OLD TELEGRAPH TOWER, TOOLEY STREET.
This system was introduced in 1795, at the suggestion of the Rev. Lord George Murray, afterwards Bishop of Saint David’s. He proposed to the Admiralty to erect signal-posts or towers on the heights between London and the coast, and upon experiments being made, it was found easily practicable to send messages in this way to our ships in the Downs. That year, then, witnessed the establishment of a line of telegraph-towers between the Admiralty and Deal, with a branch to Sheerness. The original apparatus of revolving shutters was in use until 1816, when it was changed for a semaphore system, resembling very closely that in use upon railways at the present day, the chief peculiarity being that, instead of only two movements of the semaphore arms, each one could be made to assume six different positions. Some old prints of the Admiralty buildings in Whitehall show a telegraph-station of this kind upon the roof, with the little wooden cabin in which were stationed the men (generally four) whose duty it was to read through telescopes the signals from the nearest station, and to work the shutters or semaphores above their own. One of these stations has given the name of “Telegraph Hill” to that knoll at Hatcham, by New Cross, which was opened as a public park so recently as April, 1895. From hence was signalled news of Nelson and Trafalgar, of Wellington and Waterloo; here worked the arms that carried orders from the Admiralty to the admirals in the Downs to sail east or west; to proceed home or fare forth to foreign stations; to summon Courts Martial, and to put the sentences of those stern drum-head tribunals into execution.
IV
SOUTHWARK
The Southwark of Chaucer’s time was a very different place. For one thing, it was a great deal smaller. The year in which his Canterbury Pilgrims were supposed to set out has generally been fixed at 1383, and at that time the whole country had only recently been smitten with three great pestilences, which had carried off nearly half the population of England. London numbered probably no more than thirty thousand inhabitants. Southwark was comparatively a village; a village, too, not with the odious surroundings of later years, but a pleasant spot over the water from the City, where great prelates had their palaces, and whence a short walk of five minutes or so would bring you into the open country, and among the fragrant hedgerows of the Kent Road. No picture exists of Southwark as Chaucer saw it, but when an ingenious Dutchman—one Antony van der Wyngrerde—made a drawing of Southwark and London Bridge, in 1546, this historic part of the “Surrey side” was still distinctly rural. Orchards and pleasant gardens are seen clustering round St. George’s Church, and stretching away to the site of the present Kent Street, and bosky woods flourished where the tall wharves of Bankside are crowded together. Where are those orchards, woods, and gardens now? Where is Winchester House, the grand palace of the Bishops of Winchester, that looked upon the river? Where its neighbour, Rochester House? Where, too, is Suffolk House, the princely residence of the Dukes of Suffolk? Gone, all of them, like the morning dew; and the only recognisable object in Van Wyngrerde’s drawing is the tower of St. Mary Overie’s Church that still, as “St. Saviour’s,” rears its four pinnacles above the Southwark of to-day.
The most famous of all the inns of Southwark was the “Tabard,” famous not only as an ordinary house of good cheer, but as a hostelry immediately under the protection of the Church, whereto resorted many good folk bent on pilgrimage. The Abbot of Hyde Monastery at Winchester was the owner of the ground upon which the original “Tabard” was built, and he built here not only an inn (which it is to be supposed he let out) but also a guest-house for the brethren of Hyde, and all others of the clergy who resorted to London to wait on the Bishop of Winchester, whose grand palace stood close by. In 1307 did the Abbot of Hyde build the “Tabard,” and Chaucer gave it immortality in 1383. At that time the landlord was the Harry Bailly of the “Canterbury Tales”; a real person, probably an intimate friend of Chaucer’s, and Chaucer’s description of him is most likely to be a careful portraiture of the man, his appearance, his speech, and his ways of thought.
CHAUCER’S PILGRIMS