October 24th, 2007
Secret London: The vices of the Hole
Aworkman from the construction site blocking Herbal Hill brushes storm water into the drain outside the old house on the corner with Ray Street, a boundary stone of 1804 discreet on its wall. Pools are proper to here - this was the course of the Hole Bourne, alias the upper Fleet River where it ran through this hollow of low amusements called Hockley in the Hole.
Way beneath us, oak piles of a medieval watermill were uncovered when a sewer finally drained the nasty dregs (Ned Ward had complained in 1717 of “all the stinks that rise together, from Hockley Hole in sultry weather”). The mounts around have been lowered and the marsh raised - the cellar of the Coach and Horses was once at ground level. The pub is being renovated: most of its engraved windows have gone, but columns wreathed with gold vines still flank its saloon bar door. A high Victorian front already updated the Coach & Horses of 1811 (where was found a portmanteau labelled Turpin), and before that it was likely the bear-ward’s quarters for the baiting pit, westwards towards the electricity substation. Hockley was a Restoration zone for rough pleasures, a resort for Smithfield butchers and gentlemen gamesters, its amphitheatre with a shady gallery and “seats for the quality, none under half a crown”. They bet on how many mastiffs a tethered beast would kill. They wagered on dogs pitched at each other, or enjoyed arranged mayhem - “a mad bull to be dressed up with fireworks and turned loose” with a cat tied to its tail, an ape panicking on the back of an ass, and a bear on the rampage, too. The ursines were not toothless. Christopher Preston, who had held Charles II’s entertainment warrant, finally failed to pay enough attention in 1709 and was almost devoured by one of his own bears - no slaughterman ceased gobbling furmity, hasty pudding and other hot guttage at Madam Preston’s, though, and no rake threw up his pickled egg (speciality of the westcountry landlord of a tavern along Crawford Passage). Hockley hardly aspired upward, except for the soil infill. Shakebag birds struck with spurs in its cockpit, professional fights and duels were staged - “Will you give cuts or receive?” a Georgian sports reporter overheard a bout being rigged - and Liz Wilkinson boxed Hannah Highfield, wearing holland drawers, with half-crowns clenched in her fists to prevent scratching. Dr Johnson said “pity he has not a better bottom” was the Hockley phrase for gutsiness. The stocks mouldered at the westward junction with Coppice, formerly Codpiece, Row, and dangerous dunghills stopped the way. Hockley (renamed Rag Street for its tat dealers, bowdlerised to Ray Street) stayed tough - the Dodger led Oliver Twist across it to Fagin’s nearby. The vast industrial pile up cobbled Back Hill, now the London College of Printing, was Reveille House, pressworks for the Daily Mirror and Reveille, the lads’ mag of the Brylcreem era, three million copies every weekend: post-print, Frankie Goes to Hollywood shot Welcome to the Pleasure Dome in there. Up Crawford Passage was the workhouse, next to a slummy, crimey rookery demolished in the 1860s for improved dwellings for the labouring classes, and superseded by The Guardian offices. When the Italian church at the top of Back Hill puts on its annual procession, the floats park in the Hole while angels have their wings pinned on and Legionnaires sandal up.