St. Paul’s had its enclosed churchyard, so that the main thoroughfare for centuries passed round it from Newgate Street to Cheapside. The name of Cheap tells of the general market held there, and the names of several of the streets out of Cheapside tell of the particular merchandise appropriated to them, as Friday Street (Friday’s market for fish), Milk Street and Bread Street. At the west end of Cheapside was the Church of St. Michael le Querne (or at the Corn), which marked the site of the Corn Market. It was destroyed in the Great Fire. At the east end of this church stood the Old Cross, which was taken down in the year 1390, and replaced by the Little Conduit, which is described as standing by Paul’s gate. There is an engraving of this church and the conduit, with the water-pots of the water-carriers dotted about.
The wall passed north along the side of St. Martin’s-le-Grand till it came to Aldersgate, close by the Church of St. Botolph. The exact spot is marked by No. 62 on the east side of the street. Stow’s etymologies of London names are seldom very satisfactory, but he never blundered worse than when he explained Aldgate as old gate and Aldersgate as the older gate; but his explanation has been followed by many successive writers, who do not seem to have seen the impossibility of the suggestion. One of the earliest forms of the name is Aldredesgate, showing pretty conclusively that it was a proper name.
The wall proceeds east to Cripplegate, with an outpost—the Watch-Tower or Barbican. The Rev. W. Denton has explained the name of Cripplegate as due to the covered way between the postern and the Barbican or Burgh-kenning (A.S., crepel, cryfle or crypele, a burrow or passage under ground). The name occurs also in the Domesday of Wiltshire, where we read: ‘To Wansdyke, thence forth by the dyke to Crypelgeat.’[19] If this etymology be accepted, we have here the use of the word gate as a way. In the north this distinction is kept up, and the road is the gate, while what we in the south call the gate is the bar. For instance, at York, Micklegate is the road, and the entrance to the wall is Micklegate bar.
It may be noted that St. Giles was the patron saint of Cripples, but the first church was not built until about 1090 by Alfune, the first Hospitaller of St. Bartholomew’s, so that the dedication may have been owing to a mistaken etymology at that early date. In the churchyard is an interesting piece of the old wall still in position. The course of the wall to the east is marked by the street named London Wall, from Cripplegate to Bishopsgate Street. Here it bore south to Camomile and Wormwood Streets, where stood till 1731 the gate.
The distance between Cripplegate and Bishopsgate is not great, and much of the space outside the walls was occupied by Moorditch. Still, in 1415, Thomas Falconer, then Mayor, opened a postern in the wall, where Moorgate Street now is, for the benefit of the hay and wood carts coming to the markets of London. He must also have made a road across the morass of Moorfields, for that place was not drained until more than a century afterwards. The site of Bishopsgate is marked by two tablets on the houses at the corners of Camomile and Wormwood Streets respectively (Nos. 1 and 64 Bishopsgate Street Without), inscribed with a mitre, and these words, ‘Adjoining to this spot Bishopsgate formerly stood.’[20]
Bishopsgate was named after Erkenwald, Bishop of London (d. 685), son of Offa, King of Mercia, by whom it was erected. At first the maintenance of the gate was considered to devolve upon the Bishop of London, but after an arrangement with the Hanse Merchants it was ruled that the bishop ‘is bound to make the hinges of Bysoppsgate; seeing that from every cart laden with wood he has one stick as it enters the said gate.’ The liability was limited to the hinges, for after some dispute it was (1305) ‘awarded and agreed that Almaines belonging to the House of the Merchants of Almaine shall be free from paying two shillings on going in or out of the gate of Bishopesgate with their goods, seeing that they are charged with the safe keeping and repair of the gate.’ The line of the wall bears southward to Aldgate, and is marked by the street named Houndsditch.
The earliest form of the name Aldgate appears to have been Alegate or Algate, and, therefore, has nothing to do with Old, the d being intrusive. Within the walls was the great house of Christ Church, founded by Queen Maud or Matilda, wife to Henry I., in the year 1108, and afterwards known as the Priory of the Holy Trinity within Aldgate. In 1115 the famous Cnichtengild, possessors of the ward of Portsoken (which was the soke without the port or gate called Aldgate), presented to the priory all their rights, offering upon the altars of the church the several charters of the guild. The King confirmed the gift, and the prior became ex officio an alderman of London. This continued to the dissolution of the religious houses, when the inhabitants of the ward obtained the privilege of electing their own alderman. Stow tells us that he remembered the prior riding forth with the Mayor as one of the aldermen. ‘These priors have sitten and ridden amongst the aldermen of London, in livery like unto them, saving that his habit was in shape of a spiritual person, as I myself have seen in my childhood.’
The old name of Christ Church is retained in St. Katherine Cree or Christ Church, on the north side of Leadenhall Street, which was built in the cemetery of the dissolved priory. This church was taken down in 1628, and the present building erected in 1630.
The wall led south by the line of the street now called the Minories to the Tower, thus dividing Great Tower Hill, which was within the wall, from Little Tower Hill, which was outside. The Abbey of Nuns of the Order of St. Clare, which was situated outside the city walls, gave its name of Minoresses to the street. When William the Conqueror built the Tower he encroached upon the city ground, a proceeding which was not popular with his subjects. Near Tower Hill, that is out of George Street,