Martha Jay
The books in the Edible series cover the history of foods
and drinks all over the world. But Reaktion’s own home, Clerkenwell, has a few
foodie stories of its own . . .
Our tour begins just off the Clerkenwell Road, the
thoroughfare that connects Clerkenwell with New Oxford Street to the west and
Old Street to the east. The streets Saffron Hill, Vine Hill and Herbal Hill are named for
the gardens that grew there in the sixteenth century, before Clerkenwell was
part of London proper. It is unclear who owned and tended these gardens, but
one possibility is that it was the gardener, herbalist and writer John Gerard,
who published one of the first and best-known British herbals in 1597.
Carry on
along Clerkenwell Road towards Clerkenwell Green, and you will pass St Peter’s,
the Italian church in London. Next to it is Terroni’s, the oldest Italian deli
in England, first established in 1878 (though it recently reopened after a
four-year hiatus). Clerkenwell was traditionally the destination for Italian
immigrants to London in the late nineteenth century and thousands of them
settled here. As we learn from Laura B. Weiss’s Ice Cream, many became ice cream or ‘hokey pokey’ vendors, selling
ice cream, wrapped in newspaper, for a penny a ‘lick’.
Turn right
down Farringdon Road and then left along West Smithfield to reach Smithfield
Market, London’s most famous meat market, which is still in use today. In Oliver Twist Dickens describes the market,
with its ‘countrymen, butchers, drovers, hawkers, boys, thieves, idlers, and
vagabonds of every low grade . . . mingled together in a mass’ and ‘the
whistling of drovers, the barking dogs, the bellowing and plunging of the oxen,
the bleating of sheep, the grunting and squeaking of pigs, the cries of
hawkers, the shouts, oaths, and quarrelling on all sides’. Many of the
streets and pubs in the area bear names related to the meat industry, from
Cowcross Street to Poultry Avenue. Walking back north towards St John Street,
you will see Fergus Henderson’s famous offal restaurant, St John.
Now go west
along Charterhouse Street, turning into Goswell Road. This was a great centre
for gin-distilling in the nineteenth century. The gin manufacturer Gordon &
Co., now part of global giant Diageo, moved here less than twenty years after
starting operations in Southwark; according to Lesley Jacobs Solmonson in Gin, they found the water from the
Clerk’s Well, the well from which Clerkenwell takes its name, purer and more
suitable for use in distilling. Tanqueray & Co. was also to be found on
Goswell Road after it was established in 1830.
Turn left along Great Sutton
Street and end the mini tour with a visit to Reaktion’s own local, The
Slaughtered Lamb.
nice written
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