In the tower are many monuments of antiquity, but none to recall the memory of anyone notable. The church stood in a very commanding situation until the building of the Viaduct, which passes on a higher level, giving the paved yard in front the appearance of having been sunk.
On this side of the church there is a large bas-relief of the Last Judgment, without date. This was a favourite subject in the seventeenth century, and similar specimens, though not so fine, and differing in treatment, still exist elsewhere (see p. [17]).
Malcolm mentions a house next the White Hart, with land behind it, worth 5s. per annum, called "Church Acre," and in the reign of Henry VII. the priest was fined 4d. for driving across the churchyard to the Rectory. In the twenty-fifth year of Elizabeth's reign there was a great heap of skulls and bones that lay "unseemly and offensive" at the east end of the church. The register records the burial here, on August 28, 1770, of "William Chatterton," presumably Thomas Chatterton, as the date accords. A later hand has added the words "the poet."
Wriothesley, Henry VIII.'s Chancellor, was buried in St. Andrew's churchyard. Timbs says that this church has been called the "Poets' Church," for, besides the above, John Webster, dramatic poet, is said to have been parish clerk here, though the register does not confirm it. Robert Savage was christened here January 18, 1696.
There is also a monument to Emery, the comedian, and Neale, another poet, was buried in the churchyard. But these records combined make but poor claim to such a proud title. The ground on which Chatterton was buried has now utterly vanished, having been covered first by the Farringdon Market, and later by great warehouses.
When the Holborn Viaduct was built, a large piece of the churchyard was cut off, and the human remains thus disinterred were reburied in the City cemetery at Ilford, Essex.
The earliest mention of Shoe Lane is in a writ of Edward II., when it is denominated "Scolane in the ward without Ludgate." In the seventeenth century we read of a noted cockpit which was established here.
Gunpowder Alley, which ran out of this Lane, was the residence of Lovelace, the poet, and of Lilly, the astrologer. The former died here of absolute want in 1658. His well-known lines,
"I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more,"
have made his fame more enduring than that of many men of greater poetical merit. In Shoe Lane lived also Florio, the compiler of our first Italian Dictionary. Coger's Hall in Shoe Lane attained some celebrity in the latter half of the eighteenth century. It was established for the purpose of debate, and, among others, O'Connell, Wilkes, and Curran, met here to discuss the political questions of the day. On the west side of Shoe Lane was Bangor Court, reminiscent of the Palace or Inn of the Bishops of Bangor. This was a very picturesque old house, if the prints still existing are to be trusted, and parts of it survived even so late as 1828. It was mentioned in the Patent Rolls so early as Edward III.'s reign. Another old gabled house, called Oldbourne Hall, was on the east side of the street, but this, even in Stow's time, had fallen from its high estate and descended to the degradation of division into tenements.