Patrick Comerford
You have probably seen the slogan on T-shirts that says, ‘A day without coffee is like just kidding’.
A quick trawl on Google brought up similar pithy sayings, such as ‘Coffee smells like freshly ground heaven’ (Jessi Lane Adams). ‘I can’t imagine a day without coffee. I can’t imagine!’ (Howard Schultz of Starbucks). Or, ‘Coffee is a cup of hope in a world full of chaos and Mondays’.
I have had my Monday coffee … or, should I say, my many Monday coffees. And I have walked around the Coffee Hall estate in Milton Keynes – not just once, but twice – in recent days, without finding anywhere to sit down and have a cup of coffee.
Coffee Hall is a short walk from Milton Keynes University Hospital, where I was back again for check-ups, tests and consultations at the weekend. It is a green place, away from the main roads, surrounded by grass, cherry trees and horse chestnut trees, with red-way footpaths throughout the estate.
The grid square is split in two, with the northern section developed mainly for education and the southern area for the residential housing.
Chapter House was built as housing for young single people, there is sheltered housing for older people at Jonathans Court, four local schools, and a church, Christ the Vine Church, that was once not a café but a pub, known as the Walnut. Coffee Hall also has a community centre, a meeting place, a chip shop, a Chinese takeaway, a Chinese food shop and a small supermarket.
But there is no coffee house or café in Coffee Hall, and the one place to get coffee is Coffee Hall Meeting Place on Garraways, behind the council offices in the local centre.
When Milton Keynes was being developed in the early 1970s, the new city started to display its first housing grids between Bletchley and Central Milton Keynes. The grid at Coffee Hall, along with nearby Netherfield and Bean Hill, was one of the first grids developed in Milton Keynes, with one-storey and two storey terraced houses.
Sadly, Coffee Hall had a disastrous start with a reputation as a failed estate in many aspects, and empty spaces left unbuilt on around the rigid grid were soon filled with badly-designed housing. According to one report, the Coffee Hall estate is one of ‘the 10% most impoverished in the country and the catchment area is the most deprived in MK’.
The one building of architectural significance in Coffee Hall was Our Lady of Lourdes Church, built in the mid-1970s under the direction of Derek Walker, Chief Architect to the Milton Keynes Development Corporation. Its design was an interesting reinterpretation of Le Corbusier’s 1931 Villa Savoye at Poissy, and it had a notable collection of ceramic furnishings by Norman and Anna Adams.
The church was one of the few buildings worth visiting in Coffee Hall, but it was closed and demolished in 2018. The ceramic Stations of the Cross and other furnishings were moved to Saint Paul’s Catholic School, Milton Keynes.
A wall painting in Woughton Leisure Centre, ‘Situation Comedy’, painted in 1981 by Boyd & Evans, was their first commission in Milton Keynes and was followed by many others.
But there is another work of street art, on the corner of Jonathans and Jamaica, that illustrates how all the street names in Coffee Hall are inspired by the names of celebrated coffee houses in London in the 17th and 18th centuries. In post-restoration England, coffee houses were seen as rowdy and unseemly places or as the trendy places to be seen in, to meet friends, socialise and engage in political debate.
Coffee seems to have been introduced into Europe through Venice in 1645. The first coffeehouse in London was established in 1652 by a Greek, Pasqua Rosa, near the later Jamaica and Madeira coffeehouse. This first coffee shop was in Saint Michael’s Alley, off the street called Cornhill, where a plaque on the wall says the coffee house opened at the sign of ‘the Pasqua Rosee’s Head’.
Such was the reputation of London coffeehouses such that Charles II thought of closing them down in 1662. By 1702, there were said to be 500 coffee houses in London, there were 2,000 by 1715, and 8,000 by 1800. Every profession, trade, class and party, had its favourite coffeehouse. Garraway’s and Jonathan’s, for example, were known for discussions about the rise and fall of stocks and the rate of insurance. A select few coffeehouses focussed on the needs of the merchants trading nearby at the Royal Exchange and Lloyds.
Many of those classic coffeehouses are recalled in the street names throughout the grid system on the Coffee Hall estate.
Daniels Welch is named after Daniel Edwards, and ‘Daniel’s the Welch Coffee-House’ in Fleet Street. Daniel Edwards was an English trader who was active in Smyrna (Izmir), where he got to know about coffee drinking. He returned to London in 1651 and married Mary Hodges, the daughter of another Levant merchant and their household attracted merchants who had sampled coffee on their travels to the Levant. Daniel Edwards and Mary Hodges opened a coffee house like those they knew in Turkey.
Daniel Edwards’s Greek assistant, Pasqua Rosée, became the manager of the first London coffee house in a shed in the churchyard in Saint Michael’s Alley, close to the Royal Exchange. Rosa’s coffee house was destroyed in Great Fire of London in 1666, and eventually Pasqua Rosée moved away. But its successor escaped the fire of 1748.
The name of St Dunstans is a reminder of James Farr and the Rainbow, a coffee-house he kept by the Inner Temple Gate that was the second in London. Farr was prosecuted in 1657 in the parish of Saint Dunstan’s in the West, covering the Fleet Street area, for making and selling coffee ‘as a great nuisance and prejudice to the neighbourhood’.
Jonathans is a reminder that Jonathan’s Coffee House was the original site of the London Stock Exchange. It was opened around 1680 by Jonathan Miles in Change (or Exchange) Alley. There John Castaing posted the prices of stocks and commodities in the first systematic exchange of securities in London. That year, dealers expelled from the Royal Exchange for rowdiness migrated to and to Garraway’s coffeehouse.
Several of Jonathan’s patrons were implicated in a plot to assassinate William III in 1698. Later, it was the venue for the South Sea Bubble and the panic of 1745. It was destroyed by fire in 1748, and rebuilt. The New Jonathan’s was renamed the Stock Exchange and is now the London Stock Exchange.
Garraway’s is named after Garraway’s Coffee House, one of three celebrated coffee houses in Exchange Alley. A frequent visitor at Garraway’s was Robert Hooke (1635-1703), who was in Garraway’s almost every day one while he worked as the surveyor to the City of London after the Great Fire. Hooke was also the architect of Saint Mary Magdalene Church, Willen. He also frequented Jonathan’s in Change Alley and Child’s in Saint Paul’s Churchyard.
After the Great Fire of London 1666, Garraway’s moved into the same place in Exchange Alley where Elford had been before the fire. There he claimed to have the oldest coffee house in London. But the site was occupied later by the Virginia and the Jamaica.
Lloyds, of course, takes its name from Lloyd’s Coffee House, opened by Edward Lloyd (1648-1713) on Tower Street in 1686. It was a popular place for sailors, merchants and shipowners, and Lloyd provided them with reliable shipping news so that the shipping community frequented the place to discuss insurance, shipbroking and foreign trade. Their dealings led to Lloyd’s of London, Lloyd’s Register and Lloyd’s List.
Lloyd’s coffeeshop moved in 1691 to Lombard Street, where Lloyd installed a pulpit to announce maritime auction prices and shipping news and reported shipping schedules and insurance agreements reached in the coffeehouse.
The original 17th century shopfront of Lloyd’s was moved to the National Maritime Museum. A blue plaque in Lombard Street commemorates its second location, now occupied by Sainsbury’s supermarket.
Jamaica is a laneway or passage off Jonathans, but with no street sign. Its name recalls the Jamaica coffeehouse in an alleyways behind Saint Michael’s Church, Cornhill. Jamaica was damaged by the fire in 1748 that consumed Garraway’s and Elford’s, but the Jamaica Wine House stands on the same spot today.
The Jamaica coffeehouse was to the West India trade what the Jerusalem Coffee House was to the East India trade. The proprietors and managers of the Jamaica coffeehouse could pride themselves on the accuracy of their West India intelligence. It had 250 to 350 ‘subscribers’ who were mainly merchants trading with Madeira and the West Indies. They met either ore going to the counting-houses in the morning or after leaving the Royal Exchange in the afternoon.
The name of Chapter is inspired by the Chapter Coffeehouse once at 49-50 Paternoster Row, on the corner of Paul’s Alley and Paternoster Row, in the shadow of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. It traded from 1672 until 1853, and was then converted into a tavern.
The Chapter was patronised by writers and publishers, including Samuel Johnson as he searched for publishers for his Lives of the English Poets, and the Bronte sisters. Writers and wits would gather in the north-east corner of the large premises, with this corner known as the ‘Wittinagemot.’
Hamlins and Elfords both take their names from lost coffeehouses from those days. Hamlin had a reputation for caffeine-charged theological debates and conversations about ‘Infant-Baptism, Lay-Ordination, Free-Will, Election and Reprobation.’ Elford’s was ‘newly set up’ in 1689, and resisted the temptation to follow its competitors in selling ‘ale and beer’ and ‘intoxicating liquors’.
Grigby Rise recalls Grigby’s coffeehouse at 12 Threadneedle Street. Truby’s Garden recalls Truby’s coffeehouse. It was said the clergy shared gossip about sermons and university life at Truby’s or at Child’s in Saint Paul’s Churchyard.
Rochfords recalls Anne Rochford, who – along with Moll King – was a famous female coffeehouse proprietor and was later publicly satirised. Brian Cowan, the social historian who has charted the history of coffeehouses in England, identifies the role of ‘coffee-women’ or female proprietors of coffeehouses. They were the proprietors of the coffeehouses as well as coffee servers, even though they seldom took part in coffeehouse conversation.
Virginia recalls the Virginia Coffee House on Threadneedle Street. The Virginia and Maryland Coffee House became the Virginia and Baltick Coffee House in 1744. The extra name Baltick marked the growing importance of the Baltic Sea market. This coffeehouse later eventually became the Baltic Exchange, which remains a source of maritime market information for trading and settling physical and derivative contracts.
Button Grove is named after Button’s Coffee House, in Russell Street near Covent Garden. The earlier Will’s Coffee House was badly reviewed by Richard Steele in The Tatler in 1709, and this helped to see the rise of Button’s Coffee House nearby. The essayist Joseph Addison established Daniel Button in business about 1712.
Button’s was known for a white marble letterbox in the form of a lion’s head, thought to have been designed by the artist William Hogarth. An inscription read Cervantur magnis isti cervicibus ungues: Non nisi delicta pasciture ille fera, ‘Those talons are kept for mighty necks: he feeds only on the beast of his choice.’
People submitted written material in the lion’s mouth for possible publication in Addison’s weekly newspaper, The Guardian. As well as Addison, the clientele included Jonathan Swift, Ambrose Philips and Alexander Pope.
Daniel Button died in 1730 and his coffeehouse eventually closed in 1751. The lion’s head was moved to the Shakespeare Tavern and then to other pubs before the Duke of Bedford acquired it for his country house, Woburn Abbey.
The location of Button’s coffeehouse is now a Starbucks shop at 10 Russell Street, close to Covent Garden Market and the Royal Opera House.
But, perhaps thankfully, there are no streets or laneways in Coffee Hall named Starbucks … or Costa … or Nero – yet.
