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A Miscellany of London Customs

This is a section of customs that don’t seem happy in any of the other London sections. There is always something going on in London; these are at random in accordance with the kaleidoscopic nature of the city...

Judges in procession from Westminster Abbey to the House of Lords for the ‘Lord Chancellor’s Breakfast’ at the start of the legal year, London, 1972

‘Westminster Hall, showing the Ceremony of Opening Term’, what we now call The Lord Chancellor’s Breakfast, (By Richard Doyle from ‘Manners and Customs of ye Englyshe in 1849’)

The procession of the Judiciary from Westminster Abbey to the House of Lords for the Lord Chancellor’s Breakfast at the start of the legal year on 1 October, London, 1972 (Lord Hailsham, in the wig, was Lord Chancellor at the time)

Judges service in Westminster Abbey at the start of the legal year before they cross the road to the Houses of Parliament for The Lord Chancellor’s Breakfast, London, c2000

Judges in Procession from Westminster Abbey to ‘The Lord Chancellor’s Breakfast’ in the House of Lords on 1 October, the start of the Legal Year, London SW1, England

Farthing Bundles at the Fern Street Settlement in Bromley-by-Bow, East London, England, 1972 (The custom has more or less died out now for the good reason that the welfare state provides)

‘Farthing Bundles’ at Fern Street Settlement, East London, when children had to step under an arch to qualify for a small present. (Once weekly and popular ‘progress’ has all but made the treat obsolete. This was a rare occasion in Sept 1987)

A new ‘Widow’s Bun’ being added, by a serving sailor, to the collection of hot cross buns in The Widow’s Son pub in Bromley-by-Bow, East London, to await the return of the widow’s missing sailor son, on Good Friday 1986

Trumpeter at the Election of the Lord Mayor of London at the Guildhall, London, England

Election of the Lord Mayor of London at the Guildhall, London, England

Guy Fawkes Fireworks at Alexandra Palace, London, England, c1985

Regent Street Christmas Lights, London, 1986 (And a Mitcham omnibus)

New Year’s Eve in Trafalgar Square London, 1985/6

Father Christmas/Santa Claus in Oxford Street, London, 1985

Shropshire Bedlams, border morris dancers, at a folk event at the South Bank Arts Centre, London, 1987

The fool of the morris side ‘Beaux of London City’ in Hampstead, London, England, 1963

Morris dancing in Trafalgar Square, London, on a Sunday morning in 1963 (Not an annual affair but a one-off gathering)

‘Holly Reeves’ for sale in North London, 1985 (To be fair, the shopkeeper was Turkish!)

A heaving Trafalgar Square, London, on New Year’s Eve 1985/6

The cast of ‘42nd Street’, led by Frankie Vaughan, assembled to cut the Baddeley Cake in the green room of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, on Twelfth Night 1986

Passing through the Barbican whilst Beating the Bounds of the parish of St Botolph, Aldersgate, London, 1986

Many years worth of ‘Widows Buns’ hanging in The Widow’s Son pub in Bromley-by-Bow, East London, Good Friday 1987

Maypole before St Andrew Undershaft in the City of London. The pole was erected each May until 1517 - hence the name of the church. (From ‘Old England’, published c1860)

Swearing on the Horns in Highgate, north London, a burlesque ceremony at which newcomers to the village (as it then was) had to swear various humorous oaths (from Chambers’ Book of Days, published 1862)

Beating the Bounds in London (from Chambers’ Book of Days, published 1862)

The Garrat Elections were mock elections held to burlesque real politicians in the late 18th century in a Surrey village, now part of London near Wandsworth (from Chambers’ Book of Days, published 1862)

Punch in 1841 (From ‘London’ Vol I, edited by Charles Knight, 1841)

Procession of Freemasons’ Orphans at Freemasons’ Hall (From ‘London’ Vol VI, edited by Charles Knight, 1844)

A merry pre-Christmas scene in Muswell Hill Broadway, North London, 1981

Cutting the Baddeley Cake at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, with the cast of ‘Gone With the Wind’ in 1972 (The actor Robert Baddeley bequeathed money to buy a cake for the cast in the green room after the show on Twelfth Night)

Farthing Bundles, once given to hundreds of children every Saturday morning by the charitable Fern Street Settlement, Bromley-by-Bow, had dwindled to only a few by this time (1972) and has since disappeared altogether, except on rare special occasions.

Enticing Christmas window in a north London cafe, 1981

‘A Martyrdom at the site of Bartholomew Fair’, from ‘Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair’ by Henry Morley, London, 1892 (Bartholomew Fair was a major London event every August for over 700 years between 1133 and 1855, on the site of the present Smithfield Market)

Christmas Lights along Regent Street, London, England

Rounding up a family of swans for checking and marking during ‘Swan Upping’ on the River Thames, Berkshire, England

Her Majesty’s Swan Marker and Swan Warden recording information during Swan Upping on the River Thames, Berkshire, England

41 Gun Salute for the Queen’s Birthday by the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery, Hyde Park, London SW1, England

Norway’s annual Christmas Tree gift in Trafalgar Square, with St Martin-in-the-Fields church, London, England

Christmas Lights in Regent Street, London, England

A Jack-in-the-Green, and a policeman, in Trafalgar Square during a ‘Hands off May Day’ demonstration in London in October 1993 (In response to a right wing effort to suppress May Bank Holiday because of its socialist associations)

Puppets for sale at Punch’s ‘Birthday’ in St Paul’s Churchyard, Covent Garden, London, England, 1996

Display by sea cadets on Trafalgar Day, 21 October, near Tower Bridge, London, c1990 (The site varies - but this one is no longer available as it is where the new City Hall now stands)

Gun Salute by The King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, Hyde Park, London on 15th November 2010 to mark the 62nd birthday of HRH, Charles, Prince of Wales

Burning the Pope in effigy at Temple Bar was an occasional anti-Catholic custom in London in the eighteenth century. (From ‘Old & New London’ by Walter Thornbury, 1877)

The Trial of the Pix - which is still held annually in Goldsmiths’ Hall in the City of London, when coins of the realm are ceremonially ‘tested’. (From ‘Old & New London’ by Walter Thornbury, 1877)

Christmas Trees in Covent Garden, London (Illustrated London News, 1854)

Thames and Medway Conservancy was the body which looked after the whole of the two rivers in 1849. The Ceremony at the Boundary Stone at Leigh, near Southend, Essex, is to do with inspecting limits of jurisdiction (Illustrated London News)

Mr Punch at a show at St Pauls Church, Covent Garden, London, 2009 (The first Punch and Judy shows in England took place nearby and were reported by Samuel Pepys in 1662)

The Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree has been given to the people of Britain by the City of Oslo, Norway, every year since 1947, in gratitude for their support in World War Two