A Secret Passage To A Secret World?

Saturday just gone, I was sat (with the TADS) in The Royal Standard of England on the outskirts of Beaconsfield. As ever I was dishing out some spiel about the area and the pub. A pub that claims to be "England's oldest freehouse" and a pub that certainly feels like it could justify that claim. Roxanne, however, was skeptical. She felt there would be many other pubs up and down the country that would make similar claims.

A not unreasonable point and one I had proven to me last night in a very different pub, The Duke of Greenwich, in - oddly enough - Greenwich. Buildings archaeologist James Wright (an enthusiastic, knowledgeable, loquacious, and funny man - and a very likeable one too) was at Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub to a talk based on, and named after, his book Historic Building Mythbuilding. Although the book extends the title to include, after a colon, Uncovering Folklore, History, and Archaeology.

I wasn't sure what to expect of the talk (it's an unusual subject - even for Greenwich Skeptics) but I came away convinced it was either a fascinating subject or that James Wright had may it so. Most likely both. He's had plenty of time to hone his talk as it was the 105th date of his tour and he's been everywhere from Glasgow to Jersey and from Norwich to Plymouth. Impressively, however, he still added a bit of local favour with stories about buildings in Greenwich and Blackheath to keep the locals (even more) on board.

James made it clear from the off that his talk wouldn't be dwelling on data or evidence but instead he'd focus on tales, yarns, rumour, hearsay, and folklore. Most people, he confidently asserted, know virtually nothing about ancient buildings and lots of people quite simply aren't interested. Those of us who are tend to fill the gaps in our knowledge in with palpably untrue stories which sounds like fun but often the made up stories are not as interesting as the true stories. Often the stories are rather cliched and can be found repeated time and time again when it comes to castles, pubs, and stately homes etc;

Possibly the clearest example of an oft-repeated canard is the widely held belief that all castle staircases turn clockwise so as to hinder right handed attackers. Most historians and curators often repeat this story but it's not true and was in fact invented in 1902 by the art critic Sir Theodore Andrea Cook.

But why does that matter? Why do buildings and their stories matter? Partly because in our current age of fake news, lies, and bullshit, truth itself matters. Also, understanding the architecture that surrounds us helps with our mental, physical, and even spiritual wellbeing. People aspire to visit, and acquire, good architecture be it modern or, more often, ancient. Be it 45 Church Street in Greenwich (at the front it's a branch of Slim Chickens, once it was the home of Goddard's Pie & Mash, and away from the street a huge and impressive Georgian house) or a pretty National Trust cottage.  

We mark the good times of our lives in buildings. We celebrate in pubs, we spend holidays in hotels, we marry in churches, and we arrive in new towns and cities via train stations and airports) and people have been known to get very upset when buildings they know and love become threatened with demolition. If we care this much about our built environment then we owe it to ourselves to develop a greater understanding of our beloved buildings.

Opposite Cannon Street station sits the famous London Stone (no definite article, thankyou very much). It's a historic, and famous, landmark in our own capital city and yet we didn't even know what it was made of until as recently as 2016. It's made of oolitic limestone from the Cotswolds and this teaches us more about the history of the stone - and about our own history.

Many of us like to think we know about ancient buildings but, in truth, we don't. Most listed buildings were listed as recently as the 1960s, 70s, and 80s and many of them were listed "at thirty miles per hour". Meaning those tasked with listing buildings had a lot of buildings to look at and in many cases they simply looked at them from a passing car before making a decision on them. Often the dates given to listed buildings are demonstrably incorrect. James Wright knows. It's his job to know.

The tear shaped burns that can regularly be found in old timber buildings are not, as widely believed, accidental candle burns. People have tried to replicate that and all that happens is you get a long straight burn or you accidentally set fire to the building which isn't ideal. Most likely they were initially intended by very superstitious Catholics of the time as protection against evil demons. The idea being that a demon would turn up with the intention of burning a church down only to see it had already been set on fire and move on. As James Wright pointed out, medieval Catholics took demons to be pretty dumb. 

Yet James fervently believes, and I share his belief, that folklore offers insight into our hopes, fears, and desires. Folklore opens psychological doors that data is unable to and acts as a form of working class history. One you won't find in books that list the dates of the reigns of various kings and queens and locations of celebrated battles.

Secret passages are said to exist all over the country. In cities, in towns, in villages, and in hamlets yet there is no evidence of there being a single secret passage anywhere in the whole United Kingdom. Some are quite simply drainage channels (at eight inches high you'd need to be one of The Borrowers to use that as a secret passage) and others are merely figments of childhood imagination, often passed down through the generations. 

The secret passage that was said to lead from the former Palace of Placentia in Greenwich to Eltham Palace is a case in question. It would need to be at least two miles long and there would be serious issues regarding ventilation and drainage (as it would cross the path of several Thames tributaries). On top of that why would a secret passage even be necessary. People who lived in, and used, palaces had better protection and safety than anyone else in the country. Why would they be scurrying around in subterranean tunnels?

Other London rumours have a secret tunnel in Lesnes Abbey in Abbey Wood and another running from St Sepulchre church in the City to the former Newgate prison and it's often the case that these alleged passages take one from a site of holiness to a site of ill repute. The cathedrals in both Salisbury and Norwich are both said to have secret tunnels that lead to local inns so that supposedly teetotal monks can have a sneaky pint.

There's even supposed to be a tunnel used by Henry VIII so he could go and get his leg over. Because, of course, he was very eager to cover up his infidelities. When he wasn't chopping his wives heads off the serial killer king liked to at least give the impression of propriety. Yes, the stories about the secret tunnels seem to, repeatedly, have the tunnels leading their users towards wanton worlds of illicit booze and illicit sex.

Puritanism and the Reformation put paid, temporarily, to these horny Catholic misadventures but the stories of subterranean worlds go back much further. Back to the Green Children of Woolpit in the 12th century and to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the 14th century. The legends continue with Horace Walpole's 1764 gothic novel The Castle of Otranto (I did a walk named after that and, again, mentioned seemingly non-existent secret tunnels) and later Kenneth Grahame's The Wind In The Willows (1908, there's a tunnel that links Toad Hall to the riverside) and Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960). There are loads of 'em in Enid Blyton's books. She bloody loved a secret tunnel.

The reality, however, is far more practical and prosaic if still interesting. The many underground spaces we do have are usually drains, sewers, extraction mines - Blackheath had a large chalk mine, and railway tunnels. Impressive engineering but not secret in any way. 

But if the tunnels did take us to recondite public houses than those pubs themselves are not without their own folklore. Or as James Wright likes to call it - publore. Believing it to be a discrete category in its own right. Many pubs, often with various caveats like The Royal Standard in Buckinghamshire, make claims to be the oldest in their town, their county, or even country. 

Most of these claims are totally false. Let's take The White Hart in Covent Garden which has a sign outside claiming the pub to date from 1216 therefore making it London's oldest pub. In reality it dates to 1920. There was another pub there but even that was only built in 1905. Before that, nothing. The sign is a complete lie intended to attract tourists no doubt.

Often pubs will claim they're so old that they're mentioned in The Domesday Book. That too is always a lie. There is not a single public house mentioned in The Domesday Book. The Fighting Cocks in St Albans (another visited on a TADS walk) claims to date from 793 (which would make it very very old) and to be in The Guinness Book of Records.

The Guinness Book of Records do not have a category for oldest pub so that's not true and records show The Fighting Cocks first registering as a public house in 1807 so they're only about a thousand years wide of the mark with their claims. Other false claimants include The Old Ferry Boat Inn in Holywell, Cambridgeshire. It looks a very nice pub but it isn't the oldest one in the country.

There are precisely fourteen medieval inns left in Britain and they include The Henry Tudor Inn in Shrewsbury and, ironically, The New Inn in Gloucester. In London, The George Inn in Southwark claims a degree of antiquity and it's a fair claim too. The site probably dates back to the 14th century and the oldest part of the existing pub (where I used to have Spanish lessons and once saw a brilliant Pogues tribute band - The Pogue Traders) was built in the 17th century.

It's probably London's oldest pub. Either that or Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street which, presumably, didn't have Ye Olde as part of its name when it first opened.Ye Olde Watling, near Mansion House tube station, has a much weaker claim but is sometimes included in the argument/debate.

Many pubs like to make the claim that part of them has been built with old ship timbers. It's normally, almost always, a ship that fought in a famous battle (Nelson's Victory, for example, which saw service in the Battle of Trafalgar) and always a battle that the British won. Battles we lost, in our island nation history, are conveniently forgotten as soon as possible.

There are a small number of buildings, including the Liberty department store, that do use ship timber in their construction but this was not out of necessity as much as it was on the whimsy of a school of romantically inclined architects in the 1920s and 1930s. Often the myth is untrue but often there are people inspired by the myth that then make the myth, at a later date, come true.

That's another reason why our folklore is so important. It not only distorts our history, it can alter our future. James Wright's talk had been absolutely fascinating (I hope I've at least done it some justice) and I've not even touched on some of the other subjects and characters that cropped up. John Betjeman, Shakespeare, Nikolaus Pevsner, Tolkien, dendrochronology, and druids.

A Q&A touched on ghosts, priest holes, walled up nuns, the QI elves, Jesuit missionaries, archery, Conwy Castle, the Battle of Agincourt, Henry VII, Horsley Towers, Joseph Bazalgette, Knole country house near Sevenoaks, the Phoenician shell grotto in Margate, and the building of the Elizabeth Line. It was a lot to take in but it was all right up my street. 

It had been a sad week for music (two bona fide greats had died in Sly Stone and Brian Wilson - both at the age of 82) but it had turned into a great week for Skeptics. Thanks to The Duke of Greenwich, thanks to Professor Chris French for hosting, thanks to Goddard's Pie & Mash for feeding Jade and myself beforehand, thanks to Jade, David, Paula, and Steve for keeping me company, and thanks, most of all, to James Wright for showing me a whole new way of looking at buildings. The aftermath of this evening will reverberate long in the walks to come. Be prepared.