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Mike Oxsaw
10:54 Thu Jun 20
Re: Part of our heritage?
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Ah! '64 beat me to it, but I've started so I'll finish...
The Bow Bells of fame (& nursery rhyme) are actually hung in the tower of a church on Cheapside (not a traditional West Ham area) and before the city/square mile was built up and the arrival of mechanised transport, may have been heard as far east as Shoreditch (same nursery rhyme) and with a good westerly perhaps as far as Stratford. Equally, a northerly wind would carry the sound of the peels southwards across the river, perhaps as far as Southwark.
An east wind, likewise would carry the sound possibly as far as Marylebone/Paddington (before they had railway stations and a southerly breeze may well have taken the sound into what is now Arsenal/Tottenham homeland.
The original "Cockney Central" is probably centred around what were once the slums of Holborn and the Fleet Docks.
London would have been a far too noisy place for the peels to reach the Boleyn Ground when and after it was built.
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1964
10:41 Thu Jun 20
Re: Part of our heritage?
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St Mary-le-Bow is a Church of England parish church in the City of London, England. Located on Cheapside
The bells, often considered amongst the most famous in the world, have typically been used to define whether or not one is a true Londoner or Cockney; anyone born within their earshot is considered such. With the urbanisation of the City of London in the 20th and 21st centuries, the increasing population, noise pollution and the soundproofing measures installed in the belfry, the range of the Bow bells is significantly smaller than at its peak.
In 1851, the bells could be heard across north and east London, as far as Hackney Marshes, Stratford and Limehouse, with reports they could also be heard south of the Thames in Southwark. An acoustic study taken in 2012 shows this range has shrunk substantially, now confined to the eastern parts of the Square Mile and Shoreditch. With no maternity hospitals within this range and only limited residential properties, arguably the modern chance of the birth of a 'true' cockney is now very low.[
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