Amazing & Extraordinary Facts: London (19 page)

The Italian church of St Peter

The Russian Orthodox presence is much older, dating from the visit to London of Peter the Great in 1698 when a church was attached to the Russian Embassy. After many moves (and schisms within the Russian Orthodox community) a permanent home for the congregation was found in Harvard Road, Chiswick. In 2005 the new Russian Cathedral was consecrated, its prominent blue ‘onion dome’ surmounted by a golden cross bringing a little piece of Russia to this quiet corner of London. The cathedral is dedicated to ‘The Holy Royal Martyrs of Russia’.

Other faiths are also represented in London, often by spectacular buildings. One of the most striking is the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, better known as the Neasden Temple.The site was acquired in 1990 and consignments of Bulgarian limestone and Italian Carrara marble began to be shipped to India where they were carved into over 26,000 components for the temple. It was opened in 1995, covering 1.5 acres with space for 5,000 Hindu worshippers, its shining white domes and pinnacles visible for miles.

The Neasden Temple

London’s best-known mosque is the London Central Mosque (often referred to as the Regent’s Park Mosque) which was completed in 1978 adjacent to the Islamic cultural centre which was opened by King George VI in 1944 as a gift from the people of Britain to its Muslim community. Its gold dome is a prominent feature of the building which has a capacity of 5,000 worshippers. The East London Mosque in Whitechapel, less often frequented by visitors to London, is equally large and has a longer history. Its construction was first mooted at a meeting at the Ritz Hotel in 1910 by prominent Muslims who wanted a suitable building in which to practise their religion. The Aga Khan was an early patron. Whitechapel was an obvious site because land was relatively inexpensive and the area had a large, albeit transient, Muslim population of seamen coming into the London docks. A striking feature of Whitechapel Road, the mosque opened in 1985 and lies adjacent to the Jewish Great Synagogue in Fieldgate Street which opened in 1899.

The London Central Mosque

F
rom 1894 to 1981 no day out in London was complete unless it included a cup of tea (or occasionally coffee) and a piece of cake at a Lyons teashop with its distinctive gold lettering on a white background. The company was founded in 1887 as a spin-off from the Salmon and Gluckstein tobacco business. Nigella Lawson, the food writer and TV chef, is descended from the Salmon family. The tearooms offered cheap, standardised menus which were served by waitresses known as ‘Nippies’, the business taking its name from Joseph Nathaniel Lyons who ran the business from its earliest days. Most of the food was produced at the firm’s headquarters at Cadby Hall in Hammersmith. The company made its own cakes and also ice cream under the name Lyons Maid. In addition to the teashops Lyons opened Lyons Corner Houses in the Strand, Coventry Street and Oxford Street and two Maisons Lyons at Marble Arch and Shaftesbury Avenue. They were noted for their attractive Art Deco interiors on four or five storeys with bright lighting. They had a well-stocked food hall on the ground floor and restaurants of different character on the upper storeys: a brasserie, a grill room, the first Wimpy bars, an egg and bacon room (popular with students because of its swift service and wide variety of good food) and similar facilities to suit all tastes. As early as 1895 Lyons acquired a lease on the Trocadero music hall at the bottom of Shaftesbury Avenue and built an elaborately decorated restaurant notable for its famous Long Bar in multi-coloured marble. The company also ran some large hotels including the Cumberland at Marble Arch and the Tower Hotel near the Tower of London.

In the 1960s the restaurants began to lose money in the face of mounting competition from other chains and the company’s fortunes were further damaged by some unwise speculation in foreign currencies. The last Corner House closed in 1977 and the last tearoom in 1981 while its own branded products were sold off to other manufacturers. The Trocadero became a complex of shops, restaurants and entertainments including The Guinness World of Records but this, and subsequent ventures, were not financially successful and the building, with its famous name and prime site, is being redeveloped, still seeking a role. In 1978 Lyons was acquired by Allied Breweries and became part of Allied Lyons, a drinks company. Its demise coincided with the rise of companies like McDonald’s and Starbucks who filled the gap left by Lyons, though at much higher prices.

L
ondon is well furnished with organisations dedicated to the advancement of learning and the arts and many of them enjoy royal patronage. The most eminent is surely the Royal Society for the promotion of science and mathematics. It was formally constituted in 1660 at a meeting at Gresham College which was attended by, amongst others, the physicist Robert Boyle and the astronomer, later architect, Christopher Wren. In 1662 it received a charter from Charles II and from its earliest days it was active in promoting scientific research including, for example, the exploratory voyages of Captain Cook. A Fellowship of the Royal Society is the most coveted honour that a scientist can achieve short of a Nobel Prize and to list its presidents is to compile a roll of honour of the most eminent scientists who have ever lived. They include Christopher Wren, Isaac Newton and Ernest Rutherford. In 1967 the Royal Society moved to its present home at 8-9, Carlton House Terrace, built by John Nash after the demolition of Carlton House. From 1849 until World War II the building was the home of the German Embassy, its last ambassador being the despised Joachim von Ribbentrop, a former champagne salesman who was hanged as a war criminal. The building, which has retained much of its 1930s décor, is sometimes opened to the public, notably during the Summer Science Exhibitions which are held in July. In 1902 the British Academy was founded to do for the humanities what the Royal Society does for science. It founders included Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf, and the then Prime Minister AJ Balfour. It is to be found at 10, Carlton House Terrace, next door to the Royal Society.

The Royal Academy of Arts in London

The Royal Society is sometimes confused with the Royal Society of Arts whose full title is the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, based at John Adam Street near Charing Cross. Its was founded in 1754 by a drawing master from Northampton, William Shipley, and received great impetus when it received its royal charter in 1847 while Prince Albert was President. It was very active in organising the Great Exhibition of 1851 and instituted the process by which blue plaques are placed on buildings associated with famous people; the first, in 1867, was affixed on the house in Holles Street, Mayfair, where the poet George Byron (1788-1824) was born. The house was later demolished. The blue plaque scheme is now administered by English Heritage.

Lollipops and candles

The Royal Academy of Arts was founded in 1768 during the reign of George III who declared that he would be its ‘patron, protector and supporter’. In 1769 the Academy moved into the new Somerset House though many of its early exhibitions were held at the Foundling Hospital which enjoyed the patronage of early members like Sir Joshua Reynolds and William Hogarth. After a brief stay in Trafalgar Square the Academy moved in 1868 to Burlington House in Piccadilly where it remains. There it holds its Summer Exhibitions when about 1,200 works are exhibited from entries submitted by about 10,000 hopeful artists whose ambition is to feature in this famous event. Winston Churchill had paintings selected for the exhibition on several occasions.

The Royal Academy of Music was first proposed in 1774 by the musician Charles Burney who wanted to convert the Foundling Hospital into a musical academy. This was defeated but in 1822 the proposal was revived at a meeting at the Thatched House Tavern in St James’s Street and in 1823 it opened in premises near Hanover Square with 21 pupils, one of them being the 12-year-old Fanny Dickens, sister of Charles. The Academy received its royal charter in 1830 but struggled financially until Gladstone’s government gave it an annual grant of £500 in 1864. In 1912 it moved into its present premises in Marylebone Road where it continues to flourish. It is Britain’s oldest degree-giving music school and is now a college of the University of London, giving regular concerts to which the public are admitted. Its former pupils include Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Simon Rattle, Dame Evelyn Glennie and Sir Elton John.

I
n Shakespeare’s time, and for long after, actors and theatres were as welcome as neighbours as were prostitutes and bawdy houses. For this reason London’s entertainment district was centred on Bankside, across London Bridge and safely distant from the respectable areas north of the river that were more concerned with commerce. There the theatres could keep company with bordellos and bear baiting. North of the Thames the Curtain Theatre, opened in 1577, lay in Shoreditch just outside the City boundary and was used by Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, to produce
Henry V
and
Romeo and Juliet
, the latter received with ‘Curtain plaudits’ (great enthusiasm). It was destroyed in the Great Fire and a plaque marks its site at Hewett Street, off Curtain Road. The Blackfriars Theatre also opened in 1577 within the City, its status protected by the fact that its proprietor, Richard Farrant, was also Master of the Music at Windsor and claimed that its primary use was to train boys for the king’s choir. It was closed by the Puritans in 1642 and demolished in 1665 but its memory lives on in its site, now named Playhouse Yard. The only theatre now within the City is The Mermaid at Puddle Dock, Upper Thames Street. It was the brainchild of (later Sir) Bernard Miles, opening as a temporary theatre at the Royal Exchange to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 and was so successful that the City Corporation granted ‘Bernard Miles and other Poor Players of London’ a lease on a derelict Victorian warehouse which became a permanent structure in 1959.