CHAPTER 1 - PRINCE'S MEADOWS
Prince's Meadows was the name given to the detached portion of
the demesne land of the manor of Kennington lying at the northern end of
the parish between Broadwall and the site of Waterloo Road, inside the
Narrow Wall.
The river front, being reclaimed land, was not considered to be part
of the Meadows but was known as“waste.” It was, however, only the“waste” which is shown to have buildings on the 1636 survey of the manor
(Plate 1). There the river front is indicated as having been“campsheathed,”
i.e., protected by a wall of timber and the sloping ground of the foreshore
inside it made level. Several houses and a crane are shown near the parish
boundary, while the remainder of the“waste” is marked as timber yards or
osier beds. The Meadows are divided into two. They appear to be entirely
unbuilt on and are surrounded by watercourses.
In the reign of Henry VIII, William Baseley, who owned the manor
of Paris Garden (now roughly coincident with the parish of Christ Church)
and ran a gaming house there, (ref. 36) obtained a lease (ref. 17) of marshland being part of
Kennington Manor. This was almost certainly Prince's Meadows, but the
name does not seem to have come into use until later, the first documentary
reference to it that has been found being in Norden's Survey of Kennington
made in 165. (ref. 31)
In the Prince's Meadows area Norden listed a “meadow called
Princes Mead” containing 25 acres and let to William Page, an osier ground
adjoining the river next to Prince's Mead containing 4 acres and let to John
Johnson, John Olife and Robert Robinson, and half an acre of ground with
a wharf let to William Smythe. He also included a piece of copyhold land
with buildings“formerly Cockerhams” containing 11/2 acres, lying next to
the Thames and called the Corner Meadow in the marsh known as Prince's
Meadow, and added the note that though this was claimed by Ralph Hanmer,
gentleman, de jure, he was not in possession, and the tenant was of the opinion
that the land belonged to the manor of Paris Garden. (fn. a)
Paris Garden was almost entirely surrounded by the Pudding Mill
Stream, but it is obvious that by the beginning of the 17th century some
doubt had arisen as to the exact boundary between it and Prince's Meadows
near the river. The confusion probably arose over the King's (or Queen's)
Barge House, which was, from the time of Queen Elizabeth, and perhaps
earlier, near or over the sluice from Pudding Mill Stream into the river. In
1636 Harbord (ref. 32) stated that the Earl of Arundel held 2 “lowe meadowes
Iyeing together called the Prince's Meades” containing nearly 23 acres, “a wharfe strongly built called the Cittie Wharfe” and another new wharf “lyeing between the Erle of Arundell his garden and the Thames adjoyning
to the Sluce.” Harbord was doubtful whether this last wharf should have
been included within the manor or not, and even more so about the wharf
and timber yard in the tenancy of Jeremy Crewe, on which half the King's
Barge House stood, and the wharf and timber yard in the tenancy of Katherine
Strikeley, widow, on which a number of houses and cottages stood. Harbord
noted that Norden had described the manor of Kennington as extending to
the decayed common sewer, then “not used and partly filled up’ on the
mouth of which the King's Barge House was situated. A plan, a part of
wnich reproduced
here, of the northern
part of Paris Garden
at about this date
shows the King's
Barge House and the
land referred to by
Norden as the Corner
Meadow included
within that manor.
As at that time the
Earl of Arundel was
in possession of the
land on both sides
of the boundary the
matter was perhaps
not considered to
be immediately important.
In 1660 Sir
Charles Harbord reported
that the site of
the old Barge House
erected by Queen
Elizabeth “is confessed
to be his
Majestie's ground,”
but that the rest of the wharf was “detained from his Majesty” and the
prospective lessee ought to try and recover the same “for his Majestie's use
and benefit,” at his own costs. (ref. 34)
Figure 1:
Part of plan of Prince's Meadows, 1636
It seems probable that the Barge House was originally built on
land belonging to Kennington Manor, being royal property, and that the
boundary between the manors ran along the sewer or sluice under the barge
house, but that subsequently the mouth of the sluice which had marked the
boundary was filled up and the boundary line diverted. Certainly the sites
of the King's Barge House and Corner Meadow are now included within
Christ Church parish though the small strip of ground west of the sluice on
which one part of the King's Barge House originally stood is still considered
to be a detached portion of the Duchy of Cornwall property.
In 1649 Daniel Goodersay was tenant of Prince's Meadows, and
several wood yards are listed as lying along the river front, while Judah
Walker held one little tenement in the north-east corner of the Prince's
Meadows “consisting of three litle roomes wherein washing weomen live.’ (ref. 26)
A further survey was made in the same year to decide whether the cranes and
houses on two of the wood yards were tenants’ fixtures which might be
removed at the end of their lease. It was decided that the dwelling houses
were “soe fixed to the freehould and soyle … by strong sleepers of wood
lying deepe within the ground and by other substantiall ground cills and
foundacons, some of brick and others of wood” they ought not to be
removed; but that the two cranes and a counting house stood on removable
blocks and were the tenants' goods. (ref. 33)
In 1660 Harbord had to report (ref. 34) that during ‘the late usurped Authority’ many houses and wharves had been erected along the river bank
by Prince's Meadows. William Dover held one dwelling house and about
11 acres of the meadows and ten small houses along the river bank; Boydell
Cuper had 7 acres of the meadow and 13 small tenements; Fulke Morris
had 6 acres of meadow; Henry White had 13 small cottages erected by him
on part of the bank and a house and yard, part of the same wharf; Edward
Smith had a house and yard on the same wharf and Thomas Shirley had a
yard called City Wharf and some houses built there by Mr. Bassett, together
with houses and yards held under him by one Sandon and Ralph Wilmot.
Much of the ground was used for the washing and whitening of cloth.
He further reported that three barge houses had been recently
erected there, one for the Lord Mayor, a second with a small cottage for the
Merchant Taylors’ Company, and a third for the Woodmongers’ Company.
There was some difficulty at this time in adjusting the claims of tenants who
had spent money during the Commonwealth period in improving properties
which at the Restoration reverted to the Crown. Harbord recommended
that these tenants should be given leases before any general grant of the
whole demesne was made. Among others the Lord Mayor and Commonalty
of the City and the Merchant Taylors’ Company were granted leases (ref. 17) of
their barge houses, and these remained in their tenancy until the beginning
of the 19th century. The barge house of the Woodmongers was leased to
them for 31 years, but the lease does not appear to have been renewed. (ref. 17)
A lease of Prince's Meadows was granted to John Arundell in 1661.
In 1671 and again in 1676 John Arundell was granted renewals of
his lease. In the latter year he sublet the ground to Richard Rawe. It was
described in the lease as “meadows, wharves and osier grounds bounded on
the north by the land called Le Banke and extending to the place where
there is built a certain ruinous house called the King's Old Barge House
towards the north, up to a certain parcel of ground lately of Henrie Earl of
Arundel towards the west near the Sluice.” (ref. 17)
It was during Arundell's tenancy that some of the remaining fragments
of the Arundel marbles from Arundel House in the Strand were
dumped on the waste ground bordering Prince's Meadows. James Theobald
has left it on record (ref. 37) that this ground was shortly afterwards let for a timber
yard and that when the foundations for the new St. Paul's Cathedral were
laid “great quantities of the rubbish were brought over thither to raise the
ground, which used to be overflowed every spring tide; so that by degrees,
those statues, and other marbles, were buried under the rubbish… and
lay there for many years almost forgot and unnoticed.“ Theobald's father
obtained a lease of this ground in 1712 and in digging foundations for new
buildings came upon some of the fragments. These were dug up and subsequently
some of them were acquired by the Earl of Burlington and sent to
Chiswick House and some by the Duke of Norfolk and sent to Worksop.
Theobald himself used some blocks of marble to put in his house, the
Belvedere, a little farther up the river (see p. 51).
In March, 1699, Sir Francis Child was granted a lease of Prince's
Meadows, excepting the barge houses, to commence from 1717, but in 1716
he assigned his interest to Richard Rawe of St. Columb, Cornwall. Richard
Rawe died shortly afterwards, and in 1718 Frances his widow and Richard
Agar of the Middle Temple were granted a lease of the site of the Wood-mongers’
barge house; this land is described as “lately part of a yard called
Collyar's Yard, bounded by the Gates and Pallisadoes on the Thames Wall
south.” (ref. 17)
In 1734 Mrs. Rawe and Richard Agar obtained a lease in their own
right of the whole of Prince's Meadows, with the exception of the two barge
houses, and in 1765 this was renewed to Mrs. Frances Rawe. At Mrs.
Rawe's death her estate went into Chancery and Thomas Duck, the receiver
appointed by the court, was granted a lease in trust for such persons as the
court should direct, to commence from April, 1780. It is noteworthy that
the fine for this renewal was £3,710 whereas at the previous renewal in 1765
it had been only £900. (ref. 17)
In the 1780 lease the King's Old Barge House site was stated to be
in the tenure of Thomas Lowe Co., glass bottle makers, and the Wood-mongers'
barge house site in the tenure of Margaret Eeles and Thomas
Bond, timber merchants. (ref. 35)
In the Middleton survey of 1785 (ref. 35) there were stated to be 70 dwelling
houses on Prince's Meadows with warehouses, dyehouses, storehouses,
accounting houses, brewhouses, coachhouses, carthouses, stables, sawhouses,
cranes, sheds, wharves, yards, gardens, fields, ponds and canals, containing
in all nearly 29 acres. (fn. b)
The 1799 edition of Horwood's map shows a large woollen cloth
manufactory stretching south of Narrow Wall east of Beaufoy's Distillery
(the site of Cuper's Gardens), the Patent shot works and timber yards along
the river frontage, and a line of small houses along the south side of Narrow
Wall.
In 1810, in view of the building of Waterloo Bridge and its approaches,
an Act of Parliament was passed to enable the Prince Regent to grant leases
of Prince's Meadows for 99 years from October, 1815, for the purpose of
building a “town” to be called “Prince's Town.” (ref. 38) The state of the property
at this time with the projected roads is shown on the plan on Plate 3. The
whole property was leased to Thomas Lett and John Lett of Narrow Wall,
timber merchants, for a fine of £55,100. (fn. c) They developed some parts of
the estate themselves but let the greater part on building leases in small plots.
Narrow Wall was widened to form Commercial Road, now Upper
Ground, and Stamford Street was continued as Upper Stamford Street to
Waterloo Road; while Duke Street, now Duchy Street, Princes Street,
now Coin Street, and Cornwall Road, a continuation and widening of Green
Lane, running north and south, were made across them.
Most of the houses were small and of little architectural interest.
One of the largest commercial enterprises was the printing works of William
Clowes, which occupied a considerable area of ground between Duchy
Street and Coin Street. Clowes took over Applegath's works in 1821, (ref. 39)
and the firm remained on the same site until the premises were bombed in
1941. (ref. 5)
The river bank was entirely given over to commercial purposes,
timber yards, wharves, and the like. Of recent years two of the Metropolitan
Borough Councils had dust destructors there, while on Bowater's Wharf the
brothers Gatti had a generating station to supply light to the Adelphi Theatre
in the Strand. (ref. 17)
The square shot tower, which stood east of Waterloo Bridge until
1937, had ceased to manufacture shot for a number of years, and was used
as an advertising sign. It was built circa 1789 by Messrs. Watts. Samuel
Ireland in 1791 (ref. 40) spoke of it as “a new structure … [which] cost near
six thousand pounds, but cannot be considered as an object ornamental to the
river Thames.” (Plate 6b.) It was about 150 feet high. In 1826, when it
was owned by Messrs. Walker and Parker, the top part was destroyed by
fire, but it was soon repaired and in use again. This shot tower was not the
first of its kind to be built along the south bank. In 1758 Henry Raminger,
of Christ Church, Southwark, had taken out a patent for the manufacture of
lead shot, and a tower was built in that parish some years before the one in
Prince's Meadows. (ref. 9) An account of the round shot tower south-west of
Waterloo Bridge is given on p. 47.
A more detailed account of the development of Stamford Street is
given in the next chapter.
The London Botanic Garden
Waterloo Junction and the streets immediately surrounding it stand
on the site of the botanic garden opened by William Curtis in January, 1779.
The garden lay between Green Lane (now Cornwall Road) on the west and
Broadwall on the east, while its southern boundary was the footpath known
as Curtis's Halfpenny Hatch. Curtis's prospectus stated that subscribers
of one guinea a year would be entitled to walk in the garden, use the library,
and introduce one person; “the situation being low, renders it peculiarly
favourable to the growth of aquatic and bog plants.” (ref. 41) Curtis continued
his garden in Lambeth Marsh until 1789, and much of his Flora Londinensis
was prepared during this period. The reasons for his removal of his plants
to a new site in Brompton are best given in his own words: “I had long
observed with … regret, that I had an enemy to contend with in Lambeth
Marsh, which neither time, nor ingenuity, nor industry, could vanquish;
and that was the smoke of London, which, except when the wind blew
from the South, constantly enveloped my plants … In addition to this
grand obstacle, I had to contend with many smaller ones … such as
the obscurity of the situation, the badness of the roads leading to it, with the
effluvia of surrounding ditches, at times highly offensive.
“Nevertheless, when I reflected on the sums I had expended, when
I surveyed the trees, the shrubs, and the hedges which I had planted now
become ornamental in themselves and affording shelter to my plants …
I should have … continued my garden under all its inconveniences had
not my landlord exacted terms for the renewal of my lease too extravagant to
be complied with.” (ref. 41)
The Curtis family held leases of about 4½ acres from the Duchy of
Cornwall (ref. 35)
(fn. d) and 1½ acres from Sir William East (lessee of the Archbishop of
Canterbury). (ref. 42) It is probable that one or both were holding out for higher
rent in expectation of building development in the neighbourhood though in
fact this did not materialise until more than 20 years later.