Normally, we here at the Observer love nothing more than a baseless rumour mill, but today we’re here to debunk one. For many years the house that was used to plan and execute the Gunpowder Plot was referred to as ‘Guy Fawkes Residence’. It was situated on the Thames Foreshore close to Lambeth Bridge and was leased by Fawkes accomplice Robert Catesby due to the property’s Zone 1 address and handy access to Parliament (homes with river views being a bit cheaper in the 17th century Vauxhall than today).
So what was our house in Upper Fore Street actually used for? It was a spacious and elegant family home, perfect for light entertaining or stashing gunpowder intended to blow up people. Said gunpowder was then transferred at night to a leased storage space beneath the House of Lords. As most of the conspirators lived in the north, the house was used for meetings and perhaps lodging. And were imagining a kind of ‘Netflix and chill meets mancave’ crash pad scenario for the doomed men. And while Fawkes was known to frequent the ‘gaff, he never lived there.
In the end poor Fawkes and three of his co-conspirators, including Catesby, were hung, drawn and quartered for their espionage, and that got us in the office thinking. Once you’ve been hung you’re pretty much dead anyway, so wouldn’t then having your genitalia chopped off (drawing) and then chopping up your body (quartering) seem a bit, well, unnecessary? And one can only imagine what the clean up afterwards was like.
So yes, we can claim a bit of the Gunpowder Plot as our own but sad, dismembered Fawkes never lived there.
