Aldgate Pump is a historic water pump in London, located at the junction where

Aldgate Aldgate () was a gate in the former defensive wall around the City of London. It gives its name to Aldgate High Street, the first stretch of the A11 road, which included the site of the former gate. The area of Aldgate, the most common use of ...

meets

Fenchurch Street Fenchurch Street is a street in London linking Aldgate at its eastern end with Lombard Street and Gracechurch Street in the west. It is a well-known thoroughfare in the City of London financial district and is the site of many corporate office ...

and Leadenhall Street. The pump is notable for its long, and sometimes dark history, as well as its cultural significance as a symbolic start point of the East End of London. "East of Aldgate Pump" refers to the East End or to East London as a whole.

Design

Aldgate Pump is a Grade II

listed structure In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. The metal wolf head on the pump's spout is supposed to signify the last wolf shot in the City of London. Historic photographs show that the pump was formerly surmounted by an ornate lantern. The pump can no longer be used to draw water, but a drainage grating is still in place.

History

As a well, it was mentioned during the reign of King John in the early 1200s.''Aldermary Churchyard – Aldgate Ward''
, A Dictionary of London (1918). accessed 14 September 2009 A structure is shown on Braun and Hogenburg's map of 1574, and shown as ''St Michael’s Well'' on the Agas map of 1633. John Stow recalled the execution of the Bailiff of

Romford Romford is a large town in east London and the administrative centre of the London Borough of Havering. It is located northeast of Charing Cross and is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. Historically, Romfo ...

on a gibbet 'near the well within Aldgate'.The London Encyclopaedia, Weinreb and Hibbert This execution seems to have been carried out on the dubious basis that he was involved in

Kett's Rebellion Kett's Rebellion was a revolt in Norfolk, England during the reign of Edward VI, largely in response to the enclosure of land. It began at Wymondham on 8 July 1549 with a group of rebels destroying fences that had been put up by wealthy landowners ...

of 1549.

Served by one of London's many underground streams, the water was praised for being "bright, sparkling, and cool, and of an agreeable taste". These qualities were later found to be derived from decaying organic matter from adjoining graveyards, and the leaching of

calcium Calcium is a chemical element with the symbol Ca and atomic number 20. As an alkaline earth metal, calcium is a reactive metal that forms a dark oxide-nitride layer when exposed to air. Its physical and chemical properties are most similar t ...

from the bones of the dead in many new cemeteries in north London through which the stream ran from Hampstead. Several hundred people died during what became known as the Aldgate Pump Epidemic, and on its relocation in 1876, the

New River Company The New River Company, formally The Governor and Company of the New River brought from Chadwell and Amwell to London, was a privately-owned water supply company in London, England, originally formed around 1609 and incorporated in 1619 by roy ...

changed the supplies to mains water.

Fenchurch Street railway station Fenchurch Street railway station, also known as London Fenchurch Street, is a central London railway terminus in the southeastern corner of the City of London. It takes its name from its proximity to Fenchurch Street, a key thoroughfare in th ...

was built in 1841 upon the site of Aldgate Pump Court. As the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...

developed, it is thought to have been taken down and moved a short distance to the west, to its current location in 1876, as a result of road widening.

East End

The line of the former eastern walls and gates of the

City A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

are taken as the usual start point of the East End, but the pump lies just ''inside'' the site of the former

. The pump is a suitable symbolic start point for several reasons: *The removal of the gate and associated walls in the late 18th century gave the pump added significance. *The social importance of pumps as meeting places *The pump marks the start of the A11 road towards

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. As the seat of the See of Norwich, with ...

and distances to locations in the

Tower division The Tower Division was a liberty in the ancient county of Middlesex, England. It was also known as the Tower Hamlets, and took its name from the military obligations owed to the Constable of the Tower of London. The term ‘Hamlets’ probably ...

of Middlesex,

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...

and East Anglia were measured from here.

Cultural references

Phrases

''East of Aldgate Pump'' is a term used to apply to the East End or East London as a whole. It is also used in two phrases which seem to hark back to the epidemic: *As

Cockney Cockney is an accent and dialect of English, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by working-class and lower middle-class Londoners. The term "Cockney" has traditionally been used to describe a person from the East End, or ...

Rhyming Slang; Aldgate Pump, or just Aldgate for short, rhymes with “get (or take) the hump”, i.e. to be annoyed. *''A draft on Aldgate Pump'' refers to a harmful, worthless or fraudulent financial transaction, such as a bouncing

cheque A cheque, or check (American English; see spelling differences) is a document that orders a bank (or credit union) to pay a specific amount of money from a person's account to the person in whose name the cheque has been issued. The pers ...

. The pun is on a draught (or draft) of water and a draft of money. *''There's a pump up Aldgate, mate. Pump that!'' was an East End phrase directed at rent collectors believed to be pressing tenants unreasonably hard.

Music, TV and literature

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...

refers to the pump in '' The Uncommercial Traveller'', published in 1860: "My day's no-business beckoning me to the East End of London. I had turned my face to that point of the metropolitan compass…and had got past Aldgate Pump." In the 1991 TV adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story " The Creeping Man", Holmes advises Watson "Always carry a revolver east of Aldgate". ''Aldgate Pump'' was also the name of a song, written by G. W. Hunt for the '' lion comique'' Arthur Lloyd in 1869. In the song, the raconteur is abandoned by the girl "I met near Aldgate Pump". Not without hyperbole, the pump was once referenced thus "East of Aldgate Pump, people cared for nothing but drink, vice and crime".Hoping to find the original source http://spitalfieldslife.com/2019/07/11/at-aldgate-pump/

References

{{coord, 51, 30, 47.4, N, 00, 04, 40.4, W, display=title Grade II listed buildings in the City of London Tourist attractions in the City of London