Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Ludgate Circus
Fleet Street terminates at
Ludgate Circus
, built in the 1870s to replace a bridge over
the
River Fleet
,
which had already been buried under the roads after a drunken butcher
got stuck in the river mud and froze to death. The Fleet originally marked the western
boundary of the walled City, and was once an unmissable feature of the landscape, as
the tanneries and slaughterhouses of Smithfield, to the north, used to turn the water red
with entrails.
The Fleet's western bank was the site of the notoriously inhumane
Fleet
Prison
, where the poet John Donne was imprisoned in 1601 for marrying without his
father-in-law's consent. Until 1754, Fleet Prison was renowned for its clandestine “
Fleet
Marriages
”, performed by priests (or impostors) who were imprisoned there for debt.
These marriages, in which couples could marry without a licence, attracted people of all
classes, and took place in the prison chapel until 1710, when they were banished to the
neighbouring taverns, the fee being split between clergyman and innkeeper.
St Paul's Cathedral
Cathedral Mon-Sat 8.30am-4.30pm; galleries Mon-Sat 9.30am-4.15pm • £16 (£14.50 online) •
T
020 7236 4128,
W
stpauls.co.uk •
!
St Paul's
The enormous lead-covered dome of
St Paul's Cathedral
has dominated the City skyline
since it was built after the Great Fire - and remains so despite the encroaching tower
blocks. Its showpiece west facade is particularly magnificent, fronted by a wide flight of
steps, a double-storey portico and two of London's most Baroque towers. While it can't
compete with Westminster Abbey for celebrity corpses, pre-Reformation sculpture,
royal connections and sheer atmosphere, St Paul's is nevertheless a perfectly calculated
architectural space, a burial place for captains rather than kings, artists not poets, and a
popular wedding venue for the privileged few (including Charles and Diana).
The current building is the fifth on this site, its immediate predecessor being
Old St Paul's
, a huge Gothic cathedral built by the Normans, whose 489ft spire
(destroyed by lightning in 1561) was one of the wonders of medieval Europe. St Paul's
was just one of over fifty church commissions Christopher Wren received in the wake
of the Great Fire. Hassles over his initial plans, and wrangles over money plagued the
project throughout, but Wren remained unru
ed and the world's first Protestant
11
SAMUEL PEPYS
Born to a humble tailor and a laundress in Salisbury Court, off Fleet Street,
Samuel Pepys
(1633-1703) was baptized in St Bride's (see opposite) and buried in St Olave's, having spent
virtually his entire life in London. Family connections secured an education at St Paul's School,
a scholarship to Cambridge and a career in the civil service. He was an MP, served as Secretary
to the Admiralty, and was instrumental in the establishment of a professional British navy. In
1679 he was imprisoned for six weeks in the Tower on suspicion of treason, but returned to
o
ce, only to be forced out again in 1689, following the overthrow of James II.
Of course, it's not Pepys' career, but his
diaries
, written between 1660 and 1669, that have
immortalized him. This rollicking journal includes eyewitness accounts of the Restoration, the
Great Plague and the Great Fire, giving an unparalleled insight into London life at the time.
Ultimately, Pepys emerges from the pages, warts and all, as an eminently likeable character,
who seems almost imperturbable - he gives as much space to details of his pub meals as he
does to the Great Fire, and finishes most entries with his catchphrase “and so to bed”.
Pepys was also a notorious womanizer, detailing his philanderings in his diary in a mixture of
Spanish, Italian and French so as to avoid detection by his French Huguenot wife. Nevertheless
he was caught
in flagrante
with their maid, and his slow reconciliation with his spouse is recorded
in a novelist's detail, the diary ending in 1669 as they sail off to the Continent to patch things up.
In the event, his wife died later that year and he never remarried. Pepys bequeathed his vast
library to his old college in Cambridge, where his diaries lay undiscovered until the nineteenth
century, when they were finally published (with the erotic passages omitted) in 1825.
