From a print published in 1798.
The lofty spire of the church rises to an altitude of 226 feet, a trifle higher than Bunker Hill Monument, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, which is a measuring-rod for many Americans.
St. Mary le Bow is on the site of a Norman church of the Conqueror’s time, and so named because it was built on arches or “bows” of stone. This crypt still remains. The steeple of the later church, which rang its bells above the head of little John Milton on Bread Street, close by, was built a hundred and fifty years before his birth; the church was said to have been a rather low, poor building. Bow bells were nightly rung at nine o’clock, but an old couplet shows that they were not always punctual:
“Clark of the Bow Bell, with the yellow lockes,
For thy late ringing, thy head shall have knockes.”
To which the clerk responded:
“Children of Cheape, hold you all still,
For you shall have the Bow Bell rung at your will.”
From the days when little Dick Whittington, a forlorn runaway, heard from far Bow bells summon him back to London, the bells have played a notable part in the life of Londoners. A true cockney is supposed to be one born within hearing of these bells. Certainly the boy in Spread Eagle Court deserved the title.
The spire of St. Mary le Bow rises a little higher than St. Bride’s, and bears a golden dragon nine feet long.
Upon the side of Bow Church, half hidden behind the tower, is an inscription which the pilgrim to Milton’s London will step aside to read. It is on the tablet which was transferred from All Hallows Church, in which Milton was baptised, when it was torn down. It closes with the familiar lines of Dryden, the poet whom England most admired when this new spire of Wren’s was rising upon the ruins of the old, and close beside the birthplace of the greatest soul ever born to London in all her two millenniums of history.
“Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,
The next in majesty, in both the last;
The force of nature could no farther go,
To make a third she joined the other two.”