Here is a pen-and-ink sketch of Holborn Bridge—from some old engraving or painting (Crosby does not give his authority), which gives an excellent idea of old London—squalid and filthy according to our ideas. How different from that noble viaduct which now spans the course of the Fleet River! which her Majesty opened on November 6, 1869.
HOLBORN BRIDGE.
Footnotes
[66] Hollinshed says—speaking of a Council at the Tower, relative to the Coronation of Edward V., at which the Protector presided, "After a little talking with them, he said unto the Bishop of Ely, 'My Lord, you have verie good strawberries at your garden in Holborne, I require you let us have a messe of them.' 'Gladlie, my Lord,' quoth he, 'would God I had some better thing as readie to your pleasure as that!' And there withall, in all haste, he sent his servant for a messe of strawberries."
[67] Gray, "A long Story."
[68] Afterwards Anglicised into Audrey.
[69] There is now Bowling Green Street, Farringdon Street.
[70] See next two pages.
[71] "London Spy," part vi.
[72] Thames Street.
CHAPTER XV.
THEN, close by (still keeping up its title of the River of the Wells) was Lamb's Conduit, on Snow Hill, which was fed from a little rill which had its source near where the Foundling Hospital now stands, its course being perpetuated by the name of Lamb's Conduit Street, where, according to the "Old English Herbal," watercresses used to flourish. "It groweth of its own accord in gardens and fields by the way side, in divers places, and particularly in the next pasture to the Conduit Head, behind Gray's Inn, that brings water to Mr. Lamb's Conduit in Holborn."