St Dunstans, with clock
Back to the church - the previous one on the site had a clock,
with statues of giants to strike the hours put up in 1671, the work of
one Thomas Harrys of Water Lane. When the old church was taken down, the
acquisitive Lord Hertford got those statues for his villa too.
Preserved, the Queen Elizabeth and sticking-out clock eventually came to
the current 19th Century church, along with a set of 8 bells from the
old church, and underneath in the Porch are the statues of King Lud and
his sons. Also in front of the church is the 1930 Lutyens-designed
Northcliffe Memorial, with strongly-modelled bust by Lady Hilton Young.
Much more in the way of 17th Century work inside the church.

The preserved clock
From here onwards, bits and pieces of décor and sculpture only,
all the way through to St Pauls. A few are noteworthy. On the right hand
side, nos. 49-50, where the entrance of Serjeants Inn lies, a good stone
group of Justice and Truth, early 20th Century work. A little further on
the left, Mary Queen of Scots House at no. 145, with a stone statue of
that queen and much spiky tracery to the windows and other Gothic décor.
Then nos. 135-141 have a modern frieze with two athletes, and back on
the right hand side is Reuters at no. 85, with an angel astride the
globe, blowing a trumpet. Opposite is the old Express Building of 1931 -
peer in the window to see the exciting ceiling and wall pieces. This
part of the street has links to the Press as far back as the 18th
century - among many famous names are the Morning Advertiser started
there in 1795, the Dispatch in 1801, the Telegraph and the Standard in
the 1820s, and magazines such as Punch in 1841.
Next on the right hand side is Wren's St Brides, with its
wedding-cake spire and inside, two sculptured Charity Children of 1711.
One of the buildings in front of St Brides is number 92, with cherubs
above the door and tiny heads high up. Back on the left hand side
bordering onto Farringdon Street nos. 107-111 date from 1872-3 and show
a good mix of heads, cherubs etc. Crossing over Ludgate Circus, we can
note a Callcutt building of around 1890 at nos 45-57, a terra cotta
effort with little moulded heads lost in the decoration, and on the left
hand side, another Wren church, St Martin within Ludgate. A few more
steps takes us to St Pauls and the end of the walk.

End of the Walk - St Paul's from Ludgate Circus, 1880s
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links
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Special thanks to
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/speel/place/britart.htm |
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www.essential-architecture.com
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