While lamenting the loss of the old patterns of Hall, pulled down, or destroyed by fire, we must admire the sumptuous, and even magnificent, buildings which have taken their place; such as the massive, floridly decorated façade of the Drapers’ Hall in Throgmorton Street. This street, as it bends or winds, has a majestic, almost Genoese, air; its great gloomy buildings rise solemnly on each side of the narrow street, foreign in tone; towards the close of the business day, the street becomes filled with crowds of animated noisy figures pouring out of the Stock Exchange, and debating their bargains in the open air. This scene—the narrow street, the stately shadowy buildings frowning down on the figures—suggests one of the retired picturesque streets in Ghent, or even in some Italian city. The busy, substantial negotiators have a burgher-like air, and the whole is utterly different from anything to be seen in the trivial West End. The Drapers’ Hall is a vast and ponderous mass, already blackened with age, though young in years, but very striking in character, with its enormous and richly florid cornice, bold windows, and heavily arched portals. As we look through the iron rails, we can see a retired court, curious contrast to the noisy scene without. The old “Drapers’ Gardens” used to stretch down the whole street that turns out of Throgmorton Street, and were admired for their tranquil air of old fashion. Gradually they have been encroached upon; warehouses have been reared, and a fragment only now remains. Even this remnant, however, is welcome, and the promenade down the alley leaves an impression as of something old-fashioned and rural. Such are a few of these very striking “survivals.”
CHAPTER XXI.
ALLHALLOWS, ST. OLAVE’S, ELY CHAPEL, ETC.
THE old City Churches offer an inexhaustible field for a London explorer. There is nothing more touching than the air of utter abandonment of some of these forlorn structures, appropriately situated in some fast-decaying quarter. They seem closed for ever; and with many are associated strange histories.
The gloomy, ancient church of Allhallows Barking impresses the visitor in an extraordinary way. It is difficult to give an idea of the blighted, solemn desolation of this woe-begone fane. The name of the place in which it stands, “Seething Lane,” seems fitting enough. The neighbouring houses have fallen away from it and have been excavated out of existence by Metropolitan Railways, etc., and, as a last degradation, a house has been built over its porch. One face of it projects along Tower Street on a sort of abject terrace—a squalid, abandoned churchyard, with a few starved trees flourishing their bare branches. The old mould, quite grassless, lies thick. There the gaunt tower, with its meagre, decayed lantern, and its worn, stripped sides, rises blighted by neglect. The two low aisles that range beside the nave have the same piteous air.
Not far away is another of these blighted fanes, St. Olave’s, Hart Street, whose dismal entrance gateway is set off with a gruesome representation of skulls and cross-bones elaborately carved, offering with its decayed and rusted iron gate a truly depressing prospect. This seems a souvenir of the Plague time. It is a strange, gruesome feeling, looking through the close railings of the barred gates, into this rueful inclosure. Entering from “Seething Lane,” under a quaint gateway, we pass across the forlorn graveyard. The interior is interesting and original in the shape of its arches and aisles, and well lined with mural tablets. Two are in memory of Samuel Pepys and his wife, with their alabaster busts and inscriptions. It is pleasant to find oneself in company with the piquant and agreeable chronicler.
Wandering on, we come to a very effective and picturesque structure—the old Cripplegate Church, which affects one with the strangest feelings of a forlorn kind. Its grim old square tower rises in an abandoned fashion, as though it felt that no one cared for it, that it is but an obsolete survivor amid the lines of new and magnificent warehouses that have been built about it. On its top platform is perched a sort of kiosk-shaped lantern; from within, as I stand below, booms out the solemn melodious bell. Its clock-face is fixed, not at the centre, but at one side, with bizarre effect. The church is hedged round by ancient buildings with projecting framed bow-windows, and the florid gate of its churchyard is set off with a well-carved hour-glass, lying on its side, flanked by a skull and crossbones—grim supporters. This is gruesome enough. On the top of each are two more upright hour-glasses. The church within has been trimmed up, painted and decorated, in an unpleasing modern way. Milton’s tomb, which faces the door, has been “done up handsomely,” with a Gothic canopy, and altogether made smart and pretentious: all round the walls are curious black tablets with florid carvings as black.
ALLHALLOWS BARKING.