Today is the 300th anniversary of the Handel’s Water Music premiere.
Handel’s Water Music was composed for King George I’s progress up the Thames on Saturday evening 17 July 1717.
The King embarked on a borrowed City livery barge at Whitehall Steps, near the PS Tattershall Castle’s present mooring, at 8pm to be rowed up to Chelsea.
It was a river party with George Frideric Handel and an orchestra on board.
The performance started as the barge was passing Lambeth Palace.
So the actual anniversary hour must be 7.15 BST.
Tonight, Monday 17 July 2017, there will be a re-enactment when a large party with a 12 piece baroque orchestra sets out on the Golden Jubilee party boat.
BBC Radio 4’s Front Row programme will be broadcasting live from the river at 7.15pm.
The King was so pleased with the new music that there were at least three encores 1717 as he was rowed to Lord Ranelagh’s Chelsea house for supper and back to Whitehall.
Nine Elms Bridge is a proposed foot crossing linking St George’s Square in Pimlico with Nine Elms. It would land on the right bank at a point near the new US Embassy.
During the last General Election Labour candidates on both sides of the river strongly opposed the bridge. Marsha de Cordova unexpectedly won Battersea whilst Ibrahim Dogus turned Westminster into a marginal seat.
As with the Garden Bridge there are fears that views and the sweep of open water will be compromised.
The Pimlico consultations are on Friday 30 June 2.30-6.30pm at St Saviour’s Church Hall in St George’s Square SW1 (about 350 yards from the site) and Saturday 1 July 10am-3pm at Pimlico Academy, Lupus Street SW1 (about a quarter of a mile from the site).
The Nine Elms consultations are a week later on Friday 7 July 2-7pm and Saturday 8 July 10am-3pm in Park Court Clubroom on the Doddington Estate off Battersea Park Road SW11 4LD (about a mile from the site).
Canon Giles Goddard by the seat prior to the blessing
The first Waterloo Bridge was opened 200 years ago on Wednesday 18 June by the Prince Regent.
The Georgian granite bridge was to have been called the Strand Bridge but after the Battle of Waterloo victory in 1815 it had to be Waterloo Bridge. The opening, in the presence of the Duke of Wellington, was on the second anniversary of the battle..
The Times reported that “the guards wore their new pantaloons”.
The bridge’s 200th anniversary has been marked on the day by the dedication of a bench in the churchyard of St John’s Waterloo.
The seat echoes the present crossing by Giles Gilbert Scott and has been designed by MSMR Architects, based in Waterloo’s Exton Street overlooking the churchyard.
The long bench was dedicated on Sunday morning 18 June by the vicar of St John’s, Canon Giles Goddard, with the sprinkling of holy water before the start of the Flower Festival Sung Eucharist.
The singing of the first hymn Praise to the Lord, the almighty, the King of creation started outside with the congregation around the bench.
An attempt is being made to close the Thames riverside path at the Putney end of Wandsworth Park.
Residents with gardens abutting the path are seeking to obtain a long lease to prevent the public using the walkway.
The path is not part of the Thames Path since the west end runs up against a brick wall.
The Thames Path follows parallel Deodar Road whose late Victorian and Edwardian houses have gardens running down to the river.
The path under consideration was created about forty years ago before a large isolated 1850s stuccoed house was converted into flats and its grounds developed.
It is the occupants of this villa and a more recent small house who, according to the planning application, wish their gardens to “extend into the riverside walk”.
The granting of land already part of the riverside public realm for exclusive use would be unprecedented.
All London boroughs have followed the capital-wide policy, dating from GLC days, of always securing a riverside path when possible.
Until now Wandsworth Council has championed the opening of riverside paths even where there is not yet any exit at the other end.
Canon Giles Goddard, vicar of St John’s Waterloo, has been on the South Bank’s Thames Path to bless its trees.
The riverside trees, within his Waterloo parish, are now thought to be safe from being felled for the proposed Garden Bridge.
This follows the Mayor London’s decision to withhold all further funding. Planning permission for the controversial crossing lapses later this year.
Over forty parishioners and other nearby residents were present for the ceremony on Saturday afternoon.
It was preceded by the reading of a quotation about the environment from Pope Francis’ installation sermon and the singing of All things bright and beautiful.
The hymn includes reference to ‘tall trees in the greenwood’ and water.
After blessing the water, Canon Giles walked along the Thames Path sprinkling the trees on both sides.
Albion House which is now divided into several houses
Percy and Mary Shelley took possession of their new home at Marlow in March 1817.
So this year is the bicentenary of their summer in Marlow.
Albion House in West Street was to be their home for a year although at the time they intended to stay longer having purchased a 21 year lease.
They employed a gardener and sowed seeds brought back from Switzerland where Mary had begun to write Frankenstein.
Now during her pregnancy in Marlow she prepared a new handwritten copy for the publisher.
In between there were boat trips up and down the river to nearby Medmenham Abbey, Henley and Maidenhead. Shelley loved the river and had once rowed to Inglesham. He also sat thinking and writing in a boat at Bisham on the right bank.
He walked a lot and sometimes took a woodland path to upstream Medmenham Abbey and back.
In 1817 the High Street was not the direct route to the river crossing. Instead St Peter Street, which now runs into the Thames, was the approach to a white painted wooden road bridge.
Today’s suspension bridge in line with the High Street and The Causeway was not considered for another decade.
With Percy and Mary at Albion House were Claire Clairmont and her baby Allegra by Byron who was in Venice.
Mary’s father William Godwin stayed as did Leigh Hunt and his family.
Shelley’s friend Thomas Love Peacock was also living at 47 West Street, opposite the turning to Oxford, and in his novel Nightmare Abbey gives a picture of the Shelley household.
On Tuesday 2 September Mary gave birth to Clara and the same month she finished her and her husband’s travel narrative A Historyof a Six Weeks’ Tour which was published under Percy’s name in November.
All this time Mary was finding Albion House damp and lacking direct sunshine.
The approach of Christmas saw the couple, despite their lack of regular money, distribute blankets to the poor of Marlow. They were embroidered with the decoration ‘PBS Esq., Marlow, Bucks’.
Do any still exist in the town?
Shelley, who was waiting for his long poem The Revolt of Islam to have its print run completed, spent Boxing Day along the road in Peacock’s house where he started his poem Ozymandias.
New Year’s Day 1818 saw the publication of Mary’s Frankenstein but there was no great public celebration. The title page did not carry the author’s name and her husband had to deny that he was the author.
There were to be no royalties so the couple looked to Percy’s The Revolt of Islam to earn money.
Shelley sent a copy of Frankenstein to Sir Walter Scott who, without knowing that Mary was the author, later praised it in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.
But that was in March 1818 just days after Mary and Percy had left England.
2018 will see many Frankenstein anniversary events but for Mary her Frankenstein year was really 1817.
Albion House front door
Thomas Love Peacock’s house where the Shelleys stayed whilst Albion House was prepared for the family
NEW LONDON BRIDGE
Sir, Whatever the case for a Garden Bridge (News, Apr 29, leading article, Apr 29; letters May 1), a better idea might be a reconstruction of the medieval Old London Bridge. Surmounted by rows of shops, it would produce a stream of rental income. Its picturesque appearance, including the magnificent Nonsuch House, is known from Hollar’s engraved view. Like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence it would be a draw for tourists and would enhance the attractiveness of the city. Unlike the Garden Bridge, it could attract funding through the City of London Corporation’s City Bridge Trust, whose funds have paid for a number of bridges over the years, including the present London Bridge.
Edmund Gray Oxford
A public consultation on allowing cyclists to use the Thames Path between Reading and Purley has opened.
The new dual status would run from the River Kennet oil the east confluence to the Roebuck Hotel near Tilehurst Station in the west. in the west to where it meets the Kennet mouth in the east.
Tony Page, Reading Council’s lead member for Strategic Planning and Transport, says that the opening of Christchurch Bridges encouraged more cycling.
