London | Author, Jane Lark's stories

I have been calling myself an amateur historian ever since I managed to find a potentially lost manor site and had the manor site, and my name as finder, listed by English Heritage a few years ago. So if that is not enough evidence that I have a good eye for these things, then here’s another little tale. My knowledge comes from reading about everything when I visit historical places, then reading everything about the place after I have visited it, studying places all the way back to their origins and finding out about life, about the people who lived there through time and how they’ve lived. So after a life time of this curiosity, as that is all it really is, I spot things, things that look different.

In this tale the unusual thing I spotted was a rectangular pond at the edge of Kew’s ‘village’ green.

A pond on a village green is normal, you might be saying?

Yes it is, I answer, but not the shape. That is the thing. Ponds usually have curved banks. It’s unusual enough for me to think it was more than just a normal pond on a village green. But then there’s this concrete ramp, what was that about? And concrete isn’t old… BUT THE SHAPE – my mind continues to tell me.

When I say village, of course Kew village was long ago subsumed into the heart of London. However, the ancient green, where once residents would have grazed livestock, and cut down hay to feed animals through the winter months, or perhaps used the hay to stuff mattresses or lay across mud floors to carpet their houses, survives. Possibly the green survived, (or was re-established as there are a lot of lines on the image below) because the gates to Kew Palace stand at one end.

The pond is positioned at the edge furthest from the palace and closer to The Thames.

At first, when I saw the concrete ramp, I thought it was something to do with river. Opposite the pond, there’s a road of old houses that were used by people who worked on the river, and the river bank is only a couple of hundred meters further on.

BUT THE SHAPE – my brain kept saying. Because I have only ever seen that shape of pond when the pond was a medieval fish pond. Monasteries particularly used to create and maintain fish ponds because in the medieval period there were many days when religious fasts meant people could only eat fish (usually two days of the week, and during lent and on many saints’ days). So, to ensure there was enough fish to feed everyone at these times they bread fish in a pond at the site. Often they largely contained eels, as eels are large and fleshy and more able to feed a quantity of people.

My mind kept telling me this pond looked very like an ancient fish pond as I walked along the road. Then I saw a board, so of course I had to look, and when I walked around the corner and saw what the information board said… I was once again very impressed by the instinct of the voice in my head. 😀

Hee. Hee. Hee.

I have worked in some wonderful historical venues for my day job as well as visiting places at the weekend for fun and to do research for the historical books. But sometimes I work in a modern venue that still makes me think about the past.

A while ago now, I went to a meeting that was in a venue at the top of an office block close to the banks of the Thames in London near Vauxhall Bridge. When I looked out through the window it struck me just how small London was in the Regency and Victorian eras when my historical books are set.

Three years ago I occupied one cold autumn evening that I had stayed over in London for work by walking down to the area where Vauxhall Pleasure grounds had once been. It is that small triangle of green on the far side of the river. You can see there is very little there now, I couldn’t even find any plants or trees that suggested there had been an aristocratic playground there once. But I walked there thinking about all the historical characters’ whose diaries and letters I had read, imaging them climbing into boats to cross the river to reach the excitement at the time when there was no bridge. I had set a scene there in The Passionate Love of a Rake and so I knew a lot about what it was like in its heyday.

The underpass to get from one side of the road to the other near the park is decorated with images to remind people today what people then would have been looking forward to. Men on stilts and tightrope walkers.

I was writing The Tainted Love of a Captain at the time I was in this high office building and I had recently researched how to obtain a licence to marry without the banns being read. I had set a scene in the book when a character travels to Lambeth Palace to obtain a licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s officials. So when I turned the other way in this office, with my camera, and took another picture, I was probably foolishly surprised to see Lambeth and Westminster Palace within easy walking distance to the boats to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.

I thought of Harriett Wilson as I stood there looking out at London. I have shared her story on the blog. I thought particularly about the days she wrote of waiting in a carriage outside Westminster Palace for a lover to come out from a meeting of the House of Lords. Perhaps men left the House of Lords and travelled straight to the boats to ferry them over to the pleasure grounds. I also thought about Frances Bankes letters that talked about visiting her son when he was ill while at the boys’ school in Westminster. The element of her life story inspired an element of The Reckless Love of an Heir, as she sat on an upturned bucket beside his bed, did she dine at the pleasure gardens when they were in their townhouse.

Certainly, lots of the wealthy families owned houses in the area between Westminster and Vauxhall, as all the street names declare.

It was just fascinating for me to stand there and look down and it made my imagination run with ideas on how people lived in the past. That area of London would have been flooded with the best society.