They are in Cheapside, two and a half miles away, and the church they hang in is a different Bow entirely
The Bow Bells holds a 4.4 from nine hundred and seventy-two people, is listed at one to twenty pounds, and the bells in the name are not in Bow.
They never were.
The definition
A Cockney is a person born within the sound of Bow Bells.
Which everybody knows, and which is repeated constantly, and which sends people to this district looking for a church.
And it is the wrong Bow.
They are in Cheapside
The bells are those of St Mary-le-Bow – which is in Cheapside, in the City of London, two and a half miles west of here.
And it is called le-Bow because of the bows – the arches – in its Norman crypt.
Nothing whatsoever to do with this district, which is named after a bow-shaped bridge over the Lea.
Two entirely unrelated bows, and the most famous definition in London has been attached to the wrong one for centuries.
And you cannot hear them from here
Which is the point.
Because the sound of a church bell carries a certain distance – and it depends on the wind, and the weather, and on what is in the way.
And studies of the audible range have been done, and the honest answer is that the bells were once audible over a substantial part of the East End – and that traffic noise and buildings have shrunk that radius enormously.
The zone in which you can now hear them is very small.
Which means that on the strict definition, almost nobody alive can be a Cockney – because the maternity hospitals are outside the range, and the bells are drowned by the road.
And the bells were destroyed
Which is the fact that finishes it.
Because St Mary-le-Bow was bombed in 1941, and the bells fell. The church was gutted.
And they were recast, and rehung, and did not ring again until 1961.
Which means that for twenty years, no Cockney could be born at all.
Which is the finding
Eight postcodes and twelve hundred and twenty-seven articles.
The tellable version wins – and it wins so completely that an entire identity is defined by a sound that comes from somewhere else, that most people cannot hear, and that stopped for two decades.
Verdict
Good pub, cheap, honest number.
Go, and listen. You will not hear anything.
And Bow is a bridge
Which is the actual etymology of this district, and it has nothing to do with bells.
Because Bow is named after a bridge over the River Lea – and it was a bow-shaped bridge, arched, which was unusual enough at the time to be worth naming a place after.
And it is said to have been built at the instruction of Matilda, the wife of Henry I – who is supposed to have got wet crossing the ford and decided nobody should have to again.
The Prat has looked. It is repeated everywhere, and it is not securely documented.
The tellable version wins. Even about a bridge.
Oeko Angebot ([email protected])
