Aldgate and the Aldgate Pump
February 2019
The Aldgate Pump is a historic water pump in the City of London which is situated at the junction of Leadenhall street and Fenchurch Street. The pump marks the start of the A11 road towards Norwich and is a Grade II listed structure. As a well, it was mentioned during the reign of King John – famous for the Magna Carta. As the City developed and streets were widened, the pump is thought to have been taken down and then re-erected at its current location in 1876 as a drinking fountain.
Served by one of London's many underground streams, people began to complain about the "funny" taste of the water. Upon investigation, this was found to be caused by the leaching of calcium from the bones of the dead in the many new cemeteries in north London through which the stream ran. (Some of the new cemeteries had been created after the 1665 plague – yeuchh!). In 1876, the New River Company changed the supplies to mains water.
The wolf head on the pump is supposed to signify the last wolf shot in the City of London. The last wolf in England was killed about 1500 during the reign of Henry VII (who was the dad of Henry VIII).
While he was a customs official, from 1374 until 1386, Geoffrey Chaucer occupied apartments above the Aldgate. If you want a good laugh then read “The Miller’s Tale” from Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”.
The road from Aldgate heads east to Colchester which can claim to be the oldest town in Britain and the first capital of Roman Britain.
London (or Londinium) was founded by the Romans about 50AD and the Aldgate was one of London’s 6 Roman gates. Within Aldgate ward, a short distance to the north of the gate, Jews settled from 1181, until their expulsion in 1290 by King Edward I. The area became known as Old Jewry. Jews were welcomed back by Oliver Cromwell, and once again they settled in the area, founding London's oldest synagogue at Bevis Marks in 1698. You can still see the aptly named Jewry Street that runs parallel with the far end of the Minories.
To the east of Aldgate and outside of the City of London lies Whitechapel. In Victorian times, the warrens of small dark streets branching off from Whitechapel were beset with problems of poverty, overcrowding, filth, squalor and crime. William Booth founded the Salvation Army in this area in 1878 to help the poor and was its first General. Booth was deeply influenced by his wife, Catherine Booth, who believed that women were equal to men and it was only inadequate education and social custom that made them seem to be men's intellectual inferiors. She was an inspiring speaker and helped to promote the idea of women preachers. The Salvation Army gave women equal responsibility with men for preaching and welfare work and on one occasion William Booth remarked that: "My best men are women!"
In the basement of the Salvation Army Café at 101 Queen Victoria Street (at the head of the Millennium Bridge) they used to have a display of paintings of all the Generals. Their names and dates of birth were given, but not their date of death just the day that they were “promoted to glory.”
In “The Creeping Man”, Holmes goes to his desk drawer in Baker Street and pulls out a revolver to set off on an adventure. Watson asks him “You’re going armed?“ To which Holmes replies “ Watson, I always carry a firearm east of the Aldgate pump.”
Brian Madican
2018