Searching for the sites in "My Inconvenient Duke"

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Ready for lunch at Ye Olde Cock Tavern

Please brace yourself for some extremely nerdy history—and yes, let’s start by saying I can get a little obsessive about historical details.

For the most part, when writing my stories, I’m living in the past, via books (some of them quite old and crumbling) and online sites. Every book also requires me to consult several maps, from different years. Coordinating between the early 1800s and the 2020s helps me work out distances (not always clear on old maps) and helps me calculate travel times (via online tools + aforesaid crumbling books).

So, yes, I do my best to be accurate. But when I’m in London, I can’t resist checking: finding the places and making sure I got things right. There’s also the thrill of finding a building, for instance, that’s still there. It doesn’t matter if I already know it’s still there. I get excited, as I did the day I was walking alongside the Thames in Richmond, and saw, peeping out over the trees, the top of what I felt certain was Asgill House, aka Ithaca House, where Raven Radford’s parents live in Dukes Prefer Blondes. Yes, I knew it was in Richmond, close to the river—hadn’t I researched the daylights out of it? All the same, to stand in front of it and get a sense of the environment was a joy, which I shared with you in my Asgill House post.

Another place I knew still existed was the Cock Tavern, where Blackwood meets Maggie Proudie, in My Inconvenient Duke. It dates to the 1500s, though changes have occurred. The most startling one—and the one I forgot when I was standing in Fleet Street, baffled (this often happens, as I have no sense of direction)—was that it had moved across the street in the 1880s, fifty years after the time of the story. Then, in the 1990s, a fire destroyed the interior. It was rebuilt, using old photographs, but it does not look as it did in the 1880s, as you can see if you view some of the images at the London Picture Archives.

What it looked like in 1832 is anybody’s guess. I suspect that the sort of layout we see in the 1880s (Image #3) isn’t completely different from the 1830s. It very likely would have had boxes (in the U.S. we call them booths) similar to those in Image #4, a Thomas Rowlandson print of 1800, of another tavern on Fleet Street, either the Rainbow or the Wheatsheaf.

Another, much more elusive location was the site of the Holland Arms, which became the Lovedon Arms in the Blackwoods’ story. I knew that the inn no longer existed, but I wanted to find where it used to be, an interesting challenge in the Kensington High Street. As mentioned in my notes to the book, the Holland Arms was also referred to as the White Hart and the White Horse in some sources.

Image #1 shows it as the White Hart on the travel map in Cecil Aldin’s The Romance of the Road. Image #2 is an 1832 map of the area of Kensington where Blackwood and Alice search for Ripley. The 1827 map in Image #3 pinpoints two locations: the Holland Arms/White Hart/White Horse to the left and the toll gate to the right. #4 is the Holland Arms as it appeared in Leigh Hunt’s The Old Court Suburb (1855). #5 and #6 show where it stood. That’s me, looking triumphant, once I felt sure this was the place. Image #7 is the Kensington tollgate. And #8 was the big surprise. I kept looking at the building and wondering if that had been a tollgate. After double and triple checking the location, I feel reasonably certain that this was site of the Kensington tollgate. I know the gates were abolished in 1865. However, I don’t know if the toll-keeper’s building survived. Is this the original building, renovated? Another building erected on the site? What’s its current function? More sleuthing required.

Ham House

Ham House, Richmond

Ham House, Richmond, was a revelation. I’ve often used 16th and 17th century houses for my characters. Sutton Place in Surrey became Camberley Place in all three books of the Difficult Dukes series. Northumberland House became Clevedon House in Silk is for Seduction. Holland House became Castle de Grey in “Lord Lovedon’s Duel” and My Inconvenient Duke.

I’m drawn to these houses because they tend to be complicated. They’re built around courtyards; they have great halls and long galleries and they’re loaded with nooks and crannies where my characters might steal a private moment or two. Over the years, they acquire accretions, and they tend to sprawl over vast acres.

But many of the houses I used in my books have either been demolished or converted into something that isn’t a house. Ham House is still very much a house, and very much a 17th century house. It’s seen some changes over the years, but not very many, considering its age. Wikipedia points out that “Ham House is unusual in retaining much of its original 17th-century interior decoration, offering a rare experience of the style of the courts of Charles I and Charles II.” This was what knocked me out. Apparently, I’m not the only one, as the interior was considered over-the-top, even in its time, when aristocrats were not shy about displaying their wealth. The ebony staircase is a good example.

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The ebony staircase.

Because I have so much to show and tell, you can expect at least two blog posts.

Video of Loretta Chase in the Round Gallery of Ham House, Richmond

The Round Gallery was originally the Great Dining Room. Early in the 18th century, most of the floor was removed. The remaining room displays portraits, while the Great Hall was made grander, with better lighting.

The marble fire place is in the North Drawing Room, as is the Ivory cabinet. On the day we visited, the cabinets were open, which is not usually the case. The harpsichord is believed to have been made in England about 1730. The open doorway leads to the Long Gallery, which is lined with more portraits, of which I offer a sample.

The London Transport Museum

Characters have to get from one place to another. In the time of my stories, they could travel on horseback, in a private carriage (or lesser vehicle, like a farm cart), or via public transport. Though I’ve spent time before at the London Transport Museum, I always discover something I’ve missed or forgotten. And this visit offered a fresh opportunity to share a bit of this wonderful museum, and perhaps help readers visualize the world of my stories.

London was a vastly different, and definitely smaller, place then. Kensington was “the Old Court Suburb,” and the Notting Hill of My Inconvenient Duke was rural, with gravel pits and piggeries and brick making. I’m currently staying in Notting Hill, among antique shops and not-inexpensive clothing stores and fine restaurants. The “Porto Bello Lane” of my story is Portobello Road, crowded on market days with dealers and tourists. Shops and housing line the streets.

I can hop on a bus a short walk from my place, while an almost-as-short walk takes me to a Tube Station.

My characters had to travel via other means, but, given the traffic, not necessarily more speedily. Depending on the time of day, I suspect the bus would move only a little more quickly than Blackwood and Alice did.

Some notes about the images:

The museum includes not only prints of construction under way in London, but also scale models. And let us bear in mind that virtually all of this work was done by hand, with a few mechanical devices to help. Artist George Scharf made many drawings of numerous demolition and construction projects in London. It’s the closest we can come to photographs, before photography happened. You can find many of his works in the British Museum’s online collection.

The horse is all-important throughout the Regency and Victorian eras. Although the photograph of the stables is much later than the time of my stories, it gives a sense of the great number of horses needed for the various kinds of transport. Huge stables like these filled vast blocks in and about the coaching inns. At a future date, I hope to show a map of the George Inn, which Alice and Blackwood visit in search of Jonesy . Today, one may see a remnant—a rare example of the galleried coaching inns—and a fraction of what one would have encountered in its heyday.

If you’ve been subscribing to this blog for a while, you’ve probably seen the image of a hackney cabriolet before. When I mention vehicles speeding along the London streets or “occasionally throwing out passengers,” this is the vehicle. It’s a nice model of a single-passenger vehicle, but there were cabs that could hold two people, not very comfortably.

Once again, I have to apologize for the randomness of some of the images. My available technology while traveling is limited, and procedures possible on my laptop are not possible on my tablet. This is why—among other things—the omnibus information and images are not in proper sequence.