Stories That Words Tell Us

by Elizabeth O'Neill

The great Tower of London still stands to show us how London was defended in the old feudal days; but Tower Bridge, the bridge which crosses the river at that point, is a modern bridge, built in 1894. The name Cripplegate still remains, and the story it has to tell us is that in the Middle Ages there stood outside the city walls beyond this gate the hospital of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. It was a hospital for lepers; but St. Giles is the patron saint of cripples, and so this gate of the city got the name of Cripplegate, because it was the nearest to the church of the patron saint of cripples.

This church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields no longer remains; but we have St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, to remind us of the difference between Trafalgar Square to-day and its condition not quite two hundred years ago, when this church was built.

It must be remembered that even at the very end of the eighteenth century London was just a tiny town lying along the river. At that time many of the nobles and rich merchants were building their mansions in what is now the West Central district of London. The north side of Queen Square, Bloomsbury, was left open, so that the people who lived there could enjoy the view of the Highgate and Hampstead hills, to which the open country stretched. Even now this end of Queen Square is closed only by a railing, but a great mass of streets and houses stretches far beyond Hampstead and Highgate now.

Trafalgar Square itself got its name in honour of Nelson, the hero of the great victory of Trafalgar. The great column with the statue of Nelson stands in the square.

This brings us to one of the most interesting of old London names. On one side of the square stands Charing Cross, the busiest spot in London. At this point there once stood the last of the nine beautiful crosses which King Edward III. set up at the places where the coffin of his wife, Eleanor, was set to rest in the long journey from Lincolnshire, where she died, to her grave in Westminster Abbey; and so it got its name. A fine modern cross has been set up in memory of Edward's cross, which has long since disappeared.

The district of Westminster takes its name, of course, from the abbey; and the name Broad Sanctuary remains to remind us of the sanctuary in which, as in many churches of the Middle Ages, people could take refuge even from the Law. Covent Garden took its name from a convent garden belonging to the abbey.

One of the oldest parts of London is Charterhouse Square, where, until a year or two ago, there stood the famous boys' school of this name. The school took its name from the old monastery of the Charterhouse, which King Henry VIII. brought to an end because the monks would not own that he was head of the Church instead of the Pope. They suffered a dreadful death, being hanged, drawn, and quartered as traitors. The monastery was taken, like so many others, by the king, and afterwards became a school. But the school was removed in 1872 to an airier district at Godalming. Part of the old building is still used as a boys' day school.

The word Charterhouse was the English name for a house of Carthusians, a very strict order of monks, whose first house was the Grande Chartreuse in France.

Not far from the Charterhouse is Ely Place, with the beautiful old church of St. Ethelreda. This was, in the Middle Ages, a chapel used by the Bishop of Ely when he came to London, and that is how Ely Place, still one of the quietest and quaintest spots in London, got its name.

People who go along Ludgate Hill to St. Paul's must have noticed many curious names. Perhaps the quaintest of all is Paternoster Row. This street, which takes its name from the Latin name of the "Our Father," or Lord's Prayer, got its name from the fact that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many sellers of prayer-books and texts collected at this spot, on account of it being near the great church of St. Paul's. Paternoster Row is still full of booksellers.