Conventions when naming a fictional tube station

This month has been a busy time for book stalls at venues ranging from churches to garden centres. One of the questions I am asked most often when meeting readers face-to-face is why can’t they find St Botolph and Old Billingsgate tube station (Smash all the Windows) on the underground map? It is, I confess, a little piece of poetic licence. (In other words, I made it up.)

My own tumble down the escalators (from which I emerged relatively unscathed – a pair of laddered tights and bruised pride) happened at the Monument tube station (named after the monument raised as a memorial to the Great Fire of London, at the time the tallest structure in the City) which is linked by underground walkways to Bank (named after the great English institution that is the Bank of England). After a day working in the City I was scheduled to read the first chapter of My Counterfeit Self at a book launch event at Waterstones Covent Garden, and was laden down with my laptop bag and a suitcase full of books. It was the suitcase that toppled me off balance. I am pleased to say that I made it to Waterstones. You can watch the video here. (I can’t because I hate the sound of my voice, but it demonstrates very neatly why authors tend not to narrate their own audiobooks.) Both video and photo are courtesy of Novel London.

Copyright: Novel London

Why not use the name of a real tube station? The truth is that several tube stations have been the sites of real-life tragedies – the King’s Cross Fire, and Bethnal Green Tube Disaster being just two – and it didn’t seem right to infringe on them. I also intended to quote or come very close to quoting a number of real reports into the state of public transport in the UK (for me, fiction has to feel as if it could have happened). Although I had obtained the necessary permissions, I felt that by changing the name of the station, I was diluting the risk of the book coming back to bite me.

But when you have the freedom to name a tube station, what do you choose?

My walk from London Bridge into the City takes me down the north side of the Thames Path in the direction of the Tower of London. I wanted to create that same sense of two stations linked by an underground walkway. I could easily have chosen Fish Street Hill and Pudding Lane, but that would have been too close to the real Monument station. Instead, my first choice was Old Billingsgate, now a grand corporate venue but once the world’s largest fish market. (See picture below, public domain) My second choice was the name of church – St Botolph’s, a saint whose name I’d never heard until I began working in the City, where no less than three London are named after him. (There were four, but one fell victim to the Blitz.)

public domain

So who was St Botolph?

What little we know about him comes to us from an account of his life written four hundred years after his death. This tells us that Botolph of Thorney was a seventh century Benedictine monk. Born into a noble family, he was sent to France to study, and then returned to England to found a Benedictine order. The King of the Southern Angles granted permission for him to build a monastery called Icanho (meaning ‘ox hill’), named after the tidal island in Suffolk on which it stood. Botolph was said to have expelled the ‘Devils’ from the swamps. Since he intended to farm the unforgiving land, it is far more likely that he drained the surrounding marshes, eliminating the noxious ‘marsh gas’ with its eerie night-time glow. His name might have been forgotten had invading Danes not destroyed the monastery in the tenth century. The King of England then gave permission for his remains (by then bones) to be divided into three parts and removed to Ely, Thorney and Westminster Abbey. In fact, as is often the case with holy relics, every parish wanted a piece of him. He was as well travelled in death as he was in life. St Botolph came to be known as the patron saint of wayfarers, and it appears that on reaching their destinations safely, travellers would visit churches named after him, many of them situated near City gates, to give thanks.

Which brings me to another naming convention

When you visit a London church and part of its name is ‘without’ (as in St Botolph without Aldgate or St Botolph without Bishopsgate) it means that it was without (outside) the London’s defensive wall, built in the time of the Romans. Of course, London is continually expanding and many such churches now sit comfortably within the City’s boundaries. You can see ‘London Wall’ on the 1746 map below, just underneath Lower Moorfields and Bethlehem Hospital, widely known as Bedlam. By the Georgian era London had already expanded northwards, but you can see where London ends and the fields begin.    

John Rocque’s map, 1746

Did you find Chiswell Street? Lackington’s bookshop was on the corner at the junction with Bunhill Row. Opposite is Whitbread’s brewery, and behind is the Royal Artillery Ground, both of which remain.

You can explore the whole of John Roque’s map here.

Mapping Wolf Hall

Those of you who have been watching the BBC’s adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, may be interested to know that Matt Brown of Londonist has mapped all of the locations mentioned in the Wolf Hall Trilogy. Incidentally, Matt is producing a colourised version of John Rocque’s 1746 map on London. The 1746 map (Moorfields section shown above) provides a clear picture Georgian London and was a resource I referred to constantly when writing The Bookseller’s Wife, and do so now when writing The Temple of the Muses.

December

“The week before Christmas, when snow seemed to lie thickest, was the moment for carol-singing; and when I think back to those nights it is to the crunch of snow and to the lights of the lanterns on it” – Laurie Lee, Cider With Rosie

The year feels as if it is winding down. Time for family and friends. Time to reflect. Time to watch The Great Escape and The Bishop’s Wife. Whether you celebrate Yule, Hanukkah, Las Posadas, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Dongzhi, or if the highlight for you is Hogmanay, I wish you all joy and peace, and hope that you manage to carve out a little time to put your feet up with a good book.

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