ELEPHANTS

See Also: ANIMALS; JUMBO

Blue Peter

Blue Peter was an immensely successful B.B.C. Television children's programme that went out live. In the late Sixties it was presented by John Noakes (1934-2017), Peter Purvis, and Valerie Singleton. In 1969 Lulu, a baby elephant, and her keeper appeared on the show. The animal defecated and urinated. Her keeper slipped up on the material. Noakes, the show's lord of misrule, exclaimed Ow, he's trod on my foot. Oh dear - I ve trod right in it!

Location: Television Centre, 101 Wood Lane, W12 7FW

Website: www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/shows/blue-peter

Circus Elephants

Escalator accessed via Waterloo Entrance to the Jubilee Line Extension - modern sculpture of an elephant's head. Astley's circus was on the site.

Location: York Road, SE1 7ND

See Also: CIRCUSES, DISAPPEARED

Grazing

The circus proprietor Lord George Sanger bought a stretch of land north of Falledon Way between Big Wood and Little Wood for grazing his elephants on.

Location: Elephant Field, Park Farm, Denman Drive North, NW11 6RB

The Elephant & Castle

The Elephant & Castle is an inner-city South London district. The origins of its name are uncertain, initially the area was called Newington. The first recorded usage of Elephant & Castle dates from 1765. A long-favoured theory was that this was a corruption of Infanta de Castille . She was popularly believed to have been a Spanish princess who had been intended to be the bride for an English prince. It was supposed that prior to the wedding she had resided in the district. However, international circumstances had gone on to change and she had no longer been regarded as being an appropriate match. Therefore, she had been returned to her homeland.

A reasonable hypothesis is that the name derived from the badge of the Cutlers Company, one of the City of London's livery companies. On this, one of the elephants that is portrayed has a howdah upon its back.¹ A copy of the emblem was probably hung outside the premises of a local blacksmith and cutler.² It would have provided a visual cue for people who were illiterate or semi-literate. With time, the business's site came to be occupied by a pub. This probably assumed the name of The Elephant & Castle in order to avail itself of a continuity of association. It was to these premises that the 1765 written source referred.

Westminster Bridge opened in 1751. As a direct result, the area to the south of the Thames became economically more vibrant. There was a marked growth in the number of people who lived and worked in Newington. New buildings were constructed to accommodate them. Therefore, there would have been a greater need to tell the district apart from Stoke Newington, which was located to the north-east of the City of London. The name Elephant & Castle was distinct and had shown itself to be durable. Common usage accounted for Newington's renaming and not a decision that was made by an official body.

The infanta story seems to have been derived from the treatment of a real Spanish infanta by the ministers of King Louis XV of France. The royal pair had become betrothed in 1721. However, the statesmen at Versailles concluded that she would be too young to produce an heir for several years and they believed that the continuation of the French branch of the Bourbon dynasty was more important than the negative repercussions of antagonising Spain. Therefore, the girl was returned her family in 1725 and the Madrid government fell into a deep strop with its northern neighbour. In the 1760s this story would have still been present in folk memory but would have been far back enough for most of those who knew of it to be unclear about its details.

Location: The Elephant & Castle, 119 Newington Causeway, SE1 6BN

See Also: BRIDGES Westminster Bridge; THE CHAPELS ROYAL The Queen's Chapel

Website: www.cutlerslondon.co.uk www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en www.exteriores.gob.es/en/Paginas/index.aspx

¹. Cutlers furnished valuable items with ivory or ivory-like handles.

². The scientist Michael Faraday was born (1791) in Newington Butts, the son of a blacksmith. The Michael Faraday Memorial (1961) is sited on the traffic island within one of the Elephant & Castle roundabouts. It is an electrical substation. Its exterior was designed by the Brutalist architect Rodney Gordon.

Elephant Graveyard

There is reputed to be the remains of an elephant buried underneath Haven Green roundabout in Ealing. The animal is said to have died while a travelling circus was visiting the area.

Location: Haven Green, Ealing, W5 2UU. In the north-eastern section

Exeter Exchange Menagerie

Exeter Exchange Menagerie contained a menagerie. Chunee, its Asian elephant, appeared at The Theatre Royal. The animal used to be walked along the Strand. The animal went rogue in 1826 and ended up being shot dead by a body of soldiers.

Location: The Strand Palace, 372 Strand, WC2R 0JJ (purple, turquoise)

The Great She-Elephant

The senior Labour politician Denis Healey (1917-2015) dubbed Margaret Thatcher The Great She-Elephant . This was a reference to an aspect Swazi society.

Mowing

The 2^nd Duke of Wellington had his lawn mown by a small elephant that drew a lawnmower behind it. This was because horses left hoof marks. The peer regarded it as a bonus that the elephant did need to be re-shoed. This enabled his grace to save on his blacksmithing bills.

See Also: GARDENS & PLANTS Lawns; TOWNHOUSES Apsley House

Sir Hans Sloane

In the early 18^thC mammoth remains were being excavated in Britain.

The physician Sir Hans Sloane dissected an elephant. At the time of his death, he had parts from 68 elephants.

Location: 4 Bloomsbury Place, WC1A 2QA (red, blue)

The Pardoning Pachyderm

The Jacobite physician Patrick Blair anatomised an elephant that had died a mile outside Dundee in 1706. The results were published in Osteographia Elephantina (1713). Sloane held the work in good regard. In 1713 Blair visited London. He spent time with the physician and the apothecary James Petiver.

Blair came from a Jacobite family. He participated in the 1715 Jacobite Rising and was apprehended. Sloane and Petiver organised a successful campaign to secure him a pardon.

The Sultan's Elephant

In May 2006 a 40ft.-tall mechanical elephant walked around the West End. The device had been created by Royal de Luxe, a street theatrical company that is based in Nantes, France.

Website: http://www.artichoke.uk.com/project/the-sultans-elephant

David Backhouse 2024