‘Membering Middx

As any pub bore will tell you Middlesex no longer exists, having been abolished as a county sixty years ago. It isn’t even necessary in addresses anymore, the post town of that name having continued for a couple of decades more before itself being broken up. But memories of Middlesex remain deeply embedded in the culture, streets and buildings of London, from the borders of Hertfordshire right down to the Thames. I thought I’d recover a few of those memories this warm London History Day.

The full history of Middlesex is complex, but the three principal phases are the long-standing historic area bounded by the Thames, Lee and Colne rivers; contraction in 1889 after formation of the County of London from those portions either side of the Thames (this also explains why Surrey’s county cricket ground at the Oval in Kennington is no longer in Surrey); and abolition in 1965 in favour of the Greater London Council. Politics aside, the most substantial expressions of Middlesex were – and are – its grand civic buildings, as the county had its own courthouse its own town hall. Both survive, even if neither are likely to be recognised today for their former use.

Perched above a railway cutting in Clerkenwell at the very edge of the City of London, the Middlesex Sessions House is an elegant Palladian block designed by Thomas Rogers (no relation, as far as I know) in 1782. A grand Portland stone frontage leading to a square main hall topped by a dome said to be inspired by that of the Pantheon in Rome made its municipal status clear amidst a sea of residential architecture; carved fasces and swords on the exterior confirmed its judicial function. The term Quarter Sessions describes the mid-range criminal and civil hearings that took place every three months before travelling judges; the more serious Assizes for Middlesex were held at the Old Bailey. Eighty years later, Frederick Pownall altered and expanded the Sessions House, which today is a restaurant and bar (prisoners were kept across the road at the House of Detention, long-since demolished and whose vaults remain but are not readily accessible).

Some administrative offices for the county were included in the Sessions House but most of this work was spread across the area or done in the City, where London as a whole began, meaning that only when the Metropolitan County of Middlesex was formed in the later nineteenth century was a county hall needed. After squatting in Westminster’s Guildhall on Parliament Square, which was rebuilt a few years later but still proved too small, the brand new Middlesex Guildhall opened on the same site in 1913. James Gibson’s richly-detailed Renaissance Gothic building featured a prominent central tower and relatively plain façades but these are relieved by an elaborate decorative programme by Frank Skipwith, whose numerous sculptures and other carving by Henry Fehr and Carlo Domenico include mythical and historical subjects. On Middlesex’s dissolution the building became a crown court, the legal system also having been reorganised, before being converted to become the home of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in 2009.

The largest built manifestation of Middlesex is the Modernist Middlesex Street Estate, although this is somewhat paradoxical for two reasons. It actually lies within the City, which broke away from Middlesex in the twelfth century to become its own local authority, and it was constructed after 1965 albeit on a street whose name dates from the early 1800s and so well within the life of the county it is named after. Finished in 1975 the estate comprises a rectilinear, six-storey horseshoe of flats with a jagged skyline around a slender tower four times higher. A raised piazza within the square was intended to connect with the City’s post-war network of elevated pedestrian ways, and the whole is of black engineering brick and concrete. Adjacent is Petticoat Lane Market, which most Londoners have heard of and indeed many Britons generally and even international tourists make a beeline for. But none will find ‘Petticoat Lane’ in the A-Z, because the stalls are also set out along Middlesex Street as well as nearby Wentworth Street – the popular name for the market has an altogether different origin.

Another architectural remnant of Middlesex is now somewhat hidden, and yet it once formed part of another large complex just off Oxford Street. Middlesex Hospital was founded in the 1750s and cared for patients (including Winson Churchill) for two and a half centuries. It was rebuilt once and grew to occupy an entire city block before closing after the Millennium. Sold to a property company, the site was entirely cleared save for the non-denominational chapel which remained for some years, propped up in a desert of dirt, awaiting its rebirth. Designed by John Loughborough Pearson between the world wars, its interiors are entirely and exquisitely clad in multi-coloured mosaic and stone, echoing the Byzantine tradition abroad but also for example Westminster Cathedral’s own decoration. Now fully restored and called Fitzrovia Chapel, the building is a public amenity inside a courtyard within a luxury apartment development.

The arms of Middlesex are visually powerful and centre on a trio of seaxes. The seax was the notched sword of the Anglo-Saxon warrior, and it was the homeland of the Middle Saxons – Middleseaxan – that gave us the county name. The arms carved into the doorway of Middlesex Guildhall were unfortunately covered up by the Supreme Court logo on its opening though another set remains visible higher up on the porch, and several more are (or until recently were) scattered across London as road and street signs.

In other media the tube network holds dozens of what are probably the smallest examples, as well one of the biggest. Harold Stabler was commissioned to decorate several stations in the 1930s, and worked with Carter’s of Poole to produce cream glazed earthenware tiles whose raised motifs represented London and the home counties, including of course the crown and seaxes of Middlesex. Also passed daily by thousands of commuters is the vast, almost panoramic stained glass clerestory window that helps light the booking hall of Uxbridge station, which contains the arms of Middlesex, the prominent local Basset family and Buckinghamshire. It was made by Erwin Bossanyi.

Sport, so often linked intimately with a particular district, retains links with the Middlesex name. On land Middlesex County Cricket Club was founded in 1864 and still operates under that name, despite the inherent illogicality; it is based at Lord’s, by agreement with the similarly geographically-specific Marylebone Cricket Club. In the water, commentary during the famous University Boat Race still differentiates between the Middlesex and Surrey sides of the river, again notwithstanding the anomaly.

And so to education, which should span from the cradle to the grave and so is a helpful endpoint for this summary of a body that has lived, thrived and passed into history. Middlesex University was formed only after the dissolution of Middlesex, however its constituent institutions began within it long before so I can perhaps be allowed the indulgence. Fittingly, its main campus occupies a number of former council buildings atop the ‘Northern Heights’ of Barnet, overlooking the county which may be gone but is by no means forgotten.