How a rose was used to pay off City officials

Planning officials today would tell you exactly where to go if you offered them a rose as payment for building a footbridge across a public road without permission. But that’s exactly what was imposed when in 1381 Mrs Knollys was rebuked for creating a structure to connect her husband’s City house on Seething Lane to a rose garden across the way. As a penalty, it was ordered that the flower had to be given every year to the Lord Mayor by way of ‘rent’.   

This morning I joined the annual ceremony where a single red rose is cut from the garden and carried on a cushion in a procession to Mansion House. The footbridge may have long since disappeared but each year the Lord Mayor still gets this peppercorn rent payment thanks to the ritual organised by the Company of Watermen and Lightmen of the River Thames.  

Against a backdrop of shiny modern office buildings, the red rose attracted a lot of attention today from office workers rushing from meetings and bemused tourists alike. Few probably had a clue what was going on as members of the Company of Watermen and Lightmen, dressed in traditional red outfits and carrying wooden oars, watched attentively over the flower.   

But why did Mrs Knollys want / need a footbridge to cross the road to reach her rose garden anyway? While her husband, leading citizen Sir John Knollys, was away fighting abroad she is said to have become annoyed with dusting blowing from a property opposite. So she bought it and turned it into rose garden. London roads were muddy so she built the footbridge as well and so her troubles began.

What I witnessed today just goes to show that while the fabric of the old City may have changed it still has a beating Medieval heart. Boris Johnson has control over Greater London but there is still a Lord Mayor elected annually. Guilds may not have the monopolistic powers they once had on all aspects of commercial life, from setting prices to deciding who can trade in the City, but they still meet in their halls. Some are even reporting growing memberships. The street layout in London is Medieval. You just sometimes need an imagination to relieve it and understand it.

The planned destruction of Deptford

Today it is one of the poorest parts of London with residents struggling to get by on low incomes, many shops look shabby, 70s tower blocks are ridden with crime and street drinking is an all too apparent problem. So it may surprise some that Deptford High Street was once one of the richest part of the capital and on par with fashionable Oxford Street.   

This captivating riches to rags story is powerfully told in the first episode of The Secret History of Our Streets, part of the BBC’s ‘London Calling’ season. Taking the landmark map produced by Charles Booth in 1886 recording living conditions of inhabitants in the capital, the programme features archive footage and interviews with residents to chart over 125 years of social history.

In many senses the story of Deptford High Street in south London mirrors an important national history - the destruction of close knit communities up and down Britain through the clearance of slums. But a running theme through this programme is the question of whether the condemned houses really were unfit for human habitation. Were the terraced properties bulldozed by the authorities in Deptford, and elsewhere in Britain, really slums?

Of course many people were living in terrible conditions after World War Two with whole families forced to bunk up in single rooms. Yet documents unearthed in 2012 and featured on the BBC programme revealed that many of the properties in Deptford were not beyond repair - council officers that visited the homes noted that demolition was not the only option. Unsurprisingly these comments were not made public at the time.

In fact, some contributors to the programme alleged that it was the authorities themselves created the slums. When residents moved out following the purchase of their homes demolition teams would move in and those in neighbouring properties who refused to leave would suffer. Roofs were damaged and water pipes cut. If people weren’t already living in slums they after the bulldozing had started.

Councillors and planners at the time also said that people were happy to move out - and with shiny new kitchens and bathrooms why wouldn’t they? But contributors to the programme and archive interviews from the time tell a different story. Deptford residents enjoyed the community spirit that came with living in terraced streets. They popped in for a coffee with neighbours and children had somewhere to play. By contrast, many told of the misery of living in 70s high rise tower blocks or of being pushed out of the area and away from friends.

Booth’s map of 1886 showed how rich and poor people were living literally streets away from each other. Yet the Deptford after the slum clearances was largely one of extreme poverty. Those that had “made it” could not be persuaded to stay and the local council struggled to fill the new homes with local residents. So to fill the vacant spaces a new wave of immigration brought in only those on low incomes.

It’s telling that houses in a street (Aldbury Street) in Deptford that miraculously survived demolition are on the market for £750,000 today. And for a street that was labeled as the lowest of all slums in the 1960s. Just imagine what Deptford would be like today if many more streets had survived demolition.

International Slavery Museum - a case study for a good museum

What is a museum? The answer to this may at first be obvious - surely it is simply a place where objects and artefacts from the past are preserved and put on show for the public to see. Originating from the Greek Mouseion, which denoted a place or temple dedicated to the Muses (the patron divinities in Greek mythology of the arts), the word evokes grand museums like the British Museum in London and the Smithsonian in Washington DC. With both these, impressive buildings house equally special collections charting thousands of years of civilisation.

But in reality the scope and purpose of museums around the world vary enormously, both in what they conserve and how they present it to the public. In today’s modern age, where the thirst for lifelong learning has never been greater, institutions need to work harder in the way they interact with visitors. Displaying classical objects in dusty museums cases is not enough to win over a demanding public, no matter how rare and significant the pieces. 

Of course a good museum starts with its collection, without that it is not a museum. This however is only the starting point. For me, museums need to use a range of tools and techniques to tell the story of the past. When I visit a museum I want to be able to get a sense of the world in years gone by - presented correctly objects really can speak a thousand words, as BBC Radio 4’s recent Shakespeare’s Restless World proved. Touring galleries, I want to know what people thought, what they would have seen, what they would have smelt and what they would have heard. Objects and artefacts can go a long way to telling the past’s story, but good museums supplement with photos, videos, models and other effects.   

In terms of a case study for a good museum, I think Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum ticks all the boxes, somewhere I had the pleasure of visiting at the weekend. The middle passage gallery, which charts the history of the terrible conditions slaves faced as they were squashed into cramped boats on the torturous journey from Africa to the New World, is particularly effective. The shackles that were put on the enslaved people are displayed in well illuminated cabinets. There is a chilling model of a ship, based on contemporary paintings, that brings home the horrors of the poor conditions victims faced. Accompanying text discusses the magnitude of the crime. During the 400 years of the Atlantic slave trade at least 12m Africans were forcibly transported on ships - but about a quarter died on the passage. Visitors can also feel the full force of the conditions on board ships with a video room featuring wrap-around screens showing the terrible transatlantic journeys that slaves faced below deck.

Those that did make it to the New World were both lucky and unlucky - in that they’d made the passage but faced a pretty bleak future on plantations where they were quite literally worked to their deaths. The museum has an impressive large scale model of a plantation next to which visitors can listen to audio accounts, based on original sources, of daily lives for the enslaved workers. Listening to the accounts of the workers, where they were whipped for not working hard enough, can be contrasted with the lavish daily life lived out by plantation managers and owners.

The slave trade made plantation owners very rich indeed. Attractive returns of 10% a year meant that the entrepreneurs could build themselves great country houses in England. It is particularly fitting that the museum is in Liverpool because by the end of the 1700s it was the slavery capital of the world given the high number of ships sailing to Africa. The profits from the slave trade were invested in many other enterprises such as iron, coal and banking bringing about a boom in the local economy.     
Of course, history needs to be set in context - something that the International Slavery Museum does well. It has a whole gallery dedicated to the legacy of slave and the sad fact that, despite the Abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1807 (which is properly charted in the museum as well), the trade continues today.  

No-one today could ever possibly fully comprehend the horrors that enslaved African faced, but the International Slavery Museum is the best attempt I have seen in the UK to chart this chilling history.

Mapping the Underground - a new exhibition

Travelling on packed Tubes on weekday mornings when you are squashed in to small spaces against closing doors, it is hard to imagine a time when clever marketing was needed to persuade people to get on board. But turn the clock back a few decades and you have a colourful array of beautifully designed posters encouraging those living in the capital to explore the countryside at the weekend or up sticks to a modern housing development on the outskirts of city and use the London Underground to commute in.   

The story of how the London Underground helped serve a growing London (or indeed brought about the growth of London) has been well documented - see for example The Subterranean Railway: How the London Underground Was Built and How it Changed the City Forever . Mind the Map, a new exhibition at London Transport Museum, tells the story of how maps and other illustrative artwork in shaping the network. Find out about the origins of the fold-out Tube map and how it has changed little over the years. And see the colourful maps that chart the shopping centres and theatres of London.

But there is much more to Mind the Map as artists have been commissioned to produce special pieces, like Stephen Walter who has mapped out what lies beneath ground. It is a congested map showing secret tunnels, burial sites and disused stations. Other installations graphically chart individuals’ journeys across the capital over the course of many years. What would it look like if your movements were recorded?

Travelling on the Tube in amongst all the congestion it is easy to take this vast transport network for granted - Mind the Map will make you stop and think a little deeper about the world’s first subterranean railway. 

UK high streets struggle while it’s boom time in Dubai

High streets across the UK are struggling: footfall is collapsing and consumers’ spend is going down. Across the UK, there are countless examples of parades of boarded-up shops in what were once-thriving market towns and busy city centres.  Several long-established businesses such as Peacocks and Blacks have been pushed into administration in recent months. And, as I write this, it looks like the greeting card chain Clinton Cards could be next.

The response from many struggling retailers is to invest in digital and benefit from the growing number of people who want to shop from the comfort of their own homes and offices. If the likes of Amazon can create a highly profitable business, then why can’t others emulate it, goes the thinking.

But, why, in other parts of the world, are shopping malls busy and consumers still spending . Take Dubai as an example; I was out there for a few days recently and found shopping malls booming – people were laden with shopping bags from designer stores and out in force after a day in the office. My friend, who lives out there, could identify that many were Saudis who were treating Dubai’s malls as their playgrounds. It is, of course, far quicker to jump on a plane to Dubai or one of the UAE’s other emirates than it is to jet all the way to London. These days many famous British brands, such as Hamleys, are owned by Middle Eastern investors and have outlets in the Gulf anyway.    

And then of course there are the expats from Britain who live permanently out in Dubai. If they were born in the UK then going out and spending money in shops is probably the only way they know. They have the disposable income, so they spend, spend, spend.

But perhaps the biggest reason explaining why shopping malls in Dubai are booming is that online shopping is almost non-existent.  As people in the emirate don’t generally have postal deliveries to their homes making purchases on the Internet becomes very difficult.  Organisations pay for postal boxes at local post offices where they can pick up deliveries on a daily basis, yet this is mainly used for business purposes. In any case, it is hardly worth companies like Amazon investing in somewhere like Dubai when the market is so small – they would be building a distribution centre for a place with a population on par with the likes of Birmingham. All this means that Dubai’s shopping centres, the nearest we have to high streets, have something of a reprieve from the switch to consumers moving online.  

And so we are back at the UK and whether it matters that are high streets are in terminal decline in the face of falling consumer confidence and increasing Internet purchases. On the one hand, we can’t go back to the time when so many purchases were bought using cheap credit – our economy needs to recover and we can’t artificially keep the high street afloat. But at the same time we thrive on nostalgia, with brands like Marks & Spencer and WH Smith helping us connect with the past.  And it is an important place for social interactions – it gives people a place to meet.  

So perhaps we need a compromise. In towns where shop after shop is boarded up, the solution could be to reduce the space given over to retail. If shops are concentrated in one particular area, then the rest of the space could be converted into affordable housing or devoted to community centres, such as libraries. We don’t have the luxury of a shopping monopoly, as bricks-and-mortar shops have in Dubai, so perhaps this idea of matching the supply of shops to demand could prove the best solution?  

Preserving ALL of Istanbul for the world

For history fans, a trip to Istanbul takes some beating. Here visitors can discover two great cities for the price of one, with both Byzantine Constantinople and Ottoman Istanbul waiting to be explored. To walk the streets of Turkey’s commercial capital today is to take a stroll through the ancient, medieval and modern history; over past two millennia it truly has been one of the most important places in the world.

And Istanbul is hardly short of tourists who want to visit the main, blockbuster historic sites like the Haggia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace. Big cruise ships dock along the Bosphorus daily and visitors are herded like cattle onto buses for whirlwind, exhausting day trips which include lunch in Turkish restaurants which are about as authentic as McDonalds and end in shady carpet shops where tour guides receive commission on sales. Tourists get to put big ticks on attractions in their guide books, while traders and the government gain important revenue. It’s a win, win scenario all round, surely?

Perhaps not. Tourists are only seeing minute fractions of the Byzantine and Ottoman cities – and while the key sites are being preserved, elsewhere historic building and monuments are facing a real risk. Corruption has become ingrained in modern Turkish society, meaning that if developers want to build new hotels in a way which seriously damages ancient and medieval sites they can through the payment of bribes to officials. And it’s not just a question of the odd pot or altar being destroyed; the recent discoveries are far more spectacular. For example, when they started constructing an extension to an underground line a Byzantine palace was found. Once these masterpieces are ruined in the name of so called progress, history is lost forever – it cannot be replaced.

Of course, the well-known historic buildings and monuments are important. Take the awe-inspiring Haggia Sophia. Commissioned by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in 537, it stands as one of the world’s greatest architectural achievements and was built by 100,000 men at a time when Europe was facing a truly dark age. It came at a time in history when the old Roman city of London had been abandoned and many inhabitants of what we now call Britain had returned to live on the land. The Haggia Sophia church was converted into a mosque following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, but is now designated a museum and has many amazing mosaics and frescos on show alongside Islamic calligraphy and decorative artwork.

Buildings from the Ottoman era are, in their own way, equally spectacular. The Blue Mosque with its six minarets (the sultan Ahmet I had to pay for a seventh to be added to the mosque in Mecca because some said he was trying to out-do the place of worship at the birthplace of Islam) is named after the blue tiles from the Turkish town of Iznik that adorn this construction, which dates from 1609. The Topkapi Palace, with its complex of interconnected courtyards, pavilions and ornamental gardens dates from shortly after Mehmet II constructed the city and confidently sums up that the Ottomans were in Istanbul to stay. While the likes of England under the Tudors were at the edge of the world, here was a great power that was entering its heyday, with territory stretching as far a north Africa, Arabia and eastern Europe.

But in terms of Byzantine heritage, the Haggia Sophia is a mere morsel of what can be discovered in Istanbul. On my recent trip to the city I went on an excellent walking tour (run by Istanbul Walks) that took in no fewer than 10 Byzantine monasteries. Of course, they aren’t in perfect condition today as modifications were made when they were converted into mosques and some of the buildings are now in a bad state of repair, but there is more than enough remaining of the original artwork on show to give you an impression of what they must have looked like more than one thousand years ago. The highlight of the tour was undoubtedly the Church of St Saviour in Chora, with colourful glass mosaics depicting the genealogy of Jesus Christ, his birth and ministry, including some of miracles he performed.

It is ironic to say the least that today’s secular Turkey has less regard for Christian churches than the Ottomans, whose rulers were of course Muslim, had. Following the 1453 conquest sultans made considerable effort to persuade Christians (particularly Armenians) to live in Constantinople. It must have been a very exciting and multi-cultural place to be. As I’ve noted above, Christians mosaics were plastered over (Islamic forbids image of people in mosques), but at least they preserved the buildings and valued the heritage (plastering over the Byzantine artwork may have even conserved it so that much is still on show for today’s visitors).

When the Turkish Republic was declared in 1923 there was a high regard for preserving Byzantine and Ottoman history, and putting it on show for visitors. The first president of modern Turkey, Ataturk, opened both Haggia Sophia and Topkapi Palace as museums. He loved the arts and enjoyed the power that came with opening new attractions to the public.

Unfortunately there is not the same commitment to heritage with the government today. History is disappearing in the face of corruption. And, in a country which is celebrated by the US and others for its democracy and the positive example it sets as to how Middle Eastern countries can reform, there is no freedom of the press. The government began a few years ago a crackdown on journalists that are pro-opposition and 100 journalists are currently in jail on ridiculous, trumped up charges. I’ve even heard of the intelligentsia who are prominent is trying to preserve heritage being attacked by gangs working for developers.

For a modern nation that in recent years has expressed interest in joining the EU, this cannot be allowed to continue. Turkey’s important history needs to be preserved – it belongs not just to the Turkish people, but to the world as a whole.

Dubai: the city that has grown up

Five years ago I vividly recall sitting in my car in a supermarket car park on the outskirts of Hull and talking on the phone to a friend who was moving out to Dubai. It was pouring down with rain and I couldn’t face getting soaked from walking the short distance to the store entrance. Yet in spite of the turbulent weather that we often face in the UK I thought then I was in the better position – at least I wasn’t moving an outpost in the desert!

But two years later, in 2009, I thought I should go and visit the place that many were raving about, so I booked a flight out to visit my friend in Dubai. People back home warned me that I would find the place soulless, however if I wanted to visit some of the world’s biggest shopping malls, indoor ski slopes and extravagantly themed hotels then I would probably have a good time.

Worse still, in 2009 the British press was full of stories about the supposed financial collapse of Dubai. Thousands who had bought new properties off plan had lost their life-time saving as work stopped on construction sites. Most high profile of all was ‘the World’, a series of manmade islands representing scaled down versions of all countries in the globe, lay barren – it was all very embarrassing for Dubai. There were also reports of expats abandoning their cars at the airport and getting out while they could. Had for Dubai, the emirate bankrolled for so long by unsustainable debts, the bubble finally burst?

In the end Dubai was bailed out by its oil rich neighbour Abu Dhabi, which is run by the cousin of the leader of Dubai, to the tune of an estimated $15bn. And, as for my holiday, I had a great time. We chilled out in some of the best bars in the world – built on the beach, high up skyscrapers and at my friend’s golf club. There was also time for history too – the story of Dubai is well told at an excellent museum down by the Creek.

Since that visit, I’ve made several return trips – usually combined with visiting other places like India and Oman. It really is a great place to stop over and chill – and catch up with my good friend Ian from university days and his wife.
On my most recent visit, I was really struck by how much Dubai has matured and grown up. Talking to Ian, he says that the days of people jetting over to Dubai and getting a well-paid job straight away just because they have a British passport are long gone. The under qualified and those lacking a hard work ethic have found themselves packing their bags and heading back home. Building work has started again, but projects seem to be far more sensible and manageable. And those that are sensible won’t buy off plan or not even buy at all and just rent.

Of course, those that are prepared to work hard are rewarded with fantastic leisure activities. There are some great golf courses and beautiful, well looked after landscaped parks across the city. The bars and restaurants are of the highest quality and are booming. The highlight of the week for many being the Friday brunch where hotels lay on extravagant buffets and are charged one fixed price to eat and drink as much as they want. Dubai is also putting on some great festivals – on my recent visit we enjoyed a fantastic music event with Kaiser Chiefs headlining. The location, down on the sands on the Palm, a manmade island jutting out from Dubai, and the atmosphere would be hard to beat.

The city has never looked better, with extensive walk ways along by some of Dubai’s waterfront areas. The Metro is finished, connecting the airport with the main business and leisure districts. The shopping malls are booming with visitors from far and wide. Dubai still boasts the tallest building in the world – the Burj Khalifa. To travel up to the viewing platform of this immense skyscraper gives you the chance to look down on a city that gets more exciting by the day. Work will apparently start soon on building a grand opera house.

Many that live out in Dubai don’t actually do any work in the emirate all – but just use it as a comfortable base for picking up lucrative contracts in emerging countries like Saudi Arabia. Air travel in the region is excellent, so it is very easy to live in Dubai with all its Western comforts and then commute to neighbouring areas. Expats also have plenty of options for having fun at the weekend – aside from the vibrant nightlife in Dubai itself, modern roads make it really easy to travel out to exciting places in neighbouring emirates. On my most recent visit we headed out to Liwa in the Arabian desert (about four to five hours drive from Dubai) for a couple of days. It was amazing seeing nothing but red sands, and the odd camel, for mile upon mile.

Dubai hasn’t completely turned the corner yet – it will for example have to settle its debts with Abu Dhabi over the next couple of years, but there is a great sense of optimism out there now. It’s an increasingly popular tourist destination for people of all ages and it is doing well trading on the notion of being a safe hub in an otherwise turbulent region. The message to weary war reporters and enterprising businessmen alike is the same: Dubai has grown up and means business.