Central Cemetery Burges Assebroek, Belgium

I think this was the first time that I have ever looked for a grave that I only knew from social media. This tomb. with skull and crossbones resting on a tasselled pillow. is a favourite on Facebook and Instagram and you see it constantly in cemetery groups. It is all over the internet, along with silly rumours that the haut bourgeois wine and textile merchant who is buried here embraced a career change to pirate in later life. It is not a small tomb and is so distinctive I thought it would be easy to find. But on a freezing January day in a deserted cemetery with a bitter east wind driving sleet into my face, I just couldn’t see it. On my fifth circuit of the grounds, I was about to give up when I saw a bearded man in a windcheater strolling jauntily along the path with a shovel over his shoulder. Luckily everyone in the Flemish part of Belgium speaks English, gravediggers especially. He happily pointed me in the right direction and I soon found the family grave of Antonius Michiel (Flemish version) or Antoine Michel (French version) Wemaer (1763-1837). In summer the skull is covered with a thick layer of moss, its green toothless grin making it resemble muppet Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street more than a memento mori. It is a very eye-catching grave, there is no denying it, and I am glad that I got to see it, but the Central Cemetery of Burges at Assebroek has a lot more to see than a faux pirate’s tomb. 

A prayer card: 'Bid voor de kiel' Pray for the soul of Antonius-Michiel Wemaer

It is not just Wemaer’s grave that is covered in moss. This is the mossiest cemetery I have ever been in; nothing in rainy old England remotely compares to it, maybe you will find a graveyard in the perpetually rainy West of Ireland that approaches it, but almost every horizontal surface, especially in the summer, is plumply upholstered in deep green sphagnum. Add summer ferns and leaves on the trees and the place must resemble a rain forest by the end of Spring. It is Belgium’s oldest cemetery; the first burial took place here in 1787. Belgium at the time was still part of the Holy Roman Empire and in the last years of his life the Hapsburg Emperor Joseph II (who died in 1790) introduced many burial reforms into his multi-nation superstate, including legislation to ban intramural burials in churches or within city walls and to create new cemeteries outside of towns,  legally mandated periods between death and burial, obligatory examinations of the deceased by a medical professional and reusable wooden coffins with trap door floors that dropped corpses into the grave. By 1810 all of Bruges inhabitants had to be buried here.

A short distance from the main entrance is the impressive monument of artists Hendrik (1828-1894) and Gustaf (1862-1921) Pickery. Henrik was the son of a baker who specialised in amandelbrôod (almond bread, actually a biscuit)) and Noeuds de Bruges (similar to palmier pastries). Young Hendrik probably enjoyed eating the produce but he was not remotely interested in entering the family business. Instead, he persuaded his father to allow him to study at the Bruges Academy of Fine Arts. He went to make a successful career as a sculptor and painter.  Perhaps his marriage to baker’s daughter Mathilde Vanneste was a sop for his failure to enter the family patisserie but if so, it didn’t stop the marriage being successful; the couple had six children, fives sons and a daughter. Hendrik’s sculptures are to be found at various locations around Bruges but the most prominent is probably his statue of Jan Van Eyck which dominates Jan van Eyckplein. Hendrik’s eldest son Gustaaf is also commemorated on the memorial; he followed in his father’s footsteps to the extent of even taking over his teaching position at the Art Academy when he died. I don’t whether father or so was responsible for the tomb with its wonderful details, the memento mori with scythes, the bat winged flying hourglass and the four putti bearing the weight of the sarcophagus.

An interesting story about the cemetery appeared in the Shields Daily Gazette of Saturday 22 June 1929;

War’s Dark Secrets: copies of many of the photographs of the sinking of British ships, and taken by German officers on sub-marine service, were developed by a Belgian photographer in Bruges. Although it was a great risk he retained copies in view of the value they would possess after the war. But German search parties were always on the prowl through Belgian homes, and the discovery of such photographs meant instant execution. After successive hiding places for the copies had been abandoned, they were entrusted to a friendly grave digger employed in the Bruges Cemetery, who employed a family vault for their safe custody until after the Armistice. These pictures represent some of the darkest secrets of the war.

 

Thirty minutes from sundown; time travel in the Anglican Chapel, Kensal Green Cemetery

My friend Meriel and I were showing a visitor the catacombs at Kensal Green just before Christmas. When our visitor left, we went back down to the vaults to check on some memorial tablets stored there. Standing underground in the dark, surrounded by hundreds, thousands of corpses, even though they are hidden from sight in lead lined coffins, is a disquieting experience. When your vision is limited to a little circle of torchlight, the silence and the darkness become almost tangible, pressing in on you and threatening to extinguish your light source. The longer you loiter down there, the more oppressive the atmosphere becomes. Insanely I suggest we go look for a coffin that had been broken open, exposing the skeleton. Thankfully Meriel refuses point blank to entertain the notion and shortly afterwards we leave, locking the iron grill at the entrance and climbing the dank stairs spattered with pigeon guano, back up to the Anglican Chapel. It is odd that from time to time one of the pigeons that roosts on the pediment of the building manages to find its way inside. No one knows how. Once in they are apparently unable to find their way back out again. They lurk high in the stairwell that leads down to the catacombs, frantically trying to escape in a flurry of beating wings whenever anyone enters the building. Eventually they weaken and die and fall to the stone flagged floor of the chapel from where one of the cemetery company’s employees are sent to shovel the corpse up and dispose of it. 

Surveyor John Griffith's original drawing of the proposed Anglican Chapel

Built in 1835-36, despite recent works the Anglican Chapel is in a parlous state, internally and externally. Originally the intention was to build the architectural centrepiece of the cemetery in the gothic revival style, after the architect Henry Edward Kendall won a competition run by the nascent General Cemetery Company in 1831, to design a chapel and a gatehouse. But the chairman (and main financial backer) of the GCC, the banker Sir John Dean Paul, was no fan of the new gothic style and overturned the decision of the competition judges. He insisted on a neo-classical design and instructed the cemetery company’s surveyor John Griffith to come up with it. Griffith was an accomplished draftsman but as an architect he was bereft of original ideas. With his chairman peremptorily demanding new designs, the surveyor did what any intelligent individual with little or no original talent does, he plagiarised. And the architect whose work he plagiarised? Henry Edward Kendall. Griffith produced a beautiful set of drawings for the new chapel that were straight from Kendall’s design for the Spilsby Session House in Lincolnshire. Without a doubt Kendall noticed the theft of his design, but, as he had kept the 100-guinea prize from the architectural competition, he swallowed his contempt for Griffith and kept his own counsel.   

Anglican chapel ceiling, photo by John Haines

Griffith’s chapel may not be entirely original but it is still a beautiful building. As I locked the door to the catacomb stairwell behind Meriel, the late afternoon winter sun illuminated the great stained-glass window but did little to pierce the gathering gloom. The chapel isn’t large, roughly 25 by 30 feet and is cruciform in shape, but the ornate ceiling is high, a plasterwork vault painted blue and dotted with gold stars, topped by a lunette, supported on pendentive arches. Griffith took his ‘inspiration’ for the ceiling and general layout of the chapel from John Soanes now demolished Princes Street vestibule of the Bank of England, possibly after a nudge by his banker chairman. The original window, of painted glass, was destroyed by a bomb blast in the Second World War. It was replaced in 1951 by a window designed by Antoine Acket a Dutch artist who worked for Wainwright & Waring of Croydon, manufacturers of architectural metalwork and stained and leaded glass. Acket’s design is rather kitsch, showing blue robed angels with purple wings fluttering around Christ like a flock of parakeets, plebian worshippers at his feet, including a couple of alarming children, a boy with a bicycle and a girl with a skipping rope, who have the haggard faces of dissolute 40 year olds, and flanked by an orange robed St Peter holding the keys to heaven and a shrouded Lazarus with skin of opalescent blue, presumably due to cyanosis. Christ himself, holding up his hands to demonstrate his stigmata, is depicted with a halo inside a mandorla, that looks unnervingly like a giant red vulva.  

Most of the original fixtures and fittings have long gone, except for the hydraulic catafalque, which stands shrouded in white cloth in the centre of the chapel. Dating from 1837 and restored in the nineties back into working condition, the black and gold catafalque served two purposes. Firstly, it was a bier; bearers deposited coffins on it at the start of funeral services with the head facing the altar. At the end of the service the top of the catafalque, which is on rollers, can swivel around so that the bearers can take up the coffin ready to leave the chapel, without having to execute a tricky manoeuvre to turn the coffin around in the relatively tight space available. Secondly it served as a hydraulic lift for anyone being deposited in the catacombs and at the end of the service, mourners would watch as the catafalque sank beneath the floor taking the coffin and the deceased with it, and a pair of metal doors clanged shut behind it. The disused chapel is now used as a lumber room, storing various odds and ends from around the cemetery that have no better home.  Meriel and I decided to explore the miscellaneous contents, as we are intrigued by the memorials, tightly packed into wooden cases and protected with PVC foam, that are gradually being restored by students at City and Guilds London Art School in Kennington. Dozens of these are stacked against the south wall of the chapel, most of them too heavy to move, waiting for the day when the building is restored and the memorials can be returned to the walls of the colonnades where they belong. 

There are also two or three bigger pieces stored in the chapel, a couple of angels culled from graves, which stand sentinel at the entrance and the stone figure of a sleeping child resting its head on a pillow which was removed from the grade II listed tomb of Frederick Thomas Yates. Frederick, the son of Frederick and Stella Yates was baptised at St Margaret's Westminster on the 21st November 1835. His father was a solicitor and the family lived right in the heart of Westminster, on Great George Street, where Parliament Square now stands. Frederick Thomas died of croup in December 1839 and was buried at Kensal Green that month.  He had probably just turned four at the time of his death. His parents erected a fine memorial over the vault which housed their dead son, a Portland stone sarcophagus with the Carrara marble effigy on top. The statue of the sleeping child was removed from the tomb some time ago for safekeeping and is kept on a trolley in the chapel.

The object that really caught our attention was one that we had never seen before and which seemed not to belong there; an old bureau style desk sitting incongruously amongst some old broken pews. Some of the drawers were open to show dozens of old maps. The maps seemed to be of various places abroad, and seemingly had no connection with the cemetery. The one on top showed the area around the towns of Moers, Kempen and Krefeld in Westphalia, northwest of Düsseldorf and close to the Dutch border. It wasn’t a recent map, it only took a little research to establish that it was almost certainly printed in the 1930’s. Moers was written old style as Mors and, most tellingly Krefeld is called Krefeld-Uerdingen. Originally Krefeld and Uerdingen were two separate conurbations but in time, as each expanded, they merged into one another though retaining their separate names. In 1929 they officially became the Stadt of Krefeld-Uerdingen but in 1940 the Nazi administration shortened the name and it became, then and ever since, Krefeld. In 1941 the town deported 1131 Jews from Krefeld, Duisburg and Kempen to Šķirotava Railway Station near Riga, later to become Jungfernhof concentration camp. They were transported in freezing conditions with no drinking water for more than two days and on arrival on the 8th December, were shot in the Rumbula forest massacre along with 24,000 Latvian Jews. These 1930’s German maps, would have been invaluable in 1943 when the RAF heavily bombed Kempen and Krefeld, starting a firestorm in the eastern part of Krefeld that destroyed much of the town centre (On 3 March 1945 US troops occupied Krefeld. Henry Kissinger was a private in the Intelligence unit stationed in the town and the units only fluent German speaker. With no else able to communicate with the city administration the U.S. Army decided to put Private Kissinger in charge of running the occupied town, his first ever taste of political power.

The next map we looked at also seemed to belong to the 1930’s or 40’s, El Djem in Tunisia. The town is famous, of course, for the spectacular amphitheatre built around 238 AD in the Roman city of Thysdrus by Proconsul Gordian (who later, very briefly, became Gordian II, Emperor of Rome for 22 days, the shortest reign of any Roman Emperor, in 238, the Year of the Six Emperors). The amphitheatre is big, second only in size to the Colosseum in Rome, with capacity for 35,000 spectators to view the gladiatorial combats and chariot races that were staged there. During the Tunisia campaign in World War II German soldiers took shelter in the amphitheatre making it a target for the RAF who bombed it, seemingly without causing irreparable damage. El Djem became the location of serious fighting during the North African campaign, firstly to destroy a railway bridge on the line to Tunis (the allies tried for weeks to destroy the bridge by aerial bombardment, without success, and eventually had to send in paratroopers to finish the job) and to capture the Luftwaffe airfield just outside the town. So here we had another 1930’s map showing a key location in WWII military campaigns. What were they doing here? Why would they be in the cemetery, let alone the chapel? Meriel held the torch while I took photos but we should have examined the other maps. Would they also show WWII battlegrounds? The December sun was sinking fast and we had to get the chapel key back to the cemetery office. As we left through the door to the old vestuary I saw something odd propped up against a cupboard door. A spear. With my mind still full of El Djem it seemed obvious to me that I was looking at a hasta, a heavy seven-foot-long Roman iron tipped spear, not designed to be thrown but used by legionaries as a thrusting weapon. The iron tip was rusted quite badly and the shaft was filthy. Why would there be a Roman spear in here? I asked Meriel. There was clearly something strange going on, old maps that don’t belong in the cemetery and now ancient objects from locations on the maps. Were we on the site of a wormhole, a time travel portal? Brompton Cemetery claims to have one with far less evidence for it than we have here. Meriel held the spear in her hand for a moment and eyed it appraisingly before giving it back to me. I’m no expert, she said, but that looks a lot like a piece of an old iron tomb railing to me...      

 

To the memory of the Maharani of the Punjab; Jind Kaur (1817-1863) Kensal Green Cemetery

 

It’s nice to see that, at the Dissenter’s Chapel in Kensal Green Cemetery, someone has left flowers for Maharani Jind Kaur (1817-1863) and draped her wall plaque in fairy lights.

Jind Kaur was the youngest of the wives of Ranjit Singh (1780-1839), the founder and first Maharaja of the Sikh Empire. She bore Ranjit one son, Duleep Singh who inherited his father’s throne at the age of 5 after his three predecessors all died early and violent deaths at the hands of rivals for the throne. Jind ruled as regent for her son and, determined that he would not meet the fate of her husband’s three successors, was fiercely protective of him. Inevitably perhaps it was not internecine disputes that ended Duleep’s reign and her regency, but the British East India Company which declared war on the Sikh empire in the Punjab in 1845. Jind and her army commanders put up a spirited defence but defeat in the Second Anglo-Sikh war deposed the 10-year-old Duleep, who was sent to England where he could be ‘properly educated’ and a close eye kept on him. Jind was separated from her son and imprisoned first in Lahore, then at Sheikhupura and finally at the Chunar Fort in Uttar Pradesh. The doughty Maharani managed to escape, not only from her prison, but from India, travelling through 800 kilometres of forest, to seek sanctuary in Kathmandu in Nepal. Jind remained in political exile in Nepal for almost 12 years until she was allowed to reunite with her son in Calcutta in 1861. Their reunion was the cause of great joy amongst the Sikhs and the jittery British insisted that the pair leave for England.

Within two years of arriving in London, the Maharani was dead, dying in her sleep on the 1^st August 1863 at Abingdon House in Kensington. Her son, rather controversially, had converted to Christianity at the age of 15, almost certainly under pressure from his British guardian. Two of the Maharaja’s servants claimed, in a letter to the Times, that the Maharaja was to be buried with Christian rites. One of the officers attached to the Maharaja’s household wrote to the Times to rebut the charge:

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. attention has been directed to a letter in the Times of to-day, written. by Utchell Singh and Kishen Singh, in which they would have it believed that it was the intention of his Highness the Maharajah Duleep Singh that his mother, her Highness the Maharanee Jenden Kour, should receive the rights of Christian burial. His Highness never had any such intention. Yesterday at ten o’clock the remains of the Maharanee were removed from Abingdon House to be deposited temporarily ina vault at Kensal-green Cemetery, following the course which was adopted in the case of his Highness the late Rajah of Coorg. The remains of the Maharanee were attended by his Highness, myself, several of his personal friends, and by all the retinue of her late Highness, . No Christian rite was attempted, his Highness Duleep Singh, when the coffin was placed in the mausoleum, merely addressing the people in their own language with affectionate earnestness on the uncertainty of human life. Had the writers of the letter (two discharged servants) been present they would have seen that there was a scrupulous care on the part of the Maharajah to avoid offending the prejudices of his countrymen. As his Highness left London last night for Scot- land, and the letter may not, therefore, meet his eye, I lost no time in sending you this communication. I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant, J. Oliphant, Lieutenant-Colonel. Hatherop Castle, August 6.

Jind Kaur’s body was kept in the catacombs at the Dissenters Chapel until 1864 when her son received permission to take it to India. She was cremated at Bombay (permission to cremate her at Lahore, in accordance with her last wishes, having being refused) where a small samadhi in her memory was erected by Duleep on the Godavari River.

Portrait of Jind Kaur by George Richmond

'I see the Four-fold man, Humanity in deadly sleep'; Ben Edge and the Children of Albion, Fitzrovia Chapel

I see the Four-fold Man, The Humanity in deadly sleep

And its fallen Emanation, the Spectre and its cruel Shadow.

I see the Past, Present and Future existing all at once

Before me. O Divine Spirit, sustain me on thy wings,

That I may awake Albion from his long and cold repose

William Blake – Visions of the Daughters of Albion

The last time that I went to the Fitzrovia Chapel it was still called the Middlesex Hospital Chapel and it was surrounded on all sides by a busy London NHS hospital. The hospital closed in 2005 and was demolished in 2008, apart from the chapel, which stood, exposed to its foundations (and held up by timber props) in an empty wasteland until the new Pearson Square/Fitzroy Place was built around it. Walking into Pearson Square from Riding House Street was a little disorientating and although the brick-built chapel was right there in front of me, all my eyes could take in were the concrete and glass of the new buildings. I walked right around the chapel before I finally registered its presence, completely out of place in its new, corporate square, surroundings. The chapel isn’t much to look at from outside, built in the tight central courtyard of the old hospital there was never enough space to get much of a vantage point on it. All the time and effort seem to have gone into the interior; internally it is visually stunning, a glittering jewellery box of gold leaf, gilt, polychrome marble and mosaics. Designed by John Loughborough Pearson in 1911 in what was then the increasingly outmoded Gothic Revival style, the Byzantine inspired chapel seems an appropriate place to stage an exhibition of Ben Edge’s folk art inspired paintings and sculpture; a quaint hundred-year-old survivor looking over its shoulder to dimly understood traditions, marooned in a post-modern desert of concrete and glass. 

Where Must We Go In Search Of Our Better Selves

Ben Edge was born in Croydon in 1985 and spent his childhood shuttling between his separated parents, his mum in semi-rural, genteel Southborough near Tunbridge Wells and his father in fashionable urban Shoreditch. He studied Fine Art at West Kent College and the Sir John Cass School of Art in Aldgate (now a part of London Metropolitan University and hastily renamed the School of Art, Architecture and Design following the death of George Floyd and the resulting stigma attaching to institutions named after individuals with connections to the slave trade). Edge originally pursued a career in music but over the last few years has gained a reputation as an artist following his reconnection with Folk traditions in 2017. His immersion in the world of folk ceremonies has produced an arresting series of figurative paintings which explore British folk traditions and their connection with the modern world. He believes that we are in the middle of a ‘folk renaissance’ “reflecting a rising desire to reclaim ancestral roots and reconnect with nature”. In his new book ‘Folklore Rising’ he explains that “as we struggle as a nation with the darker elements of our history, I have found folklore to be a breath of fresh air and something of an antidote to the legacy of our colonial past… its greatest appeal to me is that folk customs often arose from the ways in which peasants used their ritual practices, superstitions, storytelling and creativity to take back control of their lives and destinies from the oppressive regimes of the ruling classes.” 

The Pearly Lwyd of Albion

The centrepiece of Edge’s exhibition at the Fitzrovia is his new painting ‘The Children of Albion’, displayed in the chancel of the chapel, in front of the altar. The Guardian recently described it as an ‘epic quasi-altarpiece that… explores the richness of Britain’s history in fabulous detail. Fusing the grotesque topsy-turviness of Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights with the surreal humour of Terry Gilliam, it’s the culmination of a body of work that began after the double crises of Brexit and the pandemic.’ It is a gloriously detailed piece of work, impossible to take in at a glance. Edge would have been gratified to see his audience gently jostling for a place directly in front of the painting and by the amount of time they then spend examining each group of figures. The visual references are legion; Blake’s personification of Albion looms over the whole composition which is full of folkloric details from Edge’s other works, as well as nods to medieval illuminated manuscripts, Bosch, Brueghal and Hogarth. Amongst what seem like hundreds of figures we spot Cro-Magnon man hunting a woolly mammoth, Joseph Grimaldi with glass and decanter, a strolling Olaudah Equiano, Mary Seacole, the head of Margaret Thatcher with mouth wide open like the gaping jaws of Hell waiting to admit striking miners, ships carrying waves of invaders, Guy Fawkes and a naked King blowing a trumpet with his arse.   

The Children of Albion

The other paintings in the exhibition are illustrated and described in ‘Folklore Rising; An Artists Journey through the British Ritual Year’, Edge’s account of the various rituals, rites and ceremonies he has attended and from which the inspiration for his paintings is derived. His pictures generally show the location of a ritual or details of a ceremony, often with figures from past and present co-existing on the same canvas. There is a striking image of the Dorset Ooser, a wooden head that featured in the folk culture of Melbury Osmond in Dorset, which unfortunately went missing in 1897. Edge likes to use the rosy light of dawn or dusk, to illuminate his subjects which helps to create a deeply mysterious atmosphere. If you can’t catch the exhibition, which is only on for another couple of weeks, buy his book and lose yourself in the place where past, present and future exist all at once.    

Ben Edge

Earth Mother

The Devils Den

The Rollright Stones

John Barley Corn must die

'Folklore Rising' Watkins £25.00

The Sewing Machine, the Umbrella and the Operating Table; a rainy afternoon in Buffalo

 

I had few, if any, preconceived notions about Buffalo; in all honesty, until relatively recently I didn’t even know where it was. If I had been asked to guess, I would have fallen into the obvious trap of assuming it had been named after Bison bison, the American buffalo, and gone for somewhere on the great plains, in Kansas, Dakota or Wyoming. I would never have guessed upper New York state, virtually on the Canadian border. All the authorities agree that the city took its name from Buffalo Creek (now upgraded from 'creek' to 'river' along the majority of its course) but there is still some controversy about how the creek acquired its name.  Some say the French originally referred to it as le beau fleuve (the beautiful river) or le rivière au boiblanc, names then corrupted by local non-French speakers to ‘bow-flo’ and ‘bo-blow’ and eventually anglicised to Buffalo. Others believe that it is a corruption of the original name bestowed by the indigenous Seneca people of the area, or a corruption of a mistranslation by Mohawk or Iroquois translators of the Senecan name during the negotiations for the Treaty of Fort Stanwix. No one seems to give much credence to the idea that Buffalo is named after the bison even though it is generally acknowledged that herds of them once roamed the area; in 1718 the Governor General of New France, Philippe de Rigaud, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, noted that ‘Buffaloes abound on the south shore of the Lake Erie, but not on the north.' And in October 1911 the Times & Democrat of Orangeburg, South Carolina reported  that ‘a herd of ten thousand buffalo used to visit a lick near Onondaga lake, NY…. Settlers killed 700 there in one year. In 1730 the last buffalo east of the Alleghenies was killed. In 1897 the last wild buffalo in the country, outside the preserves, was killed. Goodbye, bison.’ So why the reluctance to accept the obvious explanation that Buffalo was named after the majestic American bison? Who knows. 

Why did we visit a city we knew nothing about? Because of its proximity to Toronto, a city we paid our second visit to a couple of weeks ago. We thought it might make an interesting side trip as it is just a hundred miles or so away; a two-hour journey on the slow GO train from Union Station in Toronto that crawls around the rim of Lake Ontario to Niagara Falls. From there you can pay a dollar toll in US Mint coins (no debased Canadian dollars allowed) and a $30 dollar I-94 entry fee (and don’t forget to apply in advance for your $40 ESTA) and cross into the United States on foot, across the Rainbow Bridge. There are fine views of the Falls from the bridge and in the middle, you can straddle the border and leave your left limbs in Canada while your right limbs stand in the States. Once you have dealt with the formalities at US Customs and Border Protection, Buffalo is just a short but dispiriting Uber ride away down interstate 1-90, the Niagara Thruway, crossing back over the Niagara River to Grand Island, with its Amusement Park and golf course closed down for the winter, then back over again onto the left bank of the river and down into Buffalo, skirting the shore of Lake Erie. Downtown Buffalo came into view under an overcast sky as we slowed down to exit the freeway; I could see a clutch of interesting looking buildings scattered around the city centre, a hulking art deco red sandstone skyscraper topped by a Moorish dome, a beaux-arts white tower, a neoclassical two towered skyscraper topped by two large brass statues and various neo-gothic spires and turrets. 

The Uber drove us away from downtown, up Michigan Avenue to our hotel, through a bleak landscape of shops, lots and religious buildings; tire shops, body shops, used car lots, low rise office blocks with outsize parking lots, endless weed covered vacant lots, converted factories, a boarded-up Baptist church, the concrete spire of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints and the steeply pitched roofs of the Church of St John the Baptist. The gloomy view from our eighth-floor room looked out over the roofs of the Roswell Park Cancer Centre, back towards a now distant downtown. The horizon was a slate grey straight line that it took me a few seconds to realise was Lake Erie. The only sign of activity was a gang of roofers on the flat roof of the hospital manoeuvring rigid 6-foot square grey tiles into place.  A sudden fierce cloud burst sent them scurrying for cover from the driving rain. Half an hour later we were again in a taxi heading back down Michigan Avenue when the late afternoon sun broke through the clouds, pouring golden light onto downtown. By the time the taxi dropped us off at the bottom of Pearl Street the light was beautiful; we wandered down Pearl Street admiring the Liberty Building in the distance, pausing at the intersection with Church Street to admire the Guaranty building on the corner and the Old Post Office to the east and Old Erie County Hall to the west.  On wet pavements, plastered with autumn leaves, reflecting a wounded sky of bruised blacks, greys and yellows, bleeding reds, and scar tissue pinks and whites, we made our way down the diagonal of Niagara Street to Niagara Square, the McKinley monument and the extraordinary Buffalo City Hall.

President William McKinley was shot in Buffalo on the 6th September 1901 and died of his infected wound 8 days later. The position of being President was truly dangerous in the second half of the 19th century, there were 9 of them in the 36 years between Lincoln’s death 1865 and McKinley’s in 1901 and a third of them were assassinated whilst in office, James A. Garfield being the third man. Whether this period represents the apogee of political violence in America, or the nadir of presidential security, is a moot point.  McKinley was in Buffalo visiting the Pan-American Exposition. He was a popular president; in 1898 he had declared war on Spain triggering a short global conflict between an emerging superpower and an imperial power on its last legs. In just five months the Spanish army and navy were humiliatingly routed in the Pacific and the Caribbean and Spain was forced to hand over sovereignty of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to the US and to allow them to establish a protectorate over Cuba. When the public queued up to greet President McKinley at a public reception in the Exposition’s Temple of Music, one of those in line was a 28 wireworker and would be anarchist Leon Czolgosz. Czolgosz was born to Polish parents in Detroit in 1873. He had been drawn to socialism following the economic crash of 1893 when living in Cleveland and the rolling he worked for had closed down. He struggled to make a living in the difficult economic conditions of 1890’s America and in 1898 he went to live with his father on a farm in Ohio and became a recluse. If he was alive today Czolgosz would be one of those individuals who sleeps in the day and spends all night in his bedroom surfing the internet and stoking his resentment at the injustices of the world. When he finally abandoned his self-imposed exile from the world in early 1901 it was to try and insinuate himself into the most extreme political activists of the period, the anarchists. He was not entirely successful in this; his blatant desire to be involved in some sort of political extremism made him an object of suspicion to the very people he wanted to join. Ironically, just a few days before he murdered McKinley, the radical newspaper Free Society issued a warning about Czolgosz to its readers, “The attention of the comrades is called to another spy,” the paper said, “he is well dressed, of medium height, rather narrow shoulders, blond and about 25 years of age… His demeanor is of the usual sort, pretending to be greatly interested in the cause, asking for names or soliciting aid for acts of contemplated violence. If this same individual makes his appearance elsewhere the comrades are warned in advance, and can act accordingly.”

As he stood in line to greet the President, Czolgosz was hiding a .32 calibre Iver Johnson revolver beneath a handkerchief. When he reached the front of the line, he slapped away McKinley’s extended hand and shot him twice at point blank range in the stomach. One of the bullets ricocheted off a button and lodged itself in McKinley’s jacket, the other wounded him severely in the lower abdomen. As Czolgosz readied himself to pull the trigger for a third time the man behind him in the queue struck him roughly in the neck and knocked the gun out of his hand. Other members of the crowd surrounded Czolgosz and began punching and kicking him so vigorously that the wounded McKinley felt obliged to step in and ask them to go easy on him. At first McKinley’s doctors thought that the President’s injuries were non-fatal but within a few days he had developed gangrene in the wound and by the 14th September he was dead. A grand jury indicted Czolgosz with first-degree murder on September 16th and he went on trial at the State Courthouse in Buffalo on the 23rd. Czolgosz, who not only refused to co-operate with the prosecution but also with his own defence team, pleaded guilty to the charges against him but was overruled by the Judge who insisted that a not guilty plea be entered to allow the full trial to go ahead. The prosecution case just took two days to deliver, the defence a mere 27 minutes, the time it took Czolgosz’s lawyer to deliver a half-hearted plea for clemency to the jury and judge, claiming that his client was insane. The jury took even less time to deliberate; they were back in the courtroom less than half an hour after being dismissed to consider their verdict. Czolgosz was executed at Mount Auburn penitentiary on October 29th 1901, by being given three shocks of 1800 volts in the electric chair. Before being buried an autopsy revealed that he had had bad teeth and chancroids on his genitals, most likely the result of a sexually transmitted disease. A death mask was taken and his body was buried in the prison cemetery after sulphuric acid had been poured into his coffin to ensure that it decomposed quickly. His clothes and possessions were burnt in the prison incinerator. 

The McKinley monument in the centre of Niagara Square is a 69-foot-high obelisk of marble from Italy and Vermont, standing on a 24-foot-high base, which bears an inscription saying ‘this shaft was erected by the State of New York to honor the memory of William McKinley, twenty-fifth President of the United States of America.’ After a list of his political achievements the inscription carries on, ‘William McKinley died in Buffalo September 14, 1901 victim of a treacherous assassin who shot the President as he was extending to him the hand of courtesy.’  There are four lions surrounding the base, each 12 feet long and weighing 12 tons, they were sculpted by Alexander Phimister Proctor of New York City and based on Sultan, a Barbary lion who, along with a  female named Bedouin Maid, was presented to the Bronx Zoological Park by Nelson Robinson in 1903 (just three years before the zoo put the Congolese pygmy Ota Benga on display in the same cage as an orang-utan). The monument cost $190,000 to build and was dedicated on September 6, 1907, the 6th anniversary of the shooting. Over 100,000 people turned out in a heavy downpour to see the dedication service.

The imposing hulk of the City Hall stands in front of the McKinley monument, a 32 storey Art Deco skyscraper completed in 1931 to replace the Old Erie County Hall which stands a few hundred yards away on Franklin Street. The Old County Hall is an impressive building in its own right, designed by Andrew Jackson Warner and completed in 1875, it is pure Victorian Gothic, four storeys with a 270 foot clock tower with a spired roof and louvered belfry sporting four allegorical classical figures representing Commerce, Agriculture, the Mechanical Arts and Justice. The Old County Hall draws its authority from the past but the City Hall was thrillingly modern at the time it was built, like something out of Fritz Laing’s Metropolis. The cost of building the new City Hall, apparently calculated to the last cent, is always given, with suspicious accuracy as $6,851,546.85. The architects were George J. Dietel and John Wade and the builder the John W. Cowper Company. According to Buffalo City Council what the architects aimed for in their design of the building “was to accomplish in stone, steel and glass what the ancient Greeks did in stone and timber.” The building is littered with symbolic art works, inside and out, from the 10 columned portico at ground level with its frieze by Albert T. Stewart showing a central figure based on Michelangelo’s Sibyl from the Sistine Chapel, flanked on either side by figures representing Buffalo’s commercial, industrial and cultural life, right up to the Moorish inspired octagonal drum and glass dome which tops the 398 foot high structure. The glass roof of the dome and the exterior of the tower were illuminated at night, floodlights within the dome turning the tower into a glowing beacon. External floodlights at ground made sure that the building made its presence felt day and night, dominating the skyline and the shoreline of Lake Erie.  

There are two buildings which dominate downtown Buffalo, City Hall being one, and the 100-meter-tall Liberty Building being the other. Completed in 1925 for the Liberty Bank (which had been forced to change its name by world events in 1918, it was originally the German American Bank but World War One tarnished the brand name by association with the Hun).  The neo-classical office block with its distinctive two towers topped by 36-foot-high states of Liberty facing East and West, enjoyed a short reign as Buffalo’s biggest building until City Hall was completed 6 years later. The architect was English, Alfred Charlkes Bossom, born in 1881 the son of a stationer from Islington who was a pupil at   St. Thomas's Charterhouse School, in the City, and studied architecture at the Regent Street Polytechnic and the Royal Academy of Arts.  As a 23-year-old newly qualified architect Bossom decided to seek his fortune in the US and went to work for Carnegie Steel in Pittsburgh. He became a very successful architect specialising in the construction of skyscrapers and in 1910 he married the daughter of a New York banker. He returned to England in 1926, determined to educate his sons in the English public school system. He abandoned architecture for politics and was elected MP for Maidstone in 1931. His private life took a tragic turn when his wife and eldest son were killed in an air crash in 1934. He remained in office until 1959, long enough to encounter the conservative candidate for the neighbouring constituency of Dartford in the 1950 and 1951 general elections, Margaret Roberts and her fiancée Denis Thatcher. When the couple married in 1951 the wedding reception was held at Bossom’s Chelsea home. He became something of a mentor to the newly married Mrs Thatcher, supporting her attempt to win the Orpington by-election in 1955 and to win the conservative candidacy for the safe seat of Finchley in 1958. Bossom stood down as an MP for the general election of 1959, in which Mrs Thatcher was finally elected to the Commons, but was a life peer. His son Clive later served as Mrs Thatcher’s Parliamentary Private Secretary when she became a junior minister in the Treasury in 1966.  

Standing on the corner of the intersection of West Huron Street and Main Street you get a wonderful view of the ‘Goldome’ building, the 1900 Buffalo Savings Bank, and the 1912 Niagara Mohawk Building, now generally known as the Electric Tower.

The Lost Memorials of London; the shrine of St Erkenwald, Old St Pauls Cathedral

St. Erkenwald (c630-693) founder of Barking abbey, Abbott of Chertsey and Bishop of London, once a great English saint, is now almost forgotten. His magnificent shrine stood behind the high altar in Old St Pauls and, according to Walter Thornbury in Volume 1 of Old & New London (1878) was “a source of wealth and power to the cathedral”;

Foremost among the relics were two arms of St. Mellitus (miraculously enough, of quite different sizes). Behind the high altar—what Dean Milman justly calls "the pride, glory, and fountain of wealth" to St. Paul's—was the body of St. Erkenwald, covered with a shrine which three London goldsmiths had spent a whole year in chiselling; and this shrine was covered with a grate of tinned iron. The very dust of the chapel floor, mingled with water, was said to work instantaneous cures. On the anniversary of St. Erkenwald the whole clergy of the diocese attended in procession in their copes. When King John of France was made captive at Poictiers, and paid his orisons at St. Paul's, he presented four golden basins to the high altar, and twenty-two nobles at the shrine of St. Erkenwald. Milman calculates that in 1344 the oblation-box alone at St. Paul's produced an annual sum to the dean and chapter of £9,000. Among other relics that were milch cows to the monks were a knife of our Lord, some hair of Mary Magdalen, blood of St. Paul, milk of the Virgin, the hand of St. John, pieces of the mischievous skull of Thomas à Becket, and the head and jaw of King Ethelbert. These were all preserved in jewelled cases.

Little is known about Erkenwald’s early life. He is said to be of royal descent, of the house of King Offa, though as there were two King Offas, one in Essex, one in East Anglia, both areas lay claim to him, as does Kent and Lincolnshire. He is also said to have studied under Archbishop Mellitus of Canterbury, who was a member of the Augustinian mission sent by the Pope Gregory to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons in 596 (this may seem unlikely as Mellitus died in 624 but this was, after all, the age of miracles so no one can be sure). In the year 666 Erkenwald founded the Abbey of Chertsey in Surrey for men and Barking in Essex for women. His sister, the equally saintly Ethelburga was made Abbess at Barking and a third saint, Hildelith was brought in to instruct Ethelburga. In 675 Erkenwald was created Bishop of London by Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury with the encouragement of King Sæbbi of Essex.  Sæbbi was also later made a saint but Theodore was never elevated to sainthood, perhaps because a long running dispute over theological doctrine with Saint Wilfred which Erkenwald spent much time and energy trying to resolve. The two men were eventually reconciled shortly before Theodores death and Erkenwald is seen as a central figure in the unification of the early English church. He repaired a Roman gate in London’s walls, which is still known today as Bishopsgate, and he contributed significantly to the construction of the first St Pauls. In 691 Bishop Erkenwald, and his successors, were granted the manor of Fulham by Bishop Tyrhtilus of Hereford, now the site of Fulham Palace, the official residence of the Bishops of London from the 11th century until 1973.

St Erkenwald as depicted in the Chertsey Beviary

The miracles of St Erkenwald began in a small way when he was still alive. He was in the habit of preaching regularly to the wild woodsmen of Hertfordshire from a two wheeled horse drawn chariot. When one of the wheels of the chariot came off, Erkenwald was not thrown to the ground as you would expect, because a miraculous invisible wheel took its place, allowing the chariot to run on smoothly. But it was at his death that miracles began in earnest, as documented in the 12th century Miracula Sancti Erkenwaldi by Arcoid, a canon of London and the anonymous Vita sancti Erkenwaldi. Erkenwald’s death at Barking Abbey in 696; literally took place in the odour of sanctity, those present at his expiry said “a most marvellous fragrance and sweetest odour filled the cell where he lay”, the air aromatic with the scent of civet musk, ambergris and sandalwood. The monks of Chertsey and the Canons of St Paul’s both claimed the body of the saint. While they argued a group of commoners from London placed the corpse on a bier surrounded by lit candles and set off for the capital. Before they could cross the river Roding they were caught by the Chertsey monks and the St Paul’s canons and a vicious squabble broke out. Suddenly dark clouds rolled across the sky and a storm broke out. A squally wind blew out the candles on the bier and the river inexplicably burst its banks, rising rapidly until the monks, canons and commoners were standing in a lake of water that came up to their knees. Someone shouted that they all needed to pray to the Lord and beg forgiveness. As the prayers began the rain stopped, the wind died, the clouds departed, the candles on the bier relit themselves and the waters retreated leaving a clear path across the bed of the river. Taking it as a sign from God the entire crowd set off for London, pausing only at the river Lea to marvel at a second miracle when the waters of that river also parted, Red Sea like, to allow them to cross into Tower Hamlets and onto St Pauls. 

The old gate tower in Barking; all that remains of Barking Abbey where St Erkenwald died. 

Erkenwald is credited with many other miracles, the usual restoring health to the sick, liberty to prisoners, sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and making the halt and lame walk again. If he was in a good mood his response to anyone failing to show him due deference and respect would be to visit a sickness upon them until they repented and prayed for forgiveness, like the man who prevented his wife celebrating his feast day or the painter who violated his festival. If he was in a less forgiving mood his response to anyone who desecrated his shrine or his memory was sudden death, including a man who scorned his feast day and a ‘drunken buffoon’ who went to sleep inside his shrine. And when St Pauls was destroyed by fire in 1087 the saints tomb remained miraculously untouched by the flames. His most celebrated miracle is detailed in the 14th century alliterative poem St. Erkenwald, probably written by the anonymous poet who wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The poem recounts how a magnificent ancient marble tomb inscribed with golden runes was discovered during the construction of Old St Pauls. When the tomb is opened a perfectly preserved body dressed in sumptuous robes is found. When Bishop Erkenwald is summoned to see the extraordinary sight, he falls to his knees and begins to pray. As he performs a mass over the body it begins to moves, animated by a ‘goste-lyfe’ and miraculously holds a conversation with the saint, telling him that he lived during the reign of King Belinus (before the Roman conquest of Britain), and that he was a judge but not just any judge, he was that rarity, a just judge, famed for his wise and impartial judgements. As a righteous pagan his soul is trapped in Limbo, unable to be received in heaven. St Erkenwald weeps to hear this, his tears splash the corpse, baptising him and making him eligible to progress to heaven. As the righteous pagan’s soul is received into paradise, his mortal remains crumble to dust before a crowd of astonished onlookers.

In Shrines of British Saints (1905) James Charles Wall tells us that “Londoners were justly proud to have in their midst the entire body of their third bishop, Erkenwald; and the chapter of the cathedral church of St. Paul looked upon it as their greatest treasure. The bishop’s body had been buried in the crypt, and as we learn from the Nova Legenda Angliæ, the vault above the tomb was decorated with paintings.”  On the 14th of November, 1148, the saints body was moved to a new position behind the high altar to stand side by side with the shrine where the two arms (one shorter than the other) of St. Mellitus resided. The feretory, the portable shrine in which the saints remains were kept, was made of wood, covered with silver plate and decorated with images and 130 precious stones. In 1326 Bishop Gilbert de Segrave oversaw the removal of the remains to a new shrine, the one drawn by Weneclas Hollar 300 years later for William Dugdale’s History of St. Pauls (1658). The cathedrals records show that senior churchmen personally paid for the shrine to be enriched; canon Walter de Thorpe left all his gold rings and jewellery to be used on the shrine, bequeathing £5 to pay for the work and William de Meleford, archdeacon of Colchester, gave £40 to ornament the shrine, enough money to pay for three goldsmiths to labour on it for an entire year. The shrine was surrounded by a bronze covered iron railing 5 feet 10 inches high. The railing did not prevent the shrine being looted during the reformation. The saints were removed for safekeeping but have since been lost. The shrine itself survived until the Great Fire of London in 1666 when Old St Paul’s was razed to the ground.