In Pudding Lane south of the Monument the Great Fire of 1666 started, raged for six days and destroyed three-quarters of London.
Miles Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, who made the first complete English translation of the Bible in 1535, was at one time rector of the church of St. Magnus the Martyr at the foot of Fish Street Hill. He was buried here and to the right of the altar is a tablet explaining that:
On the 4 of October 1535, the
first complete English version
of the Bible was published under
his direction.
The first London Bridge was begun in 1176 and completed in 1209 under the direction of Peter of Colechurch chaplain of the church of St. Mary, Colechurch, in the Poultry. Narrow and poorly paved, at each end was a fortified gate, with a chapel in the centre. On the gatehouse were exposed from time to time heads of poor fellows executed for treason. There were twenty arches and a drawbridge for vessels, for most of the arches were too narrow to permit the passage of boats. Afterwards houses were built on the bridge so that it greatly resembled a regular street. When the inhabitants needed water they lowered buckets by ropes from their windows. In 1481 the houses tottered in decay and fell in one block into the river. They were replaced and not finally removed until 1757. Wat Tyler and his followers entered the City over this bridge, and Jack Cade and his rebel army chose the same way. Until 1769, London Bridge was the only archway over the Thames. The present structure was commenced in 1825, taking the place of the old bridge but about sixty yards further up the river.
In the church of St. Michaels on College Hill, built by Sir Christopher Wren, there is a memorial window to Dick Whittington who was buried in the old church on this site—a church that was destroyed by the Great Fire.
St. James Garlickhithe in Thames Street, erected in 1683, came by its name because in earlier times garlic was usually sold close by along the waterside. Steele has recorded that it was in this church he first really came to understand the Common Prayer. For here he "heard the service read so distinctly, so emphatically, and so fervently, that it was next to an impossibility to be inattentive."
Of the church of St. Mary, Somerset, in Upper Thames Street, only the tower of the original structure remains, that being spared by a special Act of Parliament when the old church was demolished in 1868.
Where the red brick church of St. Benet's, Paul's Wharf, is now, used to be an earlier church, destroyed in the Great Fire. In the older church Inigo Jones was buried in 1652, and his tomb was not restored when the present structure was set up by Wren in 1682.
By the riverside just to the east of where the Fleet stream flowed into the Thames and in the district south of the present Queen Victoria Street stood Bayard's Castle, where the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III., lived. Here the crown of England was offered him, and here he with pretence of humility at first refused it. The remains of the castle were swept away in the Great Fire. This was the second castle of the name on this site, the first having been that of Robert Fitz Walter a malcontent Baron who fled after refusing allegiance to King John, who in return destroyed his castle. It was here that King John made violent but unsuccessful love to the Baron's daughter, Maud Fitz Walter.