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. Chaucer, sometimes called the father of English poetry, lived in this street, where his father was a vintner.
St. Dunstan's-in-the-East stands where St. Dunstan's Hill and Idol Lane meet, between Little Thames and Tower streets. In the building of this church Wren made his first effort at perching a steeple upon quadrangular columns. Though the work was much criticised, the architect was well satisfied with the effect. Once when told that a violent windstorm had toppled over all the steeples of the City churches Wren exclaimed, "Not St. Dunstan's, I'm sure." For many years Archbishop Morton, the tutor of Sir Thomas More, was rector of this church.
Further to the west, St. Mary at Hill was damaged in the Great Fire and afterwards repaired and reconstructed by Wren in 1672. Here Dr. Young, author of the tranquil "Night Thoughts," was married in 1731. For many years John Brand, the author of "The Popular Antiquitus," was rector of this church and was buried here.
The bad language of Billingsgate is proverbial all over the world. Since the reign of Elizabeth there has been a market where Billingsgate Market is now—the chief fish mart of London. Originally it was a place for the sale of all sorts of provisions, but has been exclusively set apart for the sale of fish since the time of William III., and the wharf of Billingsgate is the oldest on the Thames.
On Fish Street Hill is a fluted Doric stone column, two hundred feet high, crowned by a flaming urn of brass. This was erected in 1671 as a memorial of the Great Fire of 1666. It has 345 steps leading to the top. When the Monument was first set up an inscription was put on it which wrongly traced the cause of the Great Fire to "the treachery and malice of the Popish faction, in order to carry out their horrid plot for extirpating the Protestant religion." And Pope, writing of the Monument, and referring to the charge of the inscription as without foundation, said:
Where London's column, pointing to the skies,
Like a tall bully, lifts the head and lies.
On the spot where King William joins Cannon Street is the statue of King William IV. Here for generations stood a celebrated tavern called the Boar's Head. Shakespeare speaks often of this house in his plays, making it the scene of the revels of Falstaff and the Prince (afterwards Henry V.). The original tavern was destroyed in the Great Fire but was immediately rebuilt. In 1739 it was doubtless the principal tavern of London. In 1831 it was demolished.
The church of St. Clement, Eastcheap, close by the statue of William IV. in King William Street, was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The parishoners were very proud of their church when it was finished and they gave the great architect a hogshead of wine costing £4 2s. 0d., and then were so pleased with their own liberality that this fact was placed in the church records and the entry may be seen to this day.