For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.
I could eat a horse (13.03.13)
The site of 37 Albany Street was once home to naturalist William Buckland Dean of Westminster, a fanatical animal collector and one of London’s strangest characters.
To prove the efficacy of bird droppings as fertiliser he once used great quantities of it to write the word ‘guano’ on the lawn at his Oxford College. When the summer came and the grass had grown well the letters could be clearly seen.
Buckland’s house was overrun with animals including two monkeys he let drink and smoke, some he slept with and others were kept till they died and then dissected or just left to rot. But Buckland’s taste for natural history extended further.
He started the Society for the Acclimatisation of Animals which aimed to naturalise exotic animals to widen the nation’s diet. His wide circle of friends were guests at Albany Street and were treated to roasted hedgehog, grilled crocodile streak, slug soup, horse’s tongue, boiled elephant trunk, rhinoceros pie and boiled porpoise head which tasted like ‘broiled lamp wick. If you partook of his generous hospitality, the chances are that the dish of the day came from an animal that had roamed Buckland’s house and garden a little earlier as a pet.
Stewed mole was a dish that Buckland announced to be the most revolting thing he’d eaten, though this was before he tried ‘horribly bitter’ earwigs and ‘unspeakable’ bluebottles.
Buckland acquired exotic creatures when there was a death at the nearby London Zoo. On one occasion returning from holiday, he was furious to discover in his absence, the zoo had buried a dead leopard. Buckland eagerly dug it up for supper.
He showed no qualms in using his taste buds in pursuit of knowledge. Travelling to London on his horse one dark wintry night Buckland got lost, but trusting to his extraordinary sense of taste he simply dismounted, picked up a handful of earth, tasted it, shouted “Uxbridge!” and went on his way – if only London’s cabbies could do the same.
While visiting a cathedral where saints’ blood was said to drip on the floor, Buckland took one lick to determine the ‘blood’ was, in fact, bat urine.
Buckland’s friend Edward Harcourt, Archbishop of York, was, like Buckland himself, a great collector of curiosities and had managed to obtain what was believed to be the shrunken, mummified heart of Louis XIV. He kept it in a snuff box in his London house and rashly showed it to Buckland during a dinner party. “I have eaten many things”, Buckland is reported to have said, “but never the heart of a King” and before anyone could stop him he gobbled it up.
On 19 April 1012 Archbishop of Canterbury, Ælfheah, was killed by Viking raiders at Greenwich after they had held him captive for 7 months
Formed to stop the Stuarts bankrupting the country one of the Bank of England’s first directors embezzled £29,000, it was never recovered
In 1918 Philip Tilden designed a monumental tower to put atop Selfridge’s so tall and heavy if built it would have squashed the store flat
On 19 April 1881 British Prime Minister, statesman and author Benjamin Disraeli died at 19 Curzon Street, Mayfair
When the Victoria Embankment was constructed its 37 acres was claimed by Prime Minister Gladstone to build offices their revenue used to cancel Income Tax
London’s largest collection of Buddhas can be found in Soho’s Fo Guang Temple Margaret Street formerly All Saints’ Church
Market Ouvert meant that until 1995 any stolen goods purchased between sunrise and sunset at Bermondsey Market became the buyers property
The first lawn tennis sets were launched in 1874 by Major Walter Wingfield at £6, 1,050 were sold from 46 Churton Street in the first year
Demonstrating Trumph’s latest car to Princess Margaret at the Motor Show chairman Sir John Black pulled the wrong lever and incinerated the vehicle
WH Smith whose first newsagency was on the Strand was also the First Lord of both The Admiralty and Treasury and commissioned our first sewers
On 19 April 1935 actor, composer, musician and comedian Dudley Moore was born in Charing Cross Hospital, Hammersmith
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