[Illustration: Book Cover]
NOOKS AND CORNERS OF OLD LONDON
[Illustration: The Mansion House]
NOOKS AND CORNERS
OF OLD LONDON
By
Charles and Marie Hemstreet
Authors of "Nooks and Corners of Old New
York," "Literary New York," etc.
WITH SPECIAL ILLUSTRATIONS
By
W. J. Roberts
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
JAMES POTT & COMPANY
Copyright, 1910, by JAMES POTT & COMPANY
FOREWORD
A writing of the odd nooks and quaint corners of wonderful old London
town, arranged so that a wanderer may reach the points in consecutive
order without going too far afield.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. WITHIN SOUND OF BOW BELLS 9
II. ON THE WAY TO GREAT ST. HELEN'S 38
III. MILTON'S BIRTHPLACE, LAMB'S WORKSHOP, AND SOME OTHER
THINGS 53
IV. BY WAY OF THE TOWER AND LONDON BRIDGE 68
V. THE SPELL OF THE TEMPLE AND INNS OF COURT 95
VI. ALONG THE STRAND, AND A PEEP AT COVENT GARDEN AND THE
COFFEE HOUSES 110
VII. A PASSING GLIMPSE OF MANY WINDOWS 135
VIII. FROM REGENT STREET TO THE SHADOWS OF SOHO 163
INDEX 177
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
THE MANSION HOUSE Frontispiece
CHURCH OF ST. LAWRENCE JEWRY AND FRONT OF THE GUILDHALL 16
THE FAMOUS PLANE TREE, WOOD STREET, CHEAPSIDE 22
THE MARTYRS' MEMORIAL, SMITHFIELD 32
EXTERIOR OF THE DINING HALL, CHARTERHOUSE 36
DEFOE TOMB 44
THE TOWER OF LONDON 72
STAPLE INN, LOOKING TOWARD HOLBORN GATEWAY 106
ENTRANCE TO OLD ROMAN BATH, STRAND LANE 114
ADELPHI TERRACE 126
TRAFALGAR SQUARE 134
INTERIOR OF ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER 136
ONE
WITHIN SOUND OF BOW BELLS
Said the Italian sculptor Canova, "Gladly would I journey to London if
only to see Somerset House, St. Paul's and St. Stephen's, Walbrook."
Just behind the Mansion House, in the ancient by-way called Walbrook,
stands hidden away the church of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, planned by Sir
Christopher Wren. Its name recalls one of the little streams of the
London of centuries ago, called the Brook by the Wall. Outwardly the
only thing to take notice of is the shop which has been built into its
side, and it is a surprise to note its lofty dome as seen from within.
The Corporation was very proud of St. Stephen's when it was first built,
and after many expressions of gratitude as to the skill and economy
evidenced by the great architect, presented Lady Wren with a purse of
ten guineas.
On the tower of the Royal Exchange rests a great gilded grasshopper,
eleven feet in length, put up when the Exchange, founded by Sir Thomas
Gresham, was built. It has been there for more than three hundred years.
The Great Fire of 1666 destroyed the building, but the metal grasshopper
was rescued from the ruins and raised above the dome when a new
structure was erected. In 1838 the Exchange was again burned, but the
tower on which the emblem rests was saved. The grasshopper was believed
to cast a spell of enchantment, insuring riches and good fortune, at
least so the old Romans used to think.
Close by the Mansion House the street called Poultry ends. This homely
name has clung to it for more than three hundred years, ever since the
poulterers had their chief market here. Where the house numbered 31
stands, Thomas Hood, who wrote the "Bridge of Sighs," was born in 1799.
Elaborate terra cotta panels on the house No. 14, commemorate the royal
processions that passed through Poultry in 1546, 1561, 1660 and 1844.
The thoroughfare called Old Jewry was occupied by the Jews whom William
I. brought over from Rouen, and came by its name from a synagogue which
was located in this street up to the time of the persecution of the Jews
in 1291.
Bucklersbury enters from the south where Poultry ends and Cheapside
begins, taking its name from the Bukerels, quite a famous family of the
13th century, one member of whom was made the Lord Mayor. The
thoroughfare was for centuries a market place for fruits and herbs, and
here dealers in medicines and drugs had their shops. In "The Merry Wives
of Windsor," Shakespeare tells of those who smell like Bucklersbury in
simple time. At this end of Bucklersbury there stood, in the middle of
the road, set up in 1285, the Great Conduit or cistern, round, and of
stone, to which water was brought underground in leaden pipes from
Paddington. Beside the Great Conduit, Jack Cade, the Kentish rebel,
beheaded Lord Say, the king's favourite. Here Lady Jane Grey was
proclaimed queen, here DeFoe was put in the stocks and the Bishop of
Exeter beheaded. After the Great Fire Bucklersbury market was no more.
In Pudding Lane by London Bridge, in the year 1666, a fire started which
has always been known as the Great Fire, for by it five-sixths of London
within and without the walls was destroyed. From September 2nd to the
7th it burned, eating up 13,200 houses, 89 churches, and despoiling 460
streets.
"Chepe" is an old-time name for market, and there have been markets of
one kind or another in the neighbourhood of Cheapside for hundreds of
years. In the days of King Edward III. and on into the times of Burly
King Hal, Cheapside was a famous street and the place of city pageants.
When Elizabeth held her much bejewelled court, Cheapside was the
gathering point for the shops of goldsmiths.
Set in the wall of house No. 6, near the end of Ironmonger Lane, is a
panel of 1668, limning the head of a girl with flowing hair--part of
the arms of the Mercers' Company.
Turn again, Whittington
Lord Mayor of London.
This is what the bells of St. Mary le Bow, sometimes called Bow Church,
chimed in the ears of Dick Whittington running away from London and his
hardships as a kitchen boy. And the sound cheered him, so that he did
turn, and in time came to be the best and most famous Lord Mayor that
London ever had. The church came by its name for being the first church
in London to be built on "bows" as the stone arches were called. Bow
Church was swallowed up by the Great Fire, and Sir Christopher Wren
rebuilt the present frame upon the ruins of the old arches. The tower is
considered the finest of the great number built by Wren after the Fire.
From the balcony many kings and queens and their attendants have
witnessed the shows and pageants in Cheapside. The Great Bell of Bow is
the last of the churches to speak in the old rhyme "Oranges and
Lemons," in which one can almost hear the different tones of the bells
as they question and answer each other:
Oranges and lemons,
Said the Bells of St. Clement's.
You owe me five farthings,
Said the Bells of St. Martins.
When will you pay me,
Said the Bells of Old Bailey.
When I grow rich,
Said the Bells of Shoreditch.
When will that be,
Said the Bells of Stepney.
I do not know,
Said the Great Bell of Bow.
Sir Christopher Wren, who built the present Bow Church, was a renowned
English architect, and is looked upon as having fashioned most of modern
London. He was born in 1632 and died in 1723. Early in life he devoted
himself to astronomy, chemistry, anatomy and mathematics as well as to
architecture, his real art. He gave much time to the invention of
mathematical instruments, and perfected the then recently invented
barometer. When St. Paul's Cathedral was found to be in a ruined
condition, Wren worked on plans for its restoration, but the Great Fire
of 1666 swept it away together with the greater part of London. Wren
planned to rebuild the city along new lines, with wide thoroughfares
radiating from a great central square. This, however, was not adopted
despite his great reputation. He did, though, rebuild St. Paul's and
more than fifty other churches which the fire had destroyed. His
economical use of money in his work was remarkable. In most cases he did
not attempt to make a feature of the entire building, confining himself
to a special part--a spire or an interior. He was 90 years old when he
died and was buried in the St. Paul's he had constructed. His last years
were sorrowful in that he was almost entirely neglected by the country
for which he had done so much.
The pigeons strutting about Guildhall Yard in front of the Guildhall,
that council hall of the City, are descendants of those that have
inhabited the yard time out of mind. The birds of to-day are a
remarkably tame variety, and crowd the court so thickly that there is
danger at every foot of treading upon them, for they seem to feel their
right to be here and refuse obstinately to give way to anyone. Although
the Guildhall suffered much in the Great Fire, and although it has been
many times restored and altered, there are still remaining portions of
the original building of 1411, and the crypt is as when first designed.
It was in this hall that Buckingham urged the people to acknowledge the
Duke of Gloucester king, after the death of Edward IV. and while the
little princes were shut up in the Tower; here, too, that Anne Askew, a
young and beautiful woman and one of the first Protestant martyrs, was
tried for heresy. Afterwards she was burned at Smithfield.
[Illustration: Church of St. Lawrence, Jewry, and front of the Guild
Hall]
Close by the Guildhall, to the west of the Yard, stands the official
church of the Corporation--St. Lawrence Jewry, the most expensive of
all the churches built by Wren, costing 12,000 pounds, and which it took
nine years, from 1671 to 1680, to build. The original clock, still to be
seen in the spire, was made by a clockmaker whose shop was to be found
in one of the houses which in that day lined both sides of London
Bridge.
When the Great Plague raged in 1665, the churchyard of St. Stephen's,
Colman Street, was a place of interment for plague victims. It is said
of John Hayward, sexton of the church at the time, that when everyone
through fear refused him aid, he alone drove the death cart and unaided
buried all the victims who lived within the parish limits.
Almost opposite St. Stephen's, in the short and narrow passageway with
the musical name of Great Bell Alley, midway of the block on the north
side, Robert Bloomfield, the poet of country scenes, in early days
worked as a shoemaker in a garret. While living here in extreme
poverty, Bloomfield, during his working hours, thought out the
"Farmer's Boy," which when he was able to purchase paper for, he made
haste to write. In two years twenty thousand copies of the poem had been
sold. Bloomfield was born in a little Suffolk village in 1766, and
worked as helper to a farmer, but ran away to London hoping to gain fame
and fortune as a poet. After the success of the "Farmer's Boy," he wrote
"Rural Tales," "News from the Farm" and other stories in verse, but
although they met with a welcome he finally drifted back to his own
country where he died very poor.
An aged sign, setting forth what looks to be a swan with two heads, is
set in the doorway above a railway parcels office in Gresham Street, at
the Aldermanbury corner, and is the original marking of the tavern
called "The Swan with two Necks," a most famous resort, which stood on
this site for almost three hundred years. It was a thriving place in
1556, and fell from public favour only when the age of stage coaches
passed away.
Aldermanbury came by its name because of there being held in the street
a famous court or bury of the Aldermen.
The church of St. Mary in Aldermanbury, close by the Guildhall, was the
scene of the marriage in 1656 of John Milton and Catherine Woodcock his
second wife. These two were very happy, and Milton mourned deeply when
fifteen months after the wedding he was left a widower. Under the altar
of this church was buried in 1689, Lord Jeffreys, the great favourite of
James II. and the notorious leader of the Bloody Assizes. His tomb is
still to be seen here.
From the west side of Aldermanbury stretches Love Lane, at the end of
which stands the small church of St. Alban's, built by Inigo Jones in
1634, severely damaged in the Great Fire, and restored by Wren in 1685.
It guards the site of the first house of worship set up by good King
Alfred after he had defeated the Danes. Close by the altar is an ancient
hour glass of quaint design, a relic of 16th century days, when the
preacher regulated the length of his sermons by the running sand.
The name of Milk Street, in a locality formerly given over to the
sellers of milk, has crept into history because it was here that Sir
Thomas More the great Lord Chancellor was born, on the east side of the
way, near Cheapside in 1480. He was found guilty of high treason when he
refused to acknowledge the lawfulness of the marriage of Henry VIII. to
Anne Boleyn and was beheaded in the Tower, the grim Tower whose frowning
walls hide many dark secrets.
One of the most important of London taverns, The Mermaid, stood in
Cheapside beyond Friday Street and close to Bread Street on the south
side of the road. Ben Jonson founded the Mermaid Club at this house in
1603, and here met in social converse Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher,
Dr. Donne, Selden and many another author. It is recorded that here
assembled "more talent and genius than ever met before or since." The
house, among so many others, was destroyed in the Great Fire. In the
epistle of Beaumont to Jonson, the Mermaid is spoken of thus:
What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid; heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life.
In Friday Street, strangely enough, the Wednesday Club had its meetings,
and in 1694 were held the conferences, headed by William Paterson,
Scotch merchant, which resulted in the establishment of the Bank of
England, the first joint-stock bank of England.
Friday Street was, in other days, the heart of the district of
fishmongers, and came by its name because of Friday being the market-day
and fish-market-day as well.
In Cheapside, where Wood Street joins it, stood a cross, set up by
Edward I., to mark one of the spots where the funeral bier of his
beloved Queen Eleanor rested on the journey from Lincoln to Westminster
Abbey. This cross was finally destroyed in 1643, during the mayoralty of
Isaac Pennington, as under the Commonwealth it came to be regarded as a
relic of superstition.
[Illustration: The famous Plane Tree--Wood Street, Cheapside]
Where Wood Street joins Cheapside, close by the northwest corner, grows
a plane-tree, in a spot surrounded on three sides by houses, on ground
estimated to be worth one million pounds an acre. Although the space is
amply large for a building, and although innumerable legal efforts have
been made to build here, the tree is protected in the leases of the
nearby houses--evidently indefinitely protected under the "ancient
lights" laws which prevent shutting off light from windows. Still
further is the tree safe from invasion because it grows on ground that
was once part of the churchyard of St. Peters--a church destroyed in the
Great Fire--and an English law prevents building on sacred ground
without a special act of Parliament. This is the tree that Wordsworth
knew and loved, and of which he wrote in "Poor Susan":
At the corner of Wood Street when daylight appears,
There's a thrush that sings loud; it has sung for three years.
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard,
In the silence of morning, the song of the bird.
A clock without a face, set in a church steeple, is the strange detail
of the church of St. Vedast in Foster Lane opposite the Post Office,
east. No other church in London has its like. It has all the works of a
regular clock, but there are no dials, a bell proclaiming the hours.
Near the northeast corner of St. Paul's Cathedral at the top of Ludgate
Hill, once stood the Cross of St. Paul, where for centuries before the
present cathedral was built sermons were preached, heretics were made to
recant and witches to confess. The pulpit was destroyed by order of
Parliament in 1643. Where the cathedral stands a church has been from
very early times. The first is believed to have been built by
Christians in the time of the Romans. There certainly was a church here,
which was reconstructed under Ethelbert, King of Kent, in 610. It was
burned in 961 and immediately rebuilt. Again in 1087 it was destroyed by
fire and a new church begun at once, but this was not completed for more
than 200 years. This Old St. Paul's, being many times restored, finally
came to an end in the Great Fire of 1666. The present cathedral was
begun in 1675, from designs by Sir Christopher Wren, and completed in
1710.
The open way called St. Paul's Churchyard was of much greater extent
around Old St. Paul's than it is about the cathedral of this day. Then
it extended quite to the present Paternoster Row on the north and to
Carter Lane on the south. On the northern side were the business places
of many booksellers just as in Paternoster Row now; and to the south
were several taverns of renown. Here, where Bell Yard is, to the north
of Knightrider Street, was the Doctors' Commons where, previous to 1861,
marriage licenses were issued. Right here, too, where the archway leads
into Bell Yard from Carter Lane is a tablet to mark the site of the old
Bell Tavern, where Shakespeare and his companions used to meet and talk
about the plays which were afterwards to delight an entire world.
The Chapter Coffee House of the 18th century ceased to exist in 1854,
but on its old site, at the eastern end of Paternoster Row, is a new
tavern. There has been a house of public entertainment on this spot for
more than two hundred years. In its palmy days the Chapter was the
gathering place of the booksellers whose business places were in this
locality, and many of them still continue here. To the Chapter,
Charlotte Brontë and her sister came on their first visit to London,
much to the surprise of the proprietor who never remembered ever before
having women guests. The Brontës had heard their father mention the
Chapter, and as it was the only inn they knew by name they came here.
In Panyer Alley, a short and narrow road extending from the north side
of Paternoster Row to Newgate Street, on one of the houses on the east
side of the way, there is an odd little stone figure of a boy sitting on
a pannier or basket. Carved in the stone is this quaint old rhyme:
When ye have sought
The Citty Round
Yet still this is
The Highest Ground
August 27 1688
In the 14th century a proclamation was made against the sale of bread in
the houses of bakers, and it could only be sold in the king's markets.
It was, however, sold on the streets in baskets, or panniers. Panyer
Alley was a place where the bakers' boys could always be found and where
their wares were eagerly purchased.
Celebrated indeed was the Ivy Lane Club, in Ivy Lane off Paternoster
Row. Dr. Samuel Johnson started the gathering to promote literary
discussion and to lighten and relieve his heavy working hours in Gough
Square, and it met every Friday evening, at the beefsteak house called
the King's Head.
Cut through the grounds of old Warwick Palace, where Paternoster Row
ends, is Warwick Lane. There is a reminder here of a long ago time, in a
carved panel of 1668, set in the wall of the first house from Newgate
Street on the west side of the way, depicting the grand old man of those
historic days--Warwick the King Maker. Bulwer Lytton has interestingly
combined history and fiction in his spirited tale the "Last of the
Barons," dealing with the life of the Earl of Warwick, who literally
held the fortunes of kings in the hollow of his hand.
One of the oldest streets of London is Newgate, named during the reign
of Henry I. at the time Old St. Paul's was being repaired. Then the
street from Cheapside to Ludgate was blocked and impassable and a new
gate was pierced through the wall of the city, where now Old Bailey
touches Newgate Street, so as to make a direct road to Ludgate and to
Ludgate Hill. The very beginning of Newgate Prison was here at this
gate, for the rooms over the arch were used as a prison.
Where the New Central Criminal Court now is, famous Newgate Prison stood
for more than one hundred years the chief prison of London. The building
of Newgate was begun in 1770. In 1780, when scarcely completed, it was
partly destroyed by the No-Popery rioters. At the head of these was Lord
George Gordon, and the lawless scenes are picturesquely written of in
Charles Dickens' novel of the times, "Barnaby Rudge." Of the many famous
prisoners of old Newgate were Jack Sheppard, Titus Oates, Claude Duval,
Dick Turpin, and Lord George Gordon himself who died here a prisoner.
DeFoe was detained here for publishing his "Shortest Way with
Dissenters," and William Penn for preaching in the streets. For eighty
years the open space in front of Newgate was used for public executions,
taking the place of Tyburn.
Prisoners were taken from Newgate to Tyburn for execution, and as they
passed the church of St. Sepulchre, each was given a nosegay of flowers.
Another custom of this church, carried on for many years by means of a
legacy left by a Christian Londoner, was in having the church clerk
ring a bell beneath the windows of the cell of the condemned the night
before his execution, so that he might be reminded to make his peace
with God, reciting as he rang his bell:
All you that in the condemned hold do lie,
Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die;
Watch all and pray, the hour is drawing near
That you before the Almighty shall appear;
Examine well yourselves, in time repent,
That you may not to eternal flames be sent;
And when St. Sepulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,
The Lord above have mercy on your souls.
Within this church of St. Sepulchre were interred the remains of Captain
John Smith, who is said to have married the Indian princess Pocahontas.
He died in 1631, and his epitaph reads:
Here lies one conquered
that hath conquered kings.
St. Sepulchre was the last church edifice swept away by the great fire
of 1666.
Where Cock Lane touches Giltspur Street, is Pie Corner, the extreme
limit of the Great Fire of 1666. It was finally stopped here, after it
had burned its destroying way quite across London from Pudding Lane.
On a Giltspur Street house wall, near Pie Corner, there is part of a
carved figure of a child, placed here where the Great Fire was finally
extinguished. The inscription beneath the figure is now obliterated, but
it originally read:
This boy is in memory put up
of the Fire of London,
occasioned by the sin
of Gluttony, 1666.
Just what the inscription meant is uncertain, but perhaps it referred to
the fact that the Great Fire started in Pudding Lane and burned itself
out in Pie Corner, which would seem to indicate that some Old Londoners
had a nice sense of humour. This Giltspur Street was in olden times a
continuation of Knightrider Street, taking its name from the spurs worn
by the knights who galloped along the road on their way to the
tournaments at Smithfield.
The Cock Lane Ghost found its way into history in this wise. In this
lane in 1762, lived a man named Parsons. Passers-by heard strange noises
coming from his house, and neighbours thought they saw a luminous lady
who bore a resemblance to a Mrs. Kemt who had died here a few years
earlier. The rumour spread that Mrs. Kemt had been poisoned. The
supposed ghost submitted to questioning, making replies by knockings.
Mr. Kemt finally was suspected of having done away with his wife. Great
crowds came to see the ghost and hear her ghostly rappings. Many were
sceptics, and eventually the daughter of Parsons, who was suspected of
causing the ghostly sounds, was spirited away from her home and taken to
the crypt of St. John's Church, close by the square of that name. There
Dr. Samuel Johnson and others of prominence who had taken deep interest
in the affair, by inducement, argument and threats, cleared up the
deception. It was learned that the girl had taken a board into bed with
her and by scratching upon it had produced the mysterious sounds. As a
result of the exposure, Parsons was prosecuted for imposture, and
condemned to stand three hours in the pillory.
[Illustration: The Martyrs' Memorial--Smithfield]
Wide-spreading Smithfield Market stretches over ground that for
centuries has witnessed scenes of butchery, both human and animal. It
was originally a "smoothfield" beyond the wall of the City, where
tournaments took place, and where Bartholomew Fair was held annually for
more than seven centuries until its extinction in 1855. This Fair,
planned to foster trade and establish useful relations in buying and
selling, degenerated into an excuse for unrestrained license and
pleasure seeking. In the 13th century, Smithfield became a place of
public execution, the forerunner of Tyburn and Newgate, and on this
ground was beheaded in 1305, William Wallace, the Scotch patriot, hero
of Jane Porter's once famous "Scottish Chiefs." It was here, too, that
Wat Tyler was slain by Lord Mayor Sir William Walworth in 1381; here too
Protestants were burned at the stake in the days of "Bloody Mary," and
Nonconformists in Queen Elizabeth's time. To the south of the market
there is an open square, and in the centre of this is a statue erected
as a memorial to the Martyrs. Smithfield came to be the great cattle
mart of London, and so remained until 1855 when it was removed and the
present market soon after established.
The Square, where stands the memorial to the Martyrs, is between the
market and St. Bartholomew's Hospital, the oldest institution of its
kind in London and one of the wealthiest. Rahere, the favourite of Henry
I., founded it in 1123, and it has been restored in parts and enlarged
many times. You can see above the west gate the statue of Henry VIII.
where it was set when the gate was built in 1702. Close by in the wall
is a commemorative tablet that recites the burning of the Protestant
martyrs. Many world famous men have been connected with the Hospital.
Sir Richard Owen, noted as an anatomist was a surgeon here, and so was
Harvey, discoverer of the circulation of the blood.
St. Bartholomew the Less is the name of the church inside of the walls
of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. This church was built by Rahere, but has
been modernized several times and partly rebuilt in 1824. It was here,
that Inigo Jones, the great architect, was baptised.
Quaintly picturesque in its location is the mediæval burying ground of
St. Bartholomew the Great; its monuments crumbling to decay, its
greenery growing rank--a strangely hidden spot, hemmed in by church
walls, and on one side by tottering, hundreds-of-year-old buildings
whose seething humanity makes the place the more ancient by contrast.
The church of St. Bartholomew the Great, of which this is the old time
burying ground, lies hidden beyond the West Smithfield houses, hemmed in
by the overcrowded human hives of Little Britain and Cloth Fair. From
some points, just a glimpse can be had of its ancient red brick tower.
This church is very old, next to the chapel in the Tower the oldest in
London, founded by Rahere in 1123. Entrance to it is through an Early
English gateway between the houses of West Smithfield, and so past the
mouldering graveyard. The overhanging houses of Cloth Fair seem to have
turned their backs on this home of long dead people.
Like a wraith of bygone romance is dingy Cloth Fair, with its
lath-and-plaster houses and the tottering remains of the grandeur of
other days. Once the habitation of merchant princes and their wealthy
neighbours, it has degenerated into the abode of swarming small
tradesmen and day workers whose scant means find expression in ugliness
and penury. In this street, in times when the Bartholomew Fair held
yearly sway in Smithfield, the quaintly named "Court of Pie Powder" was
held, where licenses were granted for the Fair and where weights and
measures were corrected.
[Illustration: Exterior of the Dining Hall, Charterhouse]
The ancient and picturesque Charterhouse extends over the ground once
used as a field in which were buried victims of the Plague. Parts of the
Charterhouse have been there since 1371, and the buildings of to-day
have been gradually added during the passing centuries. This was
originally a Carthusian monastery, but after its dissolution in 1537,
the property passed through many hands before it came to that of a
wealthy coal owner of the North, Thomas Sutton, in 1611, who here set up
his school for "40 poor boys" and "80 poor men." Thackeray's Colonel
Newcomb was one of the "poor boys." The school occupied the buildings
until 1872 when it was transferred to Surrey, and the place is now an
almshouse for the "poor men" and for the Charterhouse School of the
ancient Merchant Taylors' Company.
Gothic St. John's Gate, a mediæval survival in St. John's Lane out of
Clerkenwell Road, is all that remains of a priory which was the chief
English seat of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, and which was
erected in 1504. Dr. Johnson lived in a room over the old gateway in
1731, and did hack work for Cave, the founder of the "Gentleman's
Magazine," whose office was here also. Nowadays the building is
headquarters for the Order of St. John which is engaged in hospital
work.
The church of St. John in nearby St. John's Square, was built upon a
crypt which was part of the old priory church of the Knights of St.
John. The crypt is still to be seen, and it was here that the final
exposure of the Cock Lane Ghost was made by Dr. Johnson.
Delightful memories of Dickens' folk crowd strong upon the journeyer
into Goswell Road beyond St. John's Square, for it was in this
thoroughfare that Mr. Pickwick lodged with Mrs. Bardell.
TWO
ON THE WAY TO GREAT ST. HELEN'S
The eastern section of the General Post Office stands on the site of the
ancient church and sanctuary of St. Martin's, commemorated in the street
of St. Martin's-le-Grand. This sanctuary was the outcome of a very old
custom--a place consecrated, where criminals who sought refuge within
its precincts were protected from all law. The Sanctuary of St. Martin's
was founded in the days of Edward the Confessor, and came to have a most
unsavoury reputation, for the rights of sanctuary brought a great
gathering of criminals of every sort and people of the lowest degree.
Within the shelter of the Sanctuary of St. Martin's, Miles Forest, one
of the murderers of the princes in the Tower, took refuge and finally
died.
The quiet little garden beside the church of St. Botolph Without
Aldersgate, was built over the graveyard that surrounded the church for
more than half a century. The church has stood here since 1796, and the
garden spot of to-day is called Postman's Park, because of the many
employes from the nearby General Post Office who gather here.
A fragment of the wall that surrounded early London is to be seen in the
northern boundary wall of the General Post Office, from Aldgate Street
to King Edward Street.
The walls that encircled Roman London, built between 360 and 380,
enclosed about 375 acres in its three miles of circumference, were
twelve feet thick, twenty feet in height, with towers at stated
distances twenty feet higher than the walls. It had its start near the
spot where the Tower is now, and followed generally the line of the
present streets of the Minories, Houndsditch, London Wall, and so on to
Newgate, Old Bailey, Ludgate to the Thames. The wall was marked in
later days by its chief gates--Ludgate, Aldgate, Cripplegate, Newgate,
Bishopsgate and Aldersgate. Fragments of it are still to be seen in the
street called London Wall, between Wood Street and Aldermanbury, where a
tablet marks it; at St. Giles, Cripplegate, and in the boundary wall of
the new Post Office from King William to Aldgate Street.
John Milton moved to the present Maidenhead Court from St. Bride's Lane.
It was then called Lamb Alley, and is off Aldersgate Street to the east.
This was his pretty garden house of which he often spoke. It was here he
had a sort of private school where he educated the two sons of his
sister and several children of his personal friends. Here, too, he
married Mary Powell, who before long finding married life irksome, left
her poet husband who even then was showing signs of the blindness that
was soon to be his portion.
In Jewin Street, about the year 1663, Milton lived when he had been
blind for ten years, and here he married Elizabeth Minshull, his third
wife.
In the street called Barbican, off Aldersgate Street, Milton lived for
two years after 1645, during which time he wrote "L'Allegro" and
"Comus." He moved here that he might have a large house to accommodate
the increasing number of pupils he had been educating in the Lamb's
Alley house. Here his wife, who had deserted him, returned, and here his
first child was born in 1646. In the narrow and winding roads
hereabouts, the great plague of 1665 caused greatest havoc.
Redcross Street came by its name because of a cross that once stood
where Beach Street touches Redcross.
In the green and quiet churchyard of St. Giles, Cripplegate, hemmed in
by tall warehouses, is a part of the old Roman wall, possibly the most
perfect bit that now remains. The church was built in the 14th century,
but has been well taken care of and often restored. Cripplegate takes
its name from "Crepel geat,"--a covered way or tunnel, which the Roman
soldiery used when defending the city wall. It was in this church that
Oliver Cromwell in 1620, when he was quite a young man, was married to
Elizabeth Bourchier. Milton, who wrote "Paradise Lost" in a house in
this parish, was buried here. In front of the chancel is a stone which
reads:
Near this spot was buried
John Milton
Author of 'Paradise Lost,'
Born 1608. Died 1674.
Foxe, who wrote the "Book of Martyrs," is also buried here, together
with Speed, the topographer, who died in 1629, and Sir Martin Frobisher,
the voyager, who was buried in 1594.
Although the part of town about Milton Street is fitted with memories of
Milton, this roadway was not named for him, but for a popular builder
who lived here. This is the former Grub Street, which Dr. Johnson's
dictionary speaks of as "inhabited by writers of small histories,
dictionaries and temporary poems; whence any mean production is called
Grub Street." Swift, writing of the street, said:
O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee,
Whose graceless children scorn to own thee;
Yet thou hast greater cause to be
Ashamed of them than they of thee.
On one side of the church of St. Alphage, which was at first a leper
hospital, there is yet to be seen a barred window through which the
afflicted could look and could hear the service, though they were not
permitted to enter the church. Across the road is a fragment of the old
Roman wall, railed off and preserved, and with it a bit of the
greensward that once formed part of the churchyard of St. Alphage.
[Illustration: Defoe Tomb]
Ruin and neglect mark what was once a green and beautiful spot--Bunhill
Fields--long the chief burial place for Nonconformists, its aged and
grime-covered stones now tottering in decay, and at war with the noise
of factory life coming from every side. Its original name was Bonehill
Fields, because it was a principal place of burial at the time of the
great plague. John Bunyan was buried here in 1688, and his tomb is still
to be seen. His memory recalls chiefly his great book "Pilgrim's
Progress," although he wrote many others--sixty in all. The "Pilgrim's
Progress" was written while he was in Bedford Jail, where he was
confined for twelve years for being a Dissenter. During this time he
supported his family by making lace. Here, too, is the tomb of Daniel
DeFoe, who was the son of a butcher of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and whose
fame also rests upon a single book, "Robinson Crusoe," although he too
wrote many others. Near by are the tombs of Isaac Watts and Susannah,
the mother of John Wesley.
In a house in Bunhill Row, whose site is covered now by the offices of a
company of well-diggers, John Milton died in 1674. Over the doorway
there is a tablet marking the spot. Milton moved here in 1664, the
street then being called Artillery Walk, from the nearby Artillery
Grounds. Here he wrote the last part of "Paradise Lost," and made
arrangements for its publication, by which he was to receive five pounds
down, with the further promise of an additional five pounds if an
edition of 1300 was sold, and still another five pounds if still another
edition of 1300 was sold. Here, too, he wrote "Paradise Regained" and
"Samson Agonistes."
Facing the eastern entrance to Bunhill Fields, in City Road, is the
chapel built in 1778 for John Wesley, the founder and preacher of the
Methodist Church; and behind the chapel is the tombstone showing where
Wesley was buried in 1791. He died in the house No. 47, next the chapel.
A commemorative window in the church of St. James in Curtain Road close
by Holywells Street, marks the location of the Curtain Theatre of
Shakespeare's time, which stood on the church site. Here, so the tale
goes, the première of "Hamlet" was given, and Shakespeare, standing at
the door, held the horses of those who attended the performances. But
that he did this is not at all certain. Like most of the theatres of
that time, this house was so arranged that the roof extended only over
the stage and galleries, leaving the central space, or pit, open to the
sky. A curtain of silk, running on an iron rod and opening both ways
from the middle, hid the stage before the performance began.
All the district about Finsbury Square was once the marshy ground of
Moorfields, a promenade of the 18th century. The name Finsbury happened
in an old ballad, which tells of a Knight who went to the crusades and
who forbade his two daughters to marry until his return. The Knight
never came back alive, but his head was sent to the daughters when they
had grown old and were still unmarried. This gruesome relic they buried
near by their home, and gave their father's name to his resting place,
as told in the ballad:
Old Sir John Fines he had the name
Being buried in that place,
Now, since then, called Finsbury,
To his renown and grace;
Which time to come shall not outwear
Nor yet the same deface.
Finsbury Pavement was the promenade of Moorfields, and was for a very
long time the one solid roadway in that marshy part of town.
The church of All Hallows-on-the-Wall was built in 1765 on a bastion of
the old Roman wall that enclosed old London. Close to the church door at
the back of the ancient burying ground, a bit of the wall is still to be
seen.
Bishopsgate is one of the few very old streets that escaped the Great
Fire. It is strangely narrow, and its hurrying throngs add to the
general picturesqueness of the high-roofed structures and the quaint
many-angled windows that line its sides.
Where Bishopsgate Within ends and Bishopsgate Without begins a gate was
cut through the wall of old London. One part was within the wall and one
part without the wall, hence the name of the street. At this gateway
were four churches. St. Botolph, Without Bishopsgate, dedicated to the
popular English saint, stands on the site of one of those early
churches. In this church John Keats, who afterwards wrote so delicately
of the Eve of St. Agnes and the Grecian Urn, was baptised.
Old White Hart Tavern stood a few yards north of St. Botolph, Without
Bishopsgate. It was much the same in arrangement as the other old inns
that existed when people travelled entirely by coach. Three sides of the
cobbled stone interior yard were lined with guests' rooms, and in front
of these extended a heavy wooden balcony. The inn yard was customarily
the resort of showmen and musicians. Sometimes a temporary stage was set
up, backing the entrance to the inn and fronting the gallery, so the
occupants of the rooms could witness the performances. The White Hart
Tavern has survived in name chiefly because Hobson, a famous Cambridge
carrier, always stopped here when he came to London. When at home Hobson
rented horses and had an unbreakable rule of letting them only in their
regular turn. This created the saying: "Hobson's choice: that or none."
When Hobson died his elegy was written by Milton.
The street called Houndsditch was a moat beyond the wall of the city in
very long ago times and was used often as a burying ground for dead
dogs. Into this ditch the headless body of Edric, the murderer of Edmund
Ironsides, was flung, after his crime had placed Canute on the throne.
He claimed as his promised reward the highest place in the city, and the
Danish king cried out: "The treason I like, but the traitor hate; behead
the fellow, and as he claims my promise, place his head on the highest
pinnacle of the Tower." And this was done.
Readers of Dickens' "Old Curiosity Shop," and who is there has not read
it, will recall Bevis Marks where Miss Sally Brass lived with her
brother Sampson; where the Marchioness, the tiny domestic, and Dick
Swiveller, the law clerk, did their visiting. Bevis Marks is close by
Houndsditch, and started existence as a garden plot of the Abbots of St.
Edmunds, but it is a very commonplace spot indeed in these times.
At the point where Bishopsgate Street Within ends and Bishopsgate Street
Without begins, the City wall crossed. On a house just where Camomile
Street touches Bishopsgate is a tablet affixed telling of the gate that
was once in the old wall just here.
Very timid in appearance is the church of St. Ethelburga, and said to be
the smallest church in London. It huddles away, in Bishopsgate Street
Within, just to the north of St. Helen's Place, between houses which
cover its old burying ground, and its tiny entrance way flanked by shop
windows. It has stood here since 1366, having been spared by the Great
Fire.
Until quite recently, Crosby Hall, a building of the early 15th century,
stood on the east side of Bishopsgate Street Within. In its last days it
was said to be the only example of a mediæval London house in the Gothic
style. Originally set up by a former grocer who with the passing years
came to be Sir John Crosby, Alderman, it came into the possession of the
Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III. Owning many masters (among
them Sir Thomas More who here wrote his life of Richard III.), it was
converted at various times into a prison, a meeting-house, a storehouse,
a concert hall, and in its last days a restaurant.
Turning from Great St. Helen's, you come suddenly upon the curious 13th
century church of St. Helen's, in a square of ancient houses, often
alluded to as the Westminster Abbey of the City. Originally it was a
church of the Priory of the Nuns of St. Helen's, founded about 1145, by
"William, son of William the Goldsmith," and it contains many
interesting memorials. Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal
Exchange, lies buried here, and Shakespeare was a parishoner here in
1598.
At the junction of Throgmorton Street and Old Broad, on the north side
of the road is an open space leading into the courtway of Austin Friars.
Here is the Dutch Church; all that remains of the renowned Augustinian
Monastery founded in the 13th century. In this church was buried the
Earl of Arundel, son of the Black Prince and the Fair Maid of Kent; and
many another famous nobleman; and here are buried all those of noble
birth who were killed at the Battle of Barnet.
Threadneedle Street is a very old road, stretching in early days far to
the south and west. It got its name from the three needles appearing on
the arms of the Needlemakers' Company. Some of its old outlines are
covered by the Bank of England, which has been irreverently nicknamed
the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.
THREE
MILTON'S BIRTHPLACE, LAMB'S WORKSHOP, AND SOME OTHER THINGS
Through a district of wholesale dealers in linens and laces, Bread
Street extends, joining Cannon Street to Cheapside. Midway between
these, on a building at Watling Street, is a sculptured bust of John
Milton with the inscription:
MILTON
Born in Bread Street
1608
Baptised in the Church of
All Hallows
Which Stood Here Ante
1878
The original All Hallows church destroyed in the Great Fire was rebuilt
by Wren and finally demolished in 1878.
Milton was born in this same Bread Street, near Cheapside, where a
warehouse numbered 53 now stands. His father was a scrivener--a writer
who prepared contracts, deeds and other documents, and the house in
which he lived and in which Milton was born bore the sign of "The Spread
Eagle." Signs in those days had great significance, for the houses were
not numbered, and distinctive sign boards were used in all professions
and trades. In former years a bust and a tablet marked the spot, but
when the present building was set up, the bust was taken down, and now
stands on a shelf inside the building on the third floor.
At the Watling Street corner of Old Change may be found the Church of
St. Augustine, built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1683. R. H. Barham,
author of the amusing "Ingoldsby Legends," was rector here for thirteen
years prior to his death in 1845.
Watling Street is the present day form of an old Roman road that
extended from London to Dover.
Further to the south is all that is left of a very old thoroughfare
called Knightrider Street. In long ago times it was a direct way from
the Tower to Smithfield, and came by its name in memory of the knights
who clattered through it on their way to the tourneys at Smithfield.
Around a corner, on the north side of Queen Victoria Street, St.
Nicholas Cole Abbey stands, the first church to be completed by Wren
after the Great Fire.
Shelley the poet married his second wife, Mary Godwin, in 1816, in the
church of St. Mildred which is in Bread Street very close to where Queen
Victoria and Cannon streets meet. It was in the first year of her
marriage that Mrs. Shelley wrote her remarkable novel "Frankenstein."
Cannon Street is part of the chief road of Roman London, and had been a
main road for the Britons before the invasion of the Romans. At a
meeting point of this road with several others was the Roman central
milestone from which distances on all roads were measured. Here a stone
was set up 2000 years ago, and all that remains of it to-day is called
"London Stone," and may yet be seen. It is set in the outer wall of the
Church of St. Swithin, the saint who controls the weather, in Cannon
Street, and is protected with an iron lattice work. This stone was
superstitiously looked upon as something that afforded protection to
citizens and a defence for the city. The Kentish rebel, Jack Cade, so
believed it when he entered London in 1450, calling himself John
Mortimer and made straight for London Stone. Arrived there, he struck it
with his sword and declared himself lord of the city. Shakespeare has
him say in Henry VI.:
"Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting upon London Stone,
I charge and command that the conduit run nothing but claret wine this
first year of our reign. And now henceforth it shall be treason for any
that calls me other than Lord Mortimer."
London Stone remained by the roadside until 1742, when being in danger
of extinction as an interferer with traffic, it was placed close by the
church door. In 1798 it was given the place in the church wall where it
is now.
St. Mary, Abchurch, was finished by Wren in 1689. Here was buried--the
monument can still be seen--Sir Patience Ward, a Lord Mayor of London,
under whose administration the Monument to the Great Fire was built.
The official residence of the Lord Mayor, the Mansion House, was built
150 years ago, on a spot where a fish market called Stocks Market had
been since 1282. The market was named from a pair of "stocks" which long
stood on the spot and were used for the exhibition of offenders, and
which continued near by after the market was established.
Where Lombard Street touches King William Street, is the church of St.
Mary Woolnoth, an old church rebuilt by Nicholas Hawksmoor, the
"domestic clerk" of Sir Christopher Wren. Here John Newton, the friend
of Cowper the poet, was rector for 28 years, and here he was buried.
The thoroughfare of bankers, Lombard Street, got its name from the
Longbards, rich bankers who settled in the district during the reign of
Edward II. They used as their emblem three golden balls, derived from
the lower part of the arms of the Dukes of Medici. These continue to
this day as the sign of the money lenders. Many romantic associations
belong to this street. Here lived, with her goldsmith husband, Jane
Shore, described by King Edward IV. as "the merriest harlot of his
reign," and who after the king's death was accused of witchcraft by the
Duke of Gloucester, put in open penance at Paul's Cross, and made to
walk through Fleet Street with a lighted taper in her hand.