please empty your brain below

The Bank of England inflation calculator suggests that £200 in 1954 is worth £4,637 in today's money - or £386 a month.
That's interesting, not least as the town in which I currently live, Wantage, makes much of its Betjeman connections (a memorial park; micro-brewery; arts festival; an office buildingall take his name), and he lived for for pretty much the same period that he lived in the Cloth Fair place (early 50s to early 70s). My guess is he mainly spent his weekdays in London, and his weekends out here in the Vale? (He also lived pretty much adjacent to a great Anglican place of worship, here, too, one of the key centres of Anglo-Catholicism).

Mind you, if you could rent a flat in Cloth Fair for £386 a month now, I'd be inclined to share my time between Wantage and London rather more equitably, too.

That bit of the City is really interesting - so many sites of historic interest, which have somehow escaped being destroyed by bombers or town planners: Cloth Fair, St Barts, Little Britain, Charterhouse, Smithfield...
Betjeman wrote a 'Monody on the Death of Aldersgate Station' - this, since the station is still there, apparently relates to the loss of its glass roof. Oddly. after the first two lines, the poem is all about City churches.
"It's just like Sir John to want to live opposite a great Anglican place of worship, so close that each peal of bells would punctuate his day."

Indeed, he may well have known that they are a complete ring of pre-Reformation bells (all five cast in 1510 in London). Only one other such ring exists, in Ipswich.
is that the same lord mottistone of isle of wight fame?
We stayed in Betjeman's house in Cloth Fair when our daughter was married, not at St Bartholomew the Great but St James' Clerkenwell. Gorgeous house, what a way to experience the City!
Off topic - DG, did you know you got a credit in the bibilography of 'Diamond Street' by Rachel Lichtenstein? Highly recommended book by the way.










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