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| The London Eye and County Hall |
The Thames embankment where the London Eye now stands has
been the location of constantly changing landmarks. Until the 16th Century, this area was
foreshore to the Thames, overgrown with rushes and willows and subject to
flooding at high tides. The road behind the Royal Festival Hall, Belvedere Road
was the Narrow Wall, a road built on the embankment to the Thames. By the end of the 18th century this area was
packed with timber yards and wharfs.
The land running from Belvedere Road to the river between Waterloo
and Westminster Bridges, once known as Pedlar’s
Acre was originally a small strip of one acre and nine poles, located alongside
the Narrow Wall and belonged to the parish of Lambeth for over 400 years.
One landmark you can always spot in pictures, after its
construction in 1826, is the Shot Tower which was built as part of the lead
works for the production of lead shot.
From the gallery, molten lead was dropped to form large shot. Half way down the tower was a floor where
molten lead could be dropped to make smaller shot. The Shot Tower was demolished shortly after
the Festival of Britain in 1951.
In 1837 the Lion Brewery, built on the site of a former
Water Works, commissioned a locally made Coade stone lion which was mounted so
as to be clearly visible from the river. The building was damaged by fire in
1931 and after being used for a short time for storage, it remained derelict
until it was demolished in 1949 to make way for the construction of the Royal
Festival Hall. The redundant lion was painted red and put on a plinth at the
Waterloo Station entrance to The Festival of Britain. The lion was subsequently relocated to the end
of Westminster Bridge and stripped back to its original colour.
Pedlar’s Acre is
said to have been given by a grateful pedlar, on condition that his portrait
and that of his dog should be preserved for ever, in painted glass, in one of
the windows of Lambeth parish church. By
1504 Pedlar’s Acre already belonged to St Mary’s at Lambeth as rent of £250 a
year for the land is listed in the Parish records. The story of the Lambeth Pedlar is connected
with the tale of the Pedlar of Swaffham.
The Pedlar of Swaffham in Suffolk dreamt that if he travelled to London
Bridge he would find a huge fortune, but in London his only luck was the advice
given him there to return and dig for treasure at home. He followed this advice, digging up a pot of
money in Swaffham and then digging further down to find a bigger pot with even
more money! The story in Lambeth is that
he rewarded the kindness he received when a penniless pedlar by returning with
a fortune and donating land and money to the parish in return for the immortality
of his portrait in glass. In 1884 a
cynical vicar removed the glass portrait but it was later replaced.
In 1908 Pedlar’s Acre was sold for the construction of
County Hall. Objections were raised that
the land belonged to St Mary’s Lambeth but no documentation before 1826 was
considered relevant. When the land was
excavated for the foundations a boundary stone was discovered on which was
written, Lambeth Boundary of Pedlar’s Acre 1777.
