The Diary of Nathaniel Bryceson (Part 7)

[Ruskie]

It's also interesting to compare the church itself in the etching and photo, and note how its appearance has been fairly drastically altered over time by having the top of its tower removed so that these days it's level with the roof of the rest of the church.

It was damaged in the war so maybe some are unplanned changes. 

A rectory is simply a rector's residence. I wouldn't imagine this would be too grand (Steven?) though I suppose anything designed by Wren would be a cut above.  I wonder if the rectory is on such a small scale that it isn't obvious in the illustration or photograph though obviously important enough to get a mention? 

Nathaniel didn't give a reason but I'd be interested to find out why it was demolished.

I think I may have answered my own question. There's some very detailed and interesting information about the church here:
http://www.st-james-piccadilly.org/History.html
I just 'skimmed' over this piece but appears that the church has undergone constant alterations through the ages.

The Rectory
The present rectory is the third to stand on the site in the north-east corner of the churchyard (G on fig. 2). The first was begun in 1685 and finished in 1686. (ref. 244) The workmen known to have been employed on its construction were Anthony Hart, bricklayer, Jonathan Wilcox, carpenter, Henry Lobb, joiner, and John Cock, plumber. (ref. 245)

In 1739 a passage and doorway were made on the ground floor to enable the rector to pass into the vestry which adjoined it. (ref. 246) The house survived until 1846 when it was demolished (ref. 247) and a new rectory was built on its site in 1846–7 from the designs of John Henry Hakewill. (ref. 248) Hakewill's building was destroyed in the war of 1939– 1945 and the new rectory, designed by Austin Blomfield, was built in 1955–7. (ref. 249) The building has a church hall at basement level and incorporates a vestry room.

The original rectory is shown by Tallis (Plate 18a), and a part of it appears in a view of the church published in 1837. (ref. 250) Both sources combine to suggest that it was a fairly typical late seventeenthcentury house of three storeys, built of brick with long-and-short quoins and bandcourses of stone, and a tiled roof sloping down to a wooden eavescornice. The Piccadilly front had four straightheaded windows in each upper storey and the pedimented doorway was placed on the left. J. H. Hakewill's building of 1846 preserved the general lines of the former house, but the windows had segmental arches, the quoins were all of equal length, and the crowning cornice was of stone. At some time, perhaps around 1900, Hakewill's three-storeyed building was heightened by an additional storey, designed with a scrupulous regard for the original work.

The new rectory, also a three-storeyed building, is built of red and fawn-coloured bricks with stone dressings. The elevations, neo-Georgian in style and somewhat eclectic in detail, are more elaborate than those of the former buildings. The entrance front faces west to overlook the paved churchyard, and is a composition of three bays. The doorway, in the middle bay, has a handsome doorcase of stone with a broken segmental pediment, and is reached by a double flight of curved steps (Plate 18b).

Another one to put on your list Steven if you haven't already visited it. 

[Siamese Girl]

October 1st, another entry that must have been written later as the news of Lionel Dietrichsen's suicide only appeared in The Daily News Saturday 3 October. Lionel Dietrichsen was the  surviving partner of Dietrichsen and Hannay, Patent Medicine vendors and general medical booksellers of 63 Oxford Street, he was unmarried and lived with his mother and sister. According to the paper  He had been engaged in a chancery suit, and had latterly evinced a lowness of spirits and eccentricity of manner resulting, as was supposed from his too close application of study.

I won't go into the gruesome details, except to remark that the invention of the safety razor stopped a lot of people from having a very messy end.

Carole

[drykid]

I think I may have answered my own question. There's some very detailed and interesting information about the church here:
http://www.st-james-piccadilly.org/History.html
I just 'skimmed' over this piece but appears that the church has undergone constant alterations through the ages.

Yeah, that link was very useful.  It's clear that the rectory is the building on the left and not the one I suggested it might be earlier.  Also it seems that though there have been three different rectories over time, the first and third ones at least are quite similar in style, which is why it seemed like the original building was still standing in the 1960 photo when in fact it was demolished during 1846.

Although it still doesn't explain why Nat talks about round windows when the drawing of it in Nat's time suggests it had square ones.

[Ruskie]

The entry for October 2nd mentions the Croydon Fair. There's a bit about it in this book (date unknown) about Croydon:
http://www.rootschat.com/links/09wt/
which mentions the fair as taking place on October 2nd. 

... but in ...

1866 Croydon Fair on Fair Field banned.
Land bought by Brighton Railway Company.
Second gasworks built.

Shame .... 

[Ruskie]

October 1st, another entry that must have been written later as the news of Lionel Dietrichsen's suicide only appeared in The Daily News Saturday 3 October. Lionel Dietrichsen was the  surviving partner of Dietrichsen and Hannay, Patent Medicine vendors and general medical booksellers of 63 Oxford Street, he was unmarried and lived with his mother and sister. According to the paper  He had been engaged in a chancery suit, and had latterly evinced a lowness of spirits and eccentricity of manner resulting, as was supposed from his too close application of study.

I won't go into the gruesome details, except to remark that the invention of the safety razor stopped a lot of people from having a very messy end.

Carole

Please do! 

Carole do you have access to the Gale Newspaper site or did you find this Daily News article somewhere else?

[Siamese Girl]

I wonder where George Lea got the money from to pay for the draught horse? I don't think they came cheap.

Yes the information came from the Gale newspaper site. Let's just say Mr Dietrichsen managed to almost sever his own head  - I'm just thinking how dreadful it must have been for the person who discovered him......

Carole

[Ruskie]

I wonder where George Lea got the money from to pay for the draught horse? I don't think they came cheap.

Yes the information came from the Gale newspaper site. Let's just say Mr Dietrichsen managed to almost sever his own head  - I'm just thinking how dreadful it must have been for the person who discovered him......

Carole

Maybe George bought the horse on the never never? Credit? A favour? Knowing George I doubt that he'd have paid cash. 

Oh dear. Mr Dietrichsen's demise sounds awful and I do feel for the poor person/people who found him. I imagine all the gory details would have been included in the newspaper article. They did tend to include those in vividly descriptive language back in those days. 

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I love today's diary entry. Nat did a good job of the shorthand not mentioning Ann's name.

It's actually made me wonder why sometimes he mentions her and sometimes, like today, makes a point of not doing so. Exchanging the clock is innocent and I would have thought it would be OK to write about her in this context.

We know that his family know about Ann, so why the secrecy today? He didn't see Ann last Sunday either, which is unusual.

I wonder if he is under pressure not to see Ann, but has managed to sneak out with her, hence the italics today? 

Although Ann is a 'charwoman' she seems to have money to spare to loan to Nat, buy books and prints and 'upgrade' clocks. She appears to be well off enough to afford some luxuries.

[drykid]

Although Ann is a 'charwoman' she seems to have money to spare to loan to Nat, buy books and prints and 'upgrade' clocks.

I just hope that Ann realises that when it comes to clocks, size isn't everything 

But yeah I like the way he distributes his shorthand around the main entry so that it still makes perfect sense with or without it, and the shorthand just adds more context to his actions.  Maybe he just likes to add an element of secrecy; it gives him a chance to practice his shorthand after all.

[Siamese Girl]

Ann is a conundrum. We don't know if she was married or single, so have very little chance of tracking her down. All we know is at one time she was a charwoman - but as Ruskie says, she's got money to lend Nat. She's got a clock,which even in 1846 is  not something everyone would have owned. She's literate and even seems to share some of Nat's interests. I can imagine Nat's mother and granny and George Lea, but I can't imagine what Ann was like at all.

Carole