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‘Let’s all go down the Strand!’ ran a popular music hall song. But what sort of street were they singing about? The future Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli called it ‘perhaps the finest street in Europe’ in 1847. Which is quite a claim to live up to. Certainly the Strand, one of London’s most famous and important thoroughfares, has had a long and colourful history, with much shape-shifting over the centuries. John and Clive reveal the secrets of a street where splendour lived next door to vice.
Lying between the City of London and the City of Westminster, it formed an important ceremonial route. Until the 19th century, though, it was as much defined by access to the river Thames as by its function as a road. During the Middle Ages, great prelates such as the Archbishop of York built palaces – sometimes known as inns – along the shore, convenient to reach by barge and within a short distance of the Palace of Westminster. In the Tudor period, many of these buildings had become the preserve of great courtiers like the Duke of Buckingham – assuming that they had not fallen into the hands of the King himself. Somerset House was named after the Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector of England until he had his head chopped off. It was then particularly associated with Queens such as Henrietta Maria.
All this changed when Whitehall Palace burnt down at the end of the 17th century and monarch preferred Kensington Palace or Buckingham Palace over Westminster. The inns were redeveloped, famously by the Adam Brothers who nearly ruined themselves building the Adelphi. To Victorian London, the Strand was theatreland – to visit which was as good as a holiday: hence the song. But with theatres, given the proximity of some notorious slums, went other forms of nightlife. Prostitution was rife. So the newly formed London County Council introduced the Strand Improvement Act at the end of the 19th century. The Strand was widened, new buildings arose -- but Clive and John uncover a surprising number of survivals from the ancient of days, such as a Roman bath.
What is the Strand today? Crowded, but once again being improved – look at James Gibbs’s church of St Mary le Strand, now set off by a new piazza that links it with King’s College London and dazzling Somerset House. The reopening of the celebrated restaurant Simpsons in the Strand, in the premises it has occupied since 1904, is (to adopt a culinary metaphor) the cherry on the cake.

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The Laskett in Herefordshire is one of the most remarkable gardens to have been created in the 20th century but now it’s future is threatened. Sir Roy Strong, scholar, museum director and the author of over 70 erudite books, and his theatre-designer wife Julia Trevelyan Oman created it as a bolt hole from London, beginning in 1973 – a bleak time of industrial unrest and inflation. It grew to become the largest formal garden made in the UK since the Second World War. This intensely personal arcadia was a place of memory, where plants, statuary and garden spaces remembered people whom the Strongs knew and important and recorded important events in the Strongs’ life together. Clive and John describe the origins and importance of this Elysium, which can be comipared to Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill.
After a long and painful reflection, the National Trust turned down Sir Roy’s offer to g give it them. It seemed though that a solution had been found when half a dozen years ago it went instead to the gardening charity Perennial. Perennial has found that it cannot generate the visitors needed to make it pay, not least because they have not succeeded in making a car park. Since their main charitable purpose is to support working gardeners in old age, illness or hard times, they cannot keep a loss-making property on their books and have decided, if possible, to find a new owner. If one does not come forward, The Laskett will be broken up. Already the catalogue of a sale at the Cotswolds auction house of Chorley’s has been published, although the date of the auction has been postponed from the end of this month until June.
In this emergency episode of ypompod, John and Clive discuss The Lastkett’s importance. How will it be viewed by future generations? Is it possible for gardens to keep their soul once the people who first made them have left? What should we think of this cultural catastrophe in the making?

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One of the most famous Catholic schools in Britain, Ampleforth College in Yorkshire this year celebrates the centenary of its chapel, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. Scott has emerged in recent years as a colossus of 20th-century architecture, bestriding it alike with his religious buildings – notably the Anglican cathedral in Liverpool – and his secular designs, such as Battersea Power Station and the familiar red telephone kiosk.
John describes the remarkable history of Ampleforth Abbey, established as a Benedictine community in 1802, and the foundation of the college, the next year. Scott’s chapel was preceded by a High Victorian one designed by Joseph Hansom, inventor of the Hansom cab. This soon proved inadequate but it was the First World War provided the main spur to enlargement – the new chapel would be a monument to the Fallen. Scott’s design features a 122ft tower, and combines a 1922 Romanesque-style retrochoir with a later, simpler 1961 nave and transepts. A triumph of 20th century architecture, it provides exceptional insights into the social and spiritual values of its time. The altar (John claims) is unique!

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Few houses better convey the opulence of Edwardian country house life than Manderston in the Scottish Borders. Built in the first years of the 20th century, it is an exquisite work of the scholarly architect John Kinross – which has always been kept up to the high standards set by Kinross’s client, the racehorse owner Sir James Miller. Clive reveals a particular affection for Kinross because he knew his son, also called John Kinross, when the latter was an old but sprightly man with many memories to share – as well as because Manderston was the subject of one of his first sets of country-house articles for Country Life.
Sir James had married Eveline, a daughter of Lord Scarsdale of Kedleston Hall, in Derbyshire, a masterpiece by Robert Adam which finds its reflection in Manderston. But if the architectural style is Adamesque, the decoration by Charles Mellier and Company often strikes a French note. Entirely of its time, however, is the staircase, whose balustrade is plated with silver. There was a marble dairy to keep the milk cool in the Scottish Baronial home farm. Given Sir James’s interest in horses, it is no surprise that the stables are splendid. But this was also the age of the first motor cars, much feared by some as an agent of change – which indeed it was.
Not that Manderston itself has changed very much: it still perfectly conveys the domestic priorities of the Edwardian age, when country houses more comfortable than ever before.

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The fascinating city of Norwich, capital of Norfolk, was one of the richest town in England during the Middle Ages. The cathedral dates from the early Norman period, as does the Castle which has recently been magnificently redisplayed. As Britain’s preeminent historian of the architecture of the Middle Ages, John has of course been to see it, and provides a superb commentary. Clive does his best to keep up by describing a Victoria roller-skating rink which now houses a gallery of Asian textiles and craft.
Norwich is still remarkable for the density of its churches, from mighty St Peter Mancroft overlooking the market square to St Julian’s, where the anchoress Julian of Norwich was immured (her Revelations of Divine Love are the first works in English literature attributed to a woman). The painters of the Norwich School of watercolourists – once revered and collected, their works are now akin, in terms of popularity in the market, to the brown furniture they would have sat on – can be studied in the Castle museum.

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Alnwick Castle in Northumberland is one of the most spectacular castles in England, an immense fortification that guarded the border with Scotland for centuries. The Percy family who built it had almost king-like power over their territory – and were not above rebelling against the king himself: the impetuous Harry Hotspur was killed fighting against Henry IV at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, while his wily father feigned illness. John describes the history and setting of this formidable building, its battlements still lined with statuary figures of warriors (probably 18th-century) to repel enemies.

In London, the Percys owned Northumberland House, demolished in the 19th century, and employed Robert Adam to turn the old nunnery of Syon House into a spectacular neo-Classical villa, using decoration in the style of the recently discovered ruins of Pompeii. Adam was also employed to decorate Alnwick but his scheme was swept away in the mid 19th century by Algernon Percy, 4th Duke of Northumberland, a man so solemn he was known as the Doge. The principal interiors were sumptuously painted and gilded in the Renaissance style that the Duke had seen on his travels in Italy. For this he employed the Italian architect Luigi Canina who used Giovanni Montiroli as his assistant. John and Clive are very nearly lost for words at the magnificence of the result – but (just as well for the podcast) not quite!

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Trafalgar Square has long been regarded as the centre of London. It wasn’t always. John describes its medieval configuration when it was still countryside – hence the name of James Gibbs’s church St Martin in the Fields. This was where Richard II kept his hawks in the royal mews. A square was proposed by the Prince Regent’s architect John Nash but not in the form we have it today. The proximity of a barracks kept public order.

What about the monument that dominates Trafalgar Square today, Nelson’s column? Clive has the story of its slow journey towards completion, and the disappointments suffered by its architect William Railton. Since then, the square has acquired fountains designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, with Art Deco sculpture – replacing ones by Sir Charles Barry that were fed from an artesian well. Within living memory, Trafalgar Square used to be a traffic island, cut off from the National Gallery by a busy road. Now it can justifiably be called the beating heart of the metropolis.