Read Online London Urban Legends by Scott Wood - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Scott Wood
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Lord Chancellor, who sits on the woolsack in the House of Lords and is custodian of the Great Seal, a symbol of the sovereign’s approval of state documents. The Lord Chancellor is responsible for the Great Seal unless a Keeper of the Great Seal is appointed. Parliamentary process can baffle anyone beyond its sphere, so there is no shame in confusing the details, but it does put doubt on the story.
There has also never been a Neil Matten in the House of Commons. Neil Marten was the Conservative MP for Banbury between 1959 and 1983. According to Andrew Roth’s The MPs’ Chart , Marten was a ‘pro-commonwealth, anti-EEC … witty, sharp, tense, neat, balding, wartime agent’. Hogg and Marten were Conservatives together and certainly knew each other. The story, with its confused titles and ‘scrawled on the back of a beer mat’ – misspelling both men’s names – has the air of a story told verbally, hastily written down and then repeated without checking any details.
In his Los Angeles Times column, Jack Smith was using this story as a way of tracing an American urban legend. A tale titled ‘The Elevator Incident’ by Jan Harold Brunvand in The Choking Doberman and Other ‘New’ Urban Legends , describes a small group of women getting into an elevator in New York. A man gets into the elevator with them and makes the command to ‘sit’. The women sit, causing the man to apologise, as he was talking to the dog. At this point the man is revealed to be a celebrity who treats the women to dinner.
The Waters of Senate House
The imposing University College of London building Senate House keeps going below ground level. Standing at its base, in several places, is a drop showing lower levels of the building created to bring natural light into the basement levels. This gully has water gushing out of it in numerous places, giving it the name of ‘the moat’. Researching Senate House folklore for her project ‘The Ghosts of Senate House’, the artist Sarah Sparks recorded stories of a spring, lake or pond beneath the building. John Stone, the Building Services Technical Officer, took her into a lower basement to show the source of the water.
Water is flowing through a fissure in the wall and collecting on the floor. The duck boards dotted along the tunnel serve as stepping stones and were placed there when the building was first constructed showing that the water was always present. A channel two inches by two inches has been carved into the stone floor to allow the water to flow into a sump pumping the water up to The Moat above.
She then goes on to speculate that:
Geologists, employed to investigate the water, suggest that a spring up to a mile away has been diverted by building work however, this does not account for the fact that the water has been present to a greater or lesser extent since the buildings construction. I speculate that this water may originate from one of the lost rivers of London, possibly the Fleet. John agrees that there may be some truth in this citing that recent excavations of North Block Green unearthed an old conduit.
The Fleet is a mile or two away from Senate House, slurping under Farringdon Road and Farringdon Street through the Fleet Sewer. Speaking to Sarah about the water some months later, she told me an investigation had found that the water was coming from a leaking water main and not some lost spring or river. However, by September 2013 the leak has yet to be found.
The water has been there since before Senate House. Charles Holden, the architect, reported that one of the few problems he had with the construction of the building was a large pocket of water in the building’s foundations. It was decided it should be left, as pumping it out could destabilise surrounding buildings as the ground moved to fill the gap left by it. The joists are said to pass through the water and into the clay beneath.
Londoners love the idea of our lost rivers, so it may not be surprising
There has also never been a Neil Matten in the House of Commons. Neil Marten was the Conservative MP for Banbury between 1959 and 1983. According to Andrew Roth’s The MPs’ Chart , Marten was a ‘pro-commonwealth, anti-EEC … witty, sharp, tense, neat, balding, wartime agent’. Hogg and Marten were Conservatives together and certainly knew each other. The story, with its confused titles and ‘scrawled on the back of a beer mat’ – misspelling both men’s names – has the air of a story told verbally, hastily written down and then repeated without checking any details.
In his Los Angeles Times column, Jack Smith was using this story as a way of tracing an American urban legend. A tale titled ‘The Elevator Incident’ by Jan Harold Brunvand in The Choking Doberman and Other ‘New’ Urban Legends , describes a small group of women getting into an elevator in New York. A man gets into the elevator with them and makes the command to ‘sit’. The women sit, causing the man to apologise, as he was talking to the dog. At this point the man is revealed to be a celebrity who treats the women to dinner.
The Waters of Senate House
The imposing University College of London building Senate House keeps going below ground level. Standing at its base, in several places, is a drop showing lower levels of the building created to bring natural light into the basement levels. This gully has water gushing out of it in numerous places, giving it the name of ‘the moat’. Researching Senate House folklore for her project ‘The Ghosts of Senate House’, the artist Sarah Sparks recorded stories of a spring, lake or pond beneath the building. John Stone, the Building Services Technical Officer, took her into a lower basement to show the source of the water.
Water is flowing through a fissure in the wall and collecting on the floor. The duck boards dotted along the tunnel serve as stepping stones and were placed there when the building was first constructed showing that the water was always present. A channel two inches by two inches has been carved into the stone floor to allow the water to flow into a sump pumping the water up to The Moat above.
She then goes on to speculate that:
Geologists, employed to investigate the water, suggest that a spring up to a mile away has been diverted by building work however, this does not account for the fact that the water has been present to a greater or lesser extent since the buildings construction. I speculate that this water may originate from one of the lost rivers of London, possibly the Fleet. John agrees that there may be some truth in this citing that recent excavations of North Block Green unearthed an old conduit.
The Fleet is a mile or two away from Senate House, slurping under Farringdon Road and Farringdon Street through the Fleet Sewer. Speaking to Sarah about the water some months later, she told me an investigation had found that the water was coming from a leaking water main and not some lost spring or river. However, by September 2013 the leak has yet to be found.
The water has been there since before Senate House. Charles Holden, the architect, reported that one of the few problems he had with the construction of the building was a large pocket of water in the building’s foundations. It was decided it should be left, as pumping it out could destabilise surrounding buildings as the ground moved to fill the gap left by it. The joists are said to pass through the water and into the clay beneath.
Londoners love the idea of our lost rivers, so it may not be surprising
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