William Lamb was a citizen of London, and of the Guild of Cloth-workers, besides which, he was some time Gentleman of the Chapel to Henry VIII. He benefited his fellow-citizens by restoring a conduit in 1577, which had been in existence since the fifteenth century; and, after the Great Fire, the busy Sir Christopher Wren was employed to design a covering for the spring, which he did, putting a lamb on the top, with a very short inscription on the front panel, to the effect that it was "Rebuilt in the year 1677 Sr Thos Davis Knt Ld Mayor."
It is curious to learn how the suburbs of London have grown within the memory of living men. Take, for instance, the following, from Notes and Queries (April, 1857, p. 265), referring to Lamb's Conduit. A correspondent writes that "About sixty years since, I was travelling from the West of England in one of the old stage coaches of that day, and my fellow-travellers were an octogenarian clergyman and his daughter. In speaking of the then increasing size of London, the old gentleman said that when he was a boy, and recovering from an attack of smallpox, he was sent into the country to a row of houses standing on the west side of the present Lamb's Conduit Street; that all the space before him was open fields; that a streamlet of water ran under his window; and he saw a man snipe-shooting, who sprung a snipe near to the house, and shot it."
It was no small gift of William Lamb to the City, for it cost him £1,500, which was equivalent to thrice that sum at present, and, to make it complete, he gave to one hundred and twenty poor women, pails wherewith to serve and carry water, whereby they earned an honest, although a somewhat laborious, living. Lamb left many charitable bequests, and also founded a chapel, by Monkwell Street, now pulled down. This Conduit existed until about 1755, when it was demolished, and an obelisk with lamps erected in its place, but, that being found a nuisance, was, in its turn, soon done away with.
LAMB'S CONDUIT, SNOW HILL.
Lamb was buried in the Church of St. Faith's, under St. Paul's, and on a pillar was a brass to his memory, which is so quaint, that I make no apology for introducing it.
"William Lambe so sometime was my name,
Whiles alive dyd runne my mortall race,