TWO double-decker buses rolled over my head. They were followed by three taxis, two cars and a lorry. I didn’t feel or hear a thing. But then I had just walked from outside Television House to Waterloo Bridge without crossing a road or dodging any traffic.

The answer to these feats is, of course, the ‘Strand Underpass’ which is due to be completed by the end of this year and which will take light traffic from the end of Waterloo Bridge and disgorge it just a little way up Kingsway from Television House after passing under the Strand and Aldwych.

Up above the sun was shining, but down there in the nearly completed tunnel it was cool. In Aldwych the traffic ground through its gears. Underneath a pneumatic drill clattered into the sides of the old tramway tunnel.

Down there a lot has been happening since work first started on September 8 last year. Apart from the ramps at each end and the arrival of the two-storey wooden building for offices in the road outside Television House not much has shown on the surface.

But by now the old tram tunnel from Kingsway to the Embankment (opened in 1908) is nearly ready for modern traffic. One of the biggest problems was tearing out a central wall which split the tunnel into two for the trams and which helped to support the road. This central wall ran under the curve from Kingsway into Aldwych where the tram tunnel follows the bends in the road.

As this supporting wall – 8 ft thick in places – was demolished (see picture), so girders had to be built into the roof and then the gap between them and the ground holding up the road was filled with concrete poured in under pressure. In some places this ground had also to be frozen chemically to prevent any chance of movement.

Meanwhile around 1,000 tons of concrete were used on the ramp in Kingsway alone. This ramp (heated to prevent icing) will bring traffic up from the tunnel to ground level at the corner of Kemble Street – the old tramway tunnel continues up to the top of Kingsway.

The walls of this one-third mile long under-pass will be lined with panels of aluminium with a backing of light grey which can be easily cleaned and which will provide the maximum reflection of light. The roof has been lined with asbestos to reduce fire risk and will have a suspended acoustic ceiling to reduce noise.

At the Waterloo Bridge end the ramp carrying traffic down has a gradient of 1 in 12. This comparatively steep descent (in Kingsway the ramp has a gradient of 1 in 15) is due to the fact that the ramp could not start descending until clear of Waterloo Bridge and it had to pass a few inches under a 4 ft 6 in diameter, main sewer below the Strand. The maximum headroom possible as a result is 12 ft 6 in, so precautions will have to be taken to stop tall lorries or vehicles entering the tunnel. This will be done by installing a photo-electric device. If a vehicle more than 12 ft high tries to enter, a warning light on overhead gantries will go on instructing the driver to rejoin the usual traffic lane.

Nothing of interest was discovered while building the underpass certainly nothing like the bodies which came to light when the original tram tunnel was being excavated. A short way up Kingsway from Television House an old plague pit was discovered where the victims of the plague had been hastily buried.

This story does not appear in the records of the time but was told by one of the two engineers who worked on the original tram tunnel and who came to see it before the walls were hidden by the new underpass.

One – an 84-year-old – came from Dublin especially and the other, who is now 82, came up from Surrey. ‘The younger one nearly cried when he saw the old tunnel walls upon which he had worked,’ recalls Mr R. Godfrey, site inspector for the consulting engineers.

More than 1,000 men worked on the tramway tunnel – practically all the excavation work was done by hand – whereas the conversion has been carried out by a labour force of around 150.

The figures are not quite the same when it comes to costs. The tram tunnel cost about £190,000 but the tender to the LCC for the underpass was £1,025,000.

For this sum London will get a bright, new underpass which should greatly ease the flow of traffic from Waterloo Bridge to Kingsway. At present it is intended that it shall function in this direction only but it will be possible to modify the approaches to allow for a ‘tidal’ flow in the reverse direction or even a two-way flow if necessary, but this will allow very little room between the two lanes of traffic in the tunnel.

But what happens, somebody will probably be thinking, when a grand, modern traffic jam sets in at the top of Kingsway and the whole tunnel snarls up? They’ve thought of that too. When the carbon monoxide level reaches a certain height an automatic detector will cause ‘switch off engines’ signs to be illuminated, the fans will work at maximum capacity and a ‘tunnel closed’ sign will operate.

Acknowledgements:

Thanks are due to the following for their help in compiling this article and for allowing our photographer to take pictures: The LCC; John Mowlem & Co. Ltd, the constructors; Frederick S. Snow and Partners, the consulting engineers.

Photographs by Jack Emerald.

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‘The newest and exactest Mapp of the most famous Citties London and Westminster, with their suburbs, and the manner of their streets’, published in 1654 shows houses sprouting out from St Clement’s Church towards the Strand. The gardens of a circle of houses appear to occupy the land on which Television House and its surrounding buildings now stand. Lincoln’s Inn Fields are still enclosed but Butcher’s Row and Clare Street have appeared in the area.

Butcher’s Row came into existence during the reign of Queen Elizabeth on the site of a meat market between the bottom of what is now Kingsway and St Clement Danes Church.

The houses were mostly built of wood and plaster with overhanging storeys. Here in the stench-laden streets the plague ‘frowned destruction on the miserable inhabitants’ each summer.

Here, too, in one of the multitude of houses was later hatched the Gunpowder Plot by Messrs Catesby, Percy Wright, Winter and Guy Vaux.

Near to the present site of Television House once also stood Clare Market, built and opened by John, Earl of Clare, in 1656 in what was a spacious field to the west of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The streets which grew up around the market all bore the family names of Clare, Denzil, Holies and Vere.

The Earl of Clare himself built a large and stately mansion, which he shut in with a high wall no doubt due to the fact that Charles I had, in 1640, granted a licence to Thomas York to erect as many buildings as he thought fit upon St Clement’s Inn Field ‘to be of stone or brick’.

The market was held there three times weekly and the Earl enjoyed ‘all the emoluments thereunto appertaining’. It quickly became noted as one of the best markets in London for all kinds of provisions, both flesh and fish.

At one time there were 26 butchers there who slaughtered from 350 to 400 sheep weekly and 50 to 60 bullocks. Near the market was a tripe house and in a separate yard the Jews slaughtered their cattle according to their religion.

The butchers were a rough lot, taking a deep and lively interest in two theatres near by … ‘cramming the galleries, and with their sweet breaths applauding or damning a piece; they were a factor to be reckoned with in theatrical management.’

The galleries were empty, however, in 1664 when the Great Plague of London swept through the population in the autumn of 1664. It started not far from the present site of Television House in the upper end of Drury Lane.

A cargo vessel had carried it from Holland, where 20,000 people had died in Amsterdam. Rapidly it spread through London. A frost for three months from December, 1664, stopped it for a while, then as the warmer weather arrived it broke out in full force. In August and September 1665, 50,000 died, 12,000 in one week. During the whole year the plague claimed 100,000 victims.

Grass grew in the main streets, churchyards were choked and large pits had to be dug. Carts rumbled through the streets to the cry ‘Bring out your dead’.

One survivor was Nell Gwynn, who was living in the fashionable part of Drury Lane in 1667.

On May 1 of that year, Pepys records:

‘To Westminster; in the way meeting milk maids with their garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler before them; and saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodgings’ door in Drury Lane, in her smock sleeves and bodice, looking upon one: she seemed a mighty pretty creature.’

Violence was always around the corner. On July 21, 1683, Lincoln’s Inn Fields saw the execution of Lord William Russell, it being the nearest open space to Newgate. Crowds flocked to the fields for the occasion.

Lord Russell sang psalms for most of the way there, then ‘he laid his head on the block, without the least change of countenance; and it was cut off at two strokes.’

By 1706 the whole district had been built over as is shown by ‘A New Mapp of the Citty of London, much enlarged since the Great Fire in 1666, in which are several Streets, Places and Buildings of Note, which hath been added since any other Mapps of London hath been published.’

Lincoln’s Inn Fields is now enclosed, probably with wooden palings; the Strand has a maypole at its eastern end; Wych Street and Clements Street occupy ground now covered by the Aldwych and the bottom of Kings-way; the King’s Theatre stands on a site nearly in the same place as the present Drury Lane Theatre.

Lincoln’s Inn Fields had been used as a dump for rubbish, besides executions. This graphic description of the place # was written at the beginning of the eighteenth century:

‘Great mischiefs have happened to many of His Majesty’s subjects going about their lawful occasions, several of whom have been killed… many wicked and disorderly persons have frequented and met together therein, using unlawful sports and games, and drawing in and enticing young persons into gaming, idleness and other vicious courses; and vagabonds, common beggars, and other disorderly persons resort therein, where many robberies, assaults, outrages and enormities have been, and continually are committed.’

No wonder the area was levelled, laid out and iron railing erected around it in 1735… more than 100 years after a Commission from the King had laid down that Inigo Jones should be responsible for laying the area out, thus disproving the fable that Inigo Jones planned the size of Lincoln’s Inn Fields to equal the base of the Great Pyramid.

Not far away from the fields public houses and eating houses abounded in the Clare Market area during the eighteenth century. It was in one of the eating houses near Television House that Boswell probably found Johnson. The historian Oldys reports having seen Johnson at Clifton’s eating house in Butcher’s Row. He records that Johnson and an Irish gentleman started arguing about why part of mankind was black.

‘Why Sir, [said Johnson], it has been accounted for in three ways: either by supposing that they are the posterity of Ham, who was cursed; or that God at first created two kinds of men, one black and another white; or that by the heat of the sun, the skin is scorched, and so acquires a sooty hue. The matter has been much canvassed among naturalists, but has never been brought to any certain issue.’

Apparently the argument became somewhat heated, ending with Johnson stalking away. Afterwards the Irishman was heard to say: ‘He has a most ungainly figure, and an affectation of pomposity unworthy of a man of genius’.

The houses around were also ungainly, as this report in a publication of the time shows: ‘The following melancholy accident happened yesterday morning in Houghton Street, Clare Market: two houses suddenly gave way and buried their 16 unfortunate inhabitants. At noon, 13 were got out, and conveyed to the parish workhouse in Portugal Street. Of these, three had been dug out, shockingly mangled, without the least symptoms of life: two children, apparently dead, were restored to life by the means prescribed by the Humane Society in cases of suffocation; the rest received, some of them slight and others severe, contusions… The landlord of one of the houses, it is reported, received notice of the insecurity of his house two days ago, but did not apprise the lodgers of their danger, for fear of losing them.’

Also in the neighbourhood in Blackmoor Street (running westwards almost opposite Television House) at one time was the Hope Tavern Concert. Here appeared the top singing stars of the day. ‘The noted Miss Toplis, and the scion of Comus, Bill Percy, here delighted auditors with their mirth-provoking, side-cracking comic duets and humorous mimicry. Here Miss Frazier James, the fascinating Queen of Song, poured forth her native wood notes wild.’

Here, too, the young bucks entertained their lady friends at ‘the famed chanting saloon’.

This was the beginning of the music hall in this country, for it was from these taverns (within a stone’s throw of Television House) that the halls developed.

By the 1820s another public house in the area-the Black Horse in Old Boswell Court – had taken over the mantle of the Hope Tavern. There was even a raised stage. It was one of the most popular entertainment places of its kind in London.

In 1868, when music halls had arrived, one historian wrote: ‘Considering the style of the building, and class of entertainment of the period, in many respects it is doubtful if our gorgeous and expensive music halls are much of an improvement upon the Boswell Court Concert room, except in affording greater scope, and giving greater facilities for intrigue, and the exuberances of masculine and feminine “fast life”.’

Life was by no means slow at the ‘Black Horse’. The celebrated Miss James used to perform in her favourite character of the Dashing White Sergeant.

‘Such was the attraction of this fascinating vocalist, that she drew to this Concert Room, nightly, a number of the fast men of her day… Occasionally the room would be visited by some sparkling, rollicking sporting men about town, upon whose entry additional devilry and life would be thrown into the scene.’

As another writer reports: ‘The visits of noble bloods were but the foretaste of future frolics, and but a slight sip at pleasure’s fountain; for were there not, in this neighbourhood, deep and dangerous wells, overflowing with enticing charms, ever attended by beauteous, but fallen nymphs, whose voluptuous attractions gathered around them the noble and wealthy, the poet and the painter, the swell and the rogue; and all fast London life assembled here to make a night of it.’

Down in the basement of the pub was another room in which thieves, pickpockets and cracksmen used to meet. They had a kind of club towards which each used to contribute so that funds should be available to pay for legal assistance if any member needed it.

They lived life to the full in those days. Perhaps it was because the threat of a sudden death was never far away. Today we live under the cloud of atomic extermination. A century or so ago disease was the fear.

Epidemics mushroomed through the dirty, overcrowded streets. One such epidemic in 1849 resulted in strong complaints against the use of St Clement Danes as a burial ground. A vault, known as the Rector’s vault, was the cause of many of these complaints.

Steps led down into it from the aisle of the church and when opened the gases from the decomposition of the bodies was so strong that lighted candles were put out. Nobody could go down into it until two to three days after the door had been lifted.

This overcrowding applied to most of the churches of London in the forties of the last century. Action was taken in 1853 when St Clement Danes and other churchyards were closed as burial grounds under a Nuisance Removal Act.

One source of pollution had been removed. Others remained.

Not far away, Newcastle Court (off Newcastle Street leading up to the present Aldwych) was labelled ‘a den of iniquity’.

This is how one writer described it:

‘It consisted entirely of houses of ill-fame of the worst description, stored with the foulest moral pollution. …The scenes enacted at night were of the most horrible description and at last its abominable notoriety became so glaring the parish authorities were compelled to indict the occupiers which they did and the vicious inhabitants were turned out, but only for some of them to resume |heir shocking mode of living in Wyck St.’ (The upper portion of this street is now covered by Australia House.)

The post A den of iniquity appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

From Fusion 19, the Associated-Rediffusion house staff magazine, published June 1961

Why, only the other day in the lift, I distinctly overheard a shorthand-typist remark to a sales executive, ‘I suppose they must fetch the elephants and things in at the Aldwych end.’ Well, really!

Obviously, this is a state of affairs which must be remedied without delay. It would be quite impossible, within the confines of a short article such as this, to attempt to explain to the Great Uninformed everything that goes on down at the works, but I can at least try to throw a little much-needed light on some aspects of Wembley life.

The prime reason for the existence of the Wembley Studios is, as the name may suggest, studios. There are at present five operational in the block, namely Studios One, Two and Four, and two lesser stages, Five A and Five B, which for some reason best known to themselves the company prefer to keep rather quiet about.

Immediately you will ask, ‘What about Studio Three, then?’ What indeed! Answers to this interesting poser vary, but I have it on reliable authority, that it was the victim of a successful take-over bid by Telerecording some years ago.

Each studio will very probably house two, or even three, different programmes in a week; for instance, Studio One may be a mass of Ancient Greek pillars and steps for the school-children on a Monday, represent one of those ultracosy, ultra-chummy village shopping haunts on a Tuesday, and by Thursday have taken on an entirely new aspect to support Messrs Lockhart and Baxter as yet another villain is brought to justice. That the geography of each studio can change so completely, so rapidly, and so often has never ceased to amaze me; the story of the Second Palace Guard who popped out of Studio Four to wash his hands, and returned a few moments later to be handed the Key to Box 13, still raises a grim smile in Wembley circles.

I do not intend to deal individually with all the people connected with getting a show on the air studio-wise, nor to mention specific personalities. However, a brief summary may be made under the following headings:

(a) STUDIO-HANDS – they wear buff overalls

(b) WARDROBE – they wear blue overalls

(c) MAKE-UP – they wear pink overalls

(d) TECHNICAL PERSONNEL – they wear surprisingly well

(e) DIRECTORS – they wear out the Floor Manager

(f) FLOOR MANAGERS – they wear out everybody else

All these will I imagine, be self-explanatory, with the exception perhaps of (d) TECHNICAL PERSONNEL. Under this heading are to be found, on the first floor, camera control operators or racks, sound balancers and gramophone operators, and vision mixers or smooth operators. On the ground floor we encounter cameramen or videoperators, and boom operators or microphone operators. All in all, you will note, quite an operation. In addition, hovering somewhere in between the two levels, are the electricians or sparks, on whose work I confess I am completely in the dark.

Naturally in an organisation which employs all the aforementioned, as well as sundry administration staff, cleaners, livestock and actors, food and drink are a major consideration. The canteen at Wembley caters admirably for its variegated clientele, and only rarely comes up with such eccentricities of diet as ‘Faggots Lyonnaise’, ‘Lover and Bacon’, or ‘Place on the Bone’. (Originals may be seen in the Office on request.)

A popular pastime at meal breaks is to play ‘Get the Set Meal for the Set Price’, a highly fascinating game which I admit I am unable to master.

Normally the canteen service is swift and efficient, except of course, on a ‘Hippodrome’ day; then it is by no means unusual to queue for an hour, while a troupe of little Chinese tumblers, a round dozen dancing girls often disturbingly attired, the entire Norrie Paramor orchestra, three inarticulate trampoline experts from Zagreb, and a performing seal, vie with each other to obtain fish and chips, from flushed, rushed but ever well-meaning counterhands.

‘A boilerhouse attendant to Studio Five immediately, please!’ yells the loudspeaker: a reminder that we must get back to work.

As well as the studios from whence live productions originate, there are, scattered throughout the building, a variety of isolated departments, all in their different ways equally important to the smooth running of programmes.

Departments such as telecine, telerecording, maintenance, VTR – it was here that the expression ‘Someone isn’t rolling Ampex’ was first used – schedules and props.

From the last-named one can obtain anything from a signed line-drawing of the Emperor Haile Selassie to a 1 concrete replica of the Taj Mahal by moonlight, but often, funnily enough, not a dining-room chair. That’s, as someone once said, Show Business.

That’s Show Business – a phrase which sums up perfectly all that is Wembley. Enshrined in the vast hulk of, TV House, you might just as well be employed by a company manufacturing chair castors or strained vegetables, as television programmes. (In the interests of free speech I allow this gross exaggeration and travesty of the truth to be printed – Editor, TV House.)

But here at the Studios, things are very different: the smell of the greasepaint – or is it those Faggots Lyonnaise again? – is strong, you rub shoulders with household names: whether you operate a camera or an everlasting hand towel, a boom or a broom, you know from the word ‘Go’ that you’re in Show Business.

Having read so far I am certain that most of you will be eager to drop those typewriters, adding machines and promising clients, that you may find out for yourselves more of what occurs in this throbbing, vital heart of London’s Television.

If this be the case, then my labour has not been wasted: I suggest the Metropolitan Line from Baker Street – there is a fast service of the latest LT rolling stock – to Wembley Park. Turn right outside the station, proceed onwards for some two or three hundred yards, and you will arrive at the main entrance to the Studios. You can’t miss it-it’s right opposite the Wimpy.

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