Fascinating Paddington London History Walking Tour (4K)

Paddington, best known for its bear of course and also its station which is just over there on the other side of the road but they do feature later on, well the bear doesn't, in this walk but we're going to explore the the ancient Paddington, Village Paddington, a place of so many incredible facts that it bowls me over almost. I'm primarily basing today's walk on two particular books published in a similar sort of era, here's Discovering London Villages by John Wittich, didn't expect to find a chapter on Paddington in here and also Geoffrey Fletcher's The London Nobody Knows. In his classic book The London Nobody Knows, Geoffrey Fletcher and if you don't know his book oh get yourself a copy, Penguin keep reissuing it or get yourself an old one, it's the great London book, it's the template for so much of what people such as myself do, nosing around, finding quirky interesting things about London and Fletcher drew a lot of those things, I've got a video below where I will I'll link to that was based on his book Offbeat London or Offbeat in London and Fletcher lived around here, I didn't know that, he's associated with Clarkowell, Islington, that kind of neck of the woods but he actually lived in Paddington and he said you could spend a lifetime nosing around Paddington and and still make discoveries, you could spend a lifetime nosing around Paddington and still make discoveries and I have not spent a lifetime nosing around Paddington, my experience of Paddington is probably like a lot of people's, it's passing through there when I go to visit my dad in North Devon, Paddington station and the new Elizabeth line and rather surprisingly or I thought surprisingly Paddington is actually a place of ancient settlement, the name Paddington is said to derive from settlement or the farms that of Pader or Pader, an Anglo-Saxon who set up a homestead here so it's a place of some antiquity and village Paddington is centred around Paddington Green, I think I've walked through Paddington Green once in my entire life, it didn't stop so and when I was reading about Paddington this morning I had no idea about 90% of the things we're going to discover today, it's so rich, it's so rich, so I'm just going to go up here over Bishop's Bridge Road and looking in that direction we're looking in the direction of the counters creek that we that we passed, for those of you not aware with the landscape of London Paddington station is one of the major railway termini, the western termini, it was envisaged you could get a train from here to New York, you could go by steam from here to Bristol and then by steam ship to New York, did that ever become a reality? And this is part of the wave of new development which has swallowed up big tracks of Paddington around the railway and around the Regents Canal basin, I'll link below to the Regents Canal walk I did earlier in the year which ended here at Paddington basin. We have a major road intersection to navigate here and a big flyover over the Harrow Road, if you are following my footsteps probably don't go this way, there's an easy way but I just want to follow the trail starting at Paddington Green. Here we have St Mary's Square, St Mary's Terrace, these terraces on the left here are a real feature of kind of the streets around Paddington that people are very familiar with, that's kind of like postcard London isn't it, and here we have just there we have Fleming Court block of flats here which is obviously a reference to Alexander Fleming, the inventor of penicillin and we will see the place where he invented penicillin later, you know is there one of the most important discoveries in human history I would say. So behind all that corrugated iron and scaffolding is the parish church of St Mary's Paddington, parish church of Little Venice, the parish of Little Venice, it's the third church on or near the site, as I say this is a place of Anglo-Saxon settlement, this church dates from the late 1700s I think it's between 1781 and 1791 and one of the more interesting features is in the crypt is the grave of John O'Meara, the doctor surgeon to Napoleon In terms of seeing old and new London side by side, there you have the 18th century church and here you have the throbbing roads pulsing through the city. This tomb here is in memory of Mary Bergen, we've lost the the last bit of it but she was married to Joseph Thrupp of Oxford Street and died in May 1795 buried here and Charles Joseph Thrupp born 1791 son of the above and died in 1872 buried in Twickenham Cemetery. The London plains here on Paddington Green around the churchyard really are impressive aren't they, a fine display of greenery. Unfortunately these gravestones are all wiped smooth but the map in Village London shows the the burial place of the actress Sarah Siddons as being around here and she was a famous actress of 18th century, 19th century London. Her first appearance was in 1775 playing Portia at the Drury Lane Theatre in a performance of The Merchant of Venice and her last performance was indeed also in Covent Garden as Lady Macbeth and her burial in 1831 drew a crowd of 5,000 people. Astonishing isn't it, buried somewhere here. This is a beautiful and unexpected tract of open space in such a congested part of London. I have to say the City of Westminster information boards are very thorough and very good, gives a good history of Paddington Green saying that although first mentioned in 1547 would have existed long long before then, I think going back to the idea of it being a Saxon settlement and it was used to graze cattle. Fascinating fact about Paddington Green, it's where the first London bus service left from. George Sheelyby's bus ran from Paddington Green to the Bank of England, oh I've forgotten the date, I think it's 1827. I'll correct that on the screen if that's incorrect, trying to remember what I read off the information board. It's interesting isn't it, it's hidden here in the undergrowth, this concrete block is what I imagine is the top of an underground civil defence report and control centre. Civil defence report and control centre, a very nondescript kind of name isn't it. You would wonder wouldn't you, what's that doing there and I might muse that it has such a purpose and people would say you're fantasising but in this case no, it's written on the information board and I guess the actual centre is beneath the ground there. And here on Paddington Green we have the statue of Sarah Siddons, the great actress, which was unveiled by Sir Henry Irvine in 1897 and it depicts her as the tragic muse based on a painting by Joshua Reynolds. Interestingly though it was the first statue of a woman unveiled in London who wasn't a member of the royal family, interesting fact. Paddington Green was famous at one point for the song Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green. I've heard of Pretty Polly Perkins, I didn't know about the Paddington Green part of it and apparently in that song they do mention the London buses that ran from here, the George Shillibere buses. The other thing that actually Geoffrey Fletcher mentions is, he calls it Blue Lamp territory around Paddington because of the film The Blue Lamp made in 1949 just after the war and it's considered to be the first British cop film. I am walking right next to Harrow Road, noisiest place in London probably, one of them, and that was the first British cop film made after the war and that used documentary footage to illustrate the life of a police officer solving crime. It introduced the famous character Dixon of Dock Green who despite being killed in the film went on to be the leading character of that TV series Dixon of Dock Green which ran for, I mean even I've watched Dixon of Dock Green, repeats of course. Paddington Green is the police station though isn't it, Paddington Green police station, I think it's the anti-terror police station where high-level prisoners are taken to be questioned and stuff but I can't see the police station. They don't like pointing cameras at them anyway. I'm going to go to a place mentioned by Geoffrey Fletcher just up here, not on this trail but up here. So here we have Edgware Road, one of the great and ancient thoroughfares of London, more or less following the line of Watling Street, not exactly but along this kind of axis anyway and Fletcher writes about some of the features here at this section but he writes about Church Street Market over there and I thought it had gone but there you go Church Street Market is still there, let's have a quick look and we will come back. So it's a Sunday afternoon, it looks like it's an antique market on a Sunday afternoon, I imagine it's probably a more traditional market during the week. I'll have to come back for a look around but I never knew this existed. Traders Inn pub, Fletcher mentions a few pubs with interesting features along Edgware Road but this is, we're off Edgware Road here, there's a blue plaque in the street next to it I'll go and check out. So this might be one where you can help me out, it says Red Buffs Recording Studios making musical history on this site since 1978. I've never heard of it, obviously I could look it up but I bet the fountain of knowledge that is the viewership of this channel knows everything about that. If you're looking for antiques and you want to avoid the crowds of Portobello Road, you could come down here to Church Street just off of Edgware Road. Look at that beautiful building there, Alfie's Antique Market, what a beautiful Art Deco masterpiece that is. It's got to be one of the great buildings of West London, I like a bit of hyperbolic, forgive me. Fletcher mentions a gallery down here that he loved and he bought an early Turner drawing for a fiver which would have been I guess in the 1950s, he wrote the book in 1962. It's another great looking old Truman's pub, the Duke of York, seems like it might be an Indian restaurant now but you never know. Fletcher did write about the portico of an old Victorian musical still being here when he was writing what 1962, but I can't, it looks like there's been a lot, I imagine bomb damage right, or it could just be 60s redevelopment. That was definitely a worthwhile little detour, it felt like a kind of Geoffrey Fletcher-esque escapade, I could feel his presence down there, how brilliant. We'll return to the heart of Paddington over to Prade Street now. They say Edgeware Road is the best place for Lebanese food and Middle Eastern food, I haven't eaten down here for a long, long, long time, I think you'd need a recommendation I think. In the London Compendium, Ed Glinner quotes Christine Keeler, the famous Christine Keeler and the famous cool girl involved in the Perfumo affair, if you're not familiar, and she said that after the war in the 1950s, Paddington took over from Soho for that side of life, for the more, it sort of became London's red light district if you like after the war. Of course being a station, a big station, it's always got that element to it hasn't it, so still a little bit seedy, it's probably one of the best places to get your bag snatched, or your camera in fact. Got St Mary's Hospital here and we're looking for the Alexander Fleming plaque here, the place where penicillin was invented, or discovered by accident you might say, not invented, discovered. So here it is behind the scaffolding, Sir Alexander Fleming 1881 to 1955, discovered penicillin in the second story room above this plaque. Wow, I've crossed the road to get a view. Turning off Parade Street into Norfolk Place and the streets around here are really interesting. We've got a itinerary in Village London, but for example look at St Michael's Street, just have a little look, there's a ghost sign down there I can see, can't really see, it says London something, the rest of it's gone, I'd say some sort of, would have been some sort of warehouse, I suppose also because of the proximity to both the canal and the railway station. And there we have the Sir Alexander Fleming pub, and on the opposite corner of St Michael's Street you've got an Iraqi restaurant there, wow, might pop back there for some dinner. And this shop here is a bit of a survivor isn't it, GF Electrical, look at that, classic, still in business by the looks of it, love these little discoverers, that's Jeffrey Fletcher-esque as well. So I think on the other side of the road there on Norfolk Place where those bollards are, according to Village London in the, or discovering Village London I should say, in the 19th century, 1840s I mean, there was a reservoir here, I guess it must be beneath the ground there, I can see a square over there so perhaps that's where the reservoir was, interesting. And we'll walk down Star Street here, just opposite that old reservoir, and Jeffrey Fletcher wrote about this street here being a great example of the kind of more lively street life of Star Street, where you could see people with their elbows hanging out of upper floor windows, kids and dogs chasing each other in the street, ducking and diving, a real lively scene and he does a drawing of it with the plants over the windows, I think he sees it as part of the kind of neighbourhood of Paddington, a lively place. So the restaurant over there, Fattoush Express, Lebanese restaurant, I think that was the site of the Lloyds Bank building which in its window had the ancient milestone telling you that you are half a mile away from Tyburn, but I've looked all around here and I can't see the milestone so I guess it must have gone. So the guy in the restaurant tells me that used to be the bank, so I'll go in and ask them if they've still got the milestone in there, it's called Jaffa Corner. That was great, the fellas in the restaurants there were eagerly helping me try to find the milestone, they were intrigued, they did know it'd been a Lloyds Bank but there was no milestone, got the book out, looked at it, even so it's good, I like little intrigues like that. We've got a few more places on our Paddington trail and maybe a few more unexpected places as well, you never know do you? I mean that's why they would be unexpected I suppose. My book Discovering London Villages, it is about 50 years old, it was published in 1974, so the numbering's a little bit off but number 32 Sussex Gardens which I think is over there, I think or maybe it's perhaps on this side, it's a little bit difficult to tell, that was where Napoleon's doctor surgeon O'Meara lived and died in a house just here. It's incredible that Napoleon had a British doctor surgeon given the relationship between Britain and France at the time wasn't the greatest was it? Cambridge Square is obviously full of modern buildings, all modern buildings, I wonder what happened, I wonder if it was bombed, but it was here that Thomas Armitage lived and he was a strong advocate for the adoption of braille for the use of blind people reading and he was the founder of what became the Royal National Institute for the Blind. William Ewer also lived here and he's best remembered as the Member of Parliament who passed an act in 1835 abolishing the hanging of people in chains. He also pushed the abolition of capital punishment as a whole which is incredibly progressive for the 1830s. He was unsuccessful but he did manage to get a committee set up to investigate alternatives which is I guess you could say it started that process which took something like a hundred years and I guess it's fitting in a way that a walk that includes Ewer in it should end at Tyburn, the famous place of execution. Lovely to see the bunting up in Portchester Place, I wonder if there's an occasion or whether they just like having bunting across the street, it's like quite a swanky little thoroughfare. So I'm trying to find a burial ground where the body snatchers were particularly prevalent and where Lawrence Stern, author of Christian Shandy, was buried. I'm not sure if it's marked anywhere and the name isn't in the book so it roughly shows its position. Connacht Street here by the way looks like a kind of swanky place with sort of patisseries and bakeries and nice shops, not on our tour, our tour's taking a slightly macabre turn. Archery Close I think is a little bit of a giveaway that the acre of ground that we're looking for is around here somewhere because there were archery grounds here and rifle butts. Sadly Connacht Square seems to be a private garden otherwise I'm pretty sure the city of Westminster signs would have information telling us about the burial ground. So somewhere around here there's an acre of land, it's quite a large area of land that in the 18th century was used as a place of execution for soldiers, a place of execution for soldiers. Quite why they were executed, I don't know, maybe for desertion or something like that and then it became a burial ground, a large burial ground, an acre, an acre I think is quite a decent sized chunk so it would cover this area or these houses do look like they might be 19th century I guess but it's where Lawrence Sturm was buried in 1768 and straight after his burial his body was exhumed, he was dug up by body snatchers, there was a lot of that kind of thing going on at the time and it was sold to a professor of anatomy at Cambridge but it happened that the guy was a friend of Lawrence Sturm and recognised the body of his recently deceased friend so he returned the body to London for reburial. When they built the flats they had to exhume all the bodies in the graveyard, it was used for the parish that was around Hanover Square and when they reburied Sturm's body they realised the skeleton had two heads, one of which was his which is interesting and the other one, I don't know, they don't know who it was which is a fascinating story. Now we're going to go to the smallest house in London, the Hill of Martyrs and then the Hanging Tree. Bayswater Road here with Hyde Park over there and Speaker's Corner and all that jazz, we're not doing any of that, we're looking for the smallest house in London. So this here at number 10 Hyde Park Place is the smallest house in London. Apparently it was built because the owner wanted to block a passageway beside the house, which is interesting isn't it? I wasn't expecting it to look like this, I wonder if anyone actually lives in there? Interesting. Do you live there? Of greater significance is the Tyburn convent here which was opened in 1901. So the Tyburn convent here right next to the smallest house in London was established in 1903, the book says 1901 but the plaque on the wall says 1903 and it was established here because of the 105 Catholic martyrs that were executed at Tyburn between 1535 and 1681. And it's houses or is run by an order of nuns from Montmartre in Paris, Montmartre being the Mount of Martyrs and Tyburn being known to Catholics as the Hill of Martyrs. Apparently the crypt here houses the relics of a number of saints. So now we're going to end our walk at the Tyburn tree itself, the famous notorious place of execution. So here at the end of Edgeware Road where meets Bayswater Road and Hyde Park corner was the site of the Tyburn tree, the famous place of execution primarily for prisoners from Newgate prison on the edge of the city of London who were brought here through the city to be hung. Interestingly in my book Discovering London Villages it talks about a 12-foot tree where people could be hung from eight sides. I looked online actually the Tyburn tree was in fact a wooden gallows, there probably was a tree here originally but the wooden gallows that was erected here in the 16th century sometimes hung up to 24 people at a time. In the 1740s alone there were 700 people executed here just in that decade so thousands of people met their end here, not just the Catholic martyrs. It was a place of a terrible place for 650 years. The last execution took place in 1783 a fellow named John Austin. Well thank you for joining me on that walk exploring the ancient village of Paddington. It's been on my list for a very long time actually for like six or seven years to make that video because I would see... ah here we go. So thank you for joining me on that fabulous walk exploring the ancient village of Paddington. Subscribe. Thank you for joining me on that exploration of the ancient village of Paddington with all its wonderful stories and history and everything else you could ever want. What a magical walk around Paddington, so much. Go in the comments there'll be some fantastic comments with all the things that I've missed, there'll be lots I mean stuff that I know that I've missed out but you can't include so much. Oh brilliant that's the best end to a piece of camera I think I've ever had. So as I always like to say I look forward to seeing the next walk wherever that may be and a pretty good idea but not a concrete idea. I found myself on a traffic island why did I come here? Take care, you're the best.