A day out in London yesterday led me to visit some locations from the Bowman Of The Yard novels!


After a walk across Lincoln's Inn Fields, I found myself on Essex Street, as featured in The Phantom In The Fog, where a young Detective Sergeant Bowman accompanies Inspector Grainger to respond to reports of attacks by a strange assailant. One particular inhabitant is Anna Mortimer who, we know, is destined to become Bowman's wife...


'To protect the residents of the genteel street from the sights and sounds of the wharves and warehouses, a triumphal gateway known as Watergate had been built over the flights of stone steps down to Milford Lane and the river’s edge. From Essex Street, it was a grand affair of red brick and fluted granite columns topped with pilasters in the Corinthian style. From the riverside, it was a narrow flight of stone steps beneath a plain brick doorway. It was as if the inhabitants of the street had thrown a screen across the road to spare them from the hoi polloi.'


Essex Street acts as conduit between the River Thames and the salubrious squares and elegant architecture of Lincoln's Inn Fields. In 1722, it was the location of an event that speaks to the perhaps surprising diversity of Victorian London. Following the death of a local cook, who had black skin, a funeral was held and attended by around 60 other people of African and Caribbean descent. Those who cry foul at the inclusion of anything other than white actors in their period dramas might do well to remember those who turned out to pay their respects.