I was born in London — in St Thomas's Hospital, in fact, located opposite the Houses of Parliament, which I believe qualifies me as a cockney (although I have given up wearing the pearly suit and eating jellied eels). The hospital itself dates back around 900 years, and knowing that I came into the world there makes me feel a strong connection to the city.
I've always considered myself a Londoner through and through, and that feeling is only intensified by the fact that I can trace my family back through the city as well: my grandfather dug artesian wells in Clapham and my great-grandfather played the barrel organ in Blackfriars. There have always been Lanes in London. As well as streets, alleys, mews and cul-de-sacs...
Growing up in the East End, near West Ham football ground, I used to travel into the city for entertainment of an evening. My favourite pubs were all based around the Limehouse area, famous from Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu stories and from the all-too-real Jack the Ripper killings in 1888. Best of all was the Prospect of Whitby, which claims to be located on the site of London's oldest riverside tavern, dating from around 1520. 'Hanging' Judge Jeffreys used to drink there back in the 1680s, and Samuel Pepys and Charles Dickens had the odd pint there as well. Legend has it criminals were left tied up to the posts supporting its riverside frontage (from which Turner and Whistler made sketches) and left to drown.
A little way away is the Town of Ramsgate (another pub) and, across the river, in Rotherhithe, is the Mayflower pub, named after the ship which sailed from there for the New World in 1620 (stopping first in Southampton) with a cargo of pilgrims. A second Mayflower actually did sail from Rotherhithe to the New World in 1629, carrying even more pilgrims.
As a child of the East End, I became strangely fascinated by the history of the tunnels passing under the Thames. Near my home were the Greenwich and Woolwich Tunnels (opened in 1902 and 1912 respectively) — foot tunnels linking east London with south London. I used to spend a lot of time walking through them as a teenager, and got to know and love every damp inch of their tile-lined lengths, but my favourite was always the original Thames Tunnel. Built by Marc Isambard Brunel and his son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, it was finished in 1843 after 18 years of digging and numerous deaths, fires and floodings. It links Rotherhithe and Wapping (or the Mayflower and the Prospect of Whitby, as far as I was concerned as a teenager). Originally designed for passengers on foot, and built wide enough for horses to walk through as well, it now carries trains under the Thames. I was sufficiently obsessed by the Thames Tunnel to use it as the location for a key scene in my novel Death Cloud.
I spent years working in London — just the other side of the river from St Thomas's Hospital, ironically. The building I worked in houses the Ministry of Defence, although it was originally built between 1938 and 1959 for the Air Ministry at one end and the Board of Trade at the other. Deep in the bowels of the building, however lurks a secret dating back to 1516 — the wine cellar that once belonged to Henry VIII. The building was constructed around it, and now it sits in the centre of a large basement area, its red brickwork exposed for all to see. Sadly, the wine was all drunk a long time ago.
While working there, I developed the habit of walking around central London during my lunch breaks — usually in the direction of the second-hand bookshops that used to line Charing Cross Road, but which are progressively vanishing now. After a while, I started looking up and noticing the tops of the buildings. There's a whole different world up there of crenellations and gargoyles, bell towers and steeples, ornate gutters and strangely shaped windows. Give it a go, next time you're in town. You might see something surprising. And if you get the chance, have a pint or two in the Prospect of Whitby or the Mayflower. You'll be part of history.
Andrew Lane's latest book Young Sherlock Holmes Red Leech (£6.99, Macmillan) is out now.
