This is the short version of the article (10 minute read). A longer version with more detail, notes and references (15 minute read) is available at https://thatmikedurham.wordpress.com/2023/03/01/a-toast-to-the-mayor-of-stroud-green/

 

By Michael Durham

 

On a Monday evening, 26th July, 1773, an extraordinary thing happened in the lives of the few score residents of the tiny hamlet of Stroud Green, a backwater five miles north of London in the marshy fields between Highbury and Hornsey.

 

A Mayor was elected. A ‘Mayor of Stroud Green’.

 

His name was Sir Thomas Legg, ‘Knight of the Oak’. On the same night, in a ceremony that quite possibly took place in the village inn, the Stapleton Tavern - a pub that exists to this day - a slate of ‘aldermen’, ‘sheriffs’, ‘recorder’ and other officials were also sworn in. There was even a sword-bearer.

 

After the election the Corporation of Stroud Green got down to business: eating, drinking and partying. Loyal toasts were drunk, a song or two were sung, a feast was served, and the whole evening perhaps concluded with a ball.

 

To cap it all, that night in 1773 the new ‘mayor’ was presented with a stunning glass and enamel badge of office, a flashy jewel with a brightly painted Saint George on one side and the mayor’s name and the date engraved on the back. The reverse engraving reads: “The Right Worshipful Sir Thomas Legg, Knight of the Oak, Elected Mayor of the Corporation of Stroud Green on Monday, July 26th, 1773.” The so called Stroud Green Jewel is now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

 

Strange indeed, since the remote hamlet of Stroud Green, today the Victorian London suburb of the same name, probably then had fewer than 200 residents.

 

The Ancient Corporation of Stroud Green - to give the body its full title - existed roughly between 1750 and 1780. But it was neither ancient, nor anything to do with local government. In reality, it was a drinking and dining club for well-heeled London businessmen - and a send-up.

 

From their country pub, these Georgian Londoners aped the ceremonies, insignia, hierarchy of officials, costumes, processions, feasts and rituals of the real, and very dignified, Corporation of the City of London. They gave themselves a motto (“Justice, Truth and Friendship”) and two songs. And once a year, after an especially lavish feast, they held a bar-room ‘election’ for ‘Mayor’, and presented a badge of office.

 

It was an elaborate joke that lasted 30 years.

 

Georgian London at the beginning of the eighteenth century was full of drinking and dining clubs that met in taverns and the new coffee houses for convivial pleasure-seeking. The Stroud Green Corporation was one of a subset of clubs that parodied imaginary civic bodies in real, but unlikely, places: other fantasy ‘corporations’ in the 1770s included Kentish Town, Highbury and Southwark. The ‘aldermen’ and ‘sheriffs’ of these imaginary bodies paid each other visits in taverns all over London and country villages. Over three decades, the numerous mayors and officials of Stroud Green seem to have engaged in a giant pub crawl.

 

Nothing has so far been discovered of the first meeting of the Ancient Corporation of Stroud Green; the first mention I have found in print is from 1750, when ‘a great number of the Aldermen’ met in the Rose and Crown pub off Fleet Street, and issued an invitation to ‘the Aldermen of Highbury’ to join them at their tavern in Stroud Green, then called the Green Man.

 

After that, meetings, feasts and ceremonies were held at regular intervals, both in Stroud Green and London. In July 1752, they were dining at Cannonbury [sic] House in Islington. In October that year it was at the Red Hart in Shoe Lane.  In November 1754 ‘The Mayor, Sheriffs and Aldermen of Stroud Green’ visited their counterparts from ‘the Corporation of Kentish Town’ in The Bell, off the Strand.

 

Contemporary newspaper reports detail the visits to each other’s 'council-chambers’, the loyal toasts drunk, the extravagant dining, late-night balls, and entertainments. A regular haunt for the aldermen of Stroud Green after the 1760s was Dobneys, a famous tavern, bowling green and pleasure gardens close to Sadler’s Wells off Penton Street. On Monday, 30th July 1764, for example, “the Ancient Corporation of Stroud Green held the annual feast at Mr. Dobney's near the New-river-head, at which were present upwards of two hundred members; after which Mr Kelly of Chancery Lane was elected Mayor for the year ensuing, and an elegant entertainment was provided on the occasion.”

 

The elections were always held on a Monday night in July. The Stapleton Hall Tavern in Stroud Green hosted many ‘elections’, and one particular knees-up there on Monday, July 1st, 1765, was clearly a boisterous affair.  The newspaper report deserves quoting in full:

 

“On Monday last, according to annual Custom, the Mayor, and Aldermen of the respectable Corporation of Stroud Green held their Court of Conservancy at Stapleton Hall (the capital Mansion on what is humorously called their Estate) near Mount Pleasant, where a sumptuous Repast was prepared for their reception of their present Sheriffs.

 

“After Dinner several loyal Healths were drank, and the Hall resounded with the names of Granby and Pitt. The whole was conducted with all [reasonable] Decorum; but what contributed in a great Measure to damp their Satisfaction was the lnebriety of his Worship's Sword-Bearer, who having imbibed large Drenches of Claret and Hock, was rendered unfit to scale the Gates and Stiles belonging to their Grounds, which, in a formal Procession, they yearly Survey, and by tumbling over Neck and Heels, unhappily lost the Insigne of his Office, viz. a Gold Sword about four inches long, of no inconsiderable Value.”

 

The alcohol-fuelled ‘procession’ around the grounds surely satirises the traditional ceremony of ‘beating the bounds’. Perhaps the four-inch miniature Sword of Office still lies in a Stroud Green back garden waiting to be found.

 

In the 1770s the Corporartion moved its headquarters to The Crown, a famous Islington tavern in Essex Road, where celebrity drinkers included the playwright Oliver Goldsmith, who lived at Canonbury Tower in 1763-4. In July 1772 on election day the aldermen processed in full fancy dress from Dobneys to ‘Cannonbury House’ in leggings, fur-trimmed robes and tricorn hats, preceded by a band and regalia, with a ball ‘for the ladies’ that went on until near daybreak.

 

Monday, July 26th, 1773,the day of Thomas Legg’s election, was particularly significant for the Ancient Corporation, as this was the day when its two official anthems, ‘Song for the Corporation of Stroud Green’ and ‘Song for the Ancient Corporation….’ were published together in a small book published in Dublin, ‘Fraternal Melody’.

 

Both are clearly drinking songs, managing to mix Greek myth, high-minded civic duty and tavern high-jinks. The first begins:

 

Ye Sons of Jollity and Mirth

Of each denomination,

Attend, while I declare the worth,

Of Stroud Green Corporation

 

The second song, shorter but no less convivial, begins:

 

Come let us unite,

Our Voices to Night,

Stroud-Green is the Theme of my Song;

That fam’d Corporation,

Of high estimation,

And Members that to it belong.

 

The music to both songs has been identified and in 2017 ‘Ye Sons of Jollity and Mirth’ was sung again, perhaps for the first time since the 1770s, at the Stapleton Tavern;  both songs might be performed again this summer in July, the 250th anniversary of Thomas Legg’s election, if there is any appetite for the show.

 

An extravagant dinner held at a Hornsey country residence known as Mount Pleasant House in 1775 was recorded as including ‘turtles, venison &c, and amongst other species of luxury too tedious to mention … 45 ducks and onions’. After this, the Corporation’s high-jinks faded away. The last recorded event is an “Annual Aleconner’s Visit” to “Brother Kippin” at the Golden Anchor in Clerkenwell on December 7th, 1779.

 

The village pub in Stroud Green changed hands in 1769, and its is not clear whether the Corporation ever returned, although the pub has retained its name since and connection to the ancient Stapleton Hall manor house next door, the oldest inhabited house in Haringey. Forty years later, in 1811, local people still remembered the visits of the Ancient Corporation, when gentlemen would meet annually in the summer time, “to regale themselves on the grass with cakes, ale, &c. They styled themselves the “Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Corporation of Stroud Green;” and the number of persons that were drawn to the spot on these occasions, produced a scene, similar to that of a country wake or fair.”

 

A folk memory from around the same time describes the tavern as embellished with a cloth draped over the front door with the inscription: “You are Welcome All to Stapleton Hall”. (22)

 

The magnificent Stroud Green Badge of 1773, the only piece of Corporation regalia to have come down to us, cannot have come cheap. About four inches across of brightly painted enamel and glass, it is a medallion within a paste star of imitation diamonds and rubies. On the front is a miniature painting of St George and the Dragon, with the motto ‘Justice, Truth, Friendship’ in gold. A sword and mace are at right angles behind, with a clip by which it could be attached to a ribbon for hanging round the neck.

 

The Victoria and Albert Museum’s curator for enamels, Judith Crouch, suggests the badge was likely to be more expensive than average because of the painting, gilding and elaborate pastes used.

 

And who was ‘Sir Thomas Legg, Knight of the Oak’? The Order of the Oak was imaginary, and the real Thomas Legg was no ‘Sir’: he was almost certainly a 56-year old tailor with a shop in newly fashionable Jermyn Street, and a house in the City of London just around the corner from the Corporation of London’s Guildhall.

 

What of the Ancient Corporation today? Perhaps it’s coming back. In 2011 and 2017, with the enthusiastic support of pub management, the Stapleton Tavern held upbeat bar-room mock-elections for a Mayor, with fancy dress, speeches, voting, and plenty of drinks.  Perhaps it will happen again.   For this year is the 250th anniversary of ‘Thomas Legg’s election, and Stroud Green's entry into the history books.  At the time of writing there is no clear support for such a plan from either brewery, owner or licensee of the Stapleton Tavern, and It would be a shame if the ancient pub’s history and a significant anniversary were ignored.

 

To follow The Ancient Corporation online, please visit ‘CorporationofStroudGreen’ on Facebook, @stroudgreen1773 on Twitter and Instagram, or Mayor Thomas Legg’s blog at the new Stroud Green History Web at www.krappyrubsnif.co.uk. Likes, comments, suggestions and new material welcome

 

 

 

 

About the author

 

Michael Durham worked as a national newspaper journalist with the Sunday Times, Independent and Observer, covering news and current affairs and writing on health, education and consumer topics. He remains an explorer (both of inner landscapes and the real world). He has lived in Stroud Green since 1987 and is an occasional customer of The Stapleton Tavern.