It will therefore be useful for a stranger to bear in mind, that the best centre of observation in the city is the open spot between the Bank, the Mansion House, and the Royal Exchange; where more omnibuses assemble than at any other spot in the world; and whence he can ramble in any one of seven different directions, sure of meeting with something illustrative of city life. The 7th route, not yet noticed, we will now follow, as it proceeds towards the West End.
The great central thoroughfare of Cheapside, which is closely lined with the shops of silversmiths and other wealthy tradesmen, is one of the oldest and most famous streets in the city—intimately associated with the municipal glories of London for centuries past. Many of the houses in Cheapside and Cornhill have lately been rebuilt on a scale of much grandeur. Some small plots of ground in this vicinity have been sold at the rate of nearly one million sterling per acre! On each side of Cheapside, narrow streets diverge into the dense mass behind—Ironmonger Lane, King Street, Milk Street, and Wood Street, on the north; and among others, Queen Street, Bread Street, where Milton was born, and where stood the famous Mermaid Tavern, where Shakespeare and Raleigh, Ben Jonson and his young friends, Beaumont and Fletcher, those twin-dramatists, loved to meet, to enjoy “the feast of reason and the flow of soul,” to say nothing of a few flagons of good Canary wine, Bow Lane, and Old ’Change, on the south. The greater part of these back streets, with the lanes adjoining, are occupied by the offices or warehouses of wholesale dealers in cloth, silk, hosiery, lace, &c., and are resorted to by London and country shopkeepers for supplies. Across the north end of King Street stands the Guildhall; and a little west, the City of London School and Goldsmiths’ Hall. At the western end of Cheapside is a statue of the late Sir Robert Peel, by Behnes. Northward of this point, in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, are the buildings of the Post and Telegraph Offices; beyond this the curious old Charter House; and then a line of business streets leading towards Islington. Westward are two streets, parallel with each other, and both too narrow for the trade to be accommodated in them—Newgate Street, celebrated for its Blue Coat Boys and, till the recent removal of the market to Smithfield, for its carcass butchers; and Paternoster Row, still more celebrated for its publishers and booksellers. In Panyer Alley, leading out of Newgate Street, is an old stone bearing the inscription:
When ye have sovght the citty rovnd,
Yet stil this is the highst grovnd.Avgvst the 27, 1688. [20]
At the west end of Newgate Street a turning to the right gives access to the once celebrated Smithfield and St. John’s Gate. South-west of Cheapside stands St. Paul’s Cathedral, that first and greatest of all the landmarks of London. In the immediate vicinity of St. Paul’s, the names of many streets and lanes (Paternoster Row, Amen Corner, Ave Maria Lane, Creed Lane, Godliman Street, &c.) give token of their former connection with the religious structure and its clerical attendants. The enclosed churchyard is surrounded by a street closely hemmed in with houses, now chiefly dedicated to trade: those on the south side being mostly wholesale, those on the north retail. An open arched passage on the south side of the churchyard leads to Doctors’ Commons, once the headquarters of the ecclesiastical lawyers.
Starting from St. Paul’s Churchyard westward, we proceed down Ludgate Street and Ludgate Hill, places named from the old Lud-gate, which once formed one of the entrances to the city ‘within the walls.’ The Old Bailey, on the right, contains the Central Criminal Court and Newgate Prison, noted places in connection with the trial and punishment of criminals. On the left of Ludgate Hill is a maze of narrow streets; among which the chief buildings are the new Ludgate Hill Railway Station, Apothecaries’ Hall, and the printing office of the all-powerful Times newspaper, in Printing-House Square. The printer of the Times, Mr. Goodlake, if applied to by letter, enclosing card of any respectable person, will grant an order to go over it, at 11 o’clock only, when the second edition of “the Thunderer” is going to press. At the bottom of Ludgate Hill we come to the valley in which the once celebrated Fleet River, now only a covered sewer, ran north and south from St. Pancras to Blackfriars, where it entered the Thames. A new street, called Victoria Street, formed by pulling down many poor and dilapidated houses, marks part of this valley; while Farringdon Street, where a market, mostly for green stuff, is held, occupies another part. Newgate Street and Ludgate Hill are on the east of the Fleet Valley; Holborn and Fleet Street on the west. The Holborn Valley Viaduct crosses at this spot. And of this wonderful triumph of engineering skill we have now to speak.
It was an eventful day in the annals of the Corporation of the City of London, when Queen Victoria, on November 6, 1869, declared Blackfriars Bridge—about which more hereafter—and Holborn Valley Viaduct formally open. The Holborn Valley improvements, it should be remembered, were nothing short of the actual demolition and reconstruction of a whole district, formerly either squalid, over-blocked, and dilapidated in some parts, or over-steep and dangerous to traffic in others. But a short time ago that same Holborn Valley was one of the most heart-breaking impediments to horse-traffic in London. Imagine Holborn Hill sloping at a gradient of 1 in 18, while the opposite rising ground of Skinner Street—now happily done away—rose at about 1 in 20. Figure to yourself the fact, that everything on wheels, and every foot passenger entering the City by the Holborn route, had to descend 26 feet to the Valley of the Fleet, and then ascend a like number to Newgate, and you will at once see the grand utility of levelling up so objectionable a hollow. To attempt to give a stranger to London even a faint idea of what has been accomplished by Mr. Haywood’s engineering skill, by a necessarily brief description here, is an invidious task. Nevertheless, we must essay it; premising, by-the-by, that if our readers while in London do not go to see the Viaduct for themselves, our trouble will be three parte thrown away. The whole structure is cellular, to begin with. To strip the subject of crabbed technicalities, imagine for a moment a long succession of—let us call them—railway-like arches supporting the carriage-way: these large vaults being available for other purposes. Outside this carriage-way, and under the edge of the foot-paths on either side, is a subway, some 7 feet wide and 11 feet or so high. Against the walls of this sub-way are fixed, readily connectable, gas mains and water mains and telegraph tubes. This was the first time all these important pipes had been so cleverly arranged in one easily accessible place. They are ventilated and partially lighted through the pavement, and by gas. Under each sub-way goes a sewer, with a path beside it for the sewer men when at work. Outside the sub-way are ordinary house vaults of two or three storeys high, according to the height of the Viaduct. These are divided by transverse walls; and, when houses are built against it, the Holborn Valley Viaduct will be shut out from sight, except in the case of the simple iron girder bridge over Shoe Lane, and the London, Chatham, and Dover bridge, with its sub-ways for gas and water pipes, and the fine bridge over Farringdon Street. You will, we trust, now see how marvellously every yard of space has been utilized by the engineer, from the roadway down to the very foundations. A few words must now be said about the splendid bridge over Farringdon Street. This has public staircases running up inside handsome stone buildings—the upper parts of which have been let for business purposes. It is a handsome skew bridge of iron, toned to a deep bronze green by enamel paint, and richly ornamented; its plinths above ground, its moulded bases, and its shafts, are respectively of grey, black, and exquisitely polished red granite. Its capitals are of grey granite, also polished, and set off by bronze foliage. Bronze lions, and four statues of Fine Art, Science, Commerce, and Agriculture, stand on the parapet-line on handsome plinths. These, and the projecting balconies and dormer window of the stone buildings just named, with their four statues of bygone civic worthies,—Fitz Aylwin, Sir William Walworth, Sir Thomas Gresham, and Sir Hugh Myddleton,—enhance the effect of the whole.
Poor Chatterton, “the marvellous boy, the sleepless soul that perished in his pride,” after poisoning himself, in 1770, ere he was eighteen years of age, in Brooke Street, on the north side of Holborn, was laid in a pauper’s grave, in what was then the burying-ground of Shoe Lane Workhouse, and is now converted to very different purposes.