Riceyman Steps
You won’t find Riceyman Steps in any A to Z of London or Sat/Nav - but it does exist, well unofficially anyway. Riceyman Steps refers to an unnamed flight of public steps which lead from Gwynne Place Kings Cross Road, up to Granville Square. They were unofficially named by Arnold Bennett in his novel Riceyman Steps, telling a wonderful story of 1919's Edwardian London, from life around a second-hand old bookshop which stood in Granville Place, (as it was called in Bennett’s day) at the bottom of these steps.
In 1888 at the age of twenty-one, Arnold Bennett left Staffordshire for London, ten years later he had his first novel, "A man from the North" published. The compelling book Riceyman Steps he wrote during his mid-fifties in 1923, it portrays life around these steps and is set in Clerkenwell. With the following description;
"Riceyman steps, twenty in number, are divided by a half landing into a series of ten." The central figure of this story is Henry Earlforward a bookseller who has his bookshop with one window facing Kings Cross Road and another window and door in Riceyman Steps. At the top of the steps is Granville Square which, in his book becomes Riceyman Square. The description of the Square and surrounding Clerkenwell area, just after the First World War is truly remarkable.
If you want a good read of this near-forgotten classic book which brings to life Clerkenwell in the autumn of 1919 then treat yourself.
Arnold Bennett, Riceyman Steps.
London Time
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