Charles Hemstreet

“ It was here, too, that Shakespeare places an act of his play of Henry VIII.
The wonderful City of London was once a cluster of huts on a wooded slope of ground which in these days is known as Ludgate Hill. Roman London was enclosed by a wall which extended from about where the Tower is now to Ludgate Hill, and from Ludgate Circus to the Thames River. It had several gates now called to mind by the streets Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Moorgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, Newgate and Ludgate. This wall was built of brick and cement as hard as stone. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was built by the Duke of Buckingham as the first stage in the rebuilding of York Palace but the task was never completed.
Villiers Street is a clean and quiet thoroughfare, where people seem to walk sedately as though strolling through a graveyard. It is named for George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who was a fashionable courtier much beloved by King James I., and who paid gallant court to Anne of Austria, wife of the French King Louis XIII. The establishment of Charing Cross Station robbed the street of its western side. ”

“ When Peter the Great visited London in 1698, he frequented a tavern which stood on the spot where The Czar's Head is now opposite the church of All Hallows, Barking.
Lower Thames Street is as old as the City itself. It is enclosed by tall warehouses and shipping marts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a wide area of quaint buildings, strange windings and uncertain by-ways relieved by unexpected open spaces and magnificent gardens—a place to wander in if you are fond of wandering, and to get lost in if you make up your mind to wander and do not mind getting lost. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Burial in Westminster Abbey is the highest mark of recognition and honour that can be bestowed by the English nation. In this grand old church have been crowned all the sovereigns of England from the time of Saxon Harold. Where the Abbey stands to-day there was once a church commenced by Sebert, King of Essex, in the year 610. ”

“ The open space between Westminster Abbey and Westminster Hospital is the Broad Sanctuary so called because here in the 15th and 16th centuries was a sacred place of refuge for criminals who took advantage of the ancient protection of the Church. The Sanctuary was a square Norman tower containing two chapels. Elizabeth Woodville, widow of Edward IV., was seeking refuge here when her two children were taken from her and afterwards killed in the Tower by order of the Duke of Gloucester. ”

“ Child's Bank close by the Temple Bar Griffin on the south side of Fleet Street, is the oldest of England's banking houses dating from the time of Charles I. when the first Francis Child, an apprentice to William Wheeler the goldsmith, married his master's daughter and by thrift and industry founded the fortunes of the great institution. The present bank stands on the site of the old Devil Tavern that for two hundred years was the haunt of men of letters. ”

“ The Strand became a regular thoroughfare about 1560.
At the time of the Reformation the palace of Walter Stapleton Bishop of Exeter was on the south, or river, side of the Strand and was called Exeter House. Afterward when the Earl of Essex, Elizabeth's favourite lived there it was called Essex House for him and the present Essex Street so gets its name. The only tangible survival of Essex House is at the end of the street—the aged and picturesque Water [Pg 112] Gate, with the worn stone stairs that once led directly to the water where the barges received visitors from the palace. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 51] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Opposite Essex Street in the middle of the Strand is the church of St. Clement Danes, designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1681. At this church Dr. Johnson was a regular attendant for years and the pew he sat in, No. 18 in the north gallery, is marked with a tablet telling of "the philosopher, the poet, the great lexicographer, [Pg 113] the profound moralist and chief writer of his times." Joe Miller, the man of jokes, was buried here, and his epitaph records among other things that he was a facetious companion, a sincere friend and a tender husband, which is about all a man need be. ”

“ Since those early days it has always been associated with flowers and growing things and the Covent Garden Market is now the chief flower, fruit and vegetable market of London. A map of the middle of the 16th century shows it a tract stretching approximately from the Strand to the Long Acre of to-day and surrounded by [Pg 123] a wall. The Crown granted the land to the Bedfords in 1552, and in 1621 Inigo Jones planned the Covent Market Square. In 1831 the market buildings of this day were erected, but they have since been added to and improved. ”

“ In Wellclose Square beyond the Tower, is a building that is more than three hundred years old, and in it are still to be seen the oldest police cells in London. Under them is the entrance [Pg 71] to a subway which tradition says once led direct to the Tower. The house is now used as a club. The cells are in the rear of the building, and reached by a winding stone stairway. They are dark and stifling. ”

“ 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 [Pg 52] 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. ”

“ Where now stands the York Column in Waterloo Place leading to Waterloo Steps and The Mall was the main entrance to Carlton House, built for Henry Boyle, Lord Carlton, in 1709, and afterwards occupied by the Prince Regent who became George IV. When the old building was demolished in 1827 the columns of the entrance were saved and used in 1832 to form the façade of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.
The name of the Haymarket has clung to it since the reign of Elizabeth when it was a mart for the sale of hay and straw and which existed until 1829. ”

“ St. James's Street ends at the gateway to St. James's Palace. This gateway designed by Holbein is one of the few survivals of the original palace where in the open fields was once a hospital for lepers founded in 1190. The royal palace took the place of the hospital buildings under Henry VIII., who had Holbein design the structure. It was a royal abode until the time of George IV. Here Queen Mary died; here Charles I. slept the night before he walked through St. James's Park to Whitehall and to death, and here Charles II. and James II. were born. ”

“ Many men and many women prominent in the life of London have lived in houses looking upon this Square during its two hundred years of existence.
Mayfair, an aristocratic residential section of London, has Bond Street and Park Lane on the east and west; with Piccadilly and Oxford Street on the south and north. It is named for a fair held where Shepherd's Market is now in each May until about the middle of the 18th century.
[Pg 149]
Through the Mayfair district stretches Curzon Street named for the third Viscount Howe—George Augustus Curzon ”

“ 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, [Pg 20] when the preacher regulated the length of his sermons by the running sand. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 contrast to his lonely deathbed, his burial in Westminster Abbey was attended by a great concourse of people of the highest rank who gathered to do homage to the genius of the man whom living they forgot.
Queer Albany Courtyard lies close by Sackville Street and is entered from bustling Piccadilly, passing from a thoroughfare of busy shops to a courtyard of asphalt, quiet and dignified. After a few yards the space widens and a moderate sized square brick building looms up. ”