Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #BlackDitch
Most recents (2)
For this week's bout of Government-mandated exercise, @sadieholland67 & I are going to visit all the churches mentioned in the nursery rhyme #OrangesAndLemons*
* The idea for this came from someone who messaged me about doing the same here on Twitter. Whoever you were, thank u!
* The idea for this came from someone who messaged me about doing the same here on Twitter. Whoever you were, thank u!
#OrangesAndLemons is an ancient tune: people were dancing to it in the 1660s, & so its lyrics may bear the stamp of that fateful decade. But probably not - the earliest version yet found in print dates to 1744 (Tom Thumb's Pretty Song Book).
There are many versions of the lyrics. The earliest begins:
'2 sticks & an apple, Ring ye bells at Whitechapel,
Old father bald pate, Ring ye bells Aldgate,
Maids in white aprons, Ring ye bells at St Catherines,
Oranges & lemons, Ring ye bells at St Clements.'
'2 sticks & an apple, Ring ye bells at Whitechapel,
Old father bald pate, Ring ye bells Aldgate,
Maids in white aprons, Ring ye bells at St Catherines,
Oranges & lemons, Ring ye bells at St Clements.'
What better way to celebrate my birthday than to walk across a plague-stricken London to Stepney, there to walk one of the city's more obscure lost rivers? - a river so lost in fact that it is commemorated not as a river at all, but as a sewer: the #BlackDitch
Stepney is first mentioned c. 1000. Stybbanhyð - 'Stybba's landing place' - conjures up romantic images of a Saxon adventurer arriving off whatever Limehouse was called back then, and navigating the river that would one day come to be called the #BlackDitch
In 1913, an antiquarian claimed that the #BlackDitch had originally been called the Barge River, & cites "old records of place names in the parishes and hamlets along the Thames side" as evidence - but if these ever existed, they cannot be found today.
