The Streets Of London – Part Ninety
Ivybridge Lane, WC2
The building of the Thames Embankment from 1862 following the design of Sir Joseph Bazalgette changed the width and course of the river, leaving a number of streets which once led down to the northern banks of London’s principal river high and dry. One such street to suffer this fate was Ivybridge Lane which, if you walk down the Strand in a westerly direction, is to be found on the left-hand side, between Carting Lane and Adam Street.
These days it leads into Savoy Place and the Embankment Gardens but in the days before the riparian transformation it ran right to the river’s edge and the Ivy Bridge or Pier, from which it derived its name. It was in existence in the 16th century, appearing in the Agas map which showed London in the 1560s. The Lane goes straight down to the river, with a set of steps immediately to its western end. It warranted a mention in John Stow’s A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, published in 1598. Stow noted that the lane “parted the Liberty of the Duchy of Lancaster and the city of Westminster on the south side” and so was an important demarcation line between the self-regulating liberty and Westminster.
John Strype, an ecclesiastical historian, expanded and updated Stow’s masterpiece in 1720, publishing a two volume Survey of London. In it Strype describes the road that made up Ivybridge Lane as bad and almost impassable. Later Victorian depictions of the lane show it as steep, narrow and overhung by housing. Today it is still narrow, penned in by tall buildings, but the incline has been reduced. It attracts little footfall and is just one of those anonymous streets off the Strand.
Until the development of the underground system one of the quickest ways to move around London was by boat. To feed this demand for a speedy, by Victorian standards, and cheap means of getting from A to B three steamboats, named Ant, Bee and Cricket, chugged up and down the Thames from the Strand to London Bridge, charging the princely sum of a halfpenny a person. More specifically, they started off from the Adelphi Pier down to which Ivybridge Lane ran. It was here at around 3 o’clock on 27th August, 1847 that one of the worst peacetime explosions in the history of London’s West End occurred.
The Cricket was preparing to set off, a head of steam was developing in its boilers and over a hundred passengers crowded on its decks. It soon became apparent, however, that something was amiss. One of the boilers over-pressurised, probably because, to increase efficiency albeit at the expense of safety, the engineer had tied down the safety valves. A noise like a volcano erupting was heard as the boiler exploded.
The scene was one of carnage. “To the horror of beholders”, ran one account published in the newspapers, “fragments of the vessel and human beings were seen scattered in the air in every direction”. The screams of the onlookers were “of the most heart-rending character”.
Thanks to the prompt actions of a group of coal heavers, principally James Dodd, Jeremiah Leary, John Connor and Joseph Taylor, the number of casualties was not as great as it might have been. The death toll has never been established conclusively, not least because the strong tide at the time would have washed many bodies away from the scene. Readers of Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend will know that fishing out bodies from the Thames was a daily and sometimes lucrative occupation. Estimates vary from five to sixty although the consensus seems to be around thirty.
The immediate aftermath of the tragedy was that the steamboat service was discontinued. However, there is no plaque or other form of commemoration to mark the tragedy. Life was cheap in Victorian London.
