London - Edward Rutherfurd [526]
But Mary Anne, as she overcame her fright, suddenly felt a surge of wild exhilaration. “I don’t care!” she cried. “This is wonderful!”
Her husband laughed. Their route, he saw, was going to provide them with another unexpected benefit. “Look,” he remarked. “We’re going directly over Parliament.”
The Houses of Parliament, in 1851, were an interesting sight. Seventeen years before, some functionary had decided that the records of the ancient English Exchequer should be tidied. Finding in the musty cellars, neatly bundled, the tens of thousands of little wooden tally sticks – stock, foil and counterfoil – some of which had lain there since the days of Thomas Becket, he decided they should be burnt. His minions obeyed his order with such thoroughness that they set the whole Palace of Westminster on fire and by the next morning it was all, except for sturdy old Westminster Hall, burned to the ground.
In its place, built round the old Norman hall, a palace now arose that was really much finer than the one that had burned down. Designed in honey-brown stone by the Londoner Barry, its gorgeous medieval-style interior by Pugin, the Gothic-inspired building was a fitting companion for the Abbey beside it. Already the House of Commons was completed; work was proceeding on the House of Lords; and at the eastern end, nearest Westminster Bridge, Mary Anne could look down upon the empty socket of the great clock tower which would soar above the rest.
From Westminster, they floated north over Whitehall up to Charing Cross. A few years ago, the area where the Royal Mews had stood had been completely cleared to form a huge piazza called Trafalgar Square, with a tall column supporting a statue of Nelson in the middle; and they were just about to sail over the great naval hero when the wind obligingly shifted and began to carry them back to the river again.
“We may be in time for the Guv’nor after all,” Bull grinned. Sure enough, a few minutes later, they were floating lazily across Bankside and over Southwark in the general direction of Blackheath. “Look,” he nudged her, “there’s the brewery.”
In fact, it would have been hard to miss it. For if the essential process of brewing had remained the same since the days when Dame Barnikel had stirred her huge brews beside the George Inn, the scale of the operations had altered out of all recognition. The Bull Brewery was huge. The high, square chimney stack of its boilerhouse towered over the roofs of Southwark. The main building, where the malt was mashed, the beer brewed, cooled and fermented, was seven storeys high, its big square windows staring out with a solid self-satisfaction from the high redbrick walls. Then there were sheds containing the brewery’s massive old vats, large yards where the casks awaiting shipment were stacked in pyramids, and enormous stables for the mighty horses that pulled the drays. And over it all presided the family of Bull – cheerful, prosperous, rock solid.
They sailed over Camberwell and continued eastwards until the balloonist was able to set them down, with only a modest bump, on the wide expanse of Blackheath, not half a mile from the Guv’nor’s mansion.
It was a happy and excited Mrs Bull who stood again on firm ground, kissed her husband and remarked triumphantly: “I do believe we’ll be the first there!”
It was mid-afternoon when one other person set out. Leaving the district of Whitechapel in London’s East End, this solitary traveller passed down on the eastern side of St Katharine’s Dock, where the tea clippers came, and continued along the waterfront down to Wapping. From there, this lone East Ender meant to cross the river and proceed towards Blackheath. For the Guv’nor was to receive an unexpected visitor that day.
If the West End had been expanding for two centuries, the development of the East End was more recent. Immediately east of the Tower, the docklands began with St Katharine’s and extended downstream