A faded decrepit corner building with peeling paintwork, bearing the odd name Plumage House, stands on a quiet Hoxton road, the B144, known to its friends as Shepherdess Walk. This sad façade hides a fascinating history, yet appearances on the internet are limited to brief comments on its most recent occupant, Bestimt & Co., feather merchants. In this post I go much deeper into its history to find tales of riots, balloons, court cases, murder, bankruptcy, and a wealth of inaccurate newspaper reports that just give me a headache.
The Romance of Wenlock Barn, or “The Mobbs! The Mobbs!”
Wenlock Barn, despite the name, was a manor house on a rural estate on the north-eastern edge of London. The metropolis began to expand rapidly in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and although an 1819 map shows the manor house still standing, on a street named Shepherd’s Walk – this soon changed gender – new roads and housing just to the south seem ominous. Sure enough, by 1830 the barn had gone, and new roads created around the site. Development of the area gathered pace.
‘The Romance of Wenlock Barn’ was how Victorian Hoxton described the following tale, a dubious legal case with not one iota of romance. The story begins with a perpetually renewable lease on part of the estate, including the barn, passing to John Mobbs on his marriage in 1757. His will of 1790, written shortly before his death, left this valuable property to his children. But did he still own it? He had deposited the lease with a Mr. Yardley for £50 and c.1800 it passed to a Mr. Sturt. Furthermore, the will was deliberately hidden by the descendants of an executor, so much of the estate, including the barn, remained in the unchallenged possession of the Sturts.
← The 1819 map with the barn towards top left. City Road is bottom left.
This wasn’t good news for tenants, as one Sturt – Henry, created 1st Baron Alington in 1876 – was a notorious slum landlord. Meanwhile Mobbs’ unfortunate children William and James, instead of becoming wealthy gentlemen, ended up poverty-stricken. It was only in 1858 that Joshua Mobbs, grandson, got probate of the will which had finally come to light, and he fought to get possession of his grandfather’s estate. He failed, and died almost destitute in 1887. His nephew John continued the fight, and succeeded to a small extent, mainly when shop and house leaseholders opted to renew their leases with him rather than the Sturts, which usually led to punch-ups between rival bailiffs. The battle fizzled out over the next few years, the merits of the case remaining unclear to this day. It is said that back in 1816 Mr. Yardley, constantly harried by William and James, went mad and died shouting “The Mobbs! The Mobbs!” Although another theory, popular at the time, has these brothers murdered as children. This is what passed for romance in Victorian Hoxton.
Goodbye Barn, Hello Royal Standard Tavern and Two Balloon Riots
As development of the area began, the approximate site of Wenlock Barn was used to build the ‘Royal Standard Tavern, Tea Gardens and Pleasure Grounds’ at 106 Shepherdess Walk, on the corner of Shaftesbury Street. It opened in 1837. The man behind the development was Henry Brading (c.1802-1851), who moved from the nearby Wenlock Arms, a pub still standing today. Do not be deceived by the innocence of ‘tea garden’. As an elderly resident of nearby St Pancras said some sixty years later: “The name sounds better than the reality was. They would horrify the temperance and every other party of our time.”
Brading applied for a theatrical licence, initially without success. He did get a music licence, so musical entertainment was always on the bill, along with events he could host in the grounds that would appeal to the neighbourhood’s working-class population. These events included several sports: Wrestling, ‘single stick’ (a kind of fencing with wooden swords) and boxing. Ballooning, given its popularity and the space available, was also tried with, it must be said, mixed results …
One aeronaut booked by Brading was Margaret Graham, who in 1826 was the first British woman to make a solo flight. Graham’s first ascent in Hoxton was to be on 10th July 1839 in her Royal Victoria balloon. This was best known for its flight from Green Park to celebrate Queen Victoria’s coronation. On that occasion, it had risen sedately with Graham at the helm, then descended far less sedately onto buildings in Marylebone Lane causing damage both to them and a young man, who was hit by a coping stone and later died of his injuries. Every flight was a drama in the early days of ballooning.
Graham’s ascent at the Royal Standard certainly was: It provoked a riot. The balloon was described by onlookers as no better than a sieve, losing gas faster than it was pumped in. Graham was prepared to risk her life rather than disappoint the public, but a gentleman appealed to the crowd to persuade her to stop. Outside the pleasure grounds, several hundred people who had gathered for a free view of the ascent began throwing stones and brickbats onto those inside, before charging into the tavern and smashing glasses and furniture. The police had to intervene and make arrests, Serjeant Clarke describing the rioters as the greatest set of ruffians he had ever met.
→ Margaret Graham depicted in a balloon basket in full-on romantic mode.
A week later, huge crowds gathered again as Graham made a second attempt. This time, inflation began the night before in Haggerston, and early on the 17th the balloon was brought to the Royal Standard by road semi-inflated. It was to no avail. Inflation resumed once it was secured in the pleasure grounds, but the wind picked up in the afternoon and there were fears it didn’t have enough lift to clear the buildings. Then, just as Mrs. Brading, wife of the licensee, was about to climb into the basket to join Graham, a tear was discovered. Graham climbed out but an associate, Mr. Adams, fearing a repeat of the previous week’s disturbance, took her place to placate the crowd. The result was two chimneys from a nearby house toppled, narrowly missing onloookers, damaged firework towers, another tear in the balloon and a bumpy landing for Mr. Adams in a nearby field. The crowd turned nasty; the police intervened again to prevent further damage to balloon, tavern, and Mr. Adams. To rub salt into the aeronauts’ wounds, a balloon named the Royal Vauxhall was then seen passing majestically overhead, heading towards Essex.
Earlier the same year, there had been at least two launches at the venue by Prof. Richard Gypson, a pioneer balloonist and eccentric. His hydrogen balloon could carry eight people; it was 68 feet high, made of “1800 yards of the richest silk, in alternate colours of crimson and gold” reported newspapers. These launches went without a hitch. Not so his return in September. Gypson was to ascend while seated on a pony in the balloon’s basket – why exactly was never adequately explained. While the balloon was still on the ground and being inflated, it burst; a sudden gust of wind was blamed. With the Mrs. Graham riots fresh in the memory, the crowd outside the grounds became agitated and according to newspaper reports, “a desperate attack would have been made on the property, had it not been for the interference of a large body of the police.”
Dog Dramas and Parachuting Monkeys: The Royal Albert Saloon
Brading eventually got his theatrical licence, and a large new building at the back of the site, the Royal Albert Saloon, opened on Easter Monday, 1840, named in honour of Queen Victoria’s new husband and, I suspect, to avoid confusion with the Standard Theatre in Shoreditch. The designation ‘saloon’ meant that access was only possible through the tavern, and that smoking and drinking were not allowed in the saloon itself. The new building was of a novel design, having two stages built at right angles to each other, one facing a typical indoor concert room, apparently able to hold somewhere between 1,600 and 2,000 people. The other faced an outdoor auditorium: The announcement of its opening claimed that the “beautiful gardens are surrounded by alcoves, boxes, galleries, promenade, fountains, views etc., forming a complete Amphitheatre, and capable of holding 6,000 persons.” This was a huge capacity compared to its local rivals. The building itself was constructed mainly of wood, and was later described as “not very substantially built”. Apparently, the shrieks of the heroine and curses of the villain could be heard from the street outside.
The saloon sometimes hosted concerts and ballets, and Brading claimed in newspaper advertisements that it was to be “open every evening with the most amusing and intellectual entertainments in the Metropolis,” but a typical presentation, nautical drama The Murderer of the High Seas sounds less intellectual and more rip-roaring melodrama. Brading, after all, needed to appeal to the local population and had stiff opposition; the rival Britannia Saloon on Hoxton High Street was bringing in the crowds, and just down the road the Eagle had unveiled its splendid new ‘Olympic Temple’ on the same day the Royal Albert had opened as a clear spoiler tactic.
From 1843 the Royal Albert was able to stage legitimate drama – Shakespeare et al – due to the Theatres Act, but the fireworks, concerts, novelties and spectaculars continued. The venue even developed a reputation for ‘dog dramas’: Melodramas featuring one or more hounds that were quite en vogue in the 1840s. Typical of the breed was the 1849 production The Dumb Hunter, or The Dogs of the Prairie.
Given the fare on offer, it is no surprise the police thought little of the clientele the Royal Albert attracted. In July 1844 a police report stated that both the Albert and the Britannia were populated by “the lowest class – prostitutes and thieves – old and young – who are admitted nightly for 6d at the Albert and 3d each at the Britannia.” The higher charge at the Albert can be put down to the pleasure grounds.
← A typical advertisement from the early years of the Royal Albert Saloon, this from the New Court Gazette in August 1840. Elephants were a frequent attraction.
Charles Green, another pioneer balloonist, made ascents at the Royal Albert from 1842, in between appearances at Vauxhall Gardens in South London. On 11th July 1845 Green was accompanied by Henry Brading Jnr., son of the proprietor, and the ascent on 11th August saw Brading Snr. and his wife joining Green. Mrs. Brading was an actress at her husband’s venue, and in appropriately dramatic fashion announced her acting retirement from the balloon as they began the ascent.
← An image showing the ascent of Green’s balloon Albion from the pleasure grounds, although as with all rapidly produced etchings of the era, it is of dubious accuracy. In the centre is what I take to be the outdoor stage.
Prof. Gypson was back in 1847, with a bizarre plan for a night ascent, the balloon carrying beneath it a wood and canvas model of the second Royal Exchange, which had burned down in 1836. At an appropriate altitude the model, 3ft wide by 8ft length, would be set ablaze amid a grand display of fireworks. However, the balloon proved inadequate to the task and the firework display began with the model still on the ground. It caught fire, and with a very real prospect of the balloon exploding, the rope attaching it to the model was cut. Gypson floated away to safety in the nick of time. His balloon was named the Royal Albert; no doubt Brading had paid for this advertising. Another form of advertising was employed for the first time the same year at the Royal Albert, when Lieutenant Gale threw thousands of cards of local businesses onto the crowds below from his balloon.
During a night ascent in 1848 it was a live monkey wearing a parachute that was thrown out of the balloon. This didn’t provoke a riot but on August 16th the venue came close to one. A benefit night was being held for the family of John Fussell, a chartist jailed for seditious language. The entertainments, of a political nature, stirred the audience to fever pitch and the final production of the evening sent them over the edge. This was a drama in which the lead character called on his supporters to attack a prison to release an associate. The audience took this as a hint to go to the prison holding Fussell and release him. They rose from their seats yelling that they’d soon get him out, and the police had to intervene in numbers. Many in the audience were ejected and a rampage was only narrowly avoided.
By this time, however, Brading was in deep trouble. The buildings and garden were deteriorating and the Britannia and the Grecian Theatre (at the Eagle) were tough competition. A magistrate’s order preventing the Royal Albert from opening on Sundays may have been the final straw. However, Assignees agreed that Brading could continue in business for the time being ‘for the benefit of the creditors’. Bankruptcy proceedings were paused.
After this, the exact course of events is unclear. The head lease of the tavern, with the pleasure grounds, was at some point separated from that of the Royal Albert Saloon and in May 1849 the remaining 47 years’ head lease on the Royal Albert was sold at auction for 1,060 guineas to Samuel Lane (1803-1871), owner of the Britannia. Brading remained ‘proprietor’ on advertisements, probably on a sublease. Lane tried to help his tenant in 1849, by sending a production from the Britannia to the Royal Albert to increase box office receipts, but any improvement was temporary. A pantomime, Harlequin Simple Simon, was produced at the end of 1849, then proceedings against Brading resumed as losses became unsustainable. He was declared bankrupt with unsecured debts totalling around £400,000 in today’s terms. Immediately the saloon’s scenery, flats, drops, curtains, machinery etc. went to auction. He moved to the small Sir Robert Peel pub in nearby Eagle Wharf Road, and was granted a licence there in March 1851, just days before he died. His son became the licensee and remained there for many years.
Meanwhile Whitbread, the brewers supplying the Royal Standard, kept it afloat themselves during the proceedings. It was then sold along with the pleasure grounds (“suitable for the erection of neat dwellings” noted the auctioneer) for £4,100, even though the court had estimated its worth at £9,000. Whatever Lane’s motivation in buying the saloon, access was still via the tavern and it was suggested that in getting one but not the other he was left with a pig in a poke, and there is no reliable evidence the saloon ever re-opened. Its music and dancing licence lapsed in October 1850, and with remaining fittings auctioned in November, the Royal Albert Saloon had disappeared from entertainment listings for good. Many mourned its loss. A June 1851 article ‘Drama – Its State and Prospects’ in the Weekly Chronicle described the audiences of some of the playhouses away from the west end: “The Victoria [Old Vic] lives by reflecting back the violent taste and manners of its audience; a great proportion of which consists of youths. The City of London Theatre the same. … There was but one veritable people’s—that is, labourers’—theatre, and that was the Albert Saloon, where 5,000 people could be congregated without boxes.”
A decade later the saloon was sublet by Lane and adapted as a drill hall for the North East London Rifle Volunteers. The landlord, still a Sturt, patriotically agreed to forego ground rent. The flimsy build quality and years standing empty meant the expected outlay for refitting, £250, rose to £1,150. There followed a court case between Captain Grissell, who used his own money to fund the repairs, and officer-in-charge, the aptly-named Lieutenant-Colonel Money, who agreed only to refund the costs in instalments of £100 per annum.
The last occasion on which the Royal Standard and former Royal Albert Saloon were linked also involved the Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1862 it was reported that Ensign Cotton was gifting what remained of the gardens – about half an acre – to the regiment for use as a drill ground, and that clearing and levelling had already begun. This seems innocent enough, but in 1864 a furious disagreement between Money and another officer, Colonel Sir Henry de Hoghton, erupted with accusations made publicly by both sides. It was suggested that Money had sold a commission – which was never forthcoming – in the 6th Tower Hamlets Rifles for personal profit, to none other than Sir Henry’s brother. Then the mud-slinging engulfed the Cotton transaction. It turns out Mr. Cotton was the licensee of the Royal Standard, and he’d bought the grounds for £500, thinking they may benefit his business. He then joined the Rifles, and offered to sell the land to the regiment, again for £500, which was agreed. Money tapped de Hoghton for the £500, but then returned it because it couldn’t be used for its intended purpose: Cotton had suddenly agreed to sell the land for a nominal sum to Money. Colonel de Hoghton suspected undue pressure had been put on Cotton, and said as much. The case between de Hoghton and Money was heard by the Master of the Rolls, who found in favour of Money, as courts so often do.
← Colonel Sir Henry de Hoghton, 9th Baronet, pictured in September 1861, just prior to his contretemps with Lieutenant-Colonel Money
These hiccups aside, the site had found a role to occupy it for the next 130 years, and its own address: 112 Shaftesbury Street. The next event of note was the destruction of the centre section, where the Royal Albert’s auditorium would have been, at some point late in the Second World War. The entire building was rebuilt in the 1960s and the entrance moved to 11 Wenlock Street. It finally closed as a Territorial Army centre in the 1990s. The site was cleared early in the new century and blocks of affordable housing rose there in 2008. A small landscaped garden was added.
← The 1874 Ordnance Survey (“OS”) map, showing the remains of the pleasure grounds converted to a drill ground for the Rifle Volunteers. The large building on the right is the former saloon, the corner building towards the left labelled “P.H.” the Royal Standard Tavern. Homes have been built on part of the grounds, facing Shaftesbury Street.
→ The scene today. 9-11 Wenlock Street covers the approximate footprint of the Royal Albert Saloon. The garden area shown covers a small part of the former pleasure grounds. Hardly a worthy successor.
← Thirty years after it closed, the Territorial Army centre is still signposted (red sign, centre of the image) from Shepherdess Walk. Plumage House is on the left.
The Royal Standard Tavern stands alone
The tavern had to face a future without the saloon after the events of 1850. In October the liquor licence was transferred from Brading to John Dunnell, and the Royal Standard settled down to more than a century of (mostly) obscurity. Among the licensees were the aforementioned Mr. Cotton and in 1873 the appropriately-named Mr. Shepherd. By 1894 it had been rebuilt. Two independent dwellings were included in the new building; subsequent internal works mean there are now three, all in better condition than the pub. The most distinguished feature of the second Royal Standard is the “elaborate roofline of gables, dormers and chimneys … reminiscent of 16th-century French chateaux”, according to Dr. Ann Robey. This sounds more attractive than the 2025 reality, though I concede it’s had a rough 130 years.
My last – and darkest – tale concerns a young barman employed at the rebuilt pub. Thomas Skeffington, 20, made the acquaintance there of Florence Wells, of similar age and already married. With the husband safely locked away in prison, the pair moved in together but by September 1899 the young man had tired of the relationship. He claimed Wells was paying attention to another man and besides, Mr. Wells was being released in January. However, leaving her was problematic as well: He was by this time out of work, pawning his possessions to drink, and owing money to Wells. On the evening of October 2nd, after the pair had left the Tyssen Arms pub, he cut Wells’ throat in Dalston Lane, with a knife he’d bought for the purpose. She died almost instantly. Skeffington walked to a police station and gave himself up, claiming to remember nothing after leaving the pub. He was found guilty of murder and despite the jury recommending mercy – journalists suggested he drank heavily and was “not quite answerable for his actions” – the Home Secretary refused. He was hanged at Newgate prison on November 22nd.
With the dawn of the 20th century the Royal Standard slipped back into obscurity. It survived the Blitz despite the neighbouring building to the south being destroyed but, it turned out, was in greater danger from the peace that followed. The war had left the area significantly depopulated and wholesale redevelopment from the 1950s onwards did nothing to reverse the process. The Royal Standard survived the urban renewal and staggered on through the 1950s, but with the Eagle, Wenlock Arms, Duke of York, Blockmakers Arms and more within a few minutes’ walk, it was probably the competition for a shrinking market that did for it. By 1965, the label “Public House” on 106 Shepherdess Walk had vanished from the OS map; the tavern with a history dating back to 1837 had closed for good.
It was the Bestimt of times …
The building entered a new era when the feather merchants H. Bestimt & Co. Ltd. moved in from St Botolph Row in the City in the early 1960s. Harris Bestimt (1889-1940) and his wife Sonja, known as Cissie (1890-1965), were both born in Warsaw, Poland c.1890. They came to London c.1911 and the 1921 census lists Harry as a feather dealer, living with Cissie and a young daughter, Lily, in a poor part of the east end, a stone’s throw from Cable Street. A second daughter, Hannah, would arrive later the same year.
Bestimt seemed to concentrate on ‘fancy feathers’ for clothing for individuals, theatre costumes etc., and was a success. Hannah and her husband Harry Lipson took over running the business, and were in charge when it moved into 106 Shepherdess Walk. Pub and feather business co-habited uncomfortably for a few years, but when the pub closed the building was renamed Plumage House.
However, attitudes were changing. As early as 1921, the Importation of Plumage (Prohibition) Act had been passed. This severely restricted the trade in exotic plumage and began a trend towards artificial feathers. That the company lasted another seventy years, and became one of the last feather merchants operating in London, says much for the Lipson’s business acumen.
← A 1967 advertisement. I honestly cannot make out what the drawing is supposed to represent.
In January 1991 a British newspaper article on exotic feathers in ladies’ fashion stated that they were all the rage despite changing attitudes. It recommended Bestimt if a lady was inspired to create her own design, but advised readers that customers could visit 106 Shepherdess Walk by appointment only.
Finis
This free advertising was, it turned out, the company’s last hurrah. In 1992 it finally closed, and in 1993 Harry Lipson died. It seems the entire building, save for the wing containing the three dwellings, has stood empty and unused ever since.
The land on which the building stands was still in the Sturt family until, as best I can make out, November 1993, when it was purchased by the current owner from the Hon. Mary Anna Marten OBE, archaeologist, daughter of the third Lord Alington, granddaughter of the ninth Earl of Shaftesbury and an extraordinary woman in her own right. The identity of the lessee, if there still is one, is impossible to find out. How much longer the Royal Standard will remain in this suspended animation is impossible to tell. With the area becoming trendier and more desirable, I’m surprised it has not already been converted into expensive apartments but it can only be a matter of time.
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