The properties entrusted to the Corporation for the upkeep of London Bridge are managed by the Bridge House Estates Committee, the revenues from which are also used in the maintenance of the other three City bridges, £26,989 being thus expended in 1907, the Tower bridge absorbing £17,735 of this amount.
Thames Tunnels.—Some of the metropolitan railway lines cross the river in tunnels beneath its bed. There are also several tunnels under the river below London Bridge, namely: Tower Subway, constructed in 1870 for foot-passengers, but no longer used, Greenwich Tunnel (1902) for foot-passengers, Blackwall Tunnel (1897), constructed by the County Council between Greenwich and Poplar, and Woolwich Tunnel, begun in 1910. A tunnel between Rotherhithe and Ratcliff was authorized in 1897 and opened in 1908. The Thames Tunnel (1825-1843), 2 m. below London Bridge, became a railway tunnel in 1865. The County Council maintains a free ferry at Woolwich for passengers and vehicular traffic. The capital expenditure on this undertaking was £185,337 and the expense of maintenance in 1907-1908 £20,881. The Greenwich Tunnel (capital expenditure £179,293) in the same year had expended on it for maintenance £3725, and the Blackwall Tunnel (capital expenditure £1,268,951) £11,420. The capital expenditure on the Rotherhithe Tunnel was £1,414,561.
Parks.—The administration and acreage of parks and open spaces, and their provisions for the public recreation, fall for consideration later, but some of them are notable features in the topography of London. The royal parks, namely St James’s, Green and Hyde Park, and Kensington Gardens, stretch in an irregular belt for nearly 3 m. between Whitehall (Westminster) and Kensington. St James’s Park was transformed from marshy land into a deer park, bowling green and tennis court by Henry VIII., extended and laid out as a pleasure garden by Charles II., and rearranged according to the designs of John Nash in 1827-1829. Its lake, the broad Mall leading up to Buckingham Palace, and the proximity of the government buildings in Whitehall, combine to beautify it. Here was established, by licence from James I., the so-called Milk Fair, which remained, its ownership always in the same family, until 1905, when, on alterations being made to the Mall, a new stall was erected for the owners during their lifetime, though the cow or cows kept here were no longer allowed. St James’s Park is continued between the Mall and Piccadilly by the Green Park. Hyde Park, to the west, belonged originally to the manor of Hyde, which was attached to Westminster Abbey, but was taken by Henry VIII. on the dissolution of the monasteries. Two of its gateways are noteworthy, namely that at Hyde Park Corner at the south-east and the Marble Arch at the north-east. The first was built in 1828 from designs of Decimus Burton, and comprises three arches with a frieze above the central arch copied from the Elgin marbles in the British Museum. The Marble Arch was intended as a monument to Nelson, and first stood in front of Buckingham Palace, being moved to its present site in 1851. It no longer forms an entrance to the park, as in 1908 a corner of the park was cut off and a roadway was formed to give additional accommodation for the heavy traffic between Oxford Street, Edgware Road and Park Lane. The Marble Arch was thus left isolated. Hyde Park contains the Serpentine, a lake 1500 yds. in length, from the bridge over which one of the finest prospects in London is seen, extending to the distant towers of Westminster. Since the 17th century this park has been one of the most favoured resorts of fashionable society, and at the height of the “season,” from May to the end of July, its drives present a brilliant scene. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was a favourite duelling-ground, and in the present day it is not infrequently the scene of political and other popular demonstrations (as is also Trafalgar Square), while the neighbourhood of Marble Arch is the constant resort of orators on social and religious topics. Kensington Gardens, originally attached to Kensington Palace, were subsequently much extended; they are magnificently timbered, and contain plantations of rare shrubs and flowering trees. Regent’s Park, mainly in the borough of Marylebone, owes its preservation to the intention of George III. to build a palace here. The other most notable open spaces wholly or partly within the county are Hampstead Heath in the north-west, a wild, high-lying tract preserved to a great extent in its natural state, and in the south-west Wimbledon Common, Putney Heath and the royal demesne of Richmond Park, which from its higher parts commands a wonderful view up the rich valley of the Thames. The outlying parts of the county to east, south and north are not lacking in open spaces, but there is an extensive inner area where at most only small gardens and squares break the continuity of buildings, and where in some cases old churchyards serve as public grounds.
Architecture.—While stone is the material used in the construction of the majority of great buildings of London, some modern examples (notably the Westminster Roman Catholic cathedral) are of red brick with stone dressings; and brick is in commonest use for general domestic building. The smoke-laden atmosphere has been found not infrequently to exercise a deleterious effect upon the stonework of important buildings; and through the same cause the appearance of London as a whole is by some condemned as sombre. Bright colour, in truth, is wanting, though attempts are made in a few important modern erections to supply it, a notable instance being the Savoy Hotel buildings (1904) in the Strand. Portland stone is frequently employed in the larger buildings, as in St Paul’s Cathedral, and under the various influences of weather and atmosphere acquires strongly contrasting tones of light grey and black. Owing to the by-laws of the County Council, the method of raising commercial or residential buildings to an extreme height is not practised in London; the block known as Queen Anne’s Mansions, Westminster, is an exception, though it cannot be called high in comparison with American high buildings.
Architectural remains of earlier date than the Norman period are very few, and of historical rather than topographical importance. In architecture of the Norman and Gothic periods London must be considered rich, though its richness is poverty Ecclesiastical architecture. when its losses, particularly during the great fire of 1666, are recalled. These losses were confined within the City, but, to go no farther, included the Norman and Gothic cathedral of St Paul, perhaps a nobler monument of its period than any which has survived it, much as it had suffered from injudicious restoration. Ancient architecture in London is principally ecclesiastical. Westminster Abbey is pre-eminent; in part, it may be, owing to the reverence felt towards it in preference to the classical St Paul’s by those whose ideal of a cathedral church is essentially Gothic, but mainly from the fact that it is the burial-place of many of the English monarchs and their greatest subjects, as well as the scene of their coronations (see [Westminster]). In the survey of London (1598) by John Stow, 125 churches, including St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey, are named; of these 89 were destroyed by the great fire. Thirteen large conventual churches were mentioned by Fitzstephen in the time of Henry II., and of these there are some remains.
The church of St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, is the finest remnant of its period in London. It was founded in 1123 by Rahere, who, probably a Breton by birth, was a courtier in the reign of William II. He is said to have been the king’s minstrel, and to have spent the earlier part of his life in frivolity. Subsequently he entered holy orders, and in c. 1120, being stricken with fever while on a pilgrimage to Rome, vowed that he would found a hospital in London. St Bartholomew, appearing to him in a vision, bade him add a church to his foundation. He became an Augustinian canon, and founded his hospital, which is now, as St Bartholomew’s Hospital, one of the principal medical institutions in the metropolis. He became its first master. Later he erected the priory, for canons of his order, of which the nave and transepts of the church remain. The work is in the main very fine Norman, with triforium, ambulatory and apsidal eastern end. An eastern lady chapel dates from c. 1410, but the upper part is modern, for the chapel was long desecrated. There are remains of the cloisters north of the church,—and praiseworthy efforts have been made since 1903 towards their restoration. The western limit of the former nave of the church is marked by a fine Early English doorway, now forming an entrance to the churchyard. Rahere’s tomb remains in the church; the canopy is Perpendicular work, but the effigy is believed to be original. He died in 1144.
The Temple Church (see [Inns of Court]), serving for the Inner and Middle Temples, belonged to the Knights Templars. It is the finest of the four ancient round churches in England, dating from 1185, but an Early English choir opens from the round church. St Saviour’s in Southwark (q.v.), the cathedral church of the modern bishopric of Southwark, was the church of the priory of St Mary Overy, and is a large cruciform building mainly Early English in style. There may be mentioned also an early pier in the church of St Katherine Cree or Christ Church, Leadenhall Street, belonging to the priory church of the Holy Trinity; old monuments in the vaults beneath St James’s Church, Clerkenwell, formerly attached to a Benedictine nunnery; and the Perpendicular gateway and the crypt of the church of the priory of St John of Jerusalem (see [Finsbury]). Among other ancient churches within the City, that of All Hallows Barking, near the Tower of London, is principally Perpendicular and contains some fine brasses. It belonged to the convent at Barking, Essex, and was the burial-place of many who were executed at the scaffold on Tower Hill. St Andrew Undershaft, so named because a Maypole used to be set up before the former church on May-day, is late Perpendicular (c. 1530); and contains a monument to John Stow the chronicler (d. 1605). The church of Austin Friars, originally belonging to a friary founded in 1253, became a Dutch church under a grant of Edward VI., and still remains so; its style is principally Decorated, but through various vicissitudes little of the original work is left. St Giles, Cripplegate, was founded c. 1090, but the existing church is late Perpendicular. It is the burial-place of Fox the martyrologist and Milton the poet, and contains some fine wood-carving by Grinling Gibbons. St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, belonged to a priory of nuns founded c. 1212, but the greater part of the building is later. It has two naves parallel, originally for the use of the nuns and the parishioners respectively. The church of St Mary-le-Bow, in Cheapside, is built upon a Norman crypt, and that of St Olave’s, Hart Street, which was Pepys’s church and contains a modern memorial to him, is of the 15th century. Other ancient churches outside the City are few; but there may be noted St Margaret’s, under the shadow of Westminster Abbey; and the beautiful Ely Chapel in Holborn (q.v.), the only remnant of a palace of the bishops of Ely, now used by the Roman Catholics. The Chapel Royal, Savoy, near the Strand, was rebuilt by Henry VII. on the site of Savoy Palace, which was erected by Peter, earl of Savoy and Richmond, in 1245, and destroyed in the insurrection of Wat Tyler in 1381. In 1505 Henry VII. endowed here a hospital of St John the Baptist for the poor. The chapel was used as the parish church of St Mary-le-Strand (1564-1717) and constituted a Chapel Royal in 1773; but there are no remains of the rest of the foundation.
The architect to whom, after the great fire of 1666, the opportunity fell of leaving the marks of his influence upon London was Sir Christopher Wren. Had all his schemes been followed out, that influence would have extended beyond architecture Sir Christopher Wren. alone. He, among others, prepared designs for laying out the City anew. But no such model city was destined to be built; the necessity for haste and the jealous guardianship of rights to old foundations resulted in the old lines being generally followed. It is characteristic of London that St Paul’s Cathedral (q.v.) should be closely hemmed in by houses, and its majestic west front approached obliquely by a winding thoroughfare. The cathedral is Wren’s crowning work. It is the scene from time to time of splendid ceremonies, and contains the tombs of many great men; but in this respect it cannot compete with the peculiar associations of Westminster Abbey. Of Wren’s other churches it is to be noted that the necessity of economy usually led him to pay special attention to a single feature. He generally chose the steeple, and there are many fine examples of his work in this department. The steeple of St Mary-le-Bow, commonly called Bow Church, is one of the most noteworthy. This church has various points of interest besides its Norman crypt, from which it took the name of Bow, being the first church in London built on arches. The ecclesiastical Court of Arches sat here formerly. “Bow bells” are famous, and any person born within hearing of them is said to be a “Cockney,” a term now applied particularly to the dialect of the lower classes in London. Wren occasionally followed the Gothic model, as in St Antholin. The Later churches. classic style, however, was generally adopted in the period succeeding his own. Some fine churches belong to this period, such as St Martin’s-in-the-Fields (1726), the Corinthian portico of which rises on the upper part of Trafalgar Square; but other examples are regrettable. While the architecture of the City churches, with the exceptions mentioned, is not as a rule remarkable, many are notable for the rich and beautiful wood-carving they contain. A Gothic style has been most commonly adopted in building modern churches; but of these the most notable, the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral (see [Westminster]), is Byzantine, and built principally of brick, with a lofty campanile. The only other ecclesiastical building to be specially mentioned is Lambeth Palace, opposite to the Houses of Parliament across the Thames. It has been a seat of the archbishops of Canterbury since 1197, and though the present residential portion dates only from the early 19th century, the chapel, hall and other parts are of the 13th century and later (see [Lambeth]).
Among secular buildings, there is none more venerable than the Tower of London (q.v.), the moated fortress which overlooks the Tower of London. Thames at the eastern boundary of the City. It presents fine examples of Norman architecture; its historical associations are of the highest interest, and its armoury and the regalia of England, which are kept here, attract great numbers of visitors.
The Houses of Parliament, with Westminster Abbey and St Margaret’s Church, complete the finest group of buildings which London possesses; a group essentially Gothic, for the Houses of Parliament, completed in 1867 from the designs Government buildings. of Barry, are in a late Perpendicular style. They cover a great area, the east front giving immediately upon the Thames. The principal external features are the huge Victoria Tower at the south, and the clock tower, with its well-known chimes and the hour-bell “Big Ben,” on the north. Some of the apartments are magnificently adorned within, and the building incorporates the ancient Westminster Hall, belonging to the former royal palace on the site (see [Westminster]). The government offices are principally in Whitehall, the fine thoroughfare which connects Parliament Square, in the angle between the Houses and the Abbey, with Trafalgar Square. Somerset House (1776-1786), a massive range of buildings by Sir William Chambers, surrounding a quadrangle, and having its front upon the Strand and back upon the Victoria Embankment, occupies the site of a palace founded by the protector Somerset, c. 1548. It contains the Exchequer and Audit, Inland Revenue, Probate, Registrar-General’s and other offices, and one wing houses King’s College. Other offices are the New Record Office, the repository of State papers and other records, and the Patent Office in Chancery Lane. The Heralds’ College or College of Arms, the official authority in matters of armorial bearings and pedigrees, occupies a building in Queen Victoria Street, City, erected subsequently to the great fire (1683). The Royal Courts of Justice or Law Courts stand adjacent to the Inns of Court, facing the Strand at the point where a memorial marks the site of Old Temple Bar (1672), at the entrance to the City, removed in 1878 and later re-erected at Theobald’s Park, near Cheshunt, Hertfordshire. The Law Courts (1882) were erected from the designs of G. E. Street, in a Gothic style.