Sir Christopher Wren died 300 years ago on 8 March 1723. The Folly Flâneuse thought she would mark the anniversary by looking at a two examples of his work that served as garden ornaments – once surplus to their original requirements.

In 1829 the churchwardens of St Antholin on Budge Row, rebuilt to a design by Wren after the Great Fire of London, were informed that the church was in need of repair, and that it was ‘indispensably necessary to take down and rebuild the upper part of the spire’. The Bishop of London was petitioned for permission to borrow the £1,000 needed to cover the cost of repairs to the church, and an appeal was then launched allowing work to begin. An entirely new spire was erected, leaving the old one in need of a new home…

The original spire was bought by a wealthy printer called Robert Harrild (1780-1853) and re-erected as an ornament in the garden of Round Hill, his villa at Sydenham in south London. Here he was laying out ‘extensive grounds’ on land he had reclaimed from ‘wild common’. And happily there it has remained, despite much of his former estate being developed for housing in the 1960s. The spire is listed at grade II and was restored in 2019.

St Antholin’s replacement spire, as erected in 1829, did not have such a happy ending. Despite a public outcry, and an initial promise to leave the tower and spire standing, St Antholin’s was demolished in its entirety in 1875 to enable the construction of Queen Victoria Street. The tower and spire were sold to a building contractor for 5 Guineas and according to contemporary accounts he recouped his investment by selling the stone at 3 shillings a barrowload. This plaque originally marked the site of St Antholin’s on Budge Row, but was moved a short distance to the wall of St Mary Aldermary early this century.

Temple Bar, completed in 1672, was one of the city gates designed by Wren. It stood on Fleet Street for two centuries, and was the last surviving city gate until it was taken down in 1878, with the carefully numbered stones being taken into storage.

The masonry was acquired a decade later by Sir Henry Bruce Meux, who had the gate rebuilt as a feature on his estate at Theobalds in Hertfordshire. The move was unpopular, and throughout the 20th century there were appeals that it should be returned to the City of London. In 1911, following the death of Lady Meux, it was proposed to make the gate the centrepiece of a grand garden in front of the Adelphi Terrace, and in the 1950s the architectural practice of Seely and Paget proposed re-erecting it on Ludgate Hill. The eminent photographic studio of Bedford Lemere & Co. worked with the architects to create a photomontage of how the arch would look in its new location.

Each proposal failed until The Temple Bar Trust was established in 1976 with a new determination to save the deteriorating structure. With the support of the City of London Corporation, Temple Bar was eventually re-erected as part of the Paternoster Square development in 2004.

You can read more about the Wren300 programme of events here https://wren300.org

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Tucked in between towering glass office blocks in the city of London, this diminutive kiosk is an unexpected Turkish delight only moments from Liverpool Street Station. That it has survived in one of the most densely developed parts of London is astonishing, and its history is as colourful as its exterior.

In 1861 a London newspaper announced that ‘Turkish baths are coming rapidly into popularity in the metropolis and in the provinces’. There were a number across London, including one on New Broad Street in the City owned by brothers Henry and James Forder Neville. In 1893, looking for an edge over their competitors, the brothers decided to demolish the existing baths and start over.

Architect George Harold Elphick (1851-1924), whose office was practically next door to the site, designed a flamboyant structure in a Moorish style, cleverly using only a very small footprint at pavement level, with the baths below ground. Elphick also designed the tiles for the interior; based on a pattern used in the Alhambra Palace, they were manufactured by Craven Dunnill in Shropshire. The new facilities, Nevills Turkish Baths, were opened 125 years ago in February 1895 and were widely admired.

The fashion for Turkish baths waned in the 20th century and many were lost; the New Broad Street baths closed in the 1950s. For a decade the building was used for storage, and would surely have been lost to developers had a new use not been found. The building’s saviour was Josef Mourat, a Turkish entrepreneur, who started with a coffee shop in his native country before moving to London and setting up progressively more upmarket dining establishments.

In January 1967 he opened Gallipoli, a ‘definitive Turkish restaurant’, where the very finest cuisine was on offer. After being greeted by a ‘massive doorman dressed in gorgeous attire’ guests could dine before the ‘sensual entertainment’ began at 10pm and 1am prompt. Reviewing the restaurant for the Kensington Post in March 1967 ‘Trencherman’ was impressed by the food and, clearly also an expert on all things terpsichorean, described the cabaret as ‘the best belly dancing this side of Cairo’.

Gallipoli was succeeded by further restaurants and clubs and the Turkish kiosk continues to offer hospitality. It is currently known as the Victorian Bath House and is available for private hire, or you can book a table for exotic cocktails on a Friday evening. But do please invite The Folly Flâneuse to join you. More here https://www.victorianbathhouse.co.uk.

Thanks to friends old and new for the two wonderful illustrations. The Shoreditch Sketcher, aka Phil Dean, and The Folly Flâneuse go back a long way and it is great to feature his work. Find out more here https://www.theshoreditchsketcher.com

The Folly Flâneuse was introduced to the work of Eleanor Crow through her beautiful book Shopfronts of London: in Praise of Small Neighbourhood Shops (Batsford, 2019), and the associated exhibition of her watercolours at the Town House in Spitalfields. See more of her work here http://www.eleanorcrow.com

There’s a brilliant website with a full description of this and other Turkish baths of the period here http://www.victorianturkishbath.org