Walks in London

I

VOL. I.

"Out of monuments, names, wordes, proverbs, traditions, private recordes and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of bookes, and the like, we doe save and recover somewhat from the deluge of Time."

Lord Bacon. Advance of Learning.

" They who make researches into Antiquity, may be said to passe often through many dark lobbies and dusky places, before they come to the Art/a liicis, the great hall of light ; they must repair to old archives, and peruse many moulded and moth-eaten records, and so bring light as it were out of darkness, to inform the present world what the former did, and make us see truth through our ancestors' eyes,

y. Howel. Londinopolis.

" I'll see these things !— Tliey're rare and passing curious— But thus 'tis ever ; what's within our ken, Owl-like, we blink at, and direct our search To farthest Inde in quest of novelties ; Whilst here, at home, upon our very thresholds, Ten thousand objects hurtle into view, Of Int'rest wonderful."

OidPlay.

BY

AUGUSTUS JcT'C/HARE

AUTHOR OF " WALKS ^IN ROME," " CITIES OF NORTHERN AND CENTRAL ITALY, "memorials of A QUIET LIFE," ETC.

jctc/hare

TWO VOLUMES IN ONE

NEW YORK GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS

416 BROOME STREET 1880

-7^% h

IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF PLEASANT WALKS IN A GREATER AND OLDER CITY

THESE VOLUMES ARE RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.

Preface

LONG ago, when I was a boy at a private tutor's near Edmonton, the only book in which I could find any interest or amusement in the scanty library of the house was Charles Knight's " London," and the pleasure derived from it led to my spending every sixpence I could save, and every holiday on which I could get leave, in seeing some of the places it described.

London is much changed since that time ; but the solitary expeditions I then made through its historic sights, so inexpressibly delightful at the time, laid a foundation for the work of the last two years, of which these volumes are the result. They aim at nothing original, indeed any one who attempts a work of the kind must, to borrow the language of the author of "Eothen," be "subjected to the immutable law which compels a man with a pen in his hand to be uttering now and then some sentiment not his own, as though, like the French peasant under the old regime ^ he were bound to perform a certain amount of work on the public highways." But, when I was wishing to know something about London nil PREFACE,

myself, in spite r^ the multiplicity of works upon the subject, I felt the want of having things brought together in the order in which they occur, of one recollection being interlaced with another in a way which might help me to remember it, and this is what I have tried to do for others.

In these two volumes I believe that all the objects of interest in London are described consecutively, as they may be visited in excursions, taking Charing Cross as a centre. The first volume is chiefly devoted to the City, the second to the West End and Westminster.

I. have followed the plan adopted in my books on Italy, of introrlucing quotations from other and better authors, where they apply to my subject ; and, while endeavouring to make "Walks in London" something more interesting than a Guide-book, I have tried, especially in Westminster Abbey and the Picture Galleries, to give such details as may suggest new lines of inquiry to those who care to linger and investigate.

The Histories of London, and the Histories of especial points connected with London, are too numerous to mention. They are all to be found in the admirable Library at the Guildhall, which is the greatest advantage to a local antiquarian, and leaves little to be desired except a better Catalogue. Of the various works by which I have benefited in my own rambles through London, I should mention with marked gratitude the many volumes of Mr. John Timbs, especially his " Curiosities of London," enriched by " Sixty Years' P.^rsonal Recollections," and the admirable articles

PREFACE. ix

on the old houses and churches of London which, for many years, have from time to time appeared in " The Builder."

Some of the chapters in " Walks in London " have been already published, in a condensed form, in *' Good Words " for 1877. The illustrations, with two or three exceptions, are from my own sketches taken on the spot, and carefully transferred to wood by the skill of Mr. T. Sulman.

I shall gladly and gratefully receive any corrections of errors found in my work by those who follow in my footsteps.

AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE.

HoLMHURST, Hastings, November^ 1877.

CONTENTS OF VOL. L

CHAP. PAGE

I. THE STRAND I

II. THE INNS OF COURT 57

III. BY FLEET STREET TO ST. PAUL'S lOI

IV. ST. Paul's and its surroundings . . . . 128

1^ '^MITHFIELD, CLERKENWELL, AND CANONBURY . . I72

VI. CHEAPSIDE 222

VII. ALDERSGATE AND CRIPPLEGATE 258

VIII. BISHOPSGATE 280

IX. IN THE HEART OF THE CITY 32 1

X. THE TOWER AND ITS SURROUNDINGS .... 363

XI. THAMES STREET 42O

XII. LONDON BRIDGE AND SOUTHWARK .... 445

INTRODUCTORY.

" O IR, the happiness of London is not to be conceived »^ but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we sit than in all the rest of the kingdom." Such was the dictum of Dr. Johnson when he was seated \vith Bos well in the Mitre Tavern near Temple Bar, and how many thousands of people before and since have felt the same cat-like attachment as the old philosopher to the vast town of multitudinous life and ever-changing aspects ? As Cowper says —

** Where has Pleasure such a field, So rich, so thronged, so drained, so well supplied, As London — opulent, enlarged, and still Increasing London."

Macaulay had the reputation of having walked through every street in London, but if we consider the ever-growing size of the town we cannot believe that anyone else will <;ver do so : for more people live in London already than in the whole of Denmark or Switzerland, more than twice as many as in Saxony or Norway, and nearly as many as in Scotland. And, if we trust to old prophecies. London has

XIV INTRODUCTORY.

still to be doubled in circumference, for Mother Sbipton says that the day will come when Highgate Hill shall be in the middle of the town. Few indeed are the Londoners who see more than a small circuit around their homes, the main arteries of mercantile life, and some of the principal sights. It is very easy to live with eyes open, but it is more usual, and a great deal more fashionable, to live with eyes shut. Scarcely any man in what is usually called " society " has the slightest idea of what there is to be seen in his own great metropolis, because he never looks, or still more perhaps, because he never inquires, and the architectural and historical treasures of the City are almost as unknown to the West End as the buried cities of Bashan or the lost tombs of Etruria. Strangers also, especially foreigners, who come perhaps with the very object of seeing London, are inclined to judge it by its general aspects, and do not stay long enough to find out its more hidden resources. They never find out that the London of Brook Street and Grosvenor Street, still more the odious London of Tyburnia, Belgravia, and South Kensington, is as different to the London of our great-grandfathers as modernised Paris is to the oldest town in Brittany, and dwellers in the West End do not know that they might experience almost the refreshment and tonic of going abroad in the transition from straight streets and featureless houses to the crooked thoroughfares half-an-hour off, where every street has a reminiscence, and every turn is a picture. There is a passage in Heinrich Heine which says, " You may send a philosopher to London, but by no means a poet. The bare earnestness of everything, the colossal sameness, the machine-like movement, oppresses the imagination and

INTRODUCTOR Y. XV

rends the heart in twain." But those who know London well will think that Heine must have stayed at an hotel in Wimpole Street, and that his researches can never have taken him much beyond Oxford Street and its surroundings ; and that a poet might find plenty of inspiration, if he would do what is so easy, and break the ice of custom, and see London as it really is — in its strange varieties of society, in its lights and shadows of working life, in its endless old buildings which must ever have a hold on the inmost sympathies of those who look upon them, and who, while learning the story they tell of many generations, seem to realise that they are " in the presence of their fame and feel their influence."

An artist, after a time, will find London more interesting than any other place, for nowhere are there such atmospheric eff'ects on fine days, and nowhere is the enormous power of blue more felt in the picture; while the soot, which puts all the stones into mourning, makes everything look old. The detractors of the charms of London always lay their strongest emphasis upon its fogs —

" More like a distillation of mud than anything else ; the ghost of mud, — the spiritualised medium of departed mud, through which the dead citizens of London probably tread, in the Hades whither they are translated. ' ' — Hawthorne. Note-books.

But if the fogs are not too thick an artist will find an additional charm in them, and will remember with pleasure the beautiful effects upon the river, when only the grand features remain, and the ignominious details are blotted out ; or when " the eternal mist around St. Paul's is turned to a glittering haze." In fact, if the capitals of Europe are considered, London is one of the most picturesque — far

XVI INTR OD UCTOR Y.

more so than Paris or Vienna ; incomparably more so than St. Petersburg, BerHn, Dresden, Munich, Brussels, or Madrid.

No town in Europe is better supplied with greenery than London : even in the City almost every street has its tree. And pity often is ill bestowed upon Londoners by dwellers in the country, for the fact is all the best attributes of the country are to be found in the town. The squares of the West End, with their high raiHngs, and ill-kept gardens, are certainly ugly enough, but the parks are full of beauty, and there are walks in Kensington Gardens which in early spring present a maze of loveliness. Lately too, since window gardening has become the fashion, each house has its boxes of radiant flowers, enlivening the dusty stonework or smoke-blackened bricks, and seeming all the more cheerful from their contrast. Through the markets too all that is best in country produce flows into the town : the strawberries, the cherries, the vegetables, are always finer there than at the places where they are grown. Milton, who changed his house oftener than anyone else, and knew more parts of the metropolis intimately, thus apostrophizes it—

" Oh city, founded by Dardanian hands,

"Whose towering front the circling reahii . commands,

Too blest abode ! no loveliness we see,

In all the earth, but it abounds in thee."

There is a certain class of minds, and a large one, which stagnates in the country, and which finds the most luxurious stimulant in the ceaseless variety of London, where there is always so much to be seen and so much to be heard, and these make so much to be thought of.

INTR OD UCTOR Y. XV li

" I have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and as intense local attachments, as any of you mountaineers can have (iune with dead nature. The lighted shops of the Strand and Pleet Street; the innumerable trades, tradesmen, and customers, coaches, wagfons, playhouses ; all the bustle and wickedness round about Covent Garden ; the watchmen, drunken scenes, rattles ; — life awake, if you awake, at all hours of the night ; the impossibility of being dull in Fleet Street ; the crowds, the very dirt and mud, the sun shining upon houses and pavements, the print-shops, the old book-stalls, parsons cheapening books, coffee-houses, steams of soups from kitchens, the pantomimes — London itself a pantomime and a masquerade — all these thnigs work themselves into my mind, and feed me \\4thout a power of satiating me. The wonder of these sights impels me into night-walks about her crowded streets, and I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fulness of joy at so much life. ... I consider the clouds above me but as a roof beautifully painted, but unable to satisfy the mind ; and at last, like the pictures of the apartment of a v^onnoisseur, unable to afford him any longer a pleasure. So fading upon me, from disuse, have been the beauties of Nature, as they have been confinedly called ; so ever fresh, and green, and warm, are all the inventions of men, and assemblies of men in this great city." — Charles Lamh to Wordsworth, Jaji. 30, 1801.

Many derivations are given for the name London. Some derive it from Lhwn-dinas, the " City in the Wood ; " others from Llongdinas, the " City of Ships ; " others from Llyndun, the " Hill Fortress by the Lake." Geoffrey of Monmouth says that Brute "builded this citie" about a.c. 1008. From the time at which it is reported to have been founded by Brute, says Brayley, " even fable itself is silent in regard to its history, until the century immediately preceding the Roman invasion." * Then King Lud is said to have encircled it with walls, and adorned it " with fayre buildings and towers." The remains found certainly prove the existence of a British city on the site before the Londinium, or Colonia Augusta, spoken of by Tacitus and

* Londiniana.

VOL. I. b

XVIU INTRODUCTORY,

Ammianus Marcellinus, which must have been founded by the Roman expedition under Aulus Plautius in a.d. 43. Tacitus mentions that it was already the great " mart of trade and commerce " and the " chief residence of merchants," when the revolt of the Iceni (occurred under Boadicea in a.d. 61, in which it was laid waste with fire and sword. It had however risen from its ashes in the time of Severus (a.d. 193 — 211), when Tacitus describes it as *' illustrious for the vast number of merchants who resorted to it, for its extensive commerce, and for tlie abundance of every kind of commodity which it could supply." *

Stow says that the walls of London were built by Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, ''about the year of Christ 306," at any rate there is little doubt that they were erected in the fourth century. They were rather more than two miles in circumference, defended by towers, and marked at the principal points by the great gates, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, and Ludgate. The best fragments of the old wall remaining are to be seen opposite Sion College, and in the churchyard of St. Giles, Cripplegate . there is also a fragment in St. Martin's Court on Ludgate Hill. Quantities of Roman antiquities, tessellated pavements, urns, vases, &c., have been found from time to time within this circuit, especially in digging the foundations of the Goldsmiths' Hall, and of the Hall of Commerce in Threadneedle Street. For a long time these remains were carelessly kept or not kept at all, but latterly some of them have been collected in the admirable little museum under the Guildhall. Several Roman cemeteries have been discovered, one of them by

* Annali. Lib. xiv. c. 33.

INTR CD UCTOR Y. xi x

Sir Christopher Wren when he was laying the foundation of the new St. Paul's. All the excavations show that modern London is at least fifteen feet higher than the London of the Romans, which has been buried by the same inexplicable process which entombed the Roman Forum, and covered many of its temples with earth up to the capitals of the columns.

Very little is known of London in Saxon t'mes except that St. Paul's Cathedral was founded by Ethell-ert, in 6io, in the time of King Sebert. Bede, who mentions this, describes London as an " emporium of many nations who arrived thither by land and sea." London was the stronghold of the Danes, but was successfully besieged by Alfred, and Athelstan had a palace here. His successor Ethelred the Unready was driven out again by the Danes under Sweyn. On the death of Sweyn, Ethelred returned, and his son Edmund Ironside was the first monarch crowned in the capital. London grew greatly in importance under Edward the Confessor, who built the Palace and Abbey o^ Westminster, and it made a resistance to the Conqueroj which was for some time effectual, though, op. the submis sion of the clergy, he was presented with the keys of th( City and crowned at the Confessor's tomb. He /mmediatel} tried to conciliate the citizens, by granting them the charter which, written in the Saxon language, on a str\p of vellum, is still preserved amongst the City archives.

"William the King greeteth William the Bishop ana Godfrey the Portreve, and all the burgesses within London, both Trench ano English. And I declare that i grant you all to be law-wot tLy asi y were in King Edward's days. And I will that every chilrl h& hi" father's heir after his father's days. And I will not suffer thai arvy 'nau do you wrong. God preseive you."

XX INTR OD UCTOR Y.

The chief events in the after story of London, its insurrections, its pageants, its martyrdoms, its conspiracies, its pestilences, its Great Fire, its religious agitations, its political excitements, are all noticed in describing those parts of the town with which they are especially connected.

Fuller says that London *' is the second city in Christendome for greatnesse, and the first for good government." Its chief officer under the Saxons was called the Portreeve. After the Conquest the French word Maire, from Major, was introduced. We first hear of a Mayor of London in the reign of Henry IL His necessary qualifications are, that he shall be free of one of the City Companies, have served as Sheriff, and be an Alderman at the time of his election.* The name of Alderman is derived from the title of a Saxon noble, eald meaning old, ealder elder. It is applied to the chief officer of a ward or guild and each Alderman of London takes his name from a ward. The City Companies or Merchant Guilds, though branches of the Corporation, have each a distinct government and peculiar Hberties and immunities granted in special charters. Each Company has a Master and other officers, and separate Halls for their business or banquets. The oldest of the Companies is the Weavers, with a charter of 1164. Then come the Parish Clerks, instituted in 1232, and the Saddlers, in 1280. The Bakers, Goldsmiths, Skinners, Grocers, Carpenters, and Fishmongers, all date from the fourteenth century. There are ninety-one Companies, but of these twelve are the most important, viz. —

* The Lord Mayor is elected on Michaelmas Day, but " Lord Mayoi's Day " is November o.

INTR OD UCTOR Y. xxi

Mercers

Merchant Tailors

Grocers

Haberdashers

Drapers

Salters

Fishmongers

Ironmongers

Goldsmiths

Vintruers

Skinners

Clothworkers.

In the second year of Elizabeth the pictorial map of Ralph Aggas was published, which shows how little in those days London had increased beyond its early boundaries. Outside Aldgate, Bishopsgate, and Cripplegate, all was still complete country. ** The Spital Fyeld " (Spitalfields) and " Finsburie Fyeld " were archery grounds : Moorfields was a marsh. St. Giles, Cripplegate, was the church of a little hamlet beyond the walls. Farther west a few houses in "Little Britanne" and Cock Lane clustered around the open space of " Schmyt Fyeld," black with the fires of recent martyrdoms. A slender thread of humble dwellings straggled along the road which led by Holbourne Bridge across the Fleet to St. Andrew's Church and Ely Place, but ceased altogether after " Holbourne Hill " till the road reached the desolate village and leper-hospital of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. A wide expanse of open pasture-land, only broken by Drury House and the Convent Garden of Westminster, extended southwards from St. Giles's to the Strand, where the houses of the great nobles Hned the passage of the sovereign from the City to the small royal city and great palace of Westminster. From Charing Cross, St. Martin's Lane and the Haymarket were hedge-girt roads leading into a solitude, and there was scarcely any house westwards except the Hospital of St. James, recently turned into a palace.

After the time of Elizabeth, London began to grow xxu INTR OD UCTOR F.

rapidly, though Elizabeth herself and her immediate successors, dreading the power of such multitudes in the neighbourhood of the Court, did all they could to check it. In July, '580, all persons were prohibited from building houses within three miles of any of the City gates, and, in 1602, a proclamation was made for *' restraining the increase of buildings," and the "voyding of inmates" in the cities of London and Westminster, and for three miles round. But in spite of this, in spite of the Plague which destroyed 68,596 people, and the Fire which destroyed 13,200 houses, the great city continued to grow. Latterly it has increased so rapidly westwards, that it is impossible to define the limits of the town. It has been travelling west more or less ever since the time of the Plantagenets ; — from the City to the Strand, and to Canonbury and Clerkenwell ; then, under the Stuart kings, to the more northern parts of the parish of St. Clement Danes and to Whitehall : then, under William III. and Anne, to Bloomsbury and Soho : under the early Georges, to the Portland and Portman estates, then to the Grosvenor estates, and lastly to South Kensington. By its later increase the town has enormously increased the wealth of nine peers, to whom the greater portion of the soil upon which it has been built belongs— />. the Dukes of Portland, Bedford, and Westminster; the Marquises of Exeter, Salisbury, Northampton, and the Marquis Camden ; the Earl Craven and Lord Portman. No one can tell where the West End will be next year. It is always moving into the country and never arriving there. Generally Fashion "is only gentility moving away from vulgarity and afraid of being overtaken by it," but in this case it is also a perpetual flight before the smoke, which still always drives

INTR OD UCTOR Y. xxiii

westwards, so that when the atmosphere is thickest in Brompton, the sky is often blue and the air pure in Ratcliff Highway.

In all the changes of generations of men and manners in London, the truth of the proverb, " Birds of a feather flock together," has been attested by the way in which the members of the same nationalities and those who have followed the same occupations have inhabited the same district. Thus, French live in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square and Soho, Italians in Hatton Garden, and Germans in the east of London. Thus^ Lawyers live in Lincoln's Inn and the Temple ; Surgeons and Dentists in George Street and Burlington Street ; Doctors in Harley Street; and retired Indians in Cavendish Square and Portman Square, with their adjoining streets, which have obtained the name of Little Bengal. Thus, too, you would go to look for Booksellers in Paternoster Row, Clockmakers in Clerkenwell, Butchers in Newgate and Smithfield, Furniture Dealers in Tottenham Court Road, Hatmakers in Southwark, Tanners and Leather-dressers in Bermondsey, Bird and Bird-cage sellers near the Seven Dials, Statuaries in the Euston Road, and Artists at the Boltons.

The poorest parts of London also have always been its eastern and north-eastern parishes, and the district about Soho and St. Giles-in-the-Fields. So much has been said and written of the appearance of poverty and crime which these streets present, that those who visit them will be surprised to find at least outward decency and a tolerably thriving population ; though of course the words of Cowley are true —

XXIV INTRODUCTORY.

*• The monster London,

Let but thy wicked men from out thee go, And all the fools that crowd thee so, Even thou, who dost thy millions boast, A village less than Islington wilt grow A solitude almost."

The great landmarks are the same in London now that they were in the time of the Plantagenets : the Tower is still the great fortress ; London Bridge is still the great causeway for traffic across the river; St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey are still the great churches ; and Westminster Palace is only transferred from the sovereign to the legislature. The City still shows by its hills — Ludgate Hill, Comhill, and Tower Hill — why it was chosen as the early capital. One feature however of old London is annihilated — all the smaller brooks or rivers which fed the Thames are buried and lost to view. The Eye Bourne, the Old Bourne, and the Wall Brook, though they still burrow beneath the town, seem to have left nothing but their names. Even the Fleet, of which there are so many unflattering descriptions in the poets of the last century, is entirely arched over, and it is difficult to believe that there can ever have been a time when Londoners saw ten or twelve ships at once sailing up to Holborn Bridge, or still more that they can have gone up as high as Baggnigge Wells Road, where the discovery of an anchor seems to testify to their presence. Where the aspect is entirely changed the former character of London sites is often pleasantly recorded for us in the names of the streets. " Hatton Garden," " Baldwin's Gardens," and " Whetstone Park " keep up a reminiscence of the rural nature of a now crowded district as late as the time of the Stuarts, though

INTR OD UCTOR V. XX v

with "Lincoln's Inn Fields," and "Great and Little Turnstile." they have a satirical effect as applied to the places which now belong to them. In the West End, Brook Street, Green Street, Farm Street, Hill Street, and Hay Hill, commemorate the time, two hundred years ago, when the Eye Bourne was a crystal rivulet running down hill to Westminster through the green hay-fields of Miss Mary Davies.

Few would re-echo Malcolm's exclamation, "Thank God, old London was burnt," even if it were quite true, which it is not. The Fire destroyed the greater part of London, but gave so much work to the builders that the small portioxi unburnt remained comparatively untouched till the tide ot fashion had flowed too far westwards to make any systematic rebuilding worth while. It is over the Czfy of London, as the oldest part of the town, that its chief interest still hovers. Those who go there in search of its treasures will be stunned on week-days by the tourbillon of its movement, and the constant eddies at all the great crossings in the whirlpool of its business life, such as no other town in Europe can show. But this also has its charms, and no one has seen London properly who has not watched the excited crowds at the Stock Exchange, threaded the labyrinth of the Bank, wondered at the intricate arrangements of the Post Office, attended a Charity Children's service at St. Paul's, beheld the Lord Mayor drive by in his coach ; stood amid the wigged lawyers and whirling pigeons of the Guildhall ; and struggled through Cheapside, Cornhill, and Great Tower Street with the full tide of a week-day.

But no one can see the City properly who does not walk in it, and no one can walk in it comfortably except on a

XXVI INTR OD UCTOR Y,

Sunday. On that day it is thoroughly enjoyable. The great chimneys have ceased smoking, the sky is blue, the trees look green, but that which is most remarkable is, the streets are empty. What becomes of all the people it is impossible to imagine ; there are not only no carriages, there are scarcely any foot-passengers : one may saunter along the pavement with no chance of being jostled, and walk down the middle of the street without any fear of being run over. Then alone can the external features of the City be studied, and there is a great charm in the oddity of having it all to one's self, as well as in the quietude. Then we see how, even in the district which was devastated by the Fire, several important fragments escaped, and how the portion which was unburnt is filled with precious memorials of an earlier time. Scarcely less interesting also, and, though not always beautiful, of a character exceedingly unusual in England, are the numerous buildings erected immediately after the Fire in the reign of Charles II. The treasures which we have to look for are often very obscure — a sculptured gateway, a panelled room, a storm-beaten tower, or an incised stone — and in themselves might scarcely be worth a tour of inspection ; but in a city where so many millions of inhabitants have Hved and passed away, where so many great events of the world's history have occurred, there is scarcely one of these long-Hved remnants which has not some strange story to tell in which it bears the character of the only existing witness. The surroundings, too, are generally picturesque, and only those who study them and dwell upon them can reaHse the interest of the desolate tombs in the City churches, the loveliness of the plane-trees in their fresh spring green rising amid the smoky