“the crossroads between time and eternity”
Peter Ackroyd
The parish of St Giles
The Church of St Giles-in-the-Fields originally a leper hospital was founded by Queen Matilda in the early 1100s.
The hospital and church were dissolved during the reformation, the chapel was rebuilt in the 1600s and again in 1731-3 by Henry Flitcoft.
To the West side of the church is a gateway built in 1800 by WIlliam Leverton. Above the gate a carving shows the Resurrection. This is a cast of a much earlier original oak panel kept safe inside the church possibly carved by someone called Love in 1687.
Traditionally convicted criminals were often allowed to stop at St Giles en route to Tyburn Tree an execution site by today’s Marble Arch for a final drink – a “St Giles Bowl” – before hanging. The Angel pub claims that it once gave the condemned their final draught (there’s been a pub here since the 18th century at least but the current Sam Smiths pub is 19th century).
“Upon this site in the first years of the twelfth century, were established a chapel and a hospital for lepers; they were dedicated to St. Giles, himself the patron saint of lepers. The establishments lay among fields and marshes, their contagion kept apart from the city. But St. Giles was also the intercessionary saint for beggars and cripples, for those afflicted with misery or those consigned to loneliness. He himself was lame, but refused to be treated for his disability in order that he might practice self-mortification all the more fervently.”
“The invocation of sorrow and loneliness, first embodied in the twelfth-century foundation, has never entirely left this area; throughout its history it has been the haunt of the poor and the outcast. Vagrants even now roam its streets and close to the church there is still a centre for the homeless.”
London The Biography by Peter Ackroyd
Billy Waters
Billy Waters was born into enslavement in 1770s New York, before becoming a sailor in the royal navy. Waters lost his leg as a sailor in the navy when he fell from the rigging. He had a wife and two children to support,and in the 1810s and 1820s he would busk outside the Adelphi Theatre. Billy Waters became London’s most famous street performer, celebrated on stage and in print. Towards the end of his life he was elected ‘King of the Beggars’ by his peers. Waters died destitute in 1823 but his legend lived on for decades.
To find out more about his life Dr Sam Willis spoke with Mary Shannon, author of the excellent book Billy Waters Is Dancing. https://snr.org.uk/the-mariners-mirror-podcast/king-of-the-beggars-the-extraordinary-life-of-billy-waters/
Painting of Billy Waters by David Wilkie
Centrepoint
https://centrepoint.org.uk/about-centrepoint
In the centre of London’s Soho in December 1969, the Revered Ken Leech opened a night shelter in the basement of his church to give homeless, young people a safe place to sleep. Towering over Soho was the Centre Point building, left empty to make money for property developers. Incensed by this “affront to the homeless”, Ken Leech called his shelter Centrepoint.
In the 1970s, we expanded to take on a hostel and bedsits and we had our first housing pathway for young people out of homelessness.
Gin Lane by William Hogarth (1751)
William Hogarth, Thomas Rowlandson, and Gustave Doré, among others, drew the area, as did novelists Henry Fielding and Charles Dickens. Romance novelists Elizabeth Hoyt and Erica Monroe wrote about it extensively in their Maiden Lane and Rookery Rogues series, respectively.
The etching “Noon” from Four Times of the Day by Hogarth takes place in Hog Lane, with the church of St Giles in the Fields in the background. Hogarth would feature St Giles again as the background of Gin Lane and First Stage of Cruelty.Four Times of the Day
Hogarth’s “Noon” from Four Times of the Day, showing St Giles church in the background
Flitcroft Street is the short street at the east end of Denmark Street, its most famous building with the huge door (theatre backdrops were painted here). Flitcroft Street is now home to Meanwhile, a gallery run by the Farsight Collective. I visited Artist and Historian Jane Palm Gold long term resident of the area
https://janepalmgold.com/ and her emotive show in the gallery during the summer
Flitcroft Street used to be known as Little Denmark Street. Peter Watts book, Denmark Street: London’s Street Of Sound, describes Billie’s, a legendary London gay club populated by musicians in the 1930s that was the subject of a homophobic police raid. Billie’s Club, run by club proprietor Billie Joyce, was located on 6 Little Denmark Street (now Flitcroft Street) and opened in October 1935. Criminal and prosecution files from this period provide a great insight into what Soho, and London’s queer scene, might have been like. They illustrate the risks involved, particularly for gay men, but also the escapism and fun that could be had. The files provide great details that evoke the atmosphere and music of the club, including photographs and plans of the interior. The numerous leaflets and booklets about the club and events hosted there create a picture of what it may have been like to attend.
After the Restoration, the area was populated by Huguenot refugees who had fled persecution and established themselves as tradesmen and artisans, particularly in weaving and the silk trade.
Sometimes called Little Ireland or The Holy Land
Phoenix Street – named after an inn that formerly stood near here
Derek Jarman lived above the Phoenix Theatre
https://www.stgilesonline.org/history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Giles,_London
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