Parsons Green and Fulham Jolly Spiffing London Walking Tour to Putney Bridge

Tally-ho! Dash good to be with you again, isn't it Simon? It is indeed, yeah. Simon's graduated, he's got his own microphone today and we're at Jewel's Guide here, in which we wander around London and tell you fascinating facts. And today we're starting here in Parsons Green and we're going to wander up towards Putney Bridge. Now I believe Parsons Green was first recorded as being called Parsons Green back in 1391, a hamlet near where the Parsonage was, where well-to-do posh folk lived. Not to be confused with the Parson's Nose, which is the chicken's bum, isn't it Simon? A Parson's Nose, do you know why it's called that? It's supposed to look like a kind of aloof English parson, sort of looking very, you know, typically posh and aloof. You know, Parson's Nose. Fulham Football Club used to play their football matches here back in 1889 as well. I don't know if it was right here. But now over there is the Sloney Pony, actually it's called the White Horse Pub, back when Art was a lad, but Sloane was a very kind of posh yard person. It was marvellous. A Tarquin was coming over for dinner, and they'd often meet in Sloane Square, so he called them Sloanes, and they used to meet at this particular pub, so it became known as the Sloney Pony. But you know, it's really lovely old houses around here. Like, I mean, all that whole parade across there is 18th century houses and they're really beautiful. They're unusual in that they've got the doorways in the middle of the house. Usually the entrance is on the side of the house. And that one next to it, that's the Aragon House, which used to be what's known as a dower house, which is a house made available for a widow by the previous owner of an estate. And this one was Catherine of Aragon's dower house, the first wife of Henry VIII. But I believe that she died before Henry VIII, so it wouldn't be a place that she lived as a widow, but I suppose she felt like a widow. But anyway, now they've turned it into a beautiful pub. And on that side, there used to be a house called Holly Lodge, and that used to belong to the wife of King George IV. Well, in 1785, when he was still Prince of Wales, he wanted to marry this woman called Maria Fitzherbert, but he couldn't because she was Roman Catholic. And if he had married her officially, he would have lost his succession to the throne. A part of the law said that you weren't allowed to marry a Catholic. So he decided to marry her in secret by bribing a dodgy priest. They've knocked it down now, but I guess it probably would have looked a bit like that one over there, or, well, no, probably more like the ones over there, which are the 18th century houses. And then in 1795, King George III wanted the prince to get married properly. And so he said, listen, I'll pay off all your debts if you marry Carolina Brunswick. But apparently she was so unattractive that when he first saw her, he had to call for strong brandy. He was so mean to her as well. He was really horrible to her. When he finally came to the throne, she was barred from the coronation. But yeah, he didn't like her. He didn't go on with her. He still loved this Maria Fitzherbert who lived over here. Poor old Carolina Brunswick, three weeks after the coronation, which she wasn't allowed to come to, she died. And then he razed her house to the ground. He disliked her so much. He smashed the house down. That's hatred of your wife. Then in his will, he left quite a lot of stuff to this Maria Fitzherbert with whom I believe he had many illegitimate children. We've just come down Peterborough Road, just around the corner here in Sturridge. Sturridge Street is it? Yes. Look, if you look up on top of the houses, they've all got these lions on them. They're terrific. There's over 1500 lions in Fulham. And it was this guy called Jimmy Nicholls. He was a builder back in like 1899. When he was ordering these lions, he put an added zero onto the order and he ended up with 10 times more lions than he required. They've become his kind of trademark. But I quite like them. They're very cute. I know I go on about them a lot, but look, they've got some really lovely original old street signs there. And look, SW. So you know that it was from before 1917, with this sign, because it doesn't have the numerical subdivision. It's nice of their relief as well, aren't they? I knew it. Yeah, I haven't seen any like that down my ends. I think it's original anyway. Could be a replica, I suppose. I shouldn't really be filming other people's houses, but how can they see out of that window? Look at that. Sleeping beauty lives there, mate. Yeah, don't need curtains. This bit here is called Broomhouse Draw Dock. I was filming the other day and the tide was out. You could see how back in the days when this was an industrial sort of area, you'd bring goods here on your barge, the tide would go out and then the barge would just be left lying on the shore, enabling you to unload them onto a car or something. Or then a horse and cart could take them off. I don't blooming know. Anyway, there used to be a ferry here, apparently, where King Charles I used to go across. So this used to be the manor of Fulham, or Fulham Ham back in 691. Ham is a word that comes from a watery meadow, describing a low-lying bend in the river. And then Fuller was just some Saxon person called Fuller who lived here. Smaller population in those days. You know, oh, there's that bloke called Fuller who lives down at that bend in the river. Let's call it Fuller Num. So this whole area would have been completely fields and a few cottages occupied by gardeners and workmen back in the 16th century. And tenants of the manor of Fulham could graze their cattle here until the 19th century when all the industry arrived. Now, Brougham House, the actual house after which the dock is named, got demolished. But the big house behind here, which you can't see, did exist back in the 18th century, Hurlingham House, which is now the Hurlingham Club, which we'll talk about in a moment. You know, I'm always going on about these boundary stones. I love a boundary stone. And often they are parish boundary markers. But this one, this one isn't a parish boundary marker. This is a property boundary marker, JTM. So Joseph Theophilus Mears. So when Charlotte Sullivan died at Brougham House, which was this big house here, I think they knocked it down soon after that. Anyway, Joseph Theophilus Mears bought some land off the Sullivan family. And this must be marking the boundary of where that land finished. Oh, look, which is why it's in Sullivan Road, in fact. I like the trousers there. Yes. These are my Oxford bags from Simon Cathcart, actually. You should get a pair. Yeah, I should. But I don't think they'd do it in a 38 chest. So this is the Hurlingham Club. But back in 1760, this was originally a country cottage built by William Cadogan. And then in 1869, they turned it into a pigeon shooting club. And a few years after that, they introduced polo, which is the one they play on horses. You know, Prince Charles. There's that famous picture of Prince Charles in there with his hand down his trousers. He's playing polo, isn't he? It became the headquarters of polo for the whole of the British Empire. Thank you very much. I'm not a member, sadly. I don't think they'll have me. Used to be part of the Hurlingham Club, this. They used to play polo here. What, what? Hey, hey. Dilly dilly. Jolly game of polo. You can actually play polo on the Penny Farthings. That guy I did the Penny Farthing video with, he plays polo competitions. After the war, they stopped doing polo here. And those buildings over there were acquired by the London County Council. They built those flats on there. I wouldn't mind living in one of those. It'd be an amazing view. But Hurlingham still remains the governing body for the polo in the UK. Excellent. One of these. I do like these. Never too old. Had to get out of here before someone yells at me. Oh, thanks very much. I thought you were going to yell at me for a second. Thought I was in trouble from the groundsman. That's Broomhouse Street. Then Hurlingham Road over here has these amazing houses on it. It's so nice. There's one in particular, which we should go and have a look at. This is the... I think this is the oldest house in the street. It's really beautiful. It's called the Vineyard. Well, actually, it's from the 18th century. But it used to be owned by Max Aitken, who was known as Lord Beaverbrook. He's a friend of Winston Churchill. He was a millionaire by the age of about 30. I think he became even richer when he started... Was it the Daily Express? I think it was the Express, his newspaper. They've got the biggest private garden in the whole of Fulham here. Don't know who lives there now. Not me, that's for sure. Nice that, isn't it? Look, there's this Putney Bridge station just here. That's the railway bridge. I think they're called pillboxes. It's from World War II, that. You'd stick a bloke in there. So if Gerry were to invade, he could have a member of the Home Guard up there, Captain Manoring or somebody, with his little gun poking out of there. Your name will also go into the book. What is it? Don't tell him, Pike. I do love these. So around this part of London, they've got really beautiful tube stations, particularly like Parsons Green and Putney Bridge. Parsons Green's the one where... I think there was a bomb there a while ago. But they just feel so much more pleasant out here in the countryside. Look, this is a beauty, this postbox, isn't it? Look, from George V. Well, usually it would be in a wall, wouldn't it? They're designed to be built into a wall, but that's just been left like that. Nice, let's get out of here. Just eyeing up this pub here for a possible drink later on. 1629, it says here, as if it was built, the Eight Bells. The football players used to get change in there for Fulham Football Club. Oh, well, see what's out, maybe we'll come back. Just down Burlington Road here, the Fulham Pottery. It was famous for its pottery, Fulham. It was the cradle of English pottery. John Dwight established a pottery here in Fulham in 1671. Look, this is the last of these kind of kilns remaining around here. Used to be lots of these around, I expect. This guy, John Dwight, he pioneered a process of creating porcelain or china or something complicated that I don't understand. You probably understand more. You're a craftsman, Simon. When they were digging, they found a locked cellar full of bits of pottery. Now you can go and see those in the British Museum. In fact, if you're doing mudlarking along the river there, you still find lots of shards of pottery around this area. Pottery enthusiasts might know of a potter called John Dalton, the sort of person you might find his stuff popping up on Antiques Roadshow. Anyway, he was an apprentice here before he took his pottery over down to Lambeth. This is now accommodation. I expect it probably costs a pretty penny to live in there. But back in the old days, those little windows up there, I think those were prison cells. This used to be a women's prison. Actually, quite a nice building. Say studios on the other side, so I'm guessing it's probably art studios. Yeah, it looks like it. Looks like art studios or something. Probably a mixture. Yeah. This tower here, the All Saints Church, that dates from 1440. Really ancient. There's actually 10 bishops of London buried here. But most importantly, this is where they filmed that scene in The Omen. 1976 film where the lightning rod or the flag at the top or something comes loose and it spears him to the ground here. Ah, here we are. Isabella Murr. You possess the brightest charms of life, a tender friend, a kind, indulgent wife. Oh, learn their worth in her beneath this stone. These pleasing attributes together shone. Was not true happiness with them combined? Ask the spoiled being she has left behind. He's gone too. Over there, just right opposite, is a stone that marks the starting point of the Cambridge-Oxford boat race. They start here and then they go all the way up to underneath Hammersmith. I think they finish around Chiswick Bridge. They've been going for donkeys here since 1845. So in 1729, they built a wooden bridge called Fulham Bridge back in those days. I think the reason they built it was because Sir Robert Walpole was on his way back home one day and he missed the ferry. No, the ferryman was in the pub or something getting wasted. And so he was quite late. He got stranded on the other side of the river there. He wanted to come home. He was England's first prime minister, Robert Walpole. That was the only bridge between London Bridge and Kingston. And it was the old wooden bridge in 1795 that Mary Wollstonecraft, the champion of women's rights, threw herself off into the river because her lover had run off with another woman. Luckily, in her case, someone fished her out before she died. And so she survived and she went on to meet another man. And they had a child who was Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein, who herself ended up marrying Percy Bysshe Shelley. Well, she was Mary Godwin at the time, but Percy Shelley already had a wife, Harriet Westbrook. By sheer coincidence, when she found out that he had run off with Mary, she also threw herself off a bridge into the serpentine in Hyde Park. Well, in her case, she did die. It was very sad. And then he ran off and married Mary Shelley, didn't he? So it was a weird coincidence, that. Anyway, then in 1886, Joseph Bazalgette came along. London's poo man, I call him. And he designed this bridge. Very nice bridge. It's all right, I suppose, as bridges go. Yeah, come this way. You must get yourself a pair of high-waisted trousers, Simon. There you are, I'll hold that for you. Yes, yes, I must, I must. You really must. I must. Excellent, because if you've got a fat tummy, right, they're so much more comfortable. You can sit down, no problem. No gut hanging over your trouser or anything. But they have to be tailored that way. You can't be like Simon Cowell and have a pair which are supposed to be low-waisted, but just pull them all out. Then you look ridiculous. Whereas I, on the other hand, don't look ridiculous at all. This is Fulham Palace. For a thousand years, this is where the bishops of London lived. Look along here, around the edge, is part of what used to be the longest moats in England. Some people say it was built by the Romans even, but it could have been the Vikings. It's around a thousand years old, this moat. They should fill it full of water again, that would be so cool. Put little boats in it and stuff. There aren't enough moats. I think the world needs more moats. It's like something out of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, isn't it? I think that's the Victorian chapel. So a lot of the palace isn't here anymore, but some parts have been replaced. They say, Simon, we could go for a spot of tea later over there. Tea and scones. Scones, you say, do you? More of a scones man myself. In 1973, the bishops moved out from here. They don't live here anymore. They've turned it into a sort of museum. But sadly, because of COVID, it is closed and so we can't go in. But they started the Great Hall in 1480 and large parts of it are Tudor. Many famous bishops met quite a sticky end. And now there was Bishop Sudbury. He was dragged to the Tower of London and beheaded in 1381 during the Peasants' Revolt. I think you can still see his mummified head somewhere. They kept his head. And then there was Bishop Bonner, who was known as Bloody Bonner, who tortured and burnt Protestants here under the reign of Queen Mary, Bloody Mary. One of the people he tortured and burnt was his predecessor, Bishop Ridley. There was a tunnel that led underneath here. And it was full of skeletons and dead bodies and stuff. And it went all the way to the Golden Lion Pub on the main road, which is where Bishop Bonner's mother used to live, apparently. Fox's Book of Martyrs, one of my favourite publications, I was bedside reading, it describes Bishop Bonner as this cannibal in three years' space, 300 martyrs slew. They were his food. They're trying to rhyme food with blood. Food and blood do not rhyme. Food and blood? If you're Swedish, maybe. It's rather wonderful, this beautiful street here, Stephenage Road, just beside that lovely park. And you wouldn't think that there's a whacking great football stadium just at the end there, but this is where Fulham Football Club is. Richard Osman is a Fulham supporter, and so is Terry McCann in Minder. I think Dennis Waterman is actually, in real life, a Fulham supporter. Anyway, that cottage there was built in 1905, but it's kind of built as a reference to the previous one, which burnt down in 1888, which belonged to Lord Craven. That's why they're called the cottagers. That's not, I'm trying to be rude about them. So you've been into a bit of cottaging, Simon? Anyway, because this is called Craven Cottage. Actually, the guy who lived in it afterwards, Lord Lytton, he was a writer, and he was famous for having introduced a lot of phrases into common parlance. So it was Lord Lytton who first said the great unwashed. He also said that the pen is mightier than the sword. He was famous for that. And also, he was the first person to start a story with it was a dark and stormy night, which is what was plagiarised in by Charles M Schultz in the, you know, Snoopy, Peanuts. But they often started like that. And so it was him living in a little cottage over there. I wonder if he supported Fulham. They're actually the oldest professional football club in London. They were founded in 1879. And yeah, and we saw where they used to play their football earlier on. For a while, Fulham was owned by Muhammad Al-Fayed, who also owned Harrods. And he had this Michael Jackson statue made, which he intended to put in Harrods. But when he sold Harrods, the new owners didn't want the Michael Jackson statue anymore. So he decided to put it here outside Fulham Football Club. And it was the laughing stock. The fans were absolutely livid. They said, what the hell is a Michael Jackson statue doing here? He said, well, he did come to see a match, Fulham versus Wigan Athletic in 1999. So I don't know, maybe he was a Fulham fan. Didn't even look like him. Al-Fayed said, if some stupid fans don't understand and appreciate such a gift as this guy gave to the world, they can go to hell. Terrible. But anyway, in the end, I think they clamoured for its removal. And it got removed. But I think it was around that side, actually. This might be one of those kind of urban myths, but they said that Jimmy Hill was in the commentary box and he's known to have a big chin. And one day he was commentating and he turned around like that to talk to the other guy. And the whole of one of the stands, they ducked. They ducked. I've heard it. It's true. It's very, very true. I don't know. I think Arsenal also claimed that that was on the North Bank. Well, that's football humour. We love Georgie. We do. We love Georgie. We do. We love Georgie. We do. Hello, Georgie. We love you. What's the key to a good football chant, then? Something's got to happen on the pitch. There was one time, and I can't remember the year, going back a few years, when it was David Seaman. Yeah. And David Seaman had a bad habit of coming out well out of the box. And a Chelsea player chipped the ball over him to the goal and he ran back doing this. Oh, right. Yeah. OK. I remember this. And they scored. Well, the very following week, the whole crowd just started saying, Let's all do the Seaman. I remember that. Let's all do the Seaman. Because obviously we don't meet up. Yeah. Just happens. Cheers, Simon. Cheers, everyone. Cheers, girls. Thanks for watching. Don't forget, if you enjoy the videos, don't forget to hit the subscribe button. You can even go over to Patreon, whatever that is, or PayPal, leave a donation. And don't forget to follow me on Instagram, which is at JoolsGuidesOfficial. And I've got lots of other videos, so don't forget to check those out. And I'll see you next time.