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Vic Keegan: The medieval gems of the London Charterhouse

11th September 202120th November 2023

Parts of the original building have survived through the centuries against incredible odds

Hiding behind the gatehouse and wall of the Charterhouse, located between the Barbican and Smithfield on Charterhouse Square, lies one of the capital’s least known and most magnificent medieval gems.

The surprise is that it is there at all. A remarkable amount of the original Charterhouse building, a monastery for Carthusian monks built in 1371 on land which had seen over 50,000 burials during the Black Death of 1348, has survived later plagues, aristocratic reconstructions, bomb damage in the Blitz and, above all, the Dissolution, which saw many monasteries sold off to Henry VIII’s cronies, who often pulled them down.

All the others – such the Blackfriars and Greyfriars monasteries and the Priory of St John, along with St Mary‘s Nunnery – have been lost almost without trace, leaving remnants within Westminster Abbey as the only other parts of a monastery from the medieval era above ground.

Charterhouse’s longevity may be partly thanks to its being acquired in 1545 by Sir Edward (later Lord) North, following the monastery’s dissolution in 1537. North had been Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations, and was therefore responsible for selling monastic land and properties. He pulled down parts of the Charterhouse complex, including its church, some cloisters and other reminders of Catholicism, building in their place a beautiful Great Hall and adjoining Great Chamber, which are star attractions of the Charterhouse today. But he also left much of it standing.

The property’s next owner was Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk – later executed for his part in the Ridolfi plot to put Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne – who transformed the remains of the religious house to complete a magnificent mansion, fit to entertain royalty. And so it did: Elizabeth I and James I both held court in the Great Chamber.

Today, the Great Hall (above), which looks as if it has been stolen from an Oxbridge college, provides meals for the Charterhouse’s community of residents – its Brothers and Sisters, single people aged over 60 in financial and social need who live in the almshouse there. The Charterhouse is still a charity and any lay person can apply to be a Brother or Sister, as long as they meet the requirements of age and pecuniary circumstances. They can then occupy a building covering most of the footprint of the old monastery.

There have, of course, been changes additions to the original monastery fabric – including a long terrace added by Howard known as the Norfolk Cloister – but parts of the monks’ quarters are just as they were, and much original stone was probably re-used when alterations were made.

The Carthusians, in a sense, lived a privileged existence. They took a vow of silence, and their clothing “consisted of two hair-cloths, two cowls, two pairs of hose, and a cloak, all of the coarsest manufacture, contrived to almost disfigure their persons”. However, their cells were more like cottages – two storeys high with four rooms, complete with a garden and fresh water piped from local sources at a time when the rest of the population had to battle with polluted water.

The Carthusians were known as “good monks” as they didn’t succumb to worldly temptations like some other orders (though, curiously, today’s monastery is next door to a Malmaison hotel). Their goodness reached unscalable heights when they refused to recognise Henry VIII as head of the Catholic Church. The prior, John Houghton, and six others were hanged, drawn and quartered. Houghton’s head was severed and affixed to London Bridge as a warning to others and a limb impaled on the gatehouse of the monastery.

The Norfolk cloister (below), which used to be twice as long as it is now, is one of the delights of the Charterhouse. It still harbours one of the original monk’s cells, complete with stone serving hatch.

This cloister was later used for playing football by the boys of the original Charterhouse School, built in 1611. The Charterhouse claims, with some justification, to have played a leading role in creating the rules of the game, including the offside rule and skills such as the art of dribbling, which was honed among the confined cloisters. As Simon Inglis points out in his marvellous book Played in London: “If the ball exited through one of the [cloister] openings, the first player to leap out and ‘touch’ it won the right to throw it back in.”

It would need a book to chronicle all the famous people who have passed through The Charterhouse. They include Thomas More, John Wesley, William Makepeace Thackeray, Prime Minister the Earl of Liverpool, Simon Raven and Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island . There is also a rolling cast of aristocrats, but it was a member of the nouveau riches who left the biggest mark on these hallowed remains.

Thomas Sutton was the richest commoner in Britain. He purchased the Charterhouse in 1611 as a home for his almshouse and the school, which later relocated to Godalming. Sutton died soon becoming the owner, but the Charterhouse rapidly became the wealthiest institution of its kind in Europe. It aimed to prove the superiority of Protestant good works over Roman Catholic practices.

Sutton started his working life as the servant of two powerful aristocrats in Tudor England and ended up so rich he lent money to them. Where did it come from? He owned the biggest coal mines in the north-east of England in County Durham and as a moneylender charged as much as 10 per cent in interest. Nonetheless, Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, praised Sutton’s endowment as “the greatest and noblest gift that was ever given for charity.”

Following further restoration, The Charterhouse is now open for bookable tours. There is also a lovely bijou museum you can visit free of charge and a learning centre.

All photos by Vic Keegan.

This article is the fourth of 25 to be written by Vic Keegan about locations of historical interest in Holborn, Farringdon, Clerkenwell, Bloomsbury and St Giles, kindly supported by the Central District Alliance business improvement district, which serves those areas. On London’s policy on “supported content” can be read here.

Categories: CDA supported series, Culture

Tags: Barbican, Charterhouse Square, Smithfield

Jack Brown: Live music is back in London. What does its future hold?

10th September 202111th September 2021

One the capital's most exciting and important creative industries has sustained severe damage during the pandemic

Jack Brown

After its long Covid-imposed hibernation, live indoor music in London is back. I for one am delighted, and not only because of the music. The experience is also about the unique and irreplaceable the energy of being in a crowd – a fundamental part of the human experience and has been absent from London life for far too long.

There has been a great deal of press debate over the “return to the office” and its impact on the city centre. Will they or won’t they? And what about Pret? There has also been widespread discussion of the plight of London’s theatres, with Andrew Lloyd Webber unconvincingly pledging to martyr himself in their name. There has been less coverage of live music. Yet it remains a large part of what London has to offer.

Live music fans reportedly injected £1.5bn into London’s economy in 2019, with the capital drawing over four million “music tourists” from across nation and globe, before Covid put the entire scene on ice. Over 10,000 jobs were sustained by the industry, which supported an entire infrastructure of skilled and unskilled work. Seeing a friend’s band locally, it struck me how many old faces were being reunited. A relatively small but professional touring band, they have their own soundman, a tour manager and someone who sells merchandise.

In addition, someone books their gigs and someone runs the venues they appear at. Someone puts up the stage. Someone fixes the instruments and the van. Someone takes photographs. During the Covid hibernation, some venues have been supported with grants, including many in London. In Outer London, where I live, I find more opportunities to see live music and also comedy popping up – surely a positive sign. But where have all those affected been and how many have survived?

I did a ring round of my friends who make their livings from live music. I began by asking what London as a city has meant to musicians, aside from being their home. Their replies underlined that, alongside access to audiences and venues, it is the agglomeration of other musicians and artists, industry, management, venues, music shops and other ancillary benefits that make London so vital. For them, it is a magnificent hub of everything and everyone you could ever hope to need. If you want a career in the music industry, London is probably the place to be.

But the expense of living here can be particularly difficult for those working in the literal “gig economy”. It is a busy and stressful place too. Those not born and raised in the capital, who lack the longstanding human ties we call “support networks”, say the benefits outweigh the costs, or at least come close enough to make it worthwhile. That was the deal. But lockdown put the benefits of London on hold. There were no crowds, and few opportunities to meet new people and expand networks in unexpected ways. There was no energy. And there was no work.

Technology has made it possible for office workers to work from home, and the same is true to some extent for musicians. But when money is mostly made from the live experience, the music game has been more akin to hospitality – placed on life support. Financial support has been available to some, but many have been ineligible. I was told of acquaintances and peers who left the capital when the pandemic hit, retreating initially to family homes elsewhere or seeking more affordable accommodation outside of the city. Continued uncertainty, changes in policy and repeated retreats into lockdown helped make those decisions. With the London equation broken, or at least suspended, the capital hasn’t had the same appeal. Perhaps a city rated higher for quality of life would have retained some of those people. Who knows? But London is raw capitalism incarnate – it offers great opportunity at great expense.

Live music is an inconsistent source of income – few bands have the capacity to tour for the entire year – and many musicians have some form of side hustle. With live shows placed on ice, for many the side hustle has become the main one. Friends have been DJ-ing, focusing on art and design, writing, pouring pints and working in warehouses. Some have worked in Covid testing centres for the duration of the pandemic. Others have decided that now would be as good a time as any to trade the instability and constant travel of a career in live music for a more stable source of income. Many will not return to London.

With the lifting of restrictions, some major UK music festivals have gone ahead, offering opportunities for work once more. By all accounts, some have been glorious occasions, but others have not. The risk of cancellations, outbreaks and quarantines can tip the balance of risk beyond the acceptable. Travel restrictions, Covid-related risks and costs have meant that those that have gone ahead have had fewer international acts than usual. Once again, we are truly an island: I was amused when a friend told me his band had to compete with Mr Motivator leading a mass aerobics workout on a rival stage.

These circumstances have created opportunities for British bands right now, as less competition means they might jump up the bill and play to larger audiences. Festival-goers are ecstatic to just be back in the game. But I wonder how sustainable this will be. I heard of a sizeable outdoor live show in the capital being cancelled at short notice as the temporary stage set-up had begun sloping dangerously. A lack of experienced stage hands was blamed. It seemed the “top guys” had sought alternative employment during the pandemic.

The unmentionable Brexit cannot, unfortunately, go unmentioned. Touring musicians were not alone in benefitting from free movement across the European continent, but they were especially dependent on it. The UK is not a large country. It can be toured comprehensively in a month. That is not sustainable for a year-round touring band. The costs of playing a European festival now run to several thousand pounds in visas. This is a fixable situation, but it is not yet fixed.

What may come next? Those at the very top will be ok and at the opposite end of the spectrum, hobbyists will continue at leisure, but several rungs of the ladder in between have been knocked out. In the end, human resourcefulness will surely triumph. The musicians I spoke to have all found alternative ways to sustain themselves and are gradually returning to work, slowly emerging, blinking, into the sunlight. Some good ideas will surely emerge from the pandemic along with a new generation of high-energy young musicians, full of zest. London’s great melting pot of creativity will continue to pour out delicious treats.

I fear it may be, at least temporarily, a little less full than before. But perhaps now is not the time to worry, but instead to rejoice in the return of live music, dancing, smiling, laughing; of that particular, semi-meditative, near-dreamlike escapist joy that has been hard to find for a year and a half. What comes next is what comes next.

Jack Brown is lecturer in London Studies at King’s College and author of The London Problem. Follow him on Twitter. Photo of gig at Clapham Grand by Joshua Neicho.

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Categories: Culture

Tags: Brexit, coronavirus, COVID-19 London

Richard Brown: It’s time to nationalise social care funding

9th September 2021

London's experience, as elsewhere in the country, suggest this is a rare policy area where devolution isn't best

Richard Brown

So many prime ministers have pledged action on social care before recoiling, that I really wanted to celebrate Boris Johnson grasping the late summer nettle of reform. But he seems to have brushed casually past it while racing after shimmering mirage of making the NHS “the envy of the world”.

Providing a “cap and floor” for personal contributions to care is a good thing. It will reduce anxiety and help protect inheritances for many moderately well-off families, though using workers’ national insurance contributions to do so seems the least appropriate way of achieving that.

Or almost. State-provided adult social care, which London Councils estimates accounts for 65 per cent of home care and 54 per cent of residential care in the capital, is currently funded by London’s boroughs, drawing on government grants and the dysfunctional ugly twins of local government finance – Council Tax and national non-domestic rates.

Paying for social care accounted for more than 50 per cent of London borough service spending in 2018/19 according to Centre for London analysis (excluding public health, education and police services). London’s older population and younger populations with care needs are both forecast to grow over the next decades, so the costs will rise.

When he was chief executive of Barnet Council, Andrew Travers drew a “graph of doom, showing social care (including children’s services) gobbling up the whole borough budget by 2030. The £3 billion or so (out of a total of £36 billion) left for reform of the system over the next three years would only just close the funding gap in London. It’s pretty thin gruel.

Even putting the matter of funding levels and taxes to one side, it makes no sense for the service to be delivered this way. People value social care and see it as a critical service, but also look to councils for housing, planning, waste collection, street cleaning, parks, libraries and schools.

The current model also creates an unhealthy tension between the NHS and social services, as older people are shunted gracelessly between home care, hospitals and residential care. I have heard anecdotes about councils employing full time lawyers to argue against hospital discharges into their care, and (full disclosure) I am personally in the middle of an unseemly haggle with the NHS and social services about who should be providing my mother’s care.

The row over the miserly allocation of funding to social care improvement compared to the sums lavished on the NHS, illustrates the point. It is artificial to distinguish between the care provided to an old person at home and the care she receives on a hospital ward, not least because if you get the former right, you are less likely to have to pay for the latter.

I am generally all for devolution, but I think this may be the exception. The PM announced that the “NHS and social care systems need to be brought closer together” and talks of “integrated care systems”, but we have been hearing soft phrases like that for years. I think we need to be bolder, and nationalise funding for adult social care.

This does not necessarily mean nationalising care homes and care agencies, though in some cases that might be desirable or even necessary. It should mean tighter regulation to ensure decent pay and more consistently compassionate care. In many cases, services would be provided pretty much as they are now (the NHS is far more used to operating through third-party providers than it was in the past), but decisions would be taken in a genuinely integrated way, with budget allocations no longer the issue.

This is not intended as a criticism of borough social services departments – London has some pioneering councils such Hammersmith & Fulham, which is, I think, the only local authority to levy no charges for home care, regardless of care recipients’ savings.

And the NHS is far from perfect. It has a lot to learn from social services about the management of long-term conditions, which often seem to take second place to the more life-affirming business of “curing” people in hospitals. There would still be a role for local authorities, in managing interfaces with housing and other services, in promoting public health and preventative services, and in acting as champions and advocates for their residents, perhaps through continuing to play a part in assessments of need.

There are elements of the government’s announcement that should be celebrated, but it is still tinkering with the system rather than seeking to transform and upgrade arrangements that date back 70 years. There has been a lot of talk about better joint working between the NHS and local government, but progress in London has been limited.

I’m afraid the consequences of missing the opportunity for more fundamental structural change – or at least beginning a debate about it – will become increasingly apparent in the next few years.

This a slightly edited version of an article which originally appeared on Richard Brown’s personal website. Image from GLA.

Categories: Comment

Tags: adult social care, Council Tax, Hammersmith & Fulham Council, London Councils, NHS

Travels with Quai: Transport and disability in London

8th September 202111th September 2021

Numerous street and public transport design features make getting around the city that bit harder for disabled people

Joshua Neicho

Quailyn Gayadeen, Quai for short, slaloms around a pair of hooped barriers at the entrance to a riverside path on her e-pedal assist foldable tricycle. “The only reason I can do that is I use the ramp going up to church,” she says, cheerily.

The barriers are a bugbear of Mark Browne, Operations Manager of inclusive cycling charity Wheels for Wellbeing, who leads our expedition on a conventional bike. “It’s a perfect route, but they put this in. It’s pretty much a design norm to stop vehicular access, but it’s not accessible if you’re cycling anything but a two-wheeler”.

I certainly can’t get through, as I struggle to keep up with Quai and Mark on a bright red single gear trike I’ve picked at Wheels for Wellbeing’s local base in Ladywell.

We’re on National Cycle Route 21 near Beckenham. Quai, a Herne Hill resident who has been cycling since January and has had her trike on loan for three months, is taking me on a ride, to be followed by a journey by tram, train and Tube to show me the accessibility of different parts of the transport system to three-wheelers.

Our cycle trip takes in the idyllic Linear Park along the Ravensbourne and Pool Rivers, followed by a road on the edge of an industrial estate, some back streets, some segregated cycleway on a main road, and finally to South Norwood Country Park, finishing at Croydon Sports Arena.

Quai skilfully handles other pathway barriers, plus roadway cambers and awkward gradients. But there is a pinch-point that defeats her, with two pipe-like metal obstacles Mark describes as “nautical”. The turn around these is impossibly tight for Quai’s trike and she has to lift it over instead.

The nature of her disability – damage to her pelvis and epilepsy – means she can walk on level ground but not on stairs. Many mobility-impaired people would get stuck here, and have to divert to a busy multi-lane road.

On the untarmaced, stony private roads of Beckenham’s Cator Estate and the rough gravel paths of South Norwood Country Park, Quai winces inwardly, each shudder causing her pelvic pain. A Cator Estate local tells Quai that cyclists are actually grateful for the surface, as it causes cars to slow down. But for Quai, at the end of almost two hours riding, the sensation is different: “I feel very, very shaken, like I’ve been put through a blender.”

There are other impediments that might not occur to non-disabled riders. At Fambridge Close, there’s no way around a step down from a crossing to the roadway. “That tiny bit that’s not a dropped kerb becomes quite problematic,” Quai explains. It’s similar at Kent House station – no dropped kerb as you come out of the pathway running underneath the platforms, and the one 20 metres to the left is imperfectly designed.

One perilous stretch, marked half for cyclists, half for pedestrians, is too narrow even for two-wheelers and the tarmac is ridged with tree roots. Along a main road are old-style segregated cycle lanes, with priority markings for vehicles crossing the lane from driveways.

The custodian of the National Cycle Network is walking and cycling charity Sustrans, although landowners are ultimately responsible for their own stretch. Sustrans has nine design principles for the network, including accessibility for cycles 2.8 metres long and 1.2 metres wide, and Sustrans volunteers and staff help landlords maintain and develop their routes.

There’s work still to be done to ensure all parts of the network can be used by every cyclist regardless of disability or cycle design, to meet the heightened expectations of 2021.

*****

Leaving Mark, Quai and I take a convoluted route to Brixton on public transport. The tram from Croydon Arena is a dream, apart from Quai having to steer wide around a pole to reach the wheelchair area. She tells me about recent journeys: long waits for elevators, no cycle rack with enough space for a trike at the Young Vic, her gratitude to a train driver who personally helped her alight.

“What’s quite special about this station is that everything is ramped,” she says as we walk down one of the gentle slopes to the platform at East Croydon. However, the train doors aren’t level with the platforms. Quai asks station staff which coach to board, and they get a ramp ready for her. Then a man on a mobility scooter and a woman on a wheeled walking frame arrive, meaning we quickly move as there’s only one wheelchair space per carriage vestibule. “The wheelchair takes priority over me and I take priority over the pushchair – that’s the way I see it,” says Quai.

It’s 20 or 30 minutes between entering the station and the train arriving, but the extra time means we get into the right position without a mad panic, while juggling hot drinks. I ask Quai if she’s ultra-organised by nature or if she’s had to learn it. She replies: “I’ve raised three children!”

She was diagnosed with epilepsy aged 20, following a seizure when giving birth to her first son. Doctors advised that the seizures were caused by stress, with lack of sleep and alcohol key factors – Quai, a keen performer at Carnival, adjusted her behaviour accordingly. But following the birth in 2005 of her daughter Rhiannon, she developed endometriosis, adenomyosis (in which the lining of the uterus grows into the muscular walls) and menorrhagia (constant menstrual bleeding).

“That resulted in blood transfusions, and the physical stress of this, and insomnia, triggered the epilepsy. So it’s been a domino effect,” she explains. “Rhiannon was the only child in her year allowed a mobile phone, because the Principal acknowledged these were extenuating circumstances. We’d role play: we’d be walking and I’d say, stop, I’ve just had a seizure. What are you going to do? She was miraculous: you should have heard her pronounce the medication I was on”.

Doctors finally consented to give Quai a hysterectomy after she turned 40 in 2017. The impact of her conditions has, however, left her pelvis permanently inflamed, while unexpected seizures still have a significant impact on her life. She works now as a tutor of children of all ages, which has been “wonderful” though it was “very difficult trying to get everyone to engage” during lockdown. She swims, which she finds highly therapeutic, is a passionate community advocate and campaigner, and gets strength from her devout Catholic faith.

Quai got into cycling after doing laps at Herne Hill Velodrome and taking part in “led rides” with Wheels for Wellbeing. “Before the trike, public transport was everything. I would often have to have someone accompany me as well. My epilepsy was far worse. Now I jump on a cycle and go. It’s very, very liberating. I can do a lot of reflecting and problem-solving. Also I’m not in a rush. I’m not racing anyone to get to any destination”.

To estimate the time journeys will take, she adds 50 per cent to the time apps estimate journeys will take, or doubles it. This doesn’t bother her. She also loves “gallivanting, cycling adventures” beyond London, planning meticulously to make sure the stations are accessible. But she has to put up with misunderstandings and long explanations on public transport as her disability isn’t visible.

Having alighted at London Bridge, we descend in a lift roomy enough for both Quai and the passenger on the mobility scooter to fit in. Quai walks and wheels her trike along the arcade to the Tube. She puts her pain levels at seven-and-a-half out of 10 but says, “I’m OK for now. But only because I have a really, really high pain threshold”.

On the London Bridge Tube concourse is a sign saying there is no step-free access to the platform, confusingly sited above a wheelchair ramp. When Quai checks with a station assistant, his first reaction is to state that only folding cycles are allowed on (Quai can laboriously fold the trike, but not when the backrest is fitted). Quai tells him, “it’s a mobility tricycle. It’s the equivalent of a walking stick,” and his tone immediately changes, directing her to the Borough Market entrance. At the next ticket gates, we go through the same routine.

Boarding a southbound Northern Line train, which is helpfully flush with a raised section of platform, Quai goes to the wheelchair-users spot and assertively but pleasantly asks a man on the tip-up seats if he would kindly move. She repeats this request to two women as we get on the Victoria Line at Stockwell (she has to say it to one of them twice). “You have to remember to be polite. Sir and Madam – it takes you a very long way,” she says.

The lift from platform to concourse at Brixton is narrow and slow. We wait for a passenger with lots of shopping bags to use it first. Then, for the separate lift to street level, we again wait again for it to complete a journey. On its return, even though Quai is now at the front of the queue, the lift doors start to close before she’s fully inside. “If you’re only going to have one [elevator], it should be twice that size” Quai says.

*****

Quai can cycle home from Brixton station in five minutes, but she reckons it could take her ten after the exertions of the journey. She lives within the Railton Road Low Traffic Neighbourhood, near disabled campaigner Sofia Sheakh, whose application for judicial review of the LTN was rejected by the High Court in June. Quai is dispirited by the polarisation over LTNs, where “you are only permitted to agree or disagree. I am pro-cycle, but we can’t ban cars, because they have their place.”

She would like all wheelchair users, and others with mobility problems who might not be Blue Badge holders, to be exempt from LTNs. For the benefit of the council, she is taking photos of barriers in Lambeth, which are causing difficulties for users of adapted cycles.

When I ring Quai the week following our outing, she tells me she crashed out after the long ride (“I will do that, I will switch my mobile off, unplug the intercom”), but adds that she’s just returned from a wonderful day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon – Quai loves being around water.

She’s starting a blog about her cycling experiences, at the urging of a Wheels for Wellbeing campaigner. She hopes other disabled people will read her warts and all account “and say ‘Oh well, I could go on the road too’”.

Wheels for Wellbeing’s Mark Browne says: “What I find inspiring about Quai is that access to inclusive transport has given her freedom, but not through the car. She’s proving wrong the concept that as a disabled person you’re limited in opportunity. Once the perception is ‘I can get 25 miles away using a cycle and the integrated transport network,’ it opens things up”.

But while Quai has been joyfully expanding her horizons, some people worry that there have been rushed decisions and narrow thinking about transport in response to Covid, which have left most disabled Londoners worse off. As Quai says: “We’re often ignored – we don’t have a voice, because no-one ever asks our opinions”.

All photographs by Joshua Neicho. In his next piece about the transport challenges facing disabled people in London, Joshua will examine the arguments about the impacts of Covid-related street design changes.

Categories: Analysis

Tags: Brixton, disability, London Underground, transport

Westminster councillor backs ‘al fresco’ Soho, but London Assembly warned of wider risks to West End recovery

7th September 20219th September 2021

Staff shortages and vaccine passports are among impediments to Central London's post-Covid revival, AMs were told

Charles Wright

Outdoor dining in Soho hasn’t been scrapped for good, Westminster Council’s cabinet member for business, licensing and planning Matthew Green (pictured) has told the London Assembly.

The council was in the eye of a storm when it announced last week that the temporary road closures which had enabled “al fresco” eating and drinking in Soho, saving “countless businesses”, will be removed at the end of September.

“The geography of Soho has always been challenging, and the scheme was never intended to be permanent,” Green said at an Assembly economy committee session on London’s night-time economy. “We can’t keep extending temporary schemes ad infinitum.”

“We do want to see al fresco in Soho continuing,” Green added. “It has been a crucial lifeline for businesses, without the normal level of consultation you would want, because we needed to support those businesses there and then. But 3,000 people live there as well, and you do need to balance that out.”

The council would now be taking time to “bring residents and businesses together” to “co-design” a longer-term wider improvement scheme for the area, he said, “hopefully putting in something that is not temporary, to deliver al fresco in Soho for years to come.”

Green also went into bat for Westminster’s much-derided Marble Arch Mound, the artificial hill intended to attract visitors whose costs almost doubled to £6 million.

“I will happily defend its objective,” he said. “There is no such thing as a post-Covid playbook. We are all doing what we can to increase footfall. It is essential that all levels of government do what we can to draw people back into central London.”

While Westminster was planning £150 million-worth of investment in Oxford Street, according to Green, there was less good news for the capital’s night-time economy as a whole, Assembly Members heard.

Continuing staff shortages and uncertainties about future restrictions, including the introduction of “vaccination passport” requirements for nightclubbers, meant night-time businesses are still in a “hugely challenging” environment, Michael Kill from trade body the Night Time Industries Association warned.

Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi confirmed at the weekend that the vaccine passport system for entry to night clubs would be introduced at the end of this month.

The impact of the pandemic, along with experienced employees leaving after the Brexit vote, has left employers dealing with falls in staffing numbers of 20 per cent compared with pre-Covid levels, Kill said.

He added that the staffing crisis, particularly of security personal, meant less inexperienced people taking up the available jobs, leaving businesses unprepared for taking advantage of increased custom when students return to London’s universities or the forthcoming Halloween and Christmas periods.

Kill warned too of the continuing impact of the suspension of the London Underground’s Night Tube service. “London has great infrastructure, but we haven’t activated it at the time the businesses are going live,” he said. “Every day, every weekend that goes on for is putting people off.”

Night time businesses are now expecting full recovery to be delayed for up to five years, Kill said, with concern that night clubs could be “scapegoated” despite being “at the forefront of successful mitigation”, while vaccination requirements for staff could further hinder recruitment.

Aslo at the meeting, City Hall “Night Czar” Amy Lamé spoke of wider recruitment issues. She said Sadiq Khan has continued to lobby for devolved immigration powers for London, with “changes to visa rules to allow businesses to fill vacancies where they have acute shortages”.

The Mayor’s “Let’s Do London” campaign, designed to boost domestic “staycation” tourism, has so far had most impact in the south east of England, she added, but it is expected to have impacts further afield, with surveys showing two-thirds of residents living outside London intending to visit before the capital by the end of the year.

Categories: News

Tags: Amy Lamé, Brexit, London Assembly, Soho, Westminster Council

Adam Tyndall: London’s international travel sector needs post-furlough support

6th September 202117th September 2021

As a key sector of the national economy taking a long time to recover, the government should provide additional measures to help it through

Adam Tyndall

As the UK’s so-called Freedom Day approached, the furlough scheme was in retreat. Figures released by the Office for National Statistics show that in June 2021, 1.9 million people were on furlough, more than half a million fewer than the month before and the lowest number since the scheme was launched just over a year earlier. As hospitality and retail have started to recover, young people in particular have found opportunities to get back into work and redundancies have not increased significantly as the scheme has become less generous to employers.

At the beginning of June, 57 per cent of those working in air passenger transport were on furlough, with hotels and travel agencies also among the top five industry groups still receiving support. While fully vaccinated European and American travellers have reason to cheer the announcement of quarantine-free arrivals into the UK, travel to the US from the UK, one of the most profitable markets for the aviation industry, remains impossible for the vast majority, and only once bilateral travel expands can the market hope to recover. Meanwhile, many European-focused travel businesses only turn a profit in the warmest months of each year and after a heavily suppressed summer are facing the prospect of a long, unsupported, winter.

The Treasury is rightly proud of the money spent and the effort made to protect as many UK jobs as possible, and most analysts agree that the furlough scheme has prevented a sharp increase in unemployment. However, the region with the most significant international links is now the region with the highest unemployment rate: London. Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising when one considers that, to take one example, half of all retail revenue in the West End comes from international visitors in normal times.

We do not know how long it will take for international travel demand to recover, but even the most optimistic would not bet on anything earlier than Summer 2023. Of course, central government job support cannot last indefinitely. But to remove the furlough scheme without a strategy for the most affected sectors risks undoing the Treasury’s good work over the last 15 months.

Ministers should overcome their resistance to sector-specific support plans, on the basis that it is now clear which sectors are likely to suffer the long-tail impacts of the pandemic. Support measures for international travel could include extending the furlough scheme for the sector, but there are other steps that can be taken too. Some of these are immediate, such as reducing the cost of tests for travel. This could be done by allowing NHS tests to be used for international travel, as they already are for domestic business and leisure activities. Others need urgent, energetic, attention but will necessarily take time to bear fruit, such as negotiating a bilateral deal to reopen transatlantic travel.

We cannot be complacent about the capital’s magnetism as a global hub for tourism and business, either in the coming months while travel remains heavily suppressed, or in the coming decades as a post-pandemic “global Britain” charts a new course for itself in the world. Our competitors across Europe and beyond are investing in their international travel capacity. They are ready to feed off our inaction. If the government fails to provide adequate support and a real strategy for the sector, thousands of jobs will be at risk and they might never come back.

Image from Heathrow Twitter feed. Adam Tyndall is Programme Director for Connectivity with business group London First.

Categories: Comment

Tags: aviation, COVID-19 London, transport

Charles Wright: What is the future for the streets of Soho?

5th September 202111th September 2021

Conservative Westminster Council is coming under competing pressures from local businesses and resdients - and from Labour

Charles Wright

Hard on the heels of the Mound debacle, Westminster Council is again under the cosh, this time for its decision to put an end to the temporary street closures which have enabled “al fresco dining” in Soho since April this year.

The widely-welcomed scheme created more than 16,000 additional covers across Westminster, supporting some 80,000 jobs in hospitality and saving “countless businesses” in Soho, according to the council.

But the partial road closures which made it possible will end at the end of September, the council confirmed last week. “We always said interventions such as road closures and barriers were temporary,” a spokesperson said, adding that businesses could still apply for pavement licences “where there is space on the footway”.

Cue protests from business owners and landlords wanting al fresco to continue for longer, but something of a wider pile-on too, with tweeters calling the scheme “one of the few good things” to come out of the pandemic and the decision to end it “utter madness”, “irresponsible” and more.

Residents expressing concerns about the scheme were dismissed as “Nimbys” and told, “You chose to live in Soho, what did you expect?”, while the local Labour Party, which had echoed those concerns and called for “careful and sensitive” balancing of the interests of business and residents, was accused of “blind oppositionalism”.

It’s a lot more complex than that, says Patrick Lilley, who is standing for Labour in the West End ward, which covers Soho, in next May’s council elections. “I think most people misunderstand the West End. It’s lazy and rude to tell our residents to move out of their homes.”

Plenty of people live in Soho, some 3,000 in fact, a resident population which has doubled since 2001. The wider West End ward is home to 12,000 people, and more than 300,000 people live in the capital’s Central Activities Zone, covering the West End, the City and part of the Isle of Dogs, which is up by nearly 30 per cent in seven years.

It’s not all high-end or hospitality offerings either. Soho has 800 social rent homes and a diverse mix of shops, offices, theatres and creative business as well as the bars and restaurants which have been the focus of the al fresco experiment. Food and beverage businesses account for 20 per cent of jobs in the area, according to the Soho Society’s “Vision for Soho 2021-2040”.

“The needs of residents as well as those of our many businesses both need listening to,” says Lilley (pictured below). “Our residents do want to see the area prosper. The vast majority have lived happily alongside our gay bars, restaurants and theatres for years. We all love Soho. I think I am the first person to run for council who has a background in LGBT club and event promotion. No one could fairly say I am anti-fun!”

But the significant change that the road closures have brought about – “too much too quickly” – has been different, he says. “We have a poorly managed street festival that threatens to drive residents out and has possibly harmed public health, an epidemic of street fouling, noise and illegal after-parties that carry on into the night outside residents’ windows or in Airbnb-style flats – not the vision of continental al fresco it was touted as!”

So what now, as the future of “Streetspace” schemes, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and al fresco dining continues to be debated across the capital in the context of the need to avert a “car-led” recovery and, more parochially but no less significantly, next year’s council elections?

Westminster Council has not actually closed the door to extended al fresco schemes, with consultation underway on whether the arrangements should continue in Covent Garden, Pimlico, St John’s Wood High Street and elsewhere “if local people agree”. There will also be consultation later this year on a new, wider “Vision for Soho”, which could include provision for outdoor dining.

There’s little flesh on the bones of the vision as yet, but it will, according to the council, specifically align with the Soho Neighbourhood Plan, devised jointly by residents and businesses over the last five years, which will become a statutory planning document following its approval in a local referendum last week.

The Plan won’t satisfy everyone; it argues for Soho to become “pedestrian friendly” rather than pedestrianised, but it also offers its support for walking and cycling alongside car-free development, a diverse business offer and more housing “in all tenures”.

It’s a significant recognition of a growing consensus, as set out last year in Centre for London research on central London, that a “city centre that balances the interests and needs of residents, businesses and visitors is desirable”, with the “stewardship” role played by stable, long-term residential communities increasingly important for city centre success.

Perhaps that is all the more so now, as London struggles to attract its commuters and overseas tourists back. In other words, as Lilley says, the city centre, its population already growing pre-pandemic, needs “more people to come and live here, not just pop in for a few hours.”

Criticism of concerned Soho-dwellers can be unfair, according to Jack Brown, co-author of the Centre for London research and lecturer in London Studies at King’s College. “Not all are affluent and footloose, and this change in dining and drinking practices has been fairly sudden and unexpected. The term “Nimby” is thrown around too easily these days, in my view,” he says.

“The impact of al fresco dining on permanent residents needs to be at least acknowledged and mitigated against where possible,” Brown continues. “Competing needs must be balanced. Hospitality has gone through hell, but residents’ needs must be taken into account as well – they haven’t necessarily had the most wonderful year either.

“Residents do play an important stewardship role, from ensuring an area’s maintenance to something as simple as making sure that its streets are never entirely silent and empty. Diversity of function, people and place is what makes the capital special – it would be a shame if we were to lose that in the West End.”

Comparisons with Manhattan may be instructive too. A Westminster Property Association meeting earlier this month heard that greater business resilience in the centre of New York had been underpinned by higher residential densities. “Approximately three times more people live within a short walk or cycle of the centre of New York compared to London,” reported WPA economic adviser Alexander Jan. “A shift to stay at home working has arguably been less damaging than for central London.”

Neighbourhoods such as Manhattan’s Wall Street financial district had already been attracting more residents and more diverse uses pre-Covid, according to academic urbanist Richard Florida, with the district’s population swelling from 24,000 at the turn of the century to more than 60,000 today. But cities need to be “intentional about how these business districts evolve,” Florida warns, to ensure that affordable housing and opportunities for a wide range of businesses are provided.

How Westminster, and the rest of the capital, manage that evolution will be an increasingly important question over the coming period.

Categories: Analysis

Tags: COVID-19 London, Soho, West End, Westminster Council

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 208: A very special cricket match in Walworth

4th September 202129th May 2023

A major sporting event for disabled people that took place in the 18th century was just one episode in the exceptional history of a cricket ground in south London

Victor Keegan

On 16 August, 1796, one of the most remarkable games of cricket ever played took place before “an immense concourse of people” in what was called Aram’s New Ground in Montpelier Gardens, off the Walworth Road near Elephant and Castle.

It lasted for two days and was played between the Chelsea Hospital Pensioners and the Greenwich Pensioners. What made it unusual was that all eleven members of the Greenwich team had only one leg and those of the Chelsea team, one arm.

The famous match started at about 10.00 am. The Greenwich team was first to bat and scored an astonishing 93 runs. Play was interrupted in the afternoon, when the Chelsea team was batting, after the gates to the ground were forced open by the enormous number of people trying to gain admittance. Parts of the fencing broke and a shed collapsed under the weight of people sitting on top of it.

According to a report in the Hampshire Chronicle, the game was resumed at 6.00 pm and the Chelsea team completed its innings with a score of got 42. The Grrenwich team then “commenced their second innings, and six were bowled out after they got 60, so that left off 111 more than those with one arm”. The match was supposed to last for one day but, partly because of the disruptions, spilled into 17 August.

The event was a wonderful early example of people with disabilities engaging in sporting activities, though one report said that five wooden legs were broken during the game, which was apparently played for a purse of a thousand guineas – a lot of money in those days.

Aram’s New Ground (named after a George Aram) was created in the same year as the match took place and the Montpelier Cricket Club, which was based there, was founded at around the same time. The ground hosted major Monteplier matches for the next ten years, including one against the Marylebone Cricket Club – a rare example of the MCC playing the MCC.

The entance to Montpelier Gardens (arrowed in map above) and its cricket pitch would have been close to the junction of Walworth Road and today’s Fielding Street (then called Olney Street) after the railway bridge – roughly where the bend in Fielding Street meets Langdale Close and Olney Road today.

Cricket was also played in fields to the north of Montpelier Gardens, which were the grounds of the Bee Hive pub at the end of Carter Place (formerly Carter Street), also off the Walworth Road. To complicate matters further Montpelier was often known as the “Bee Hive Ground” because it was so near the actual one. The Bee Hive pub is still there, though closed at the time of writing.

The Montpelier club went on to make a big contribution to the future of cricket in England. The full story is a little misty, but it is clear that in around 1845 its members were prime movers in the formation of Surrey County Cricket Club.

William Houghton, one of Montpelier’s presidents, found a suitable venue for the proposed new club on a market garden in Vauxhall, which we know today as The Oval. Houghton negotiated a 31-year lease from the Duchy of Cornwall, and soon set about building a cricket ground on the land with the help of 10,000 turfs extracted from Tooting Common.

The Surrey County Cricket Club came into exisitence on 22 August, 1845, at the Horns Tavern in south London, when around 100 cricket clubs represented there agreed “that a Surrey club be now formed”. It has never looked back, even though some nostalgics might wish it was called the Montpelier Cricket Club so that the MCC could, at least in theory, still play the MCC.

All previous instalments of Vic Keegan’s Lost London can be found here and a book containing many of them can be bought here. Follow Vic on Twitter.

Categories: Culture, Lost London

Tags: Elephant and Castle, The Oval, Walworth Road