You'll find a carving trolley here that's almost as famous as their regal regulars
Foodie lore runs deep at this London institution; they supplied oysters to Queen Victoria (there's a signed picture of Her Maj in the ladies loo), and you'll find a carving trolley here that's almost as famous as their regal regulars. The dining room itself is pitched somewhere between Victorian grandeur and Jilly Cooper camp, with giant oil paintings of be-suited board members hanging next to jolly wooden booths, perfect for politicians who might need to plot the downfall of a colleague over an ice-cold Chablis. Red velvet swags hang heavy with portent over indoor windows which seem to lead nowhere, and the female waiting staff wear matronly tea dresses.
It wouldn't be a surprise if the food at Wiltons was as old school as the decor, but there's some seriously impressive cooking happening here. An implacably good, twice baked stilton soufflé is wildly cheesy, served in a sterling silver dish, perfectly crisp on the outside and cashmere-soft on the inside, while lobster bisque is funky and dank in the best possible way.
There are also bountiful platters of oysters, various plates of smoked fish, dressed crab and caviar to start, but the menu of mains is fairly short. Grilled halibut is fresh and simple, while lobster thermidor – served off the shell – is richer than the monied clientele.
Time Out tip
Puddings here are famously good and delightfully traditional. The trifle is a sturdy, solid thing of creamy wonder.
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Daily Mirror
3 days ago
- Daily Mirror
Men paid to dig out holes full of poo in grim and smelly job
It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it – before the 19th century super sewer, which turns 150 this year, festering cesspits had to be cleared out by hand – or at least a bucket and a cart by gong farmers Poo now travels under London in a sewer tunnel so wide, you could drive three buses side-by-side through it. But before this new super sewer opened this year, Londoners were still flushing their waste down 1,300 miles of a creaking brick-built Victorian sewage system, with ornate cathedral-sized pumping stations. However, when the Public Health Act of 1875, received Royal assent 150 years ago, in August 1875, the drainage system built by civil engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette in the city was the super sewer of its time. It was built after the horror of The Great Stink of 1858, when the River Thames became so polluted with raw excrement, that during one long hot summer, the water levels dropped, and the malodorous smell was so noxious, it shut the Houses of Parliament. Nght soil workers, or gong farmers carted away the city's filth from 200,000 festering cesspits and outdoor privies, to be used as fertiliser. 'There was no integrated sewerage network system, so all the dung heaps had to be dug out by gong men,' explains Dr Dave Musgrove, content director of BBC History Magazine and the HistoryExtra podcast. 'It was an unpleasant job but reasonably well-paid, because the excrement was valuable. If you weren't rich, you had your pit, you dug it out, and it was taken away in carts and used for manuring fields.' The 17th century diarist Samuel Pepys wrote extensively about his chamber pot and whether it had been emptied into the cesspit beneath the house by his servant. 'He also used to relieve himself in the fireplace,' says Dr Musgrove. 'But he tells a story where he goes down into his basement and is very disappointed to step into a great heap of turds, because his neighbour hasn't emptied his pit and it's leaked into his.' A 19th century population explosion meant the night soil men couldn't keep up with the volume of fecal matter, and piles of untreated human waste either leaked or were dumped on the shores of the Thames, turning it into an open sewer. Along with human corpses and rotting vegetation in the waterways, this was a toxic disaster waiting to happen. 'By the early 19th century, more people were wanting to use this up-and-coming toilet flushing technology. But it meant the city had lots more liquid matter,' explains the historian. 'So they start digging sewers, digging underground or even just overground ones, and it's going into rivers and the water system is becoming contaminated.' Before 1875, people had no idea that dirty water caused the deadly cholera epidemics that raged in the country's crowded cities. Dr Dave Musgrove, who also hosts HistoryExtra Toilets Through Time podcast series, says: 'Throughout this period we get a slew of public health legislation, where people start to recognise that it is an issue.' Frightened city dwellers blamed the thousands of deaths on the foul miasma that hung heavy over London and other cities. In 1853 outbreaks of cholera in London, Gateshead and Newcastle killed over 10,000 people. The following year another epidemic hit South London After one particularly virulent outbreak on August 31, 1854, when 127 people living around Broad Street in Soho died, a local anaesthetist, John Snow, suspected contaminated water was to blame, but nobody believed him. He traced it to a water pump on Broad Street, where a child had been taken ill with cholera and its nappies had been cleaned in a cesspool of water close to the Broad Street well. The local parish agreed to remove the pump handle as an experiment – and the spread of cholera was stalled. From then on, new sanitary laws made it compulsory for local authorities to provide sewers, control water supplies and regulate the overcrowded and unsanitary lodging houses in rookeries where most poor people lived in Victorian times. Most importantly, all residential construction had to have running water and an internal drainage system. But flushing toilets took ages to catch on in Britain. 'The person who is often cited as having invented the first one was the godson of Queen Elizabeth I, Thomas Harrington, who came up with what he called the 'Ajax' on a lad's weekend in the 15th century.' Although the Queen had one installed, nobody thought his idea would catch on. The ruined Grade I listed Wingfield Manor in Derbyshire is also home to a flushing toilet built in 1596. And it's thought Henry III's 13th century garderobe in York's Clifford's Tower had a flushing spout that ran water down the lavatory hole and out of the tower. But while we were still going alfresco in philistine Britain, the world 's first flushing loos were actually invented in Bronze Age Crete. 'The Minoan Palace of Knossos had a very advanced plumbing system that was built around 2000 BC,' says Dr Musgrove. Cesspits are gold dust to archaeologists, as they reveal so much about the people who used them. 'The people who built the Neolithic site of Stonehenge lived in a village a couple of miles away called Durrington Walls in a settlement of round houses,' Dr Musgrove continues. 'Human poo was excavated, which was riddled with parasites – possibly from eating meat that hadn't been cooked well – but there was no particular designated toilet area.' That changed with the Roman invasion. You can still visit the well preserved Roman communal loos at Chedworth Roman Villa in Gloucestershire or Housesteads Roman fort at Hadrian's Wall ,where soldiers sat chatting side-by-side at the communal latrines while rainwater flushed away their waste. After the Romans leave things go downhill. 'In the early medieval period British society sort of fractures, but excavations in Coppergate in York in the 1980s found evidence of Viking toilets – and the famous Jorvik turd.' The Vikings lived in tightly packed areas, and had yards where people just dug holes and did their business, with little wicker dividing walls. Dr Musgrove adds: 'You can see the mineralised coprolite Viking 9th century poo at the museum, where they've recreated those toilets with Bogar who's been sitting on this loo for 40 years.' The Jorvik turd also tells us a lot about the Viking diet. 'It's quite a big poo – 5cm wide by 20cm long,' chuckles Dr Musgrove. 'Whoever produced it enjoyed a diet rich in bread and meat but not many vegetables.' In the Middle Ages toilets were holes in the ground in communal spaces over a river or a stream. 'They were basically doing their business into the water,' says the historian. 'But there weren't concentrations of people living in one place, so sewage wasn't much of an issue.' Community toilets continued in the Tudor period when Henry VIII built a two-story loo for courtiers at Hampton Court called the House of Easement, which held 28 people at once. 'There were private toilets for important people in castles,' adds Dr Musgrove. 'But those were still quite basic spaces in the wall and human waste would drop down a pipe into a cesspit – or just drip down the outside of the walls.' We've come a long way since those smelly days, but before we congratulate ourselves on having super sewers, transporting our effluent safely away from our homes, it's important to scotch the myth of our ancestors chucking urine-filled chamber pots out of over-hanging medieval windows onto people's heads on the cobbles below. 'Even hundreds of years before the 1875 act, communities did their level best to separate themselves from their faeces,' says Dr Musgrove. 'There were many by-laws to stop us fouling our own spaces even in the Middle Ages, so we shouldn't imagine the streets of Britain's cities were just covered in filth all the time.' Something our leaky water utility companies could no doubt learn from even now. The back story on loo paper Anyone unlucky enough to have used Izal tracing paper loo paper at school will appreciate how important a nice soft double ply is. The first loo paper appeared in 1887 when Joseph C. Gayetty of New York sold medicated flat sheets called The Therapeutic Paper, and the first perforated rolls were sold in 1890 by the Scott Paper Company. But it took a long time for these to become popular because most people were accustomed to using any old paper. 'Once we started printing stuff from the 15th century onwards, people quite quickly started using it for the purposes of wiping – and sometimes as a political gesture,' explains Dr Musgrove. 'If there was something you disagreed with, you might offer that to people to wipe their bottom.' Before that, the early Romans loved a communal khazi and it's thought they also shared a communal sponge. But Dr Musgrove admits: 'We don't actually know whether the sponge on a stick was used for wiping Roman bottoms – or for cleaning the toilets.' Moss was very popular in the Middle Ages for bum wiping. 'There was a thriving trade in bringing moss into medieval towns because it was a valuable product – nice and soft on your backside. Archaeologists have also found evidence of rags in toilet soil.' But the hardcore Tudors used 'oyster and mussel shells – more for scraping than wiping,' according to Dr Musgrove. Alarmingly, holly has also been found in some cesspits. 'That would have made the user quite anxious,' the historian says.
BBC News
3 days ago
- BBC News
How Warwick Castle was 'restored on the cheap' after 1871 fire
In December 1871, fire tore through Warwick's medieval castle, reducing its magnificent entrance hall and private apartments to ashes."The servants were woken up with what they thought was hail and in fact it was molten lead dripping off the roof into the river beneath," said castle historian Andrew strapped for cash, owners the Greville family took out an advert in their local paper begging for townsfolk, with the help of Queen Victoria, raised the monumental sum of £750,000 to restore the fire-ravaged rooms, about £76.5m in today's despite the castle's appearance of grandeur today, the fourth earl of Warwick, Lord George, and his wife, Lady Anne, secretly cut more than a few corners."It is a deception from beginning to end," Mr Lilwall-Smith of the castle's hidden past are being revealed for the BBC's Secret Warwickshire series. So, how had the Grevilles gone from extreme riches to near ruin? The story spans generations, with the family taking ownership of the castle two centuries previously, spending millions restoring it and acquiring new the years went by, their coffers dwindled by way of "incredible degrees of shopping", particularly during the lifetime of the second earl, Lord George, who died in 1816."His nickname was Golden George," said Mr Lilwall-Smith. "Two rules which he lived: Number one, if it doesn't move, gild it. Number two, if it's not nailed down, buy it."He gets so bad he actually opens the doors to the public, one of the first houses ever to do so... in those days that was considered quite a scandalous thing to do." Fast forward to 1871, and it is not clear how the fire began. The earl and countess were not there, although their children were. Servants grabbed what they could, but numerous items were lost."The only reason there's any house at all is the ceiling caved in and that is a very strong wall so the fire went up rather than along," the historian with the spoils of their crowdfunding, the Grevilles set to work restoring their private apartments. But, when it came to the rest of the building, the cash soon ran out."They realised they didn't have enough money," he said. "They had to basically do it on the cheap, making sure none of their friends realised." The castle's largest room, the Great Hall, and adjoining state dining rooms were built to host kings and queens and the height of the Great Hall's 57ft (17.3m) ceiling was "nothing to do with architectural majesty". "This is the cheapest wood they can lay their hands on," Mr Lilwall-Smith said. "It's basically 1800s MDF. If it was any lower down you'd know it was ghastly but up there you go 'wow'."What appears to be sandstone on the walls is actually cladding, with burned shells remaining ammonite fossils in the hall's floor give away that it is limestone, rather than more expensive marble."Worse still, this is the old floor, turned upside down and rebuffed," he added. "The very badly-damaged pieces are simply tucked in corners where no one's going to see them."The very, very badly-damaged ones were cut into pieces and used to pave the chapel." The Grevilles used smoke and mirrors to bedazzle their guests, opening all the doors in a corridor to make it appear longer. They would retire for a spell after dinner to a drawing room, so the ballroom would subsequently seem it may seem deceitful, "it's what everyone was doing," said the historian. "It's all about one-upmanship."The family's financial woes continued to plague them until 1978, when the castle was sold to the Tussaud's group to begin a new phase as a visitor attraction. Follow BBC Coventry & Warwickshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
BBC News
4 days ago
- BBC News
Victorian drinking fountain restored on Croydon's Surrey Street
A Victorian drinking fountain in Croydon has been restored and reconnected to the water public thirst-quencher, on Surrey Street, was built in 1896 and unveiled by the local mayor to mark the completion of a redevelopment programme.A new push-button system has also been installed to allow water to flow from the lion's charity Heritage of London Trust (HOLT) partnered with Croydon Council for the project, during which more than 300 young people met conservators and took part in creative workshops as part of HOLT's youth engagement programme. The drinking fountain, an example of Victorian craftsmanship and civic design, is made of materials of the late 19th Century, including faience - glazed terracotta, granite and cast to HOLT, the first public drinking fountain in the capital was erected at St Sepulchre Without Newgate church in the City of London in 1859. By 1900, hundreds had been installed across the the time the Surrey Street fountain was installed, clean drinking water was available to a much greater proportion of the population than in 1859, but drinking fountains remained a basic, expected amenity within public spaces, HOLT said. Dr Nicola Stacey from the trust said it was 'delighted to be supporting the restoration of this historic fountain in the heart of Croydon – a source of much local pride 130 years ago'.'King' Louis, a local resident, said: "I love what you've done with this. I'm going to make sure I keep an eye on it and protect it" while another, Maggie, added: "It's so wonderful to see this looking so good and what's better - working".
