(This was a walk originally published as a #10tweetadventure on Twitter.)
It’s time for a quick write-up of yesterday’s walk: a new #10tweetadventure. This one isn’t probing any particular mystery in depth, but I can at least offer you a wild boy, a wild man and several green men. So no need for a stony expression. 1/10
We begin in Northchurch, in a corner of Hertfordshire poking towards Buckinghamshire – and here is the simple grave of an 18th century phenomenon: Peter the Wild Boy. He was found living feral in the woods near Hamelin by George I out on a hunting holiday. 2/10
Peter was brought back to live among the king’s courtiers. Here he is – clutching some acorns in a painting by William Kent on the staircase of Kensington Palace, and shown in later life: he lived until his 70s, albeit without learning to speak more than a few words. 3/10
Our walk took us to the Ridgeway – and here’s a little chunk of the mysterious Grim’s Ditch, an earthwork that may be a boundary, or not, dating to the Iron Age, or not – perhaps related, or not, to the bits of Grim’s Ditch near where I live in Oxfordshire. 4/10
At the far end of the Ridgeway – here, also the ancient Icknield Way – is Ivinghoe Beacon, an Iron Age hillfort (and a film location for 4 Harry Potters and The Rise of Skywalker, The Avengers (Steed not Marvel) & more). 5/10
A steep chalky plunge into the vale leads to the village of Ivinghoe. History has also spelt it Evinghehou, Iuingeho, Hythingho, Yvyngho… and Walter Scott called it Ivanhoe, extrapolating a short old rhyme into a 180,000 word novel. 6/10
Ivinghoe’s church has a fantastic collection of green men and other odd Tudor-era figures, including a mermaid (which I forgot to photograph) and some bat-like angels (which I didn’t). 7/10
Over the fields and past Pitstone Mill – this is the ‘earliest dated’ windmill in Britain, from 1627 but quite possibly older. The National Trust gent there invited us to enter and “touch something 1000 years old”. I said I could always shake his hand instead. Oops. 8/10
And Pitstone’s church, now redundant, has what’s claimed to be another green man, in a 15th century piscina (ecclesiastical washbasin). But the best thing of all on the walk has to be… 9/10
This incredible wild man or wodewose, holding his ragged staff, in Aldbury church. Cheeky Sir Robert Whittingham (c.1429-71) is resting his plates on this amazing figure, which brings us back in a way to the wild boy we started with. 10/10
(PS Oops, I forgot the Whipsnade White Lion! England’s largest chalk figure, no less, made in 1933 – to scare away planes from scaring the zoo animals – and restored in 2018. 11/10)
(An archived thread from Twitter, investigating the source of the River Thames.)
1. A #10tweetadventure – exploring corners of history or landscape, but told in no more than 10 tweets. Today, let’s start with the source of the River Thames. Except… it isn’t.
2. For one thing, the site in Trewsbury Meadow has totally dried up – fair enough, it was always seasonal. But half a mile downstream is Lyd Well, in the area marked on old maps as Thames Head. But alas this was bone dry today too.
3. The fons et origo, as it were, of historical accounts that this Thames Head is the source go back to John Leland in 1542: “Isis riseth at three myles from Cirencestre, not far from a village cawlled Kemble, within half a mile of the Fosseway, wher the very head of Isis is”.
4. But hang on: in 1598 John Stow wrote “this famous streame hath her head… about a mile from Tetbury, neare unto the Fosse, (an highway so called of old)”. But Thames Head is 6 miles from Tetbury, even as the crow flies. I’ve found a nearer candidate, only 2 miles from Tetbury!
5. This is near the ultimate source of the Swill Brook (also dry alas). Its very brief Wikipedia page quips about it being bigger than the Thames where they meet. Er, hang on! Bigger? Also pictured here are where they meet, the weedy Thames thereafter and the lily-padded Swill.
6. But as well as bigger, it’s longer! From Lechlade to Thames Head is 33.7km (I’ve measured it using specialist OS data). From Lechlade to the Swill’s source is… 39.5km! So apologies to Old Father Thames in Ashton Keynes here, but you’re in the wrong place, mate. But wait…
7. There’s even a further possibility mentioned in @PaulWhitewick‘s excellent recent thread and video about some of this, referring to a leak from the Thames and Severn Canal, further up than Thames Head.
8. As Paul mentions, it’s an open secret that the *real* source is Seven Springs, known as the mouth of the tributary River Churn. Here it is, bubbling happily, a whopping 52.7km from Lechlade & making the Thames waters longer than the Severn. But… there’s a further source yet!
9. A bit W of there is this pond at Ullenwood’s college & a nearby stream – bubbling happily, a whole 54.8km from Lechlade, and feeding into the ‘Churn’. Thames Head is so utterly geographically – and even historically – wrong! Ah well: it won the gong, so the ‘source’ it is.
10. Even the source of the tributary Coln is 49.km from Lechlade. Thames Head isn’t even technically in the top 10 distance-wise! This map (OS Open Rivers data) shows A: Thames Head B: Swill Brook C: River Coln D: Churn (Seven Springs) E: Churn (Ullenwood). Bye!
Today I’m embarking on another London walking expedition… Join me on a 6-mile walk as I listen to the echoes of a Saxon-era cult, and learn about some literary legends, lost spas… and a walrus. I give you: #pancrasday
Today, 12 May, is the feast of Saint Pancras, a little-known saint whose name is writ large in London, and commemorated in various UK churches. He was a 3rd century Turkish-born Roman who converted to Christianity & was beheaded c.304AD, perhaps by emperor Diocletian. #pancrasday
Pancras/Pancratius (whose name means holder-of-everything) was venerated by the 5th century (he’s patron of children). Allegedly his head remains to this day in Rome’s basilica of San Pancrazio. But how come he’s all over (mostly southern) Britain? #pancrasday
The answer lies with St Augustine, the chap who came to Canterbury in 597AD & brought relics of Pancras with him (history does not record which bits) & the associated cult. Augustine’s 1st church in Canterbury (see pic of surviving ruins) was dedicated to Pancras #pancrasday
Plus a story tells that the monastery in Rome where Augustine had been prior was built on land once owned by Pancras’s family. Bede wrote of the relics in Northumbria c.60 years after Augustine came – Pancras became important here. Join me at 11am! #pancrasday
My London #pancrasday route begins of course at St Pancras station – more on that shortly. Along the W side lies Midland Road, built with the station, to the east of Somers Town. The railway development caused this to become a slum. (Map via http://theundergroundmap.com) #pancrasday
The district of St Pancras began as a parish but eventually encompassed dozens of parishes as the population rocketed in the 19th century (now in Camden borough). Swift’s Tale of a Tub is set in Pankridge, a version of the name Pancredge used since the 17th C. #pancrasday
Midland Road passes Brill Place, named for ‘The Brill’, earthworks which in 1750 William Stukeley fancifully imagined was where Caesar had held camp. But there were civil war defences here at Brill Farm in 1642 – and in fact a Roman road passes across here too. #pancrasday
Just W of here was a 15-sided building called The Polygon (demolished 1890), where writer William Godwin and feminist pioneer Mary Wollstonecraft lived – she died in 1797 giving birth to their daughter: later Mary Shelley. Dickens lived here when he was a teenager. #pancrasday
Here’s hope. #pancrasday
Here’s amazing St Pancras Old Church, packed with history I can only touch on. Some have claimed it as England’s oldest but evidence lacks – that gong goes to St Martin, Canterbury, but St Paul’s in London is 7th C. & St Peter-upon-Cornhill could be even older. #pancrasday
St Pancras is at least Norman, and there could be a Saxon origin even. Documents date from the 11th C. and there’s an ancient altar stone (prob. Norman) found during a Victorian rebuild (1848) – plus some Roman tiles. 50 of Cromwell’s men lodged here and made a mess. #pancrasday
But even by 1593, antiquarian John Norden would write “Pancras Church standeth all alone, as utterly forsaken, old and weather-beaten”. He warned of thieves and said “Walk not there too late”. The church stood beside the now buried River Fleet (pic is from 1815). #pancrasday
The graveyard has many more stories. Shelley canoodled with Mary here. Dickens fictionalised the bodysnatching. Moody poet Chatterton fell into a fresh grave and killed himself 3 days later. 100,000+ burials were made, including refugees from the French Revolution. #pancrasday
In 1803, an extra graveyard for St Giles-in-the-Fields was added: inmates include John Soane, whose tomb inspired the K2 phone box; Byron’s physician J.W. Polidori, author of ‘The Vampyre’, was another, plus Bach’s youngest son, & transgender spy the Chevalier d’Eon. #pancrasday
In the 1860s, the Catholic side and much of the St Giles bit was affected by work on the new Midland Railway: many graves had to be moved (an overflow cemetery had already opened up in Finchley in 1854). Contemporaries said it was being “desecrated”. #pancrasday
One workman was trainee architect Thomas Hardy, the novelist. One coffin he found contained 2 skulls. His wife wrote “by the light of flare-lamps, the exhumation went on continuously of the coffins that had been uncovered”. Here’s the Hardy Tree named after him. #pancrasday
Now forgotten is Pancras Wells, an 18th C. spa (pictured 1730) just S of the church, and the Adam & Eve tea garden nearby, still a tavern in Victorian times. The wells were “surprisingly successful in curing the most obstinate cases of scurvy, king’s evil, leprosy” #pancrasday
Frustratingly there are builders all over the gardens today so I can’t poke around on the side where Pancras Wells was! #pancrasday [update: see below]
Just N of the church is St Pancras Hospital – previously the 1809 workhouse, later expanded. One inmate was Robert Blincoe, possible inspiration for Oliver Twist. Read my article about him here. #pancrasday
Just N of the hospital is Granary Street, named after a huge 19th C. storehouse for 100,000 barrels of beer from Bass in Burton-on-Trent, later used for storing grain. The 1816 Regent’s Canal runs nearby. #pancrasday
And into Camley Street, home to a wetland nature reserve near the floodplain once called Pancras Wash and on the site of old coal yards. It opened in 1985 and was revamped only last year. #pancrasday
The old gasometers in this area were built in the 1850s. They feature in the 1955 Ealing comedy The Ladykillers. I remember taking rubbish arty pictures of them in the 1990s, before they were decommissioned in 2000; some were rebuilt in 2013 in Gasholder Park. #pancrasday
OK, this is why I’m really here… #pancrasday
Here’s hope again, and on the Pancras children theme. #pancrasday
St Pancras station opened in 1868 and the Midland Grand Hotel in 1873. The station site was once Agar Town, a slum named after Councillor William Agar, a Yorkshireman (d.1838) who had a grand villa, Elm Lodge, here. The music hall star Dan Leno was born in the area. #pancrasday
For the next sections of this walk, I’ll be following the route of the River Fleet, which curved past here. Many have written or filmed about it (eg @fugueur) so I’ll only, er, dip in. King’s Cross was once Battle Bridge, allegedly (very) where Boudica tackled the Romans. #pancrasday
Just off Gray’s Inn Road was once the site of St Chad’s Well, where in 1772 more than 1000 people drank the waters in a week – subscriptions were £1/year. It gradually declined, and the pump room was demolished in 1860 to make way for the Metropolitan Railway. #pancrasday
Another spa site was Bagnigge Wells near King’s Cross Road, then called Black Mary’s Hole. It was favoured by Charles II’s mistress, actress Nell Gwynne. It had a grotto plus bowling green & skittle alley, & 3 bridges over the Fleet. By 1842 it was “almost a ruin”. #pancrasday
As I was passing anyway, of course I stopped at the Postal Museum (@thepostalmuseum http://postalmuseum.org) for a quick trip on the Mail Rail built underground in 1927 for the Mount Pleasant sorting office. Very near the Fleet! #pancrasday
I can also confirm the rumour you can hear the waters of the Fleet through a grating outside The Coach! 👂#pancrasday
A quick lunch stop at Little Britain feels appropriate, before I’m back directly on the heels of the saint who prompted this. #pancrasday
We still have two more London churches named after St Pancras to investigate. Pancras Lane off Queen Street in the City gives a clue to the first. Sadly St Pancras Soper Lane (& its marvellously named neighbour St Benet Sherehog) was destroyed by the 1666 Great Fire. #pancrasday
This St Pancras is mentioned in 13th C. documents and was owned by Canterbury Cathedral; it may have been older still. Some remains are buried beneath 70-80 Cheapside – and this little yard marks part of the burial ground (used until 1853) to this day. #pancrasday
In 1374 the archbishop of Canterbury supported the funding of a bell here confusingly called ‘Le Clok’. In the 17th C. a memorial to Eliz. I and repairs were funded by a Thomas Chapman, who I assume is no relation. In 1598 John Stow called it a “proper small church” #pancrasday
Just E of St Paul’s stands the remains of St Augustine Watling Street, tying together the Roman road and the man who brought Pancras to Britain. This Norman church too was lost to the Great Fire, but rebuilt by Christopher Wren. Most of it was lost again in WW2. #pancrasday
Now I’m heading west along Fleet Street again (see #londonfogg). Here’s Crane Court, where Isaac Newton moved the Royal Society in 1710, and a plaque to Britain’s first newspaper, the Daily Courant. Read my article about that here: https://www.gethistories.com/p/the-first-daily-paper-1702 #pancrasday
At Lincoln’s Inn Fields is the amazing Sir John Soane’s Museum (http://www.soane.org@SoaneMuseum) – as we met him in death at St Pancras, here’s where he dwelt in life. This is the model he made of the same tomb which he kept by his dining table as a memento mori! #pancrasday
Oops – the 6-mile #pancrasday walk has been 9 miles so far…
And finally to St Pancras New Church, built 1819-22 as the main place of worship for the old parish – although it is nearer to Euston. It was inspired by a temple and a tower in Athens. It cost £77,000 to build – the most expensive church since St Paul’s was rebuilt. #pancrasday
The church is known for its terracotta caryatids – female figures serving as architectural props – although they were too big when first installed and allegedly had to be, er, pruned. Meanwhile the congregation of the old church protested at this one being built. #pancrasday
(A volatile vestry meeting in Southampton Tea Gardens “was very tumultuous” and a punch was thrown – and at the 1819 stone-laying ceremony “a numerous gang of pickpockets rushed in”. All good fun. #pancrasday)
And on that nefarious note, my #pancrasday walk comes to an end. Thanks for following! (I have plans afoot for historical walks outside London, if you like this sort of thing, and do sign up to my weekly newsletter, https://www.gethistories.com)
Follow-ups
My article on ‘the real Oliver Twist‘ (a memoir of an inmate at St Pancras workhouse).
3/6/22: On my #pancrasday day adventure a few weeks ago I couldn’t see all of Old St Pancras churchyard due to work going on. I’ve snuck back to visit the corner near where the Pancras Wells resort was, thanks to a sexton letting me through the barriers. Anyone for dominos?
Below is the full thread of my mini-adventure on 29 April 2022, an analogue for Phileas Fogg’s famed voyage, but contained within central London. I’m truly grateful for the enthusiasm people showed for it!
It’s 150 years this year since Jules Verne published Around the World in Eighty Days. Today I shall embark on my own voyage of homage, on foot, visiting places related in some way to every country Phileas Fogg went to. But the twist is it’s all in central London. #londonfogg 🧵
With London being such a cosmopolitan city, on this tiring trek by foot I hope to show you some interesting corners of history, literature and geography. Google says my route will be at least 21.6 miles and take 7 hours and 27 mins (with no stops). The game’s afoot… #londonfogg
The adventure begins at the Reform Club, where Phileas Fogg fictionally agreed to wager that he could circumnavigate the world – in the age of rail and steamers – within 80 days. (Trollope’s similarly named 1867 novel Phineas Finn also features the club. Phishy?) #londonfogg
The Reform Club (Verne: “a huge building in Pall Mall”) was founded by political progressives in 1836, supporters of the Reform Act 1832, which improved access to the vote (unless you were female or poor…). The premises still here was modelled on a palace in Rome. #londonfogg
After Phileas made his £20,000 wager, he had to pack – well, his servant Passepartout did. “We’ll have no trunks; only a carpet-bag, with two shirts and three pairs of stockings for me, and the same for you…” – so first he went home to 7 Savile Row. #londonfogg
Verne wrongly said 7 Savile Row had been playwright Sheridan’s address (that was No. 14, later home to fashion designer Hardy Amies) but he was right that these 1730s houses formed “a fashionable address”. In Fogg’s era the Royal Geographical Society was at No. 1. #londonfogg
This is my #londonfogg version of Passepartout, by the way: a document wallet with some spare socks! 🧦
Fogg and Passepartout only had 10 minutes to pack, before dashing (by cab) to nearby Charing Cross station. (Google says it will have taken me 29 minutes to get here from the Reform Club via Savile Row – I’ve done it in 26) #londonfogg
Distances from London are measured from the site of Charing Cross (see #bus24!), originally the last of the Eleanor crosses built by the mourning Edward I in 1294 and destroyed by Cromwell. The nearby cross here now is a Victorian fiction, like Phileas Fogg himself. #londonfogg
Fogg dashed to Dover (London has a Dover Street with many cultural links, with past lodgers including Anne Lister of Gentleman Jack fame and Chopin, plus the world’s first telephone call was made at Brown’s Hotel) but let’s head for France. #londonfogg
Oops: I’ve already dropped my scribbled itinerary somewhere! Let’s hope I can rely on the Baedeker of my mind. #londonfogg
How to represent France in London? South Kensington is something of a French quarter now. There were the Huguenots of Spitalfields. Or there’s Paris Garden near Blackfriars (but south of the river so not allowed). But instead I have opted for a 0.9 mile dash to… #londonfogg
Petty France (from ‘Petit’). This was another Huguenot settlement, of wool merchants. It later became York Street after one of the less controversial Dukes of York but it reverted to the original in 1925. It was the first London street to be paved for walkers like me. #londonfogg
John Milton, Jeremy Bentham and William Hazlitt all lived in this house (not at once 🙂). The passport (Passepartout?) office was in Petty France 1952-2002. The brutalist Ministry of Justice is here today. #londonfogg
London offers a bottomless well of international stories – here’s one found in passing in St James’s Square en route to my second French area… #londonfogg
But we can see a bit more of France and a first taste of Italy, both in Soho, where French and Italian communities have had long links (and long drinks). French Huguenots settled here in the late 17th C. and the 1893 French church is still in Soho Square. #londonfogg
The French House in Dean Street has only had its name since 1984 but as the York Minster it was still known as the French pub for decades. After France fell to the Nazis in WW2, Charles de Gaulle hung out here (as many boozy London writers and artists did later). #londonfogg
Oh and let’s not forget Maison Bertaux in Greek Street, whose founder fled Paris in 1871, just a year before Phileas Fogg travelled through the city by train. #londonfogg
London still has an Italian quarter and that’s where I’m off to next – but on the way here’s a sign of another of London’s Italian communities, still in Soho, where political refugees began to gather in the 1860s. (Gloucester Road has an Italian bookshop, BTW.) #londonfogg
Five miles walked so far, slightly ahead of (lost) schedule, fuelled by a delicious pain au choc from Bertaux. #londonfogg
St Peter’s Italian Church, opened 1863, is a focal point for London’s Little Italy, around Clerkenwell Road and Saffron Hill, and is modelled on a basilica in Rome. This area even had a local Godfather, Charles Sabini, 1888-1950 (he popped up in Peaky Blinders). #londonfogg
(Side note: apparently saffron was originally grown in Saffron Hill in the 14th century to disguise the taste of the rancid meat eaten by Londoners! It was later where Dickens set Fagin’s den. #londonfogg)
Phileas Fogg hurtled through Turin and down to Brindisi for the steamer to Suez. London has a Turin Street in Bethnal Green and a Turin Road in Edmonton – too far for me today – but not even a building that I can find named after Brindisi. Prove me wrong! #londonfogg
On the theme of London streets, London has adjacent ones named after Fogg’s next two destinations: Suez Road & Aden Road, in distant Enfield (plus Suez Avenue, Brentford & Aden Grove, Stoke Newington). But my Egypt – 1.7 miles from St Peter’s – takes me south-west… #londonfogg
Thanks to British obsession with Egypt since the late 18th century, London has many connections with or nods to (or looted artefacts from) Egypt. I could hotfoot to Cleopatra’s Needle, Richmond Avenue in Islington or Highgate Cemetery, say, but instead I’ve come to… #londonfogg
The rather modest entrance of 170-3 Piccadilly, called Egyptian House. Today it is aptly home to the Egyptian State Tourist Office – but this 1906 building stands on the site of a London phenomenon: the Egyptian Hall, built here a century beforehand. #londonfogg
Egyptian Hall – London’s 1st ‘Egyptian’ building – was created by collector William Bullock (whose Liverpool Museum had been nearby), and packed with art and relics. In Fogg’s era it hosted the celebrated magicians and debunkers of spiritualism Maskelyne & Cooke. #londonfogg
(Apparently the two statues in the previous picture still exist, guarding the private goods lift of the Museum of London! #londonfogg)
Phileas Fogg steamed through the Suez Canal, which had only opened 3 years before his fictional visit, and down the Red Sea to Aden, which was then an outpost of British India. Today it’s the capital of Yemen. London has a Yemeni Community Association in Kingston. #londonfogg
But my canal will have to be the 1801 Paddington Basin, and my Yemen is represented nearby – London’s only Yemeni restaurant, the Queen of Sheba in Bouverie Place. (‘Monsieur Bouverie, c’est moi?’) The legendary biblical queen is claimed by both Ethiopia and Yemen. #londonfogg
Fogg got his visa stamped in Aden & promptly returned to playing whist. But his servant took more interest: “Passepartout… sauntered about among the mixed population of Somalis, Banyans, Parsees, Jews, Arabs and Europeans who comprise the 25,000 inhabitants of Aden” #londonfogg
11 miles walked so far – feet hurt! But am only 1 minute behind schedule 🥾#londonfogg
After Aden, Fogg continued his voyage by sea to Bombay (Mumbai) and then by train (& elephant) to Allahabad and Calcutta (Kolkata). London has a Bombay Street in Bermondsey and Calcutta Road in Tilbury, but my longest stretch of the day (2.8 miles) takes me to… #londonfogg
India House at Aldwych is home to the High Commission of India, in geographical terms incongruously next to Australia House. India House opened in 1930 and is adorned with emblems for the 12 provinces of the British Raj era. #londonfogg
Getting the train to Southall would perhaps be more Indian, more fun and more tasty. Another time! Though thank you @huel for inventing a meal I can have on the hoof. #londonfogg
Fogg left India by steamer, down through another vital shipping channel, the Strait of Malacca, to Singapore. London’s Singapore spots are the High Commission in Wilton Crescent & the nondescript Tourism Board in Regent Street, which I’m taking as the easy option. #londonfogg
Verne noted: “The island of Singapore is not imposing in aspect, for there are no mountains; yet its appearance is not without attractions… the town… is a vast collection of heavy-looking, irregular houses, surrounded by charming gardens rich in tropical fruits…” #londonfogg
And thence to Hong Kong – a British colony from 1842 to 1997 – and Shanghai. The obvious – and nearby! – place for me to go is London’s Chinatown, centred on Gerrard Street (a street with connections to John Dryden, Dr Johnson and Joshua Reynolds). #londonfogg
Verne: “Docks, hospitals, wharves, a Gothic cathedral, a government house, macadamised streets, give to Hong Kong the appearance of a town in Kent or Surrey transferred by some strange magic to the antipodes.” Chinatown maybe offers the same magic t’other way around. #londonfogg
London’s real Chinese history was focused in Limehouse in the East End, home to many Chinese sailors (and the Victorian fascination with opium dens) until bombing in the Blitz. Modern Chinatown only dates from the 1950s. Its 2016 gate is in the Qing dynasty style. #londonfogg
Another short hop brings me to the Japan Centre in Panton Street, a food hall and retail centre which has been here since 1976. (Crouch Hill has a Japan Crescent; the Japan House cultural and design centre is in Kensington; Holland Park has the Kyoto Zen garden.) #londonfogg
(Some Japanese London trivia for you: in 1921 Crown Prince Hirohito sat for a portrait at Augustus John’s house in Chelsea. And the Albert Hall hosted the first ever sumo wrestling tournament outside Japan, in 1991. #londonfogg)
Verne describes Yokohama as “where all the mail-steamers, and those carrying travellers… put in” and Passepartout enjoys its “sacred gates of a singular architecture, bridges half hid in the midst of bamboos and reeds, temples shaded by immense cedar-trees…” #londonfogg
From Yokohama, Fogg took a 20-day crossing to San Francisco, and thence across the USA to New York by rail. I fancy a drink at the American Bar in the Savoy – but it’s shut. (Luckily I checked before committing my feet.) #londonfogg
Other slices of America in London include Benjamin Franklin’s house on Craven Street; various properties in Grosvenor Square have US links (including the former embassy, now in Nine Elms); and Joe Allen’s restaurant founded in 1977. But I’m off to the City… #londonfogg
My feet asked me to take this pic. 18 miles so far. Still on target though. #londonfogg
Seething Lane. Crutched Friars. My feet really are making a point now. #londonfogg
America Square is now dominated by modern buildings but it was originally built 1768-1774 by George Dance the Younger, it seems to celebrate Britain’s colonies in America and house some of their merchants and sea captains. Banker Nathan Mayer Rothschild lived here. #londonfogg
A stone obelisk stood in its centre, at least until the 1950s. The square survived the Blitz, but a 1944 V-1 strike caused major damage and no original buildings survive. Roman walls were rediscovered during construction of 1990 office complex One America Square. #londonfogg
Sadly I couldn’t access the chunk in the basement but the office manager has kindly just taken me round the corner to this. #londonfogg
(Verne: On arriving in San Francisco “Passepartout observed with much curiosity the wide streets, the low, evenly ranged houses, the Anglo-Saxon Gothic churches, the great docks, the palatial wooden and brick warehouses, the numerous conveyances… #londonfogg)
From America, Fogg went by steamer to Ireland, then took the train from Queenstown to Dublin. The City of London has Ireland Yard, where Shakespeare bought a house in 1613, and 9 years earlier some of the Gunpowder Plot plotters had plotted. But I’m not going there… #londonfogg
Here’s the London Stone, psychically propping up the metropolis, in a happier location now than last time I saw it years ago. #londonfogg
London has Queenstown Road and Dublin Avenue. Nope, not there either. The north London Irish community of Kilburn is too far, as is the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith. Instead, my feet take me to… #londonfogg
What *claims* to be the first ever Irish pub outside Ireland. A sign used to say it was founded c.1700 by Mooney & Son at the Boar’s Head, 66 Fleet Street – and the first to serve Guinness. But the plaque outside was riddled with fictions… #londonfogg
Now it seems the sign has gone and – I wasn’t expecting this – the pub is no more. A dusty Mooney carving marks the doorstep. So it goes. #londonfogg
The site was also associated with the Bolt-in-Tun inn next door, and only became Mooney’s Irish House in 1895 & The Tipperary c.1968 (not after WW1 as claimed). An excellent article by @zythophiliac(zythophile.co.uk/2018/09/27/the…) provides the facts behind the… blarney. #londonfogg
Back to Britain. Fogg landed in Liverpool (London’s Liverpool Street & Road were actually named after early 19th C. prime minister Lord Liverpool, who had chuff all to do with the place). His train would have taken him to Euston, but the book doesn’t mention it. #londonfogg
Euston Station first opened in 1837 and was expanded in 1849. By Fogg’s time the London & North Western Railway connected Liverpool and London directly. Verne says the journey took 6 hours but Fogg ordered a special train, taking 5 and a half. Today it’s half that. #londonfogg
The final push, past a suitably Foggish hat shop. #londonfogg
Back in London, Fogg believed he was 5 minutes late for the deadline – “having steadily traversed that long journey, overcome a hundred obstacles, braved many dangers… to fail near the goal” – so he just went home to Savile Row. #londonfogg
Having miscalculated the date, Fogg won his wager after all and hotfooted it back to the Reform Club… #londonfogg
So here I am again, after 23.3 miles of walking and 7 hours and 19minutes. So I made it! Now to Mr Fogg’s Society of Exploration (@MrFoggsGB) to celebrate! Pip pip. #londonfogg
PS. If you’d like to read about one of the real-life adventurers who inspired Julles Verne, my weekly history-themed newsletter is about exactly that and goes out this evening. gethistories.com@gethistories). Thanks for following! #londonfogg
Kenneth Grahame is famous of course for writing The Wind in the Willows and a few other children’s books. But here is an essay about walking alone that he wrote for the St Edward’s School Chronicle in 1913.1 Since then, this has only ever been published in Peter Green’s 1959 biography of Grahame, and a few extracts briefly went viral when Maria Popova quoted them on her Brainpickings blog. I have tracked down the full text and am pleased to offer it here for the first time online, with a few of my annotations:
The fellow that goes alone
Those who have browsed among the pages of Caxton’s Golden Legend—a story-book of much fascination—may remember how it is told, in a passage concerning the boyhood of a certain English saint—Edmund, Archbishop and Confessor—that on a day when the boy was by himself in a meadow, “sodeynlye there apperyd tofore hym a fayr chylde in whyte clothynge which sayd, ‘Hayle, felawe that goest alone!’”
Local considerations themselves should make us cherish the memory of this Edmund with a certain tenderness; for he was born at the pleasant town of Abingdon, that sits among its lush water-meadows and almost catches the chimes down the stream from the not so distant Oxford towers; and he ‘went to Oxenforde to scole,’ as of course a good saint should; and many a time he must have ridden out over Grandpont and along the old raised ‘Cawsy’2—still there, under the road—to visit his home and his good mother, who was thought worthy to have inscribed on her tomb that she was the ‘flower of widows.’ Also he ‘dwellyd long after at Oxenforde’ and ‘Teddy,’ the last of the old Halls, is said to perpetuate his name.3 But specially we should envy him his white vision in the meadow; for which he should be regarded as the patron saint of all those who of set purpose, choose to walk alone, who know the special grace attaching to it, and ever feel that somewhere just ahead, round the next bend perhaps, the White Child may be waiting for them.
For Nature’s particular gift to the walker, through the semi-mechanical act of walking—a gift no other form of exercise seems to transmit in the same high degree—is to set the mind jogging, to make it garrulous, exalted, a little mad maybe—certainly creative and super-sensitive, until at last it really seems to be outside of you and as it were talking to you, while you are talking back to it. Then everything gradually seems to join in, sun and the wind, the white road and the dusty hedges, the spirit of the season, whichever that may be, the friendly old Earth that is pushing forth life of every sort under your very feet or spellbound in deathlike winter trance, till you walk in the midst of a blessed company, immersed in a dream-talk far transcending any possible human conversation. Time enough, later, for that—across the dinner table, in smoking-room armchairs; here and now, the mind has shaken off its harness, is snorting and kicking up heels like a colt in a meadow. Not a fiftieth part of all your happy imaginings will you ever, later, recapture, note down, reduce to dull inadequate words; but meantime the mind has stretched itself and had its holiday. But this emancipation is only attained in solitude, the solitude which the unseen companions demand before they will come out and talk to you; for, be he who he may, if there is another fellow present, your mind has to trot between shafts.
A certain amount of ‘shafts,’ indeed, is helpful, as setting the mind more free; and so the high road, while it should always give way to the field path when choice offers, still has this particular virtue, that it takes charge of you—your body, that is to say. Its hedges hold you in friendly steering-reins, its milestones and fingerposts are always on hand, with information succinct and free from frills; and it always gets somewhere, sooner or later. So you are nursed along your way, and the mind may soar in cloudland and never need to be pulled earthwards by any string. But this is as much company as you ought to require, the comradeship of the road you walk on, the road which will look after you and attend to such facts as must not be overlooked. Of course the best sort of walk is the one on which it doesn’t matter twopence whether you get anywhere at all at any time or not; and the second best is the one on which the hard facts of routes, times, or trains, give you nothing to worry about. And this is perhaps the only excuse for the presence of that much-deprecated Other Fellow—that you can put all that sort of thing on to him. For the world is fortunately well furnished with fellows who really like looking up Bradshaw, and paying bills, and taking charge generally; and it is wise to keep some such a man within easy hail. But spiritually he will be of little use, even if he were the angel that walked with Tobias.4
Much converse will he have, too, with shy bird and furtive little beast, the fellow that walks alone. I seem to have noticed a different expression in the eye of bird or animal at one’s solitary approach, from the way it looks at you when there are two or three of you about. In the first case it seems to say wistfully, ‘This may be a pal!’ In the second, ‘This is certainly a conspiracy!’ and acts accordingly. As for adventures, if they are the game you hunt, everyone’s experience will remind him that the best adventures of his life were pursued and achieved, or came suddenly to him unsought, when he was alone. For company too often means compromise, discretion, the choice of the sweetly reasonable. It is difficult to be mad in company; yet but a touch of lunacy in action will open magic doors to rare and unforgettable experiences.
But all these are only the by-products, the casual gains, of walking alone. The high converse, the high adventures, will be in the country of the mind.
– KENNETH GRAHAME
(If you like the hidden corners of history, please consider signing up to my free weekly newsletter, Histories.)
July 1913, No. 321, Vol. XII – Grahame attended the school from 1868 to 1875. ↩
A medieval – and possibly Anglo-Saxon in origin – stone causeway, part of which, as Grahame suggests, does indeed remain underneath the modern Abingdon Road – some modern excavations have revealed part of it. ↩
This is an allusion to the tradition that the Oxford college St Edmund Hall was developed from a hall where Edmund himself had taught. Edmund of Abingdon (c.1174–1240) was known for his travels around England, and was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1233. ↩
I’m a sucker for get-rich-quick schemes, especially when they don’t work. Odd that. If you haunt certain communities such as the Warrior Forum, you will be overwhelmed by offers to make you rich within hours/days/months, These generally focus on affiliate marketing, and the model is usually thus:
identify some niche keywords, preferably without competition, or at least competition of a low grade; the usual starting point is the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, which gives a rough idea (possibly) of monthly search traffic for your preferred terms
set up a WordPress-based blog, and either cram it with themed articles sourced from desperate places such as Fiverr.com, or use auto-blog plugins such as WP Robot; and link these articles to products at Amazon, ClickBank or wherever in the hope of getting a small cut of any purchases there
work on the SEO of the site in the hope of reaching a top-10 Google search position.
Now, I’m not doubting for a moment that there are people out there who make thousands of dollars a month doing this. Many of them sell guides on how you can do it yourself by (in theory, at least) explaining what they do.
But.
Let’s do the numbers, which most of the guides I’ve seen (yes, I’ve paid for some of them, because I’m a sucker curious) gloss over. I present here a quick assessment of the factors which you need to multiply together to work out how much money you will make from your affiliate marketing scheme:
Monthly traffic
Different ‘experts’ vary in how many monthly searches they say the Google Keyword Tool should show to make a niche worth the bother, but they generally fall between 1000 and 10000 (and then there’s the issue of ‘exact’ search vs ‘broad’ search, where the latter is much more focused).
Google SERP (search engine ranking position)
Everyone knows you need to be on the first page of Google’s results – only obsessives (like me) go beyond it. The famously leaked AOL search data in 2006 supposedly revealed that 42% of people click on the top result (see here for more on this) but more recent and reliable data suggests the figure may be as low as 18%. All the surveys agree that even the 10th result gets only 2 or 3% of clickthroughs. Anyway, let’s be realistic and say that if you get on the top page of Google, you should get from 2 to 20% = a factor between 0.02 and 0.2.
CTR (clickthrough rate) and conversions
The clickthrough rate is crucial: the number of people who click through (or ‘hop’) from your website, via your affiliate links (cloaked or otherwise – opinions differ on whether you should do that or not). It’s quite likely this will only be around 2%, maybe more, maybe less.
Conversions means the number of people who then, having reached the actual retailer’s site, actually go on to buy something. Let’s say 3% is typical. In both cases better is certainly possible – I’ve come across 30% CTRs, for example – but let’s assume you’re new to all this, and in any case err on the side of cautious. (Of course, different types of product tend to have different conversion rates, and CTRs will depend on how easy to use your site is and how well you funnel people towards the sale.)
Let’s put these numbers together as fractions and say therefore that CTR x clickthrough is probably somewhere between 0.0001 and 0.01.
Referral fee
This is the cut the retailer gives you for bringing them business. There are lots of different models, eg paying for new signups, per product and so on. Let’s assume a pay-per-purchase percentage, and I’ll focus on Amazon here – others pay better, but there are lots of affiliate gurus out there who say you can make a mint with Amazon because they offer so many niche products. Amazon pay from 4% (the starting rate) to 15%, but the latter rate is very restricted; let’s say in general a retailer will pay you from 4 to 12%, ie between 0.04 and 0.12.
Product price
Finally, there’s the price of the product itself – of course, you may link to many different ones, and again the affiliate experts have strong opinions. Obviously it’s tempting to go for high-ticket products such as plasma TVs, tablet computers and so on, but then fewer people are likely to buy them, so less glamorous, but higher-selling items might do better. Anyway, let’s say you’re most likely to find products between $1 and $1000.
Hatmandu’s amazing unbeatable affiliate marketing formula – make $$$s
So let’s put all this together. All of the above variables need to be multiplied together to reveal how much money you could make each month.
Let’s assume you want to make $30 a month from your website – not exactly an over-ambitious amount, surely? $10 of that would cover your domain name and hosting fees, leaving you a tasty $10 to spend on setting up another site in the same way, and $10 to SPEND!
Let’s assume you’re confident your SEO skills will get you to position 5 in Google, which about 4% of people will click. Let’s also assume that CTRs x conversions come to 0.0005 (ie about 2 or 3% for each, multiplied together), and that you get a referral rate of 4% as a new affiliate marketer. Put it together and you get:
MONTHLY SEARCHES x 0.04 x 0.0005 x 0.04 x PRODUCT PRICE= 30 or, simplified:
MONTHLY SEARCHES x 0.0000008 x PRODUCT PRICE
This means that to make $30, MONTHLY SEARCHES x PRODUCT PRICE needs to total 37,500,000.
Woah, that’s 37.5 million! So if you average a product price of $100 for your ‘greenhouse heaters’ or ‘cheap android tablets’ or whatever your lovely targeted niche is, you need to get around 375,000 monthly searches for your key phrase! Hm, that doesn’t sound very easy. Oh, and greenhouseheaters.com and cheapandroidtablets.com have both been taken, by the way – one by an affiliate marketing site and one by domain parkers. You’ll find one or the other is true of most niches you look for.
And there’s the rub: even if you can find a niche that’s free (they do exist, but they take a lot of work to find), the numbers don’t really stack up. Obviously you can improve your margins along each stage of the path:
Monthly searches: maybe there’s a niche attracting 100,000 searches a month that no one has spotted. Yeah, good luck with that. So really you’re stuck with the niches, or going for something popular… which is hugely competitive.
Google SERP: from 2% up to 20% is a factor of 10 (or 5 from our example) – if your SEO skills are amazing you could hit the sweet spot and get 20% of the keyword traffic.
CTRs and conversions: if you’re really focused you could get a percentage-of-a-percentage of around 1%, maybe even more. But it will take a lot of research and testing to find the right products and the right way of selling them.
Referral fee: the more you sell, the more this will go up, or you could target better-paying schemes than Amazon’s. But you can only really improve it roughly threefold.
Product price. This is the easiest one to change. Hell, yeah, let’s go for the $10,000 diamond-encrusted watch or a T-shirt hand-woven by Britney Bieber. I’m sure thousands of people a month will by one.
In the course of researching this, I tried looking up various .co.uk niche domains and found most were already taken. And take a look at this. These people have 1500 niche domains! Now, let’s say you want to make a comfortable, but not outrageous living of $80,000 a year. Add on top the $5000 you’d need to register, host and maintain 1500 domains, then divide by 1500 and by 12 months. Hey! Each site only needs to make $4.72 a month. You can give up the day job!
In other words, you can make a living doing this, but you’d need to find hundreds of available niches, and work hard to keep them all optimised and attracting focused traffic. Hang on, that sounds like a full-time job.
A while back I wrote about the ‘fast and frugal’ heuristics research of Gerd Gigerenzer and colleagues – in that case it was about research showing that a simple heuristic could provide decent predictions of election results. There’s lots more interesting research by these people – see the short bibliography below.
Another of the team’s proposals is the recognition heuristic: “If one of two objects is recognized and the other is not, then infer that the recognized object has the higher value with respect to the criterion.” They applied to this to numerous fields, eg getting people to guess the size of cities – but also to the stock markets.
Many thanks to the people who took my recent online survey, a small and slightly badly put-together attempt to explore this for myself. Gigerenzer and colleagues found that when they assembled stock portfolios on the basis of brands recognised most by the ordinary public (in the US and Germany), these significantly outperformed stock portfolios assembled by experts. Hey, nobody knows how to predict shares – least of all the experts.
So I took the names of the current constituents of the FTSE 100 Index and got 100 people to tell me which ones they recognised (so the various people who thought I made up some of the companies to test people… you were wrong), plus their country of residence and highest education level. I added the latter because the previous research showed that ‘recognition portfolios’ by college students did not do as well as those by the general population. In the end the research all seems to boil down to finding optimum levels of ignorance (for a pair of things, the recognition heuristic only works if you know precisely one of them).
Aaanyway. My results do not really corroborate Gigerenzer et al’s research in any way, other than to show that reduced levels of prior knowledge (less education, or not living in the UK, so presumably knowing less about companies big in the UK) seem to offer some damage limitation at least. I’ll come back to this, but let’s have the results. Here’s the table and a graph:
Constituents
Population sample
1 year change (%)
5 year change (%)
FTSE 100 index
100
-2.5
-7.5
All in sample
92
3.5
31.8
Most recognised
10
100
2
-14.8
Least recognised
10
100
14.2
62
UK most recog.
10
87
-5
-21.5
Non-UK most recog.
10
13
1.6
-6.1
Random
10
-1.4
10.9
High school only
10
8
1.1
1.4
High school + undergrad
10
50
1.5
-15.1
Postgrad + PhD
10
50
1.5
-10.9
FTSE 1984 survivors (07)
37
7.3
14.9
10 most capitalised 07
10
2.8
-3.3
To explain further, ‘constituents’ means the number of companies in each ‘portfolio’. I’ve put the FTSE Index at the top, though this is a weighted index so doesn’t actually reflect aggregated share prices, which is what all the other figures are based on. The population column relates to the number of people (in my survey) relevant to each portfolio. Where possible I took the closing share prices on 13th February 2007, 14th February 2011 (13th not a trading day) and 13th February 2012. There are only 92 companies in my final sample because the other 8 didn’t exist back in 2007. If I’d done more prior research, rather than starting this on a whim, I’d have realised companies come and go from the FTSE 100 every quarter. The various portfolios are thus:
all in sample: ie all 92 companies – clearly performed well, but it’s unlikely anyone would actually have assembled such a portfolio, so it’s really just to show what the subsets are working against
most recognised = the 10 companies most recognised across my survey takers. Performed very badly over 5 years!
least recognised = the bottom 10. Hugely successful, and rather undermining the recognition heuristic!
the next few break down into UK-based and non-UK-based respondents, and levels of education; of course the non-UK and school-only groups have very sample populations, so the data is not perhaps that useful – but as I mentioned above, the groups with what might be expected to be the least knowledge of the UK markets… do a bit better
out of curiosity I also tracked down a list of the original members of the FTSE 100 when it launched in 1984. In 2007, only 37 of these were still in the index, so I made a basket of those… and it did pretty well
finally, a small portfolio based on the top 10 most capitalised members of the FTSE 100 in February 2007. As any motley fool knows, a lot has happened in the last five years (ie a recession).
So what’s behind the poor performance of the recognition heuristic in this study? Some possibilities:
The recognition heuristic might be hornswaggle and Gigerenzer just got lucky
Poor study design – obviously one would choose to track portfolios forward from now rather than using companies currently successful
Poor sample selection: ie too many smart-arses read Twitter
The recession has particularly hit banking and retail firms, which generally seem to dominate those people recognise most.
But I do find an interesting by-product of all this: the companies which have survived in the FTSE 100 longest (not worrying about cases where they may have fallen out and come back in again) do provide a respectable portfolio. So there’s something just in longevity – unless you’re Woolworth, Cadbury, HBOS, etc etc etc. Today there are 33 companies left from the original line-up (a few under different names). Send me a fiver and I’ll tell you who they are 🙂
Bibliography
Borges, B., Goldstein, D. G., Ortmann, A. & Gigerenzer, G. (1999). Can ignorance beat the stockmarket? Name recognition as a heuristic for investing. In G. Gigerenzer, P. M. Todd & the ABC Research Group, Simple heuristics that make us smart (S. 59–72). New York: Oxford University Press.
Ortmann, A., Gigerenzer, G., Borges, B. & Goldstein, D. G. (2002). The Recognition Heuristic: A Fast and Frugal Way to Investment Choice? in Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, 2008, vol. 1, Part 7, pp 993-1003, Elsevier.
Gigerenzer, G. (2007) Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious. Viking.
Disclaimer: I know nothing of the stock markets and am a dilettante statistician.
I’m currently editing a book about a zoo. One of the things it’s drawn my attention to is the oddity of animal plurals. Discounting irregular forms such as ‘geese’ and pedantry such as ‘octopodes’, there seems to be a whole thorny area around what are known as ‘zero plurals’, where the plural is the same as the singular. There is a small list of canonical examples:
Our old friend Wikipedia says: ‘As a general rule, game or other animals are often referred to in the singular for the plural in a sporting context: “He shot six brace of pheasant”, “Carruthers bagged a dozen tiger last year”, whereas in another context such as zoology or tourism the regular plural would be used.’ This is corroborated in a PDF I found from the University of Granada (yeah, OK, not the leading source for English grammar, perhaps): “Nouns referring to some other animals, birds and fishes can have zero plurals, especially when viewed as prey: They shot two reindeer. The woodcock/pheasant/herring/trout/salmon/fish are not very plentiful this year.” And thanks to Colin Batchelor for pointing out that Eric Partridge (of Usage and Abusage fame) regards this as a snobbish usage by big-game hunters; and further that the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL) includes the above words as ‘base plural only’, then elk, quail and reindeer as ‘base or regular plural’, and elephant, giraffe, lion, partridge and pheasant as ‘base plural restricted’.
(In the book I’m editing, the writer sometimes writes phrases such as “tapirs and capybara”, but has “tapir” as plural elsewhere. I imagine the capybara example is explained by subconsciously thinking that it is a Latin neutral plural. Doing a bit of crowdsourcing with Google reveals that for both animals the -s form appears far more in phrases referring to ‘two’ or ‘a pair of’ both types of creature, and indeed for the much-victimised pheasant, suggesting people do generally favour a simple English plural rather than the snobbery of the hunter.)
Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy’s Introduction to English Morphology expands on the ‘prey’ theme:
…there seems to be a common semantic factor among the zero-plurals: they all denote animals, birds or fish that are either domesticated (SHEEP) or hunted (DEER), usually for food (TROUT, COD, PHEASANT). It is true that the relationship is not hard-and-fast: there are plenty of domesticated and game animals which have regular -s plurals (e.g. COW, GOAT, PIGEON, HEN). Nevertheless, the correlation is sufficiently close to justify regarding zero-plurals as in some degree regular…
Hm, does “not hard-and-fast” really mean the same as “sufficiently close”? It’s not what I’d call a rule – more a matter of usage as Partridge suggests. And there are non-animal counterexamples such as ‘aircraft’ in any case.
And hang on, what about this buffalo madness from Mark A Wickens’ Grammatical number in English nouns:
And let’s not get into the whole fish/fishes pond (Wikipedia: “Using the plural form fish could imply many individual fish(es) of the same species while fishes could imply many individual fish(es) of differing species” and so on.) Or indeed the other buffalo madness.
As far as I can see this is a grammatical minefield and nobody has a cleer steer. Or should that be bison. As for the book, I’m going to err on the side of English plurals with -s unless there is a compelling reason not to, such as a lexicographer approaching me with a blunderbuss.
A recent conversation at LiveJournal prompted me to revisit the whole ‘authorship of Shakespeare’s works’ malarkey. As I commented there, I had always been firmly convinced that the Man from Stratford wrote the plays, and found things such as Baconian ciphers preposterous (in fact, I even found one of the typical ones worked just as well with bits of Waiting for Godot...) – but seeing Mark Rylance’s play ‘The BIG Secret Live—I am Shakespeare’ made me much more doubtful. Such is the power of drama, eh?
Anyway, I’ve spent some time reading the (often venemous) claims of the Stratfordians vs the Anti-Stratfordians, if only to get my head round the actual evidence and what seems to make most sense. I find it hard to find unbiased summaries of the arguments, so I’ll at least attempt something like that here, albeit very briefly. I recommend this page at shakespeareauthorship.com for the Stratfordian arguments (HT to Colonel Maxim) and this free, new PDF ebook from bloggingshakespeare.com (despite it’s occasionally ad hominem approach – “Anti-Shakespearians … hardly smile, perhaps a characteristic of an obsessive mind.”). For the other camp, the only major work that isn’t trying to advocate for a specific alternative author is Diane Price’s Shakespeare’s Unorthox Biography – a useful page listing her 10 key criteria for what makes Shakespeare a biographical oddity also contains responses and counter-responses, which begin to sound like Woody Allen’s Gossage and Vardebedian. Another Anti-Stratfordian has posted a very useful chronology listing documents which reference ‘both’ the Man from Stratford and the Writer of the Works.
Aaaanyway. As far as I can see the main anti-Stratfordian points are:
There is no evidence of WS’s education (but of course absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and at most one can simply say this supports neither camp’s argument)
There is no direct literary correspondence with WS during his lifetime
There is no direct evidence that WS was ever paid to write or that he received patronage (despite his requests of the Earl of Southampton)
There are no extant manuscripts in WS’s hand (other than six shakey – hurr – instances of his signature, three on his will; and a much-argued-about Thomas More manuscript)
There is no direct proof of his authorship during his lifetime.
The Anti-Stratfordians also like making a big deal over most legal (non-literary) documents spelling his name Shaxper, or Shackspeare, or various others without the middle ‘e’, while almost all of his works are attributed to ‘Shakespeare’ or ‘Shake-speare’ and similar variants. I don’t find this compelling either way as there are always counter-examples. I’m also ignoring the fact that WS’s will makes no mention of books or other literary matters, as this doesn’t prove anything one way or the other.
Back in the folds of academe, the Stratfordian case is supported thus:
There was an actor called WS in the company that also performed the plays of ‘William Shakespeare’.
The actor was also the WS from Stratford-upon-Avon. The chap from Stratford also had shares in the Globe Theatre.
There is an abundance of evidence in the First Folio (from 1623, seven years after the death of the Stratford chap) that the playwright was the same man as the chap from the Midlands.
These three points are problems if you hold that:
There could have been a conspiracy by actors and writers in the company to pretend the Stratford actor was also a gifted writer
An interlineation in the Stratford man’s will giving money to two fellow actors was added later by someone else
The only evidence during WS’s actual lifetime is circumstantial (true enough) and that a conspiracy (see 1) saw to it that the First Folio was a cover-up.
Mark Rylance, Derek Jacobi and others are behind a ‘Declaration of Reasonable Doubt’ about the author’s identity. I think in a very pedantic sense it is possible to say that it is possible to doubt that the man from Stratford wrote the plays, based on the admittedly unusually patchy documentary record. So they’re right there is ‘room for doubt’. But ‘how much room?’ is maybe the real issue.
Ultimately it all seems to boil down to two alternatives, and which one you find more palatable or least strange:
A lack of direct evidence during the Stratford man’s lifetime for his authorship of the works
A conspiracy of numerous writers and actors to maintain the cipher of ‘William Shakespeare’ as a cover for a person or persons unknown.
I’ve tried to be fair to both sides here, but I have to say I’m now back in the Midlands, as although (1) is at times troubling, and makes Shakespeare forever a man of mystery to some degree at least, (2) is just silly. I think. Probably.
Some blundering around on the internet recently led me to read about an extraordinary place known as Colin’s Barn, or The Hobbit House (not to be confused with a self-consciously titled eco-home of the latter name built in Wales). I had to find it, so a small but intrepid band of us sallied forth to track it down. Briefly, it was built between 1989 and 1999 by a stained glass artist called Colin Stokes, on land he owned near his house in Chedglow, Wiltshire. He built it for his sheep. Apparently the council were not best pleased that neither Stokes nor his flock had been through the due planning process, and the stress of the bureaucracy may have contributed to him moving to Scotland. The ‘barn’ remains quietly dilapidating in a field.
There’s plenty more at Derelict Places but with care to keep its location secret. I’m not going to blab either, but suffice it to say (a) that it’s on private land, so tread warily and respectfully (b) despite what commenters at that site and others say, it can be found on Google maps, rather easily if you use your brain and (c) all of the stuff on these forums about rottweilers and security heavies appears to be twaddle. Or perhaps they are otherwise occupied on sunny afternoons. My only hint is to follow the horses and not the cars. (More photos at Flickr.)
Anyway, it’s a beautiful and amazing thing – and maybe the world is a better place for things like this being left dotted around in quiet corners.
