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take the animals south. Much of the trade was done on
letters of credit with each drover using his own stamp -
always an animal and, due to ink limitations, always black.
Their creditors were very vulnerable and by 1706 Queen
Anne’s Parliament was forced to change the law to stop
drovers escape their debts by declaring bankruptcy, often
claiming that they had been robbed by highwaymen. The
droving trade would after that time by necessity promote
the development of banking both in Wales and in London.
Some drovers set up their own banks or issued promissory
notes, forerunners of bank notes.
The Black Ox Bank
,
established by a drover called David Jones (you could
have guessed that name in a dozen tries couldn’t you?)
at the King’s Head in Llandovery in 1799, traded right
through until 1909 when it was taken over by Lloyds.
The Lloyds Bank black horse is itself a surviving drover’s
mark.
London’s First Bypass
The mother of all cattle markets was of course Smithfield
- by the 17
th
century Daniel Defoe described it as the
greatest meat market in the world. The Welsh drovers
would pause in the richly fertile pastures of the River Fleet
flowing down to the Thames from its source up on
Hampstead Heath for one last fattening before herding the
cattle through the narrow streets and into Smithfield itself.
In the 1750s the New Road was built from Paddington to
Islington in a hurry by Act of Parliament to try and
control this final part of the journey of the sheep and cattle
to Smithfield. This was London’s first bypass. A clause in
the Act stipulated that no houses could be built within 50
feet of the road. A hundred years later when the railways
came major London termini were built along the New
Road, which was renamed Marylebone, Euston and
Pentonville Roads. Along the Pentonville Road you can
still see some old houses with long front gardens that are
a reminder of the 50-foot clause. When you visit modern
Smithfield you can still trace the last part of the drovers’
route by following the old stone cattle troughs and by street
names such as Cowcross Street. Above is a rare old sepia
photograph of the cattle being driven through the narrow
city streets on the last mile to market.
Smithfield is just a stone’s throw from the Old Bailey
which would see its share of cases related to the Welsh
droving trade. In 1811 at the Old Bailey Daffyd Roberts
accused Londoners Sarah Bailey and Thomas Moore of
theft. In evidence Roberts said:
I am a Welsh drover. On the 7th December about four
o'clock I was in Smithfield. I had been drinking all day.
I met a man in the street; he said you are a Welshman.
Question:
Did you see your pocket-book before you went
to that public house?
Answer:
I put the notes in my pocket-book at Romford.
Question:
Did you see the pocket-book while you were in
the public house?
Answer:
Yes I was tipsy; I went to sleep and when I awoke
I found the pocket-book empty on the table, and the
prisoners had all left the house.
Verdict? Guilty. Sentence? Transported for seven years.
The Welsh Charity School
Standing on Clerkenwell Green
beneath the tower of St James’s
Church the Welsh Charity School
was built by public subscription in
1738 for the education of poor
Welsh children. About 30 years later
it moved to bigger premises on the
nearby Grays Inn Road (close to
today’s London Welsh Centre)
before leaving London altogether
for Ashford in Middlesex where it
survived as the Welsh Girls’ School
and later as St David’s School until
closing for good in 2009.
Back in Clerkenwell the Welsh
Charity School became the Marx
Memorial Library where Lenin,
exiled in London, edited the
revolutionary journal ISKRA
(Spark) that was printed on specially
thin paper to be smuggled into
Tsarist Russia.