Horseferry

Horse-Ferry (Westminster) is a Ferry over from Westminster to Lambeth and the Contrary, for Passengers, Horses, Coaches, &c. daily.

The Rates are,

		s. d.
For a Man and Horse	———	0 : 2
For a Horse and Chaze	———	1 : 0
For a Coach and 2 Horses	———	1 : 6
a Coach and 4	———	2 : 0
a Coach and 6	———	2 : 6
a Cart Loaden	———	2 : 6
a Cart, or Waggon, each	———	2 : 0

The Proprietors are Mr. Cole and 2 or 3 others.

Horseferry, a ferry on the Thames from Lambeth Palace to Millbank, or, in other words, from Middlesex to Surrey; the Lambeth Suspension Bridge occupies the exact site. It was the only horseferry allowed on the Thames at or near London, and the tolls and right of passage belonged to the Archbishops of Canterbury. The tolls were considerable when London had but one bridge over the Thames. The construction of Westminster Bridge superseded the horseferry, and the Archbishop was paid a sum of £3000 as compensation for loss of the tolls.

In the Great Frost of 1683–1684 the Thames was frozen over, and Evelyn mentions, under January 9, that coaches, carts and horses crossed on the ice from Westminster Stairs to Lambeth. He dined with the Archbishop of Canterbury (Sancroft), and stayed with his Grace till evening prayers, when he and Sir George Wheeler "walked over the ice from Lambeth Stairs to the Horseferry." Again on February 5, "My coach crossed from Lambeth to the Horseferry at Millbank."

When James II. fled from his palace, with the intention of escaping from his kingdom, he crossed the Thames at the Horseferry, as he tells in his Memoirs:—

Betwixt twelve and one on Monday night the 10th of December [1688] he left his Palace of Whitehall, and having concerted matters beforehand he took a Hackney coach and went to the Hors ferry; then taking a pare of ores he passed over to Foxhall, where horses were ready laid, and about one on Tuesday morning, the 11th of December he set out.—Memoirs of James II., vol. ii. p. 251.

He does not tell that when opposite Lambeth he threw the Great Seal, which he had carried with him, into the Thames, whence it was accidentally dredged up by a fishing-net some months afterwards. By an Act II and 12 William III. c. 21 (1700), the watermen plying between Westminster Bridge (i.e. Westminster Stairs) and Stangate, and from the Horseferry to Lambeth Bridge (Lambeth Stairs), were not to be hindered from carrying passengers on the Lord's day, but the whole of their earnings were to be given up for the use of the poor decayed watermen and their widows of the parish of St. Margaret. In the Horseferry Road is the Wesleyan Training College for male students, erected 1850, James Wilson, architect; to which a large practising school is attached.

The Horseferry

Some authorities hold that there was an ancient British ford, subsequently used by the Romans near the site of Lambeth Palace or a little down the river at Stangate.⁶ Whether this was so or not, it is certain that from the time of the establishment of a town house of the Archbishops of Canterbury at Lambeth there must have been a constant plying across the river between Lambeth House (or Palace) and the King's palace at Westminster, especially as many of the mediaeval Archbishops held high offices of state. In 1367, for example, a sum of £16 was paid to the clerks of chancery for the barge "for passage to and fro across the Thames to the manor of Lambheth of Simon archbishop of Canterbury the chancellor where the inn of chancery is now held, and for wages of the keepers of the said barge."¹

When the Horseferry was first established at Lambeth is not known. The earliest specific reference to it which has been found is in the year 1513,⁷ when the Archbishop granted the ferry over the Thames from Lambeth to Westminster to Humphrey Trevilyan at the rent of 16d. a year. A provision was included in the grant that the Archbishop and his servants and his goods and chattels should be carried free. Similar grants of a later date are to be found among the records at Lambeth Palace. In Thomas Cromwell's accounts² for the year 1538 is an entry for the "ferryage" of his horses at Lambeth and there is also extant a bill dated 1546 from Edmonde Lewes, "Feryman" for ferrying the king's horses "over the water at Lambyth ferry."²

Archbishop Laud's arrival at Lambeth was marked by an accident which was afterwards regarded as an omen of his unhappy fate. The overladen ferryboat as it crossed the river with his servants and horses sank to the bottom, though happily without loss of life.⁸ The incident was remembered when in 1656 a like accident befell Protector Cromwell's coach and horses and it was suggested that he too might be heading for disaster.⁹

During the Civil War, Lambeth Ferry was confiscated with the rest of the Archbishop's property, and on 6th December, 1648, was sold to Christopher Wormeall.¹⁰ On 7th July of that year, when there was insurrection in Surrey, instructions were issued to the keepers of the various ferries over the Thames from Lambeth upwards, "the better to prevent the confluence of people to those who have taken up arms against the Parliament," to arrange for the Horseferry boat to be kept on the Middlesex shore between sunset and sunrise, and for guards to be placed "so that none be suffered to pass in the daytime except market people, and such as have business from the State and passes to warrant their crossing over."¹¹

At the Restoration the ferry reverted to the Archbishop. In 1664 he granted a lease of it to Mrs. Leventhorp,¹² whose successors do not seem to have carried out their public obligations, for some 40 years later the churchwardens and inhabitants of the parish of St. Margaret, Westminster, complained of Mr. Leventhorp's "usurping the whole profits of the horseferry, and neglecting to repair the roads leading thereto."¹³

In 1688 Lambeth Ferry was the scene of one of the scene of one of the most dramatic events connected with the expulsion of the Stuarts. On the night of 9–10th December, Mary of Modena, James II's queen, and the baby prince (afterwards the Old Pretender) with two nurses left Whitehall under the guidance of De Lauzun and St. Victor, and drove to the Horseferry. The night was stormy and so dark that the passengers could not see each other in the boat though they were closely seated. According to some accounts the queen and her baby had to spend an hour under the walls of the old church waiting for a coach,ⁿ¹ but St. Victor records that a coach and six were ready in an inn adjoining the landing place and took the party to Gravesend.¹⁵

Kip's view of Lambeth Palace, reproduced on Plate 64, shows the ferryboat crossing the river. It suggests that the ferry plied to and from Lambeth Palace stairs, but this was not so, the landing place on the Lambeth side being a little farther south.ⁿ² On arrival there traffic turned left for a few yards along the northern end of Fore Street (now swallowed up by the Albert Embankment) and then to the right along Church Street (now Lambeth Road).

---

ⁿ¹ See, for example, Macaulay— “She remained with her child, cowering for shelter from the storm under the tower of Lambeth Church and distracted by terror whenever the ostler approached her with his lanthern.” Macaulay also tells us that when James II took flight the next night he crossed the Thames from Millbank to Vauxhall in a small wherry. “As he passed Lambeth he flung the great seal into the midst of the stream, whence, after many months, it was accidently caught by a fishing net and dragged up.”

ⁿ² The Horseferry landing place is clearly shown on Rocque's and other 18th century maps.

¹ Cal. of Close Rolls.
² Cal. of L.& P. Hen. VIII.
⁶ Polychronicon, by Ralph Higden, Rolls Series. II.
⁷ MS. of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, Register T, Fol.112.
⁸ Diary of the life of Archbishop Laud (1695 ed.).
⁹ Hist. MSS. Comm., App. to 5th Rep.
¹⁰ P.R.O.C 54/3414.
¹¹ Cal. of S.P. Dom., 1648–64.
¹² Hist, MSS. Comm., 9th Rep., App. I.
¹³ Ibid., 4th Rep., App.
¹⁵ Lives of Queens of England, by Agnes Strickland,1852.