“No. The old one was burnt, and this took its place. But some sort of chain or bar or gate has been on this spot for eight hundred years to mark the place where the part of London called Westminster ends, and the City begins. Even now, in our time, though there’s no gate left, when the King pays a state visit to the City, he stops here and asks the Lord Mayor who comes to meet him for permission to pass Temple Bar!”
“Except that it’s newer, St. Clement Danes church, where Dr. Johnson goes, looks the same,” remarked Betty, searching for buildings with which she was familiar.
“Yes, it’s one of the many churches rebuilt after the Fire by Sir Christopher Wren.”
“‘Oranges and Lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement’s!’”
Betty quoted. “That’s a nursery rhyme about that very church, isn’t it? It goes on to tell what all the other church bells say too!” she added.
“We’ll read it when we slip back into our own day,” Godmother answered. “Now look up and down the street.”
Glancing first at the road, Betty saw that instead of the smooth wood pavement with motor omnibuses running quickly over it, Fleet Street was now paved with round cobblestones which extended right up to the shops on either hand, and only a row of posts divided the foot passengers from the traffic.
Big lumbering coaches, with powdered footmen standing up behind them, rolled clattering over the stones. Wagons piled with vegetables jolted along, the horses led by carters in smock frocks, cracking their whips. Every now and then a sedan chair slung on poles and carried by men-servants, passed by, giving her a glimpse of a lady within, dressed in flowered silk, her hair piled high and powdered thickly.
Instead of gabled houses with the latticed windows of earlier times, she saw taller, plainer houses, like those in the streets of the Adelphi, built of small bricks, with sash windows level with their walls, and each story exactly over the one beneath it. There were no top windows now from which opposite neighbours shook hands across the street. At every shop door, a sign hung out, some painted on wood, others made of gilded metal.