Greenwich Historical Society

Greenwich on Film: Pool of London

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The action of Pool of London, Ealing Studios’ great film noir released seventy years ago this week, takes place over a London weekend. “The Dunbar out of Rotterdam bound for the Pool” passes through Tower Bridge on a Friday afternoon and the events that follow revolve around merchant seaman Dan (Bonar Colleano) and his Jamaican shipmate Johnny (Earl Cameron), the genuine affection of the friendship between them is established from the outset. Petty smuggling swiftly escalates to a diamond robbery and is played out against a background of real locations that give the film its authenticity and subsequent importance as a record of a lost London. This continued the highly successful approach Ealing established with Hue and Cry (1947), the definitive cinematic representation of bombed London, and followed with It Always Rains On Sunday (1947), Passport To Pimlico (1949) and The Blue Lamp (1950).

As Johnny unwittingly becomes embroiled in Dan’s misadventure, he experiences racism along the way but in each case these encounters serve to illustrate the ignorance and ugliness of the perpetrators: the hostile theatre Commissionaire (Laurence Naismith); the parasitic denizens of an all-night drinking dive, and Dan’s fair-weather girlfriend Maisie, a highly polished performance of brassy self-centredness by Moira Lister. Maisie’s venomous relationship with her younger sister (Joan Dowling) transcends sibling rivalry into undiluted hostility. When Maisie trips over her sister’s discarded footwear her complaint “Why don’t you put your shoes away? I nearly fell.” is met with the lightning riposte “Won’t be the first time!” In direct contrast is Sally (Renée Asherson) the wistful secretary at the Steamship Office, unlucky in love, who provides the film with its moral compass.

The early scenes on shore depicting the stage act of Vernon the Gentleman Acrobat (the incomparable Max Adrian) were filmed at the Queen’s Theatre in Poplar High Street. Millicent Rose provides a vivid record of a real performance at this theatre in The East End of London (The Cresset Press, 1951) observing that the aisles were strewn with peanut shells for “it is a long-established custom to crack and eat peanuts throughout the performance, and coming to the second house on a Saturday night, one finds the circle already deep in husks.”

Johnny strikes up a friendship with Pat (Susan Shaw) the cashier at the theatre box office, two lonely people thrown together by chance. Pat appears to be the least complicated and happiest of the female characters and her role is pivotal to the film’s significance as theirs is the first inter-racial relationship to be depicted in a British film. She and Johnny are undoubtedly the most attractive people in the film, providing the focus of its warmth and humanity and offering a ray of hope in the humdrum drabness. After an evening at the dance hall they spend Sunday sightseeing. Initially at the Stone Gallery at St Paul’s Cathedral, placing them in the City at the time of the robbery: “Look! Isn’t that a man climbing on that roof?” Afterwards they take the boat to Greenwich and we see them in the cavernous wonder that was the National Maritime Museum’s lost, lamented Neptune Hall (demolished 1996) providing an exhilarating reminder of what a proper museum once looked like. This cabinet of nautical curiosities is crammed with glass cases, ship models and binnacles and the location is deliberate chosen to reveal Johnny as a romantic philosopher, steeped in the lore and traditions of the sea, emphasised by a close-up of the towering baroque magnificence of the figurehead Ajax (1809). Passing through the colonnades of The Queen’s House, with the Naval College behind them, they walk up to the Observatory. The domed onion roof of the Great Equatorial Building is seen as a bare iron skeleton as its papier maché covering was destroyed when a V1 flying bomb fell on Greenwich Park in 1944. Here, with General Wolfe behind them, they muse on the mysteries of longitude and latitude.

“The Greenwich Meridian, but what does it mean?” Pat asks.

“It means that everything starts from here, goes right round the world and comes back here.” Johnny replies, reflecting: “You know, when you’re at the wheel of a ship at night far out at sea and nothing else to do, you think about a lot of things you don’t understand. You wonder why one man is born white and another isn’t. And how about God himself? What colour is he? And the stars seem so close and the world so small in comparison with all the other worlds above you, it doesn’t seem to matter much how you are born.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does you know. Maybe one day it won’t any more, but it still does.”

These were powerful words in 1951 and Earl Cameron’s performance had a profound effect on the distinguished film critic C.A. Lejeune, whose review of the film appeared in The Observer on 26 February 1951: “One thing comes shining out of Pool of London and that is the performance of Earl Cameron… he makes full use of every glancing minute… I can say with truth that Mr Cameron’s touching performance remains for me the best memory of Pool of London, and left me with deeper thoughts about the colour problem than I have ever had before.”

The authenticity of Johnny’s character can be ascribed to the fact that Earl Cameron was once a merchant seaman himself. Born in Bermuda in 1917, he arrived in London in 1939 experiencing racism whilst attempting to find a job (doors were slammed in his face), until he was eventually engaged as a dishwasher at an hotel, before he found himself on stage, at an afternoon’s notice, in the musical comedy Chu Chin Chow in 1941. Although not a trained actor he worked in the theatre throughout the forties. During this time he was proud to have had the privilege of being taught diction and voice training by Amanda Ira Aldridge (1866-1956), the daughter of the celebrated pioneering African American Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge (1807-1867) who achieved great success on the nineteenth century London stage. Cameron joked “that some of the colour might have rubbed off a little bit on me”. Pool of London was his film debut and Cameron secured the part after telephoning Ealing Studios to enquire about the possibility of a role in their forthcoming feature Where No Vultures Fly. Instead he was immediately invited to an interview with the director Basil Dearden at which Cameron lied about his age, stating himself to be 26 when he was actually 32, suggesting his moustache made him look older. Dearden was impressed by what he saw, although it took Cameron three screen tests before he was able to tone down the loudness of his declamatory theatrical delivery to suit the more intimate medium of film. Once this was mastered, he proved himself to be a natural film actor and the performance he gives as Johnny is one of great sensitivity.

Pool of London was not Ealing’s first exploration into the issues of race in Britain: The Proud Valley (1940) made a decade earlier is an extraordinary film with a strong political message and a powerful performance by Paul Robeson as a sailor in a Welsh mining village who motivates his community in the wake of a pit disaster. Robeson regarded this as his favourite film and retained a strong bond with the Welsh miners for the rest of his life. Both films are notable as presenting un-stereotypical depictions of men of colour who are accepted within their communities. Cameron stated that generally speaking he had not experienced prejudice whilst working in theatre and film industry in Britain and although the environment at Ealing Studios was entirely white he was treated with courtesy and kindness. He eschewed a career in Hollywood, a place he believed to be far more overtly racist and which he thought would have destroyed him. Cameron received favourable notices for Pool of London, and his roles in subsequent films, including The Heart Within (1957), Sapphire (1959) and Flame in The Streets (1961), form a significant body of work as pioneering cinematic depictions of the experiences of black people in Britain and the problems they endured. Earl Cameron continued working well into his nineties and died in 2020 aged 102. The heartfelt and sincere tributes paid to him recognised his unique position and the importance of his role in the advancement of performers of colour.

The idea for Pool of London came from John Eldridge and the scriptwriter originally assigned to the film was Ealing stalwart T.E.B. Clarke. The film’s original premise concerned the theft of gold bullion from the Bank of England and Clarke hit upon the idea of turning the gold bars into Eiffel Tower paperweights to enable them to be smuggled out of London incognito. Clarke was amused by the comedic possibilities and worked the idea into a three-page outline that radically changed the nature of the film.  When he revealed this unexpected development, asking whether the river aspect of the plot could be dropped, the head of Ealing Studios Sir Michael Balcon erupted in fury. He took Clarke off the project, replacing him with a different writer Jack Whittingham, but allowed him to develop his idea further with the director Charles Crichton. The result, of course, was The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) one of Ealing’s most celebrated comedies for which Clarke received an Oscar for the screenplay. Alfie Bass is the link between the two films, appearing as a member of the gang of criminals in both.

James Robertson Justice plays Chief Engine Room Officer Trotter, resolutely staying aboard the Dunbar by retreating to the safety and seclusion of his cabin in company with three bottles of brandy and The Oxford Book of English Verse. He proffers this damning critique of the Capital he avoids: “You wonder perhaps why I never set foot in this accursed city. Behold from afar it gleams like a jewel, but walk within the shadow of its walls and what do you find? Filth, squalor, misery.”

Despite his denouncement, and notwithstanding the desperation, loneliness and need for self-preservation of the characters represented, London is not as squalid as he supposes. In fact, what is striking is, despite the post war deprivations in the aftermath of the Blitz, just how clean the city is, and it certainly appears to be far better kept than it is today. The water cart dousing the pavements of Tower Bridge at midnight is a visible manifestation of metropolitan ablutions; elsewhere the play of light on the wet cobbles and the light catching the kerbstones give the streets the impression of having been varnished. The gleaming quality extends to the frontage of a pub, the glossy ceiling of the café when the job is planned and the sparkling white tiles in the Rotherhithe Tunnel.

Great credit for the stunning visual appearance of the film must go to its director of photography Gordon Dines who achieved a lustrous luminosity. The documentary technique is employed to great effect, exploiting the aesthetic qualities of cranes and derricks, sails and ropes, barges and lighters and the ever constant movement of the play of the water with its waves, wakes and washes, emphasising that the River itself is to be the true star of the film: the working river, flanked by wharves and warehouses, with Tower Bridge looming large overall. Many scenes are shot in near silhouette and the dramatic shadows cast by ropes and ironwork bear favourable comparison with the photographs of Bill Brandt.

Pool of London was made in 1950 and released in February 1951 yet there is no inkling of the impending Festival of Britain “improvements”. The architectural fabric shown here essentially remains a nineteenth century streetscape, the Victorian survival. For Ealing Studios appreciated (what most politicians and town planners have signally failed to grasp) that London was a vernacular city and authentically represented it as such on celluloid, realising that the shops, pubs, cafes, theatres and back streets of terraced houses, in addition to more set piece locations such as Shad Thames, Tooley Street, and Leadenhall and Borough Markets, were far more representative of its true character and recognisable to its audience who appreciated their familiarity.

For the rooms inside these buildings, the film’s art director Jim Morahan instinctively understood the vernacular interior and his settings are infused with an eye for detail and richness that add great interest and depth, whether ship’s cabin, theatre dressing room or public bar. Nowhere is his artistry more apparent than in Maisie’s kitchen, replete with cast iron range and gas stove, with its peeling wallpaper, washing drying on the airer, milk bottles standing on the dresser, gaudy vases on the mantelpiece and proliferation of crockery and domestic detritus. This is just as it should be, for after all, Ealing invented kitchen sink drama one rainy Sunday in Bethnal Green in 1947.

© Horatio Blood 2021

Memories of National Service

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In September 2018, fifty-five years after the final intake of men completed their National Service, Greenwich Historical Society hosted a very special and memorable evening of shared reminiscences.

Some of Greenwich’s boys of the old brigade gathered together to tell us their experiences of conscription. A contrasting view was presented by a conscientious objector.

It was a powerful, amusing, poignant evening that was curated and introduced by GHS President Anthony Cross. We published the transcript in our subsequent journal but, with the permission of those present, we make available the audio from evening so you can listen again or anew to a very special event.

Please be aware that this audio file does contain some swearing.

00:00 Intro
10:00 David Drummond
19:30 John Cox
33:38 Peter Kent
48:20 Adam Pollock
1:01:19 Ian Gordon

Nelson lying in state at Greenwich

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Lord Nelson’s Coffin. Courtesy Anthony Cross.

In January 1806, the body of Lord Nelson arrived at Greenwich. Over three extraordinary days – the 5th, 6th and 7th – the body lay in state within the upper chamber of the Painted Hall. Here are the reports from The Times newspaper of those three days.

Day 1

On Saturday the preparations having been completed at Greenwich Hospital, a few personages of high respectability and distinction were admitted, in the evening, to view the body of Lord NELSON lying in state; amongst whom were, her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, and suite, who remained there several hours, in melancholy contemplation of this solemn and affecting scene: and yesterday morning, at eleven o’clock, the Great Hall was thrown open for the admission of the public.

Before eight in the morning, every avenue from the Metropolis to Greenwich was crowded with vehicles of every description till past eleven, exhibiting a scene of confusion beyond description; but the approach to Greenwich hospital Gate, a little before that hour, must baffle the conception of those who did not witness it. When the gate was thrown open, above ten thousand pressed forward for admittance.

After the passage of the outer gate, the entrance to the Great Hall was guarded by a party of the Greenwich and Deptford Volunteer Association, and parties of midshipmen and sailors armed with pikes. With such impetuosity did the crowd rush towards the entrance of the Great Hall, as to bear down all opposition, notwithstanding the guard used every means in their power to preserve order, and to prevent accidents.
The arrangements of the solemnity were as follows:-

In the funeral saloon, high above the corpse a canopy of black velvet was suspended, richly festooned with gold, and the festoons ornamented with the chelenk, or plume of triumph, presented to his Lordship by the GRAND SEIGNIOR, after the ever memorable victory of the Nile. It was also decorated with his Lordships coronet, and a view of the stern of the San Josef, the Spanish Admiral’s ship, already ‘quartered’ in his arms.

On the back field, beneath the canopy, was emblazoned an escutcheon of his Lordship’s arms; the helmet surmounted by a naval crown, and enriched with the trident and palm branch in saltier – motto; “Palman qui meruit ferat.” Also his Lordship’s shield, ornamented with silver stars appropriately interspersed; with the motto – “Tria juncta in uno;” and surmounting the whole upon a gold field, embraced by a golden wreath, was inscribed in sable characters, the word TRAFALGAR, commemorative of the proudest of his great achievements.

The Rev. Mr. SCOTT, the Chaplain of the Victory, and who in consequence of his Lordship’s last injunctions, attended his remains from the moment of his death, sat as chief mourner in an elbow chair at the head of the coffin.
At the foot of the coffin stood a pedestal, covered with black velvet, richly fringed with alternate black and yellow, and supporting a helmet surmounted by a naval crown, ornamented with the chelenk or triumphal plume, with models richly gilt, and his Lordship’s shield, gauntlet, and sword.

Ten mourners were placed three on each side of the chief, and one at each corner of the coffin, all in deep mourning, with black scarfs, their hair full powdered, in bags. These were appointed from the Office of the LORD CHAMBERLAIN, as usual on similar occasions.

Ten banners, elevated on staves, and emblazoned with various quarterings of his Lordship’s arms and heraldic dignities, each bearing it appropriate motto, were suspended towards the coffin, five on each side.

Parties of the Greenwich and Deptford Volunteers attended in the Great Hall, to preserve order and regulate the ingress and egress of the spectators.
A railing in form of a crescent, covered with black, inclosed the funereal saloon from the Great Hall, by the elipses of which, from right to left, the spectators approached and receded from this solemn spectacle, and from the foot of the stairs ascending from the Great Hall.

A partition of boards, six feet in height, covered with black cloth, extended to the entrance, and separated the two avenues. Both the Hall and Saloon were entirely surrounded at the top by rows of silver sconces, each with two wax lights, and between each two an escutcheon of his Lordship’s armorial dignities.

The immense numbers who pressed for admittance, and the earnestness of the officers in attendance to accommodate as many as possible, occasioned the successive parties, who were fortunate enough to obtain admission, to be pushed onward with such rapidity, as to afford none of them the opportunity of having more than a short and transient glance of the solemn object of their curiosity.

Perhaps, it is no exaggeration to add, that above twenty thousand persons were unable to gratify themselves. The doors were closed at four o’clock: they are to be opened again at eight this morning.

Day 2

Notwithstanding the immense number of people who visited Greenwich on Sunday, to pay their tribute of melancholy respect at the temporary shrine of the departed Hero, thousands of who were gratified by admission to the solemn spectacle, and many other thousands of whom went away unsatisfied, as finding an entrance wholly impracticable; still the concourse there yesterday was even greater than on Sunday; and from the first time of opening the side wickets of the great Western Gate, at nine in the morning, through each subsequent opening, until their close, at four in the afternoon, the rushing torrent of the multitude was so impetuous, that numbers experienced disasters similar to those which on Sunday were so numerous, and in many instances so severely unfortunate: many were crushed in a dreadful manner, in the competition for entrance through passages so narrow; others were beaten down by the impetuosity of those who rushed forward from behind, and were severely trampled – in many cases, almost to death.

Shoes, pattens, muffs, tippets, coat-sleeves, skirts of pelise and gowns, without number, were despoiled from their owners, and trampled in the mud; and though the guards were more numerous, more vigilant and peremptory, than on Sunday, still it was scarcely possible to check the impetuosity of the multitude, or prevent the entrances to the Great Hall from being carried by force.Within however, all was conducted with order.The Volunteers posted in the area of the elevated saloon, round the farther end of which the spectators passed to view the coffin, continued to urge onward the multitude at a quick pace; so that none could indulge more than a short and sorrowful glance at that mournful casket which contained, perhaps, the most brilliant of all the gems that ever decorated the naval crown of England.

The distinctions of rank were forgotten in the general avidity to pay the last melancholy honours to the hero’s remains; and though curiosity be the ruling passion of John Bull, it was, on this occasion, marked by feelings that do honour to his heart. The votaries of Saint Monday evinced they were no strangers to “the luxury of exalted woe,” and that they could participate in the sorrow and veneration manifested by their country for the great and justly honoured subject of general regret.Amongst the visitants of yesterday were numbers of high rank and fashion: her Grace of DEVONSHIRE; and many of her noble friends were in the throng. A vast number of Military Officers also attended to pay their last tribute of respect to departed heroism, and to contemplate the noblest stimulus to gallant deeds.

Day 3

Yesterday morning, at nine o’clock, the wickets of the great Western gate of Greenwich Hospital were thrown open, for the admission of spectators to the Great Hall and Funeral Saloon.The many serious accidents on Sunday and Monday, resulting from the want of better system and regulation outside the gates, suggested to the Governors the necessity of adopting some more effectual steps to prevent further mischief; they had, therefore, obtained from London a party of the Kings Life Guards, who were posted in different divisions at the west and South avenues, and rendered very essential service the whole day, in checking the eager impetuosity of the multitude in pressing for admission at the wickets, from which most of the former accidents had proceeded.

The wickets were, as before, opened at successive times, for the admission of fresh divisions of spectators, as the former had been gratified with a view of the solemnities; and though the pressure on those occasions was unavoidably rapid and violent, no serious accident, that we could learn, occurred.The steps leading up to the entrance of the Great Hall, was the principle scene of contest; and curiosity, the ruling passion of the fair sex, rising superior to all the suggestions of feminine timidity, many ladies pushed into the crowd, and were so severely squeezed, that several of them fainted away, and were carried off, apparently senseless, to the colonnade; we were, however, highly gratified to learn, that they were rather frightened than hurt, and that no injury occurred more serious than a degree of pressure not altogether so gentle as could be wished. In general, however, the result of better regulation was obvious; for, although the multitude was even more numerous than on the preceding days, and the attendance of fashionable personages much greater, order was much better kept, and tumultuous violence scarcely anywhere apparent.

Some trivial alterations had taken place in the solemn arrangements of the Funeral Saloon. The sable pall was cast from the coffin, which was fully exposed to view, and upon it was placed the cushion supporting the coronet, with two armorial shields, properly emblazoned. The six mourners, who before were seated at the head of the coffin to the right and left of the canopy, now took their places, three on each side of the coffin, outside the benches, whereon the tressels stood, and facing inwards; the effect was much more solemn and impressive.

This was the only thing novel in the interior arrangements; but a novelty, not without very considerable and forcible impression, occurred outside the Hall, which, as an appendage of the melancholy ceremonies, demands mention.A little before four o’clock, the brig Elizabeth and Mary, from off Chatham, hove in sight, from the Terrace, on the River, having on board a chosen band of Seamen and Marines from the brave crew of the Victory, who are intended to fall into the Funeral Procession.Of their old and gallant Commander. Lieutenant BROWN, their Commanding Officer came on shore, to take orders for their proceeding.

The St. George’s Jack. At the mast-head of the brig, was lowered half mast high, as a funeral salute, which was immediately returned by the colours of all the ships in sight from the Terrace.The Lieutenant Governor of Greenwich then proceeded to inform Lord Hood of the arrival of this brave band: when the gallant Admiral, accompanied by a party of the River Fencibles, armed with their pikes, proceeded to the North –gate, next the River; and ordered the Heroes of Trafalgar to be brought on shore. The brig then hauled up alongside the quay, and the brave tars jumped ashore amidst the warm greetings and grateful acclamations of the surrounding throng. Alas! How different the sensations of those gallant fellows from what they would have been, under the brave NELSON’S eye, in boarding the deck of an enemy.

They consisted of forty-six Seamen and fourteen Marines, each bearing his hammock; and if they were a fair specimen of their messmates in the Victory at Trafalgar, that triumph is the less wonderful; for each seemed a true bred cub of the British Lion, and most of them bore the honourable scars they received on the day their lamented Leader fell in the cause of the country.Upon their passing within the gates, they were ordered by Lord HOOD, who approached them, to stow their baggage in the Royal Charlotte Ward of the Hospital; after which they should be gratified with a view of their heroic Leader’s body lying in state, which, however, he was sure, would be to them no pleasant sight. The brave fellows bowed assent to this remark; they then proceeded to stow their hammocks in the ward appointed, and were afterwards escorted by a part of the military to the Great Hall, when they were conducted to the Saloon, where the remains of their beloved Commander lay; they eyed the coffin with melancholy admiration and respect, while the manly tears glistened in their eyes, and stole reluctant down their weather-beaten cheeks. Strangers were excluded during this affecting scene; and on the return of this brave band to the parade in front, they were again warmly greeted by the multitude; and even the eyes of beauty, everywhere glittering amidst the crowd, beamed on the rough and hardy crew, the radiant glances of approbation and sympathy.

At five o-clock the doors and gates were closed, and this morning the body will be carried to London on its way to final interment. It will be conveyed from the Saloon through the Great Hall, out the Eastern Portal, round the Royal Charlotte Ward, to the North gate, on the Thames, and placed on board the State Barge, which will be rowed by the detachment from the Victory, before- mentioned; and fifty picked men from the Greenwich pensioners, who attend as mourners, will also row in the procession.

John Evelyn and Greenwich Hospital

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Elaine Galloway and ORNC ‘Lives of Pensioners’ Research Volunteers

Photograph of the relief carving of Evelyn attributed to Grinling Gibbons, who was famously “discovered” by Evelyn in 1671. Courtesy of the National Maritime Museum 1

Local resident John Evelyn was born 400 years ago on 31st October, 1620. His diary is less celebrated, and very much less racy,  than that of his good friend Samuel Pepys. However, Evelyn’s does have the advantage that it covers the whole of his long life. Towards the end of that life the scheme to provide a refuge for sailors, which became the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich, finally got underway. Previously Evelyn had been a commissioner on the Navy’s Sick and Hurt Board, and he had been closely involved in the foundation of Chelsea Hospital.  As a young man on his travels in Europe, and on subsequent jaunts to visit friends in England, he took a particular interest in hospitals and schools for orphans, as this diary entry from the Hague reveals.

19thAugust 1641. None did I so much admire as, an hospital, for their lame and decrepit soldiers and seamen, where the accommodations are very great, the building answerable; and, indeed, for the like public charities the provisions are admirable in this country, where, as no idle vagabonds are suffered (as in England they are), there is hardly a child of four or five years old, but they find some employment for it.2  

 In February 1695 Evelyn, at the age of 74, accepted the post of treasurer of Greenwich Hospital.

List of Greenwich Hospital Treasurers. Courtesy of The National Archives. ADM 80/169

As the following (slightly abridged) excerpt from Evelyn’s diary shows, this was during a hard winter with a smallpox epidemic raging. 

29thDecember, 1694. The smallpox increased exceedingly, and was very mortal. The Queen died of it on the 28th. 

13thJanuary 1694-95. The Thames was frozen over. The deaths by smallpox increased to five hundred more than in the preceding week.

20thJanuary, 1695. The frost and continued snow have now lasted five weeks.

3rdFebruary, 1695. The long frost intermitted, but not gone.

17th February, 1695. Called to London by Lord Godolphin, one of the Lords of the Treasury, offering me the treasurership of the hospital designed to be built at Greenwich for worn-out seamen.

24th February, 1695. I saw the Queen lie in state.

5th March, 1695. I went to see the ceremony. Never was so universal a mourning; all the Parliament men had cloaks given them, and four hundred poor women; all the streets hung and the middle of the street boarded and covered with black cloth. There were all the nobility, mayor, aldermen, judges, etc. 

March,1695. The latter end of the month sharp and severely cold, with much snow and hard frost; no appearance of spring.

Spring eventually came and Evelyn attended the first meeting of the Commissioners.  His diary identifies some of those present. 

5th May, 1695. I came to Deptford from Wotton, in order to the first meeting of the Commissioners for endowing an hospital for seamen at Greenwich; it was at the Guildhall, London. Present, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Keeper, Lord Privy Seal, Lord Godolphin, Duke of Shrewsbury, Duke of Leeds, Earls of Dorset and Monmouth, Commissioners of the Admiralty and Navy, Sir Robert Clayton, Sir Christopher Wren, and several more.

The names of the first five can be seen, in letters of gold, on the benefactors’ boards in the vestibule of the Painted Hall (Lord Keeper was Lord Somers and Lord Privy Seal was the Earl of Pembroke) and there were probably others. And of course John Evelyn Esq. himself is there, donating £1000, in a prominent position immediately below Queen Anne. At the bottom of that same board his name appears again, this time as Mr Evelyn, with a donation of £2000. Is this the same man? Or his grandson, who was also John Evelyn, described thus in 1696?

23rdApril, 1696. I went to Eton, and dined with Dr. Godolphin, the provost. The schoolmaster assured me there had not been for twenty years a more pregnant youth in that place than my grandson.

Benefactors’ Board. Photograph by Nikhilesh Haval. Copyright of the Old Royal Naval College

Evelyn continued to attend meetings during May 1695, although some achieved nothing for want of a quorum.The required quorum was just three commissioners.4   He was also part of the subcommittee who went to survey the ground. 

14th May, 1695. Met at Guildhall, but could do nothing for want of a quorum.

 17th May, 1695. Second meeting of the Commissioners, and a committee appointed to go to Greenwich to survey the place, I being one of them.

21st May, 1695. We went to survey Greenwich, Sir Robert Clayton, Sir Christopher Wren, Mr. Travers, the King’s Surveyor, Captain Sanders, and myself.

24th May, 1695. We made report of the state of Greenwich house, and how the standing part might be made serviceable at present for £6,000, and what ground would be requisite for the whole design. My Lord Keeper ordered me to prepare a book for subscriptions, and a preamble to it.

 That subscription book, with its very faded list of amounts and signatures, “I subscribe £500. Pembroke” etc. can be consulted in the National Archives at Kew.5

Greenwich Hospital Subscription Book. Courtesy of The National Archives ADM 80/172

The number of subscribers was impressively large, but in most cases the actual money was slow in appearing.  

5th July, 1695. At Guildhall; account of subscriptions, about £7,000 or £8,000.

11th July, 1695. Met at Guildhall; not a full committee, so nothing done.

By the following year some progress had been made.

4th June, 1696. A committee met at Whitehall about Greenwich Hospital, at Sir Christopher Wren’s, his Majesty’s Surveyor-General. We made the first agreement with divers workmen and for materials; and gave the first order for proceeding on the foundation, and for weekly payments to the workmen, and a general account to be monthly. 

30thJune, 1696. I went with a select committee of the Commissioners for Greenwich Hospital, and with Sir Christopher Wren, where with him I laid the first stone of the intended foundation, precisely at five o’ clock in the evening, after we had dined together. Mr. Flamstead, the King’s Astronomical Professor, observing the punctual time by instruments. 

Did the foundation stone have an inscription?  What a wonderful discovery that would be.

Money trickled in over the next few years. 

4th July, 1696. Note that my Lord Godolphin was the first of the subscribers who paid any money to this noble fabric.

Evelyn continued to chase the subscribers but he complained in a letter to Godolphin on 3rd August that they “avoid me, as one Carrying the Pest about me”.6

Evelyn’s salary as treasurer was £200 a year (approximately £20,000 today) but he said it was a long time before he saw any of it. To add to his woes his beloved Sayes Court had been cruelly knocked about by Peter the Great, who took up residence to learn the art of shipbuilding in Deptford Royal Dockyard next door. Evelyn was particularly dismayed by the state of his 400 yard holly hedge, through which the Czar and his party had pushed each other on wheelbarrows. 

Photograph by Elaine Galloway of the statue of Peter the Great in Glashier St Deptford. It was. created by two Russian sculptors, Viacheslav Bukhaev, who was responsible for the architectural elements, and Mikhail Chemiakin, (or Shemyakin) responsible for the sculptural elements. It was unveiled by Prince Michael of Kent in 2001. (Text from Caroline’s Miscellany). Peter is shown as a shipwright not as a Czar.

9th June, 1698. To Deptford, to see how miserably the Czar had left my house, after three months making it his Court. I got Sir Christopher Wren, the King’s surveyor, and Mr. London, his gardener, to go and estimate the repairs, for which they allowed £150 in their report to the Lords of the Treasury. I then went to see the foundation of the Hall and Chapel at Greenwich Hospital.

As recorded in Admiralty records7Evelyn faithfully attended meetings of both the Grand and Fabric Committees of Greenwich Hospital over the following years although many were adjourned inquorate. “Only C. Wren and Mr Evelyn came”. When Queen Anne came to the throne in 1702 Evelyn and his fellow commissioners began to get the Hospital’s finances into a somewhat healthier state.  In 1703 at the age of 82 Evelyn handed over the account books to his son-in-law William Draper. 

12th August, 1703. The new Commission for Greenwich hospital was sealed and opened, at which my son-in-law, Draper, was present, to whom I resigned my office of Treasurer. From August 1696, there had been expended in building £89,364 14s. 8¼d. (More than £9.5 million today, give or take the odd farthing.)

Evelyn lived long enough to see the first pensioners admitted. By the summer of 1705 there were 81 inmates. June, 1705. I went to Greenwich hospital, where they now began to take in wounded and worn-out seamen, who are exceedingly well provided for. The buildings now going on are very magnificent. 

John Evelyn died the following year on 27thFebruary at his ancestral country house in Wotton, Surrey, where he is buried.

Engraving by T. Bragge of the Kneller portrait of John Evelyn. Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection

Notes

1. https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/63958.html

2. This and all following excerpts from Evelyn’s diary are from Project Gutenberg’s The Diary of John Evelyn (Vols 1 and 2), by John Evelyn.

3. National Archives ADM 80/169

4. ADM 67/1 GH Minutes Grand Committee

5. ADM 80/172

6. British Library Add MS 78299

7. ADM 67/1 and 6

Further Reading

Gillian Darley’s excellent biography of John Evelyn, Yale UP 2006,
John Strickland was John Evelyn’s Deptford Steward/Bailiff at Sayes Court. He lived in building/s on the old Greenwich Palace site. The image is a detail from the fascinating strip drawings c1708 in the possession of the Earl of Pembroke. The drawings were published in ‘Greenwich Revealed’ by Neil Rhind and Julian Watson. 2013. Extract below.

Review: The Painted Hall, Sir James Thornhill’s Masterpiece at Greenwich

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This essay by John Bold on the Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College began as a book review but it grew. It is intended for publication in the Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society (Vol 65, 2021)

Lucas, Anya, Johns, Richard, Stewart, Sophie and Paine, Stephen, The Painted Hall, Sir James Thornhill’s Masterpiece at Greenwich, London and New York: Merrell (2019), 160 pp., c.150 ills. £40. ISBN 978-1-8589-4679-5.

Fig.1 Painted Hall, scaffolding for Lower Hall platform, 2017

This handsome publication, produced to mark and commemorate the completion of the comprehensive restoration of the Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich (originally the Royal Hospital for Seamen), is a credit to all involved, not least the now departed Conservation Director of the Greenwich Foundation, William Palin, who has successfully overseen the project amidst challenging circumstances. Project and publication have been part-funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Work began with a pilot project in 2012-13 on cleaning the west wall and Upper Hall ceiling; the remaining 40,000 square feet (3,700 sq.m) of the Upper and Lower Halls and Vestibule followed (September 2016 – March 2019). Public engagement was fundamental to the presentation of the project with almost 100,000 visitors taken within surprisingly disorientating, too-close-for-context, touching distance of the ceiling on a floor raised on a forest of scaffolding (Fig.1). The completion of this restoration along with that of the magnificent colonnaded dining hall undercroft represents the culmination of the first twenty years of stewardship of the buildings by the Greenwich Foundation, established in 1998 following the departure of the Royal Navy, ‘to preserve for the benefit of the nation the old Royal Naval College site, buildings and monuments, as being of historical, architectural and artistic importance, to allow the general public reasonable access to the site, and to educate the public thereon’. Access to the Painted Hall, which was restricted for the non-uniformed under the stewardship of the Royal Navy, became miraculously easy and free under the new management, but following the cleaning a charge of £12 per adult has been imposed – this ticket is valid for twelve months, which is perhaps acceptable for those enthusiasts who live nearby, but potentially disabling for casual or occasional visitors and perhaps not in the spirit of reasonable access and education about a great but relatively little known work of art (Fig.2).

Fig.2 Painted Hall, the Lower Hall and Upper Hall beyond, before cleaning

This is after all the finest piece of baroque mural painting in this country, painted 1707-26 by the Dorset-born Sir James Thornhill during the great efflorescence of later 17th and early 18th-century mural painting, which followed the earlier examples by Rubens (Banqueting House) and Gentileschi (Queen’s House), but essentially was begun in earnest in the 1670s-1680s by Antonio Verrio and Louis Laguerre, continued by Sebastiano Ricci, Antonio Pellegrini and Jacopo Amigoni. Knowledge and understanding of these remarkable allegorical demonstrations is in inverse proportion to their scale. Popular histories of British painting tend to begin with Thornhill’s son-in-law William Hogarth and tend to lay their emphasis on the identifiable and recognisable – portraits, land- and sea-scapes, national triumphs and snatches, often moralising, of social life – rather than the teeming mass of gods and goddesses defying gravity as they alternately skim and stutter across the sky in celebration (in the case of Greenwich) of Peace, Prosperity and the Protestant Succession, the latter displacing the fanciful and symbolic with the recognisably corporeal William and Mary, Anne and George, George I and his family.

In recent years there has been an increase in scholarly attention to these English baroque works, though such attention lags way behind the significance which is accorded its Italian equivalents. There have been notable essays on Verrio and Hampton Court by Cécile Brett and Brett Dolman in the British Art Journal; Lydia Hamlett has a chapter on painted interiors in the Tate’s British Baroque – Power and Illusion, edited by Tabitha Barber (2020, accompanying the curtailed exhibition), and she has published her book on Mural Painting in Britain 1630-1730 (which priced at £120 surely will struggle to reach a wide market); at Greenwich Anya Matthews curated a notable exhibition and catalogue of drawings for the Painted Hall, ‘A Great and Noble Design’ (2016); and we continue to anticipate Richard Johns’ long-awaited monograph on Thornhill, the artist recognised as long ago as 1953 by Ellis Waterhouse as ‘the least studied in detail of the eminent names in British painting’ (Painting in Britain 1530-1790). This relative neglect of a major phase of British art and its main native-born exponent may be attributed in part to the phenomenon remarked by Colen Campbell in matters pertaining to building – ‘so many of the British Quality have so mean an Opinion of what is performed in our own Country; tho’, perhaps, in most we equal, and in some things we surpass, our Neighbours’ (Vitruvius Britannicus, I, 1715). We might also paradoxically attribute the under-estimation of mural painting to the efforts of its greatest chronicler, Edward Croft-Murray, whose ground-breaking, two-volume Decorative Painting in England 1537-1837 (1962-70), long out of print, not only rather understated Thornhill’s abilities – weak and uncertain in modelling, but pleasing in colour – also and  more importantly chose ‘Decorative Painting’ for his title, rather than ‘Mural Painting’, as it is understood today to include the implied ceiling, or ‘History Painting’ as it was known at the time (William Aglionby in 1685, pre-Thornhill, quoted by Croft-Murray: ‘we never had, as yet, any of Note, that was an English Man, that pretended to History-Painting’). There is a terminological problem. ‘Decorative’ in English usage has connotations of the frivolous and light-hearted, the dilettante, the less than serious, quite often preceded by ‘merely’; for Dr Johnson (Dictionary, 1755) to decorate was to adorn, to embellish, all very far from the ‘Grand style’ praised by Sir Joshua Reynolds in his Discourses (from 1769), far also from the judgment of Hogarth on the Painted Hall (intended for inclusion in The Analysis of Beauty, 1753) which ‘remains fresh, strong and clear as if it had been finished but yesterday ……. France in all her palaces can hardly boast of a nobler, more judicious or richer performance of its kind’.

The high seriousness of Thornhill’s endeavours and his remarkable achievement on behalf of the governors of the Royal Hospital for Seamen is well and succinctly brought out in this book. This was a deeply considered, exceptionally well-judged work of art which maintains its coherence through three separate, related spaces – Vestibule, Lower and Upper Halls – most notably in the single field of the great Lower Hall ceiling where Thornhill created a fictive architectural framework to contain his complex allegory, to be read by the static viewer from prescribed points. This is not yet the vast, populated open sky of Tiepolo, revealing its meanings as the viewer walks through the space below, but it is considerably more expansively open, with more views and vanishing points than could be essayed by Rubens and Gentileschi, constrained as they were by Inigo Jones’s compartmentalised Venetian ceilings. Although the idea of painting the great dining room of the King William building was not foreseen at the start of its construction in 1698, it may nevertheless be interpreted as a further manifestation of the founder Queen Mary’s ‘fixt Intention for Magnificence’, recalled by the principal executant architect of the Hospital, Nicholas Hawksmoor, who began as assistant to the master-planner, Surveyor to the Hospital Christopher Wren before as official Clerk of Works (1698-1735) designing much of its detail and seeing three quarters of the building through to completion, in effect as unofficial Deputy Surveyor. His Remarks on the Buildings (1728) is an impassioned love letter and a setting to rights to counter those who might countenance a reduction in quality, cost and extent rather than completing this greatest of public buildings according to the original vision: ‘capacious and durable, as well as regular and beautiful’. He was writing in the spirit of his mentor, since Wren had himself expressed (in the 1670s) the sentiments which later informed the design and decoration of Greenwich Hospital from first to last: ‘Architecture has its political Use; publick Buildings being the Ornament of a Country; it establishes a Nation, draws People and Commerce; makes the People love their native Country, which Passion is the Original of all great Actions in a Common-wealth’ (Tract I).    

Thornhill first appears in the minutes of the Hospital governors in July 1707 – as soon as the scaffolding is ready, he should proceed to painting, priming it himself or employing his servants, ‘and that he make such Alterations in his design by inserting what more he can  relating to maritime affaires till the same shall be approved by this board’. By this time Thornhill had been commissioned to paint the saloon and staircase for the 1st Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth and it may be surmised that this connection with the Whig grandee, a benefactor and director of the Hospital, did him no harm in securing the Greenwich job, with no evidence for any sort of competition. Anya Lucas (formerly Matthews) tells the story of the building of the Hospital, the construction and preparation (high quality plastering by Henry Doogood) of the Painted Hall and Thornhill’s engagement with admirable fluency, detailed research and authoritative judgment. This, over three short chapters, immediately takes its place as the best available summary introduction to the Hospital – its architecture and politics well interwoven – and its principal artist. There are places however where a less concise approach would enable better explanation. Hawksmoor was indeed dismissed during the surveyorship of Thomas Ripley, but ‘shabbily’ is arguable, since Ripley had latterly been paying him out of his own pocket. In discussing the unusual layout of the Hospital – two sides without a centrepiece because of the retention of the much smaller Queen’s House – reference might have been made to the identical problem faced by John Webb in his 1660s design for a palace on this site for Charles II. He too was thwarted by the Queen’s House so had recourse to designing a ‘grott and ascent’ on the hill to the south in order to close the view. In fact both Inigo Jones’ great iconic buildings, the Queen’s House and the Banqueting House, in their self contained harmony and restraint inhibited the more expansive baroque intentions of his successors who sought to incorporate them in later designs for both Greenwich and Whitehall Palace. It could perhaps also have been made clearer that although Wren in a ‘shrewd piece of masterplanning’ had caused all the foundations for the whole site to be laid out at the start, ensuring that failure to complete the full design would be a very visible embarrassment, nevertheless the detail of the design did evolve over the five decades of construction. Although they have domes in common, Ripley’s utilitarian Queen Mary building (including the Chapel) differs radically within and without from Hawksmoor’s magisterial King William building opposite (the two buildings originally conceived as identical pendants), which houses the Painted Hall. Lucas notes that the King’s House (John Webb’s pattern-setting, unfinished building from King Charles’s abortive palace project, which survived to serve as the first range of the Hospital) was given a linked base wing to the west in red brick. Visitors today may wonder where this has gone, so a note on the development of the design would surely have been helpful in explaining the architecture and demonstrating its complex evolution: in pursuit of ‘magnificence’, grand stone pavilions were added first at the river front of the red brick building in 1712-15 and then at the southern end in 1769-74, the red brick wing itself being replaced in 1812-15 by the colonnaded stone-faced range designed by John Yenn to present a grand front to the town and to departing sailors on the river, reminding them of the power of the Royal Navy and the beneficence of a state which provided such palatial surroundings for its veterans.

Further discussion might also have enabled the fuller exploration of the practicalities of the painting process, including the extent of the scaffolding. This clearly falls into the  well-known historical category of ordinary, everyday things, so well known and understood at the time that they do not need to be described for the benefit of a posterity which finds itself with fragmentary information and imperfect understanding. Lucas does her best with the available evidence, but we still cannot be sure whether the whole of the hall ceiling had a fixed scaffold for the duration of the project or whether some parts were movable. We know from the well-known anecdote about Thornhill’s being prevented by the quick reactions of an assistant from falling off the scaffold when painting the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral that scaffolding did not necessarily cover the whole of the area to be painted all the time and one part at least had to be openable for access. At Greenwich there are two reasons for thinking that it might have been wholly covered – firstly that an opening had to be made in the scaffold so that the Duke of Ormond could view the painting and secondly in the same year (1713) Edward Strong the mason complained of the waste and consumption of the Hall scaffolding which had stood four years longer than first intended and he had been obliged to buy more. Both these suggest total coverage, but this then raises the question of how Thornhill did the job – how did he visualise it in order to paint it without being able to contextualise the component parts from distance? How did he physically see in order to paint? – as the restorers in the 1950s found, a fully scaffolded ceiling limits both light and ventilation. As noted, some visitors to the scaffolding during the recent restoration, certainly this reviewer, found the experience of viewing the ceiling from painting-cleaning distance remarkably disorientating: figures, well understood from floor level frequently appeared to be in an unexpected relationship at ceiling level. Although there are several preparatory sketches, previously catalogued by Matthews, they are not templates for the artist to transcribe onto the plaster. So did he draw directly, then paint, or were there drawings to follow, now lost? – there are no pounce marks to suggest the original laying out. Further investigation is needed on the practical question of how ceiling paintings at this time were carried out as well as the roles of assistants, who must for such a project have been numerous. Wider investigation of the context and the practice elsewhere by Verrio, Laguerre and others may yield more information.

Upon completion of the whole of the Painted Hall, Thornhill in 1726/7 published in English and French ‘by Order of the Directors … for the Benefit of the CHARITY-BOYS’ his detailed Explanation of the Painting in a sixpenny booklet to be sold by the porter to the many visitors to this tourist attraction. This invaluable guide to the iconography and the political and maritime messages of the painting could usefully have been included in this volume as an appendix – it would have complemented very well the helpful annotated photographs which identify the dramatis personae – instead it is available as a separate publication in facsimile. Richard Johns, in his contribution to this volume on ‘Image and Meaning’, uses extracts from Thornhll’s Explanation as a prompt for a discussion of aspects of the making and meaning of the painting. We begin with the paintings that were completed last in the long programme of works, in the entrance Vestibule beneath the dome where trompe l’oeil tablets recording the names of benefactors are supported by winged figures and Charity-Boys (not less than twenty sons of mariners to be maintained), painted to look as if they have been carved in marble. They gesture upwards towards the windows where larger-than-life figures of Charity in a niche (painted on canvas, now lost) once stood. In this section, as in the earlier chapters by Lucas, more explanation and description would have been helpful, and in the selective discussion of the painting, it is not always clear where we are on the ceiling. But Johns is aided by exceptionally detailed photographs, including a gatefold of the Lower Hall ceiling, and is eloquent in his description of the impression achieved by Thornhill of pictorial and political unity, with its ‘chorus of Virtues and other personifications that appear at each stage of the scheme’ so ‘the Painted Hall may be likened to an operatic production of the most ambitious kind’. This is a production with a very clear message as Johns shows in an analysis of the ceiling and the accompanying booklet which would resonate with political imagineers in any age: ‘But if the official Explanation gives visitors access to the vocabulary and grammar of grand-scale decorative painting, it also exercises a high degree of control over that experience, guiding us from one part of the Hall to another, giving cause to dwell on some parts of the painting while glossing over other details with a cursory ‘&c’. It encourages the viewer to read the scheme in a particular order … and therefore to understand the whole as a seamless celebration of the nation’s recent royal past, united by the common themes of national prosperity and miltary success’.       

As Kerry Downes has shown, the baroque is a style in which ‘appearances take precedence over essences’ (Grove Art Online: Baroque), hence the characteristic blurring of the real and the fictive which we see in the Painted Hall: ‘Underneath [William and Mary] is a Figure of Architecture holding a DRAWING of Part of the Hospital, and pointing [with her left hand] up to the Royal Founders’ (Fig.3). Here is a double message which enables two interpretations which are not mutually exclusive: (i) the drawing shows Architecture with her right hand pointing to the King William building, indeed pointing towards the place in the building, the Painted Hall, where she herself is being depicted; (ii) through the presence of Time to the right of the drawing, ‘bringing Truth to Light’, providing as Johns points out ‘a subtle reminder to the Hall’s early visitors that another, equal part – the Queen Mary building – had still to be built’. As identical pendant designs, the same drawing serves for both.

Fig.3 Painted Hall, Lower Hall: Architecture

In one of the two large Protestant Succession paintings on the side walls of the Upper Hall, Thornhill again depicts part of the Hospital, the river front of the King Charles building as backdrop to the arrival of King George I in 1714. Together with the painting opposite on the other side wall of the Upper Hall depicting William III welcomed by Britannia  in Torbay in 1688, this is rendered in grisaille – stone colour recalling bas-reliefs – with the participants in classicising dress and poses. As Reynolds was later to observe, the grand style is informed by the ‘general and invariable ideas of nature’ rather than attending to ‘the minute accidental discriminations of particular and individual objects’: the artist ‘must sometimes deviate from vulgar and strict historical truth in pursuing the grandeur of his design’. He would have approved of the strategy employed here by Thornhill who recorded his thoughts on a preparatory drawing: George had arrived at night, no ships were visible, certain of those present at the time of the landing were by the time of painting no longer in political favour, the king’s dress was not enough worthy of him to be transmitted to posterity – so Thornhill went for appearances as they should have been rather than essences as they were: King George arrives in a horse-drawn chariot in Roman dress accompanied by St George on horseback, trampling a dragon, with Religion, Liberty, Truth and Justice in front, Eternity above, preceded by Fame who appears to be pointing her trumpet towards the Painted Hall where we also are anticipating the arrival of the new king whose dynasty is further celebrated on the great west wall as a golden age restored. Within a fictive architectural framework, a curtain is drawn back to reveal the king and his family, many of whom here play a dual role in symbolising the Virtues, accompanied by Justice and Time, enabling Peace and Plenty to bring forth a cornucopia of riches in this best of all possible worlds.

Notwithstanding the grandeur of the conception, the west wall is an uncertain climax to the great sequence of painted spaces. Work on the Lower Hall was completed by 1714, but work on the Upper Hall did not begin until 1718. An original window in the west wall had been blocked in 1713 to allow for a painting featuring Queen Anne, but by the time terms of payment and subject matter had been agreed between the artist and the governors, the Hanoverian dynasty had succeeded the Stuarts. The two side windows were blocked and the whole wall plastered on a wooden frame for painting (movement of the frame causing cracking of the plaster was detected in the 1950s). According to Hogarth ‘the upper end of the hall where the royal family is painted, was left chiefly to the pencil of Mr.Andrea a foreigner, after the payment originally agreed upon for the work was so much reduced, as made it not worth Sir James’s while to finish the whole with his own more masterly hand’. Thornhill was assisted here not only by the portrait painter Dietrich Ernst Andreae, but also by Robert Brown, renowned for his skill in painting drapery, who is presumed to have painted the theatrical curtain. The cleaning of the paintings has also enabled the identification of another hand in the painting of the Upper Hall ceiling, that of the highly accomplished French flower painter Antoine Monnoyer who was in London between 1714 and 1729. His flowers sit in vases at each of the four corners of the deep coving of the ceiling between the personifications of the four continents, all admiring the display of British maritime power expressed within the fictive architectural framework (Fig.4). Here in an adaptation from Virgil’s Aeneid, Juno instructs Aeolus to still his winds in order to calm the sea, enabling Neptune to hand dominion over the waters to Lord High Admiral Prince George of Denmark, consort of Queen Anne, both shown here in a double portrait in a roundel supported by appropriate Virtues.

Fig.4 Painted Hall, Upper Hall ceiling, north-west corner

Richard Johns sums up this whole glorious fantasy very well, this ‘grand illusion’ of a sort which continues in fact, 300 years on, to colour our political discourse: ‘Thornhill was keenly aware of the political function of decorative painting and of the propaganda value of the role that he performed. His job, simply put, was to make the accidental and temporary appear inevitable and permanent; to craft a vision of modern Britain as a plentiful, pious and victorious nation, well governed by the right people’. This as Johns points out was a grand illusion that Thornhill wilfully entered into, including himself on the west wall only three steps below the king who had appointed him History-Painter in Ordinary in 1718, Serjeant Painter in March 1720 and knighted him two months later: ‘he was, for a short time at least, the most celebrated British artist who had ever lived’. Although he later fell from favour and fashion with Lord Burlington’s promotion of William Kent, a good architect, but a terrible painter, his obituarist in 1734 acknowledged him as ‘the greatest History Painter this kingdom ever produced’, a judgment endorsed by Whinney and Millar in their standard history: ‘not only the greatest history-painter the country had produced , but the first of whom no court in Europe need be ashamed’ (English Art 1625-1714, 1957).

The paintings in the Painted Hall have been subject to frequent interventions from as early as 1733. As Sophie Stewart and Stephen Paine explain in the final chapter of this book, wall paintings are at constant risk through their innate relationship with the fabric of the building: moisture, light, accessibility, vulnerability to uncontrollable environmental conditions, a situation exacerbated in the Thornhill period by the painting techniques employed – multiple layers of fragile pigments with delicate glazes and areas of gilding. Cleaning and restoration have frequently been heavy handed, involving repainting and ‘haphazardly applied coatings of natural resin varnishes’. The efficacy of treatments has tended to be short-lived and the day-to-day use of the building has also speeded deterioration and prompted further interventions – smoke from heating and candle-lighting, humidity, pipe and cigarette smoking have all had an impact. In 1957-60 a team of conservators from the Ministry of Works identified more than fifteen individual layers of varnish and found twenty-two signatures from 1733 onwards (a further ten have been found since), one of them extraordinarily applied in 1777 to the décolletage of Queen Mary. This programme of cleaning, removing all non-original varnishes as far as possible, is here described in detail and acknowledged as a great achievement, thanks not least to the team’s leader, the pioneering paintings conservator Westby Percival-Prescott. Consideration was given in the cleaning programme completed in 2019 to removing the 1950s varnish, but it was decided that this was not merited and that surface cleaning ‘would lead to an impressive improvement in the brightness and definition of the whole scheme’. And so it has: the Painted Hall is now as close to its original appearance as it is possible to achieve. Much has been learned by the restorers about the process of painting – first the fictive architecture was completed and the figures followed – architectural framing is visible behind some figures as the result of some thinning of the paint  over time; there is evidence of other hands, some identified; there are very few corrections or alterations so the painting must have been very precisely planned, although the painting of St Paul’s Cathedral, the architectural wonder of the age (with which Thornhill was also involved) floating in ambiguous space on the west wall behind the royal family is not discussed here. It looks like a rather uncertain afterthought, but the cleaning process in 2012-13 confirmed that its painting was coeval with the rest of the wall although it was changed in the execution – there were said to be signs that initially the dome was painted at a higher level, but had to be dropped to accommodate the lantern below the soffit of the fictive proscenium arch (Fig.5). Such alterations are rare in the Painted Hall, but despite all the close investigation, we still do not know how Thornhill and his team transferred the design from paper to wall and ceiling. This is an exceptionally well planned, clever work of art, carried out over nineteen years and necessarily adapting to changing political circumstances. As Anya Matthews observed in her catalogue of the drawings, this is both a visual and a political illusion – ‘This illusion of coherence, assisted by the use of recurring motifs and fictive architectural frameworks, is testament to the artist’s prodigious skills as a decorative history painter…. able to ….generate an appearance of wholeness when both the artwork – and the events it depicts – were in fact characterised by a high degree of contingency’.       

Fig.5 Painted Hall, Upper Hall, west wall

In his Director’s Foreword to British Baroque, Alex Farquharson refers to this period of painting as ‘one of the least familiar areas of British art history, which, in general overviews, is usually hurried over on the journey from Van Dyck to Hogarth’. But perhaps this is because Thornhill represents an ending to a tradition, a triumphant culmination, whereas Hogarth is a beginning. The triumph is clear and is clearly brought out in the book under review. For Kerry Downes, this was ‘one of the greatest achievements of decorative painting in the whole period … all the artifices of Catholic or absolutist quadratura were employed to deliver a nearly republican message in praise of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and of the constitutional monarchy and the Protestant settlement that followed from it’. He later explains this idea of an ending: the baroque is ‘based on a long tradition of growing familiarity with canons and methods ….. [allowing] the visual language to be adapted as only a mother tongue can be, to metaphor, wit, punning  … it is an art related more immediately to the beholder than to abstract principles. It has the richness and diversity of form and language that come at the end of a continuous period …. specifically that of the Renaissance, on whose forms and language it depends’. We do not know enough about Thornhill’s sources – clearly he was influenced by Verrio and Laguerre; also he was able to draw on John James’s translation (1707) of Rules of Perspective, by Andrea Pozzo, the Roman baroque quadratura painter of the ceiling of  S.Ignazio, a publication endorsed by Wren, Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh. Thornhill made two journeys to continental Europe – to the Low Countries and to France where he would no doubt have studied the work of Le Brun. He was a collector – Matthews records his owning paintings by Annibale Carracci and Poussin – and he would have had access to a large number of Renaissance paintings through prints. He was a student of the greatest of Renaissance painters – he freely learned and borrowed from the gestures and postures of Raphael (see for example both Peace (Fig.6) and Europe (Fig.7) in the Lower Hall ceiling). He spent his later years in the absence of commissions in making at least three sets of copies of the Raphael tapestry cartoons in the Royal Collection at Hampton Court as pedagogical guides for others. He had come full circle.

Fig.6 Painted Hall, Lower Hall: Peace
Fig.7 Painted Hall, Lower Hall: Europe with Justice, Temperance and Fortitude above

The Painted Hall is a very welcome addition to the literature of British art. It fills a gap. Ann Robey has done a splendid job in bringing together the individual elements by the four authors to make a coherent, attractively presented and well written book. We may cavil at the treatment of the illustrations: not all are numbered and those which are numbered are in three separate groups according to author, as if these were journal essays (1-50, 1-35, 1-37), making referencing cumbersome; the locations of associated paintings and drawings are not given, but they could easily have been included in the captions –  page number references in the picture credits tells us who owns the copyright in the image, not the location of the original. A chronology of the building and its painting and of Thornhill’s life and work would also have been useful in aiding our understanding of the period and the work. But notwithstanding these difficulties and the known unknowns discussed above (which future scholarship will surely address), this book deserves a wide audience. It will provide a lasting record of the original painting and the recent restoration of an often overlooked masterpiece.

Note: all photographs are by the author.

A MEMORY OF V.E. DAY.

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This short, sweet recollection of VE Day – still clearly engraved after 75 years – was sent in by a GHS member this morning on behalf of her elderly neighbour. Grateful thanks and best wishes to you both!

VE-Day Celebrations outside Buckingham Palace. Wikimedia Commons. Courtesy, I.W.M.)

She was in the ATS and by 1944 was based at RAF Digby in Lincolnshire where she was a PT instructor and a switchboard operator. It was “all very jovial … we danced and danced and danced … not just on Victory Day’. The RAF station was home to the ‘Arnhem boys, the D Day boys … everything was organised for them, … we waved them off – little did we know what they were going to.”

She can’t remember receiving the news of the end of the war but on 8 May suddenly everyone decided to go to London and to Buckingham Palace to see the royal family on the balcony. One of the ATS corporals was her ‘minder’ because she had recently been found to be underage (a friend had persuaded her to join up – and had filled in the form for her, lying about her age). She persuaded her corporal friend/minder to come with her and all the other girls to London. They took the train from Doncaster – “it was packed, jam packed with people … you didn’t mind it if you stood all the way”. They then followed the crowd when they arrived. “Food was being handed around, sandwiches and cakes and things. We elbowed our way round and had to hang on to each other; we were in uniform and so many hundreds and thousands were there, all in uniform as well…”. They went first to Buckingham Palace, “along the Mall to see the King and Queen … That wasn’t a five-minute job either. Then we just sort of wandered around and watched people dancing. Trafalgar Square – it was all dancing. Then to the Stage Door Canteen right in the heart of Piccadilly – we had been before many times when we had leave, we would always come to the Stage Door Canteen – doughnuts and coffee, fabulous music and bands. We then just danced all night; you could excuse somebody then so men would cut in all the time as you were dancing …  We got back on the train the next day. You couldn’t sleep at the YWCA which was full so we just stayed up all night … Memory is a wonderful thing!”

After she was demobbed she came to live in New Cross with the three other girls, then Deptford and moved to Greenwich in 1948 – when her rent was eight shillings a week.

You may also like to follow this link to a BBC World Service podcast of original sound recordings of broadcasts from 8th May 1945: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszmtt

MARK ALL and his GREAT WALK: ROADS GO EVER EVER ON.

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Captain Tom – your “heroic efforts have lifted the spirits of the entire nation”. Boris says so. Her Majesty sends her congratulations and best wishes, and so do I and all of us. £30,000,000, raised by your walk for the NHS, so far – the fund will probably keep rising till it closes at midnight tonight. Promoted Honorary Colonel. England cricketer. Top of the Pops, too. Etc., etc.

Ah, the power of ‘pedestrianism’!

But time now to say farewell to (our other veteran pedestrian) Mark All. In this, the last episode of my peep into the life of Mark All, I want to look – in snapshot mode – at the period that stretches from 1908 all the way till the time of his death in 1925, using as illustrations some of the press cuttings that punctuate his long journey.

Mark All was a man of obsessive determination. That, and a handful of raisins were what sustained him. He walked, he said, on purpose; to prove a man was not finished at 45. Whether he walked as part of a wager remains unclear. As far as I can see he never seems to have picked up any of the prizes or rewards he said were involved. He carried on undeterred, setting himself a new target as the years and miles went by until eventually it merges into the one: the boast to have walked 350,000 miles.

But never on a Sunday!

Only once or twice does the courage of his conviction seem to fail him. Besides the general “It’s the wet weather that tries me most”, the sole example I can find of Mark All feeling sorry for himself is on July 25th, 1912 when he told the Royal Cornwall Gazette, “Yes Sir, my walking days are over. Ah! I am not the man I used to be. My poor old feet and my poor old eyes are failing me.” Almost exactly a year later, on July 19th, 1913 he was in Sunderland where he told the Daily Echo that he’d set out in March that year intent on walking 5000 miles in ninety days throughout the British Isles. He’d been due to finish on June 6th, but bad weather had delayed him, and he arrived a day late. So he started all over again. 55 miles a day, 60 on a good one!

Nor did the war years, 1914-18, seem particularly to have hindered his progress. He seems, with the better part of valour, to have kept to British soil. The Essex Newsman of 22nd May 1915 had on its front page, for instance: “Mark All … had walked through France and was in Belgium previous to going through Germany last July, but acting on the advice of two gentlemen, whom he believed to have been German officers, he made his way back to England.” Accounts differ though, some saying that he was often in France during this time. And the tale grows taller: “He has been over practically every inch of the present battlefields, and has tramped through large tracts of practically every known country. Once General French, the commander of the British troops, said to him, “You have been where I would really never dream of sending a detachment of men.”

Mark All was 87 years old in 1915 when the West Sussex Gazette described him as “fit as a fiddle … He says he only eats two meals a day – breakfast and tea, and he smokes strong twist, “because there seems to be more nicotine in it”.

In the years immediately following the war, news coverage goes quiet for a while, but then in the Twenties, as Mark All entered into his nineties and his pedometer showed he was approaching the 300,000 milestone, the news hounds began to take a renewed interest in him again.

Here, for instance, is a snippet from the Cambridge Daily News of July 27th, 1920. He’d recently been in Belfast where the man from the Irish Independent told him, “Oh, Mark, you must take that Union Jack off or you will not get back to England again: we shall riddle you”. He escaped that hairy moment, but only the day before this interview tramping the road between Barnet and St Albans he’d had an unfortunate encounter with a motorcycle, the driver of which, he says, was drunk. He was run down and received a nasty shaking. “But I had my good old stick with me”, he added with a smile, “and he did not get off free. I think people are off their heads since the war.”

Nor was this likely his first or last run-in with the infernal horseless carriage. On October 12th 1923, Mark All called at the office of the Central Somerset Gazette and told how “only three weeks ago he was knocked down by a motorist, who drove on, though he had gone over the old man’s foot and left him lame beside the road. But All is a philosopher and has no room for bitterness, so just plods on in the race between space and age. If he can hold out for the next 13,269 miles, he hopes to finish his long pilgrimage in London in April or May of next year, and at the age of 96 to take his hard-earned rest.”

An entry in his diary written on his 95th birthday (June 11th 1923) reads: “Since August 6th 1900, I have walked 356,000 miles. Finished in Exeter. Now got to walk to London to get my reward”

Come March 1925, however, it is apparent that the end was approaching. The West Sussex County Times on Saturday the 7th described how “Increasing years have told on the old man, and certainly he cannot do much more walking. The upright carriage of years ago has been replaced by the stoop of old age. and laboured breathing, too, has a tale to tell. But Mark All, still clear-eyed, and with ruddy cheeks from exposure to the air, is nevertheless a wonder.”

The same article gives a neat resumé of his long journey thus far, reminding its readers that: “It was on the 6th August 1900, that he left Fleet-street, London, to walk 225,000 miles in 16 years. On this tour he passed through the five continents, visiting the chief places five times. In the British Isles he visited every town and city 17 times, completing the distance at London on Aug. 2nd, 1916. Then, being unable to go abroad, owing to the War, Mark undertook to walk 25,000 miles in the British Isles, to bring his total in eighteen years to 250,000. Subsequent visits to Horsham showed totals as follows: June 8th, 1918, 252,287 miles; October 5th, 1918, 257,603 miles: October 18, 1919. 273,590 miles; July 10th, 1920. 287,502 miles; July 30th, 1921, 304.000; June 10, 1922, 316.000; September 1922, 318,000; October 1924. 352.000 miles … we can only repeat what was said in these columns on July 30th, 1921: “it is to be hoped he will at last enjoy the rest so well deserved and so hardly won.”

Having worn out 140 pairs of boots, Mark All died a pauper’s death at Shirley Warren Poor Law Infirmary, Southampton, on or about 31st March 1925, his identity only revealed afterwards when his papers were examined. A dozen or so of the provincial newspapers, to whom he was a familiar visitor, noted his passing in brief notices, one of them, The Beds and Herts Pictorial and Tuesday Telegraph, 7th April 1925, noting, “Whether the veteran ever got his £3,000 I don’t happen to know. The gentleman [Alfred Harmsworth / Lord Northcliff] to whom he looked for it died before the walk was completed, but when Mark last called … he was very sanguine about claim being met … Like most ‘gentlemen of the road’, Mark could draw the long bow when a favourable opening offered, but, all the same, he was a remarkable old personality.”

The sweetest valediction I found is this one, penned by ‘ONLOOKER’ in the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette of Friday 3rd April 1925:

“Poor old Mark All, the veteran walker, has come the end of his long journey at last. He died this week in Southampton Infirmary at the age of 96. In the course of his itinerary the old man passed through Exeter on several occasions, and one was never quite able come the conclusion whether he was the victim a hoax or whether he himself a hoaxer. Mark’s journeys were genuine enough, and he had padded the hoof over greater part Europe. But, time after time, he came round with a tale that was completing journey for a wager, and that his success would provide means enough for retirement from the road. When he was just on 90 he told me he was he was getting very tired and old, and that I had seen him for the last time. But he turned up again quite cheerfully twice after that and told the same old story, and, of course, wanted his book signed so that he could show “his people” he had done his journeys. He was quite an entertaining old fellow, and related interesting stories of famous people had met, from the late King Edward to the Russian brigands who once laid him out for dead. He never begged, but his stories usually resulted in his getting the small amount cash needed to speed him his way. Tall and straight, with a long white beard, he might well have been taken for the Wandering Jew. But in conversation he demonstrated pretty clearly that he was a Briton of the Britons. He had been out his country quite enough to appreciate that it was the finest on earth. The fascination the road was upon him to the last and now he has reached the end the trail, may travel a beautiful highway where, to quote his own words, there will be no “bloomin’ motor cars choke an old follow with dust”.

RIP, Mark All. I will admit I misjudged you when first we met. I should have known better; that someone born in the reign of George IV and who survived into the reign of George V could hardly be dismissed as ordinary. Sorry! I thought you were a tramp of the old school vagrant sort. I rather jumped to that conclusion. It took time, but eventually I recognised your innate nobility by the pride you took in your neat appearance. So too, the determination and fortitude you demonstrated right to the end and, ”gainst all disaster’. Your blackthorn stick taught me that. These eventually revealed the error of my ways.

Mark All, Veteran Pedestrian, 1828-1925. R.I.P.

I would like to think that you picked up your reward, and if not in money, then perhaps by setting the example that others have later followed – including, if this is not altogether too far-fetched, Captain, now Colonel, Tom Moore himself.

I leave off therefore, with his words today:

“People keep saying what I have done is remarkable, however it’s actually what you have done for me which is remarkable.

“Please always remember, tomorrow will be a good day.”

Plague in the Hundred of Blackheath. By Frances Ward MA

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During the current Covid 19 pandemic we look back to the terrible plague pandemics of the seventeenth century. From 1603 to 1665 the Plague wreaked terrible destruction.

The riverside towns of Greenwich, Deptford and Woolwich, all significant landing places on the Thames – London’s main highway – were very badly affected, as were the other communities in the Hundred of Blackheath.

Frances Ward’s excellent 1982 account of the four outbreaks in our district was researched from parish registers and account books plus many other contemporary sources.

This is the first in a programme of digitally re-publishing significant articles in our journals and transactions from the foundation of our society in 1905.

Edward Hasted’s map of the Hundred of Blackheath, 1778. Hundreds were Anglo Saxon administrative districts which survived into the 19th century. The Hundred Court would have met on Blackheath. Courtesy of Warwick Leadlay Gallery.
A view of Greenwich from the park in 1637 by Wenceslaus Hollar. The Queens House and Greenwich Palace divide the town. St Alfege’s Church and West Greenwich are on the left and East Greenwich is on the right. Museum Collections and Archive, Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust.
St Alfege’s Church in 1676. A detail from Francis Place’s etching of Greenwich from the Royal Observatory. Museum Collections and Archive, Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust
St Alfege’s burial register August-November 1636 listing plague burials including Marcey Rigge and James Coalesone. Register at the London Metropolitan Archives and available online at Ancestry.co.uk
Detail from an 1810 copy of Samuel Travers’s 1695 map of the Royal Manor of Greenwich. The Pest House was built on Maidenstone Hill. In 1765 the Pest House and grounds were used to build a new parish workhouse with an entrance in what is now Blissett Street. North is at the bottom of the map. The Hospital is Queen Elizabeth Almshouses in Greenwich High Road. The Bowling Green (top left) is the old Green Man public house at the top of Blackheath Hill, beside what is now the A2.
The burial register of St Alfege’s Church October 1665-February 1666. Two columns per page are used to list the great number of burials. January and February are marked 1665 in old style dating – the new year started in April. The registers are at the London Metropolitan Archives and available online via Ancestry.co.uk.

MARK ALL and his GREAT WALK, Part V: “FICTION IS STRANGER THAN THE TRUTH.” Part two.

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Here is the second and concluding part of the ripping yarn of Mark All’s great pedestrian adventure, as it appeared in the pages of The Wide World Magazine in February 1908.

I hope the text is sufficiently clear to be legible. I am working on a transcript and will post that when it is complete. I also intend one last post on Mark All himself – a brief summation of his life and ramblings between 1910 until the time of his death in 1925. I think it right and proper to dedicate it to Captain ‘Fantastic’ Tom Moore.

MARK ALL and his GREAT WALK, Part V: “FICTION IS STRANGER THAN THE TRUTH.” Part one.

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Bingo! My quest in search of Yorick Gradeley proved rewarding. Fruitful indeed: it hit three cherries and paid out with not one, but TWO articles that he composed based on the adventures of Mark All and starring the man himself in the leading role. These were published in a journal called ‘The Wide World Magazine’ and appeared in the January and February editions of 1908. I am pasting copies of the pages below so you can read them for yourselves. I’ll do so in two episodes …

I didn’t discover much otherwise about Yorick Gradeley himself. Well, I say, not much. He pops up here and there, but randomly. He wrote a number of pieces under the title of ‘Battle To the Strong’ extolling the virtues of manly vigour. Come to that, he was, it seems, an early and enthusiastic contributor to ‘Health and Efficiency’ magazine . (Interesting, but don’t get side-tracked). Whilst not that way engaged, he was equally a busy as a proponent of open air theatre in Epping Forest. “Dear Sir”, he wrote to The London Daily News in February 1906, “I make bold now to create the band or bands of Woodland Players whose function it shall be throughout the Spring and Summer to tour the sylvan glades performing pastoral and fairy plays not for lucre, but for love”. Make of this what you will, he also took Mark All (at least, as we have seen, his notebooks and diary) under his wing …

Meanwhile.

My investigation of Mark All and his marathon tramp has led me to appreciate a number of things.  Not least, I now recognize how easily an obsession sets in, especially when a task is undertaken by someone with purpose and determination. Mark All was not a vagrant; he was an out of work engineer bent on proving a point that he was not ready for the industrial scrapheap because of his age. I have come to see him as a proud, skilled man, skilled not least in a talent for self-preservation. I also have come to know his character a little better, and even admit a little (naïve) disappointment that he was not more benevolent in his outlook towards his fellow travellers. I come to terms with this by putting him into the context of his times. Allow me if you will to conjure up the metaphorical landscape through which Mark All moved.

He was, after all, a man of his times. These were the years preceding the First World War. They were (unfortunately) characterised by a distinct anti-German sentiment. ‘Germanophobia’ along with its bastard-twin, anti-Semitism, was everywhere apparent. Just scratch the surface. It had roots in the nineteenth century but was accelerated by the Entente Cordiale between England and France in 1904, (in a nutshell, essentially a diplomatic agreement that settled who owned what in North Africa) after which a perceived fear of German militarism replaced the erstwhile admiration of German culture and literature. The relationship between King Edward and his nephew the Kaiser Wilhelm, never great, was, to say the least, dysfunctional. Erskine Childers’ ‘Riddle of the Sands’ was published in 1903 conveying the threat of German invasion!

And surprise, surprise, in the midst of all this, Alfred Harmsworth pops up again, albeit behind the scenes, manipulating the strings. In 1894, he had commissioned the author William Le Queux (look-him-up) to write a novel called ‘The Great War in England in 1897’ in which France and Russia had combined to crush Britain, until, with German aide this dastardly attempt was averted. Come 1906, Harmsworth had the same author change the title and the plot. This time it became, ‘The Invasion of 1910’ and the enemy was Germany. Serialized in The Daily Mail it was immensely successful, as well it might be with a newspaper magnate advertising it. Harmsworth, it is said, even hired actors dressed up as German soldiers, employed to ‘menace’ the shoppers in Oxford Street. In due course it was translated into 27 languages and eventually sold over a million copies. Only in Germany was it poorly received. It, and similar publications, soon stirred up an atmosphere of paranoia and xenophobia in society.

In popular culture the genie that Harmsworth, et al., let out of the bottle led to the creation of a caricature type of Englishman, a chap generally known as ‘one of the Bulldog-Breed’. Typically they were sterling sorts (usually drawn from the upper echelons, but often as not they kept a sidekick in tow who spoke the vulgar tongue). They had in common a fierce patriotism, a loyalty and were likewise physically and morally intrepid. Together, they were sworn in defence of their country against the threat of Johnny Foreigner. This, I think, is what Yorick Gradeley saw – or thought he saw – in Mark All. A sort of noble savagery. Alternatively, it was something he perhaps wished to project on to him. You, the jury, must decide.

So, now, with profuse and heartfelt apologies to my German friends in particular (and any others whom I might unwittingly offend), here is the first episode of Yorick Gradeley’s, ripping yarn: ‘A Sixty Thousand-Mile Walk’, as it appeared in ‘The Wide World Magazine’ in January 1908. The illustrations are by George Soper. It is, as it says, ‘To be concluded’. I will publish Part 2 soon as possible. Till then, keep well, and let me know your thoughts …