August the 27, 1688.’
Height fifty-two inches, breadth in the broadest part twenty-six inches. It is now much dilapidated, and seems to be in some danger of destruction, for one of the houses against which it stands is shortly to be pulled down.[1] However, I am assured that proper steps will be taken for its preservation. The property belongs by right to the parish of St. Michael-le-Querne, having been left in 1620 by Sir John Leman and Cornelius Fishe for parochial uses, but it is now handed over to the Trustees of City Parochial Charities.
The sign no doubt dates from after the Great Fire; it seems, however, to represent a previous one. Stow, writing in 1598, says that Panyer Alley was ‘so called of such a sign,’ and confirming his statement, a Panyer, Paternoster Row, appears in a list of taverns of about the year 1430, which Mr. Charles Welch, F.S.A., lately discovered among the documents of the Brewers’ Company, the landlord, John Ives, having been a member of that company. From ‘Liber Albus,’ which relates to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, one learns that in those days the sale of bread was not allowed to take place in the bakers’ houses, but only in the King’s markets. It was sold in bread-baskets or ‘panyers,’ and, the coarser kinds at any rate, occasionally in boxes or hutches.
Mr. H. T. Riley in his introduction to ‘Liber Albus’ (p. lxviii.) stated it as his opinion that the child is handing out a loaf, and that at a period somewhat later than the date of that volume (1419) Panyer Alley was noted as a standing place for bakers’ boys with their panniers. If, as seems not unlikely, this was the case, the sign would be similar to the Baker and Basket, still existing in Whitechapel and in Finsbury. Another idea—that the pannier is in point of fact a fruit-basket—seems to arise from Strype’s statement that the boy has in his hand a bunch of grapes. Fruit and vegetables were doubtless landed from the river in the neighbourhood of St. Paul’s. Porters carrying such produce may have passed through, and rested themselves in this short passage on their way to Newgate Market, which, originally for corn and meal, was after the Fire used for poultry, fruit, and vegetables,[2] before it became exclusively a meat market.
Mr. Kerslake, in a passage since referred to with approval by Professor Earle in his work on ‘Land Charters and Saxonic Documents’ (1888), tries to connect the sign with a far more remote antiquity. He argues that it may have been placed there to transmit the tradition of a wheatmaund-stone (maund being a basket or pannier), mentioned in a grant of King Alfred, a.d. 889, which indicated the site of the ancient corn market, and was, in point of fact, a place where a porter carrying a load of wheat could rest it, or the base of a market cross.[3] It seems that the question of a town house for the Bishop of the Mercians having come before Alfred, he gave to Bishop Werfrith a mansion or court, ‘æt hwæt mundes stane’—thus it is spelt in the document—and probably granted him a toll on the neighbouring market. I am not aware of any further evidence in support of this theory.
The church of St. Michael-le-Querne, ad Bladum, or at the Corne, which was destroyed in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt, stood close to Panyer Alley, at the extreme end of Paternoster Row, and Stow says it was so called ‘because in place thereof was sometime a corn market, stretching by west to the shambles.’ The Rev. W. J. Loftie tells us that at present the sign of the Boy and Panyer is not on the highest point in the City, being fifty-nine feet, while the site of the Standard in Cornhill is sixty feet above sea-level. Certainly it is not on the highest point of Panyer Alley. A writer in Notes and Queries has lately suggested that the highest point in the City was at or near Leadenhall Market, or the chancel of the primitive St. Peter’s Church on Cornhill.
A statuette, also representing a naked boy, not sculptured in stone, but carved in wood, is placed on a pedestal affixed to the wall of a public-house, at the corner of Giltspur Street and Cock Lane, called the Fortune of War. The spot was commonly known as Pie Corner: it is hardly necessary to add that here ended the Great Fire of London. The figure in question was put up after that event; an engraving of it in Pennant’s account of London shows the following inscription on the breast and arms:
‘This boy is in Memory Put up for the late Fire of London, occasioned by the Sin of Gluttony, 1666.’
Burn tells us that its propriety was on one occasion thus supported by a Nonconformist preacher on the anniversary of the Fire. He asserted that the calamity could not be occasioned by the sin of blasphemy, for in that case it would have begun in Billingsgate; nor lewdness, for then Drury Lane would have been first on fire; nor lying, for then the flames had reached them from Westminster Hall. ‘No, my beloved; it was occasioned by the sin of gluttony, for it began at Pudding Lane and ended at Pie Corner.’