Charles Dickens
Jacob's Island was immortalised by Charles Dickens's novel Oliver Twist, in which the principal villain Bill Sikes (one of Dickens's nastiest characters) dies in the mud of 'Folly Ditch'. Dickens provides a vivid description of what it was like:
"... crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem to be too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud and threatening to fall into it – as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations, every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage: all these ornament the banks of Jacob's Island."
Dickens describes Jacob's Island by imagining a viewer looking on from Mill Lane (now street):
"a stranger, looking from one of the wooden bridges thrown across it at Mill Lane, will see the inhabitants of the houses on either side lowering from their back doors and windows, buckets, pails, domestic utensils of all kinds, in which to haul the water up; and when his eye is turned from these operations to the houses themselves, his utmost astonishment will be excited by the scene before him. Crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening to fall into it—as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations; every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage; all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch."
Oliver Twist, Chapter 50
The fugitive Sikes runs to a hideout here, where he eventually meets his end by hanging. The impoverished area, now luxury flats, is thus described: "To reach this place, the visitor has to penetrate through a maze of close, narrow, and muddy streets, thronged by the roughest and poorest of waterside people, and devoted to the traffic they may be supposed to occasion. The cheapest and least delicate provisions are heaped in the shops; the coarsest and commonest articles of wearing apparel dangle at the salesman's door, and stream from the house-parapet and windows. Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest class, ballast-heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the raff and refuse of the river, he makes his way with difficulty along, assailed by offensive sights and smells from the narrow alleys which branch off on the right and left, and deafened by the clash of ponderous waggons that bear great piles of merchandise from the stacks of warehouses that rise from every corner. Arriving, at length, in streets remoter and less-frequented than those through which he has passed, he walks beneath tottering house-fronts projecting over the pavement, dismantled walls that seem to totter as he passes, chimneys half crushed half hesitating to fall, windows guarded by rusty iron bars that time and dirt have almost eaten away, every imaginable sign of desolation and neglect."
Bill Sikes' House
In 1911, the Bermondsey Council opposed a suggestion by the London County Council that George's Yard, in Bermondsey, should be renamed Twist's Court, to reflect the site of the demise of the Dickens' character Bill Sikes. Nine years later a clerk with the Bermondsey Council found a plan dated 5 April 1855 which showed 'Bill Sikes' house' marked on Jacob's Island. This was at a time when the London County Council was proposing that Jacob's Island should be 'demolished'. The following year, it was noted that 'so accurately' did Dickens 'describe the scene that the house that he chose for Bill Sikes's end was easily located' The house, which had been in Metcalf Court as shown in a reproduction of the 1855 plan, was behind 18 Eckell Street (formerly Edwards Street), and occupied as stables. But in the time of Dickens it overlooked the Folly Ditch on one side and was approached by means of two wooden bridges across the mill stream.
On to the cache. At the co-ordinates you will find an information plaque which is interesting but inaccurate! You need to answer the following and solve the puzzle -
How many black rings are there around the chimney above? Answer = AB
You know what to do! Substitute the following to find the final co-ordinates -
N 51 30. 0 B (A+B) W 000 04. A 7 B
Big thanks to Matt from Londonist for permission to use information from their fabulous website.