London's Lombard Street in the 1950s
A coat of arms, a golden grasshopper and other delights await.
Most Fridays I send out an email that features photos from the Rupert Leach Collection, snaps taken from the personal reels of View-Master’s Director of Photography in the 1940s and ‘50s. These never-before-published images show alternative shots of some commercial View-Master reels and personal photos of Leach, his wife Poppy, and others.
I try to get to the bottom of the people and places pictured within despite the limited context provided by mostly unmarked reels. Let’s dig in.
It’s been a couple of weeks but we’re back in London, exploring the city through the eyes of Rupert Leach in the 1950s.
The busses! The clothes! The busy streets! It’s all happening.
It looks like we’re back by the Royal Exchange. Once the center of commerce in London, I believe today it holds luxury shops and restaurants, which makes sense. The bright splashes of red busses really pop against those old buildings, no?
It turns out this reel isn’t just about London but about London’s equivalent of Wall Street. It’s a bit of a walking tour of Lombard Street, where many financial and other institutions got their starts.
This is the equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, which is located at the Royal Exchange. It was sculpted by Francis Leggatt Chantry and commemorates Wellington’s efforts to aid in the rebuilding of London Bridge, according to wikipedia. The best thing I learned about this statue is that Wellington himself attended the unveiling of it in 1844. I mean, HOW WEIRD would it be to have a statue of yourself as thanks? Wellington later noted that the sculptor told him he had a square head! Ha! Like James Van Der Beek, I guess?
This is the coat of arms at the Barclays bank. The company dates to 1896 and is a global banking powerhouse.
You can watch a whole video about the coat of arms at this link (it’s not for embedding on outside pages, sadly). The video notes that signs were developed as visual logos way back in the day because many people were not able to read. Fascinating!
The gold grasshopper is one of the last remaining giant signs of Lombard Street. According to Atlas Obscura, there was once about 138 giant signs that hung way out over the street.
Eventually, the signs posed real threats to passersby—several of the signs were so heavy they pulled their respective building’s facade down into the street. After the Great Fire in 1666, which destroyed the street, owners who were rebuilding their businesses opted to make signs out of stone, which also posed weight-related issues.
The golden grasshopper was the family sign of Thomas Gresham. Gresham founded the Royal Exchange.
This is the monument in honor of the Great Fire of London. It is located just west of the spot where the fire started in 1666, on the spot where the first church to be destroyed in the Great Fire once stood. The monument itself dates to the 1670s.
The Great Fire of London raged on for nearly a week, gutting the majority of the city!
Am I the only one who finds the Great Fires of History pretty fascinating? Ever since I moved to the Chicago area, I’ve been taken with the lore of the Great Fire of Chicago, and I think it carries over to every great fire for me now.
And, finally, a bird’s eye view of the city. I wonder if this was taken from the Monument or somewhere else? If you have an idea, please tell me!
Meanwhile, back at the castle…
They’re still changing the guards.
As always, thanks for reading along, feel free to weigh in via email or the comments. And please be sure to pretend it’s YouTube and smash that ❤️ button so I know you’re out there.
Did Rupert throw in a shot of the guards on every reel? Perhaps it was an inside joke!