All right, it looks like a boring bunch of bricks, but there’s a story.
In grey, grimy 1954, some workmen clearing a site for Legal & General in the City were about to go over the pub when they saw the head of a god poking out of the rubble – it was Mithras, whose temple had been buried by centuries of building.
Londoners queued to see his temple uncovered. Roman remains are nothing special in London, a city built upon them, but Mithras touched a nerve for reasons no archaeologist has ever worked out. When the new building went in, the temple was shoved on top of a car park all on one level – it would have been tilted so that as you approached the altar it came into light. Worse, they stuck a load of crazy paving around it, so that it looked like someone’s front garden.
Now that horrible building is coming down to make way for another, probably made of glass with little panels set at right-angles, this year’s ubiquitous architectural trope. London’s architects are slaves to a single style each year, so much so that you can accurately guess building dates.
This means that Mithras is being moved home, back to the banks of the long vanished Wallbrook stream, to make way for the headquarters of Bloomberg. Mithras was a virile young god whose cult spread across the Roman empire. He was worshipped in cavelike, partly underground spaces where initiates gradually learned of his mysteries in the torchlit darkness. Let’s hope he gets a more sympathetic siting this time.
Hello Christopher,
Just read ‘The Victoria Vanishes’ – my first read of your books – SUPERB. Must get more from my library. How nice to read a good story written with no bad language and sexual innuendos. Just one thing, which applies to most writers that I have read. I am sure that you try to get all your facts right. There is no such thing as a ‘cement’ floor. It should be concrete – cement is only one of its ingredients. Same goes for ‘cement mixers’ – they are ‘concrete mixers’.
Bob
Wow… as one of your readers for many years (and a bit of a fan of psycho-geography) I know that we blithely stomp over all sorts of historical treasures every day – but that is a GREAT find…
Hello btw – hope you’re well. Long time no see…
That’s you told Fowler.
In Rome there is a wonderful and well preserved Mithras altar 2 levels below the 12th century San Clemente church near the Colosseo. An important scene in Ngaio Marsh’s mystery When in Rome takes place at this church except she changed the name, but you can still recognize it from her descriptions in the book. I hope when they move the one in London they make an effort at adding a little atmosphere. From the photo the setting looks a little bleak and to be honest quite banal. Perhaps they could get Richard Meier to design something. He did a superlative job designing a structure to house Ara Pacis in Rome. I also would like to add the Mithras Altar in Rome oozes atmosphere, so if you are in Rome you shouldn’t miss visiting the church. And right below the altar is an underground river that might have at one point fed into Nero’s giant artificial lake that once occupied the spot where the Colosseo now stands.
The one in the purple dressing gown who is about to head out for a café and pastry, I shall ponder ancient Roman ruins among other things of intellectual and archeological interest.
There, you see, information you don’t get just anywhere, and it’s Terenzio again, complete with his purple dressing gown. I have always been fascinated by the Mithras worshippers, who were so often soldiers. That was how it travelled the Empire, but since the temples were more or less underground there aren’t a lot of sites known. It was a male religion, too, with no role for women at all. Kipling puts it into Puck of Pook’s Hill, which is where I first met it.
Three things:
1 Fascinating learning from admin and others, as per. Thank you all.
2 I’ve never actually read a Ngaio Marsh(I’ve only just started reading my first Katherine Mansfield). Yes, I know, Bad Kiwi, hanging her head in shame.
3 Does anyone happen to know what that stripey building in the background is? It intrigues me greatly.
(3) It’s the Poultry Gretta, odd looking building but I rather like it. Here’s a wikki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_1_Poultry
Gretta, the best Ngaio Marsh set in New Zealand is the one with the hot springs/mud baths, but I can’t find the title. The other one is Died in the Wool which is set on a sheep station. You have to have sheep in at least one New Zealand title, but I do shudder a little whenever I think of this one. (We just lost a calligrapher who was born in N.Z. and it took me a long time to learn her name which was Ngaire.)
Alan and Helen, thank you very much!
I think I may very well fall in love with that building. It’s a bit bonkers, but in a good way.
I will read a Ngaio Marsh sometime, I’m sure. I’m afraid I’m a bit rubbish at reading local novels. I have a Continental friend studying literature in Edinburgh who has read more New Zealand books than I have, which is a little embarrassing.
Non-NZ(and lots of local NZ people, for that matter) tend to struggle with words starting with ‘Ng’. The actress Nyree Dawn Porter changed her first name for this very reason when she moved to England. Having said that, Maori is still probably the easiest of the South Pacific languages to try and get your tongue around. Fijian, for example, in which a name like Tagicakibau is pronounced Tung-ee-thah-kim-boe, is a bit of a minefield.
I believe Alexander the Great’s army had a fair number of Mithras worshippers in its officer ranks. They met in caverns or caves and sacrificed black bulls to a fire god, thus the need for a dark place for effect. All sorts of secret handshakes, passwords and signs,too.
I read a little bit about this temple on the Guardian’s website. I was so saddened to hear of the disregard of the site and the callous way that the original stones were treated.
It was however fascinating to see how the media and public opinion drove the desire to preserve the temple back then.
I hope its new home will inspire a sense of Mithraic mystery once more (although perhaps less blood…).
And I think the Ngaio Marsh book you’re looking for is Colour Scheme.
She’s definitely worth reading – there was a recent A Good Read programme on Radio 4 where the presenter Harriet Gilbert chose Marsh’s Singing in the Shrouds as her nominated title. I don’t think her guests were quite as convinced as the presenter, but it does give you a flavour of her style.
Much appreciated, thank you, Bramble.