It is impossible to say when this demolition began; the river wall was standing in the time of Cnut: it appears no more. When Queen Hythe (Edred’s Hythe) was constructed, in size and shape like the port of Billingsgate, either a postern had to be made for it, or a postern already existed.
The reclaiming of the foreshore (see p. [125]) was a very important addition to the area of London: it added a slip of ground 2200 yards in length by an average of 100 yards in breadth, i.e. about forty-five acres of ground, which was presently covered with narrow lanes between warehouses. The lanes, many of which remain and are curious places to visit, led to river stairs, and were the residences of the people employed in the service of the port.
As for the removal of the wall, exactly the same process was followed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the people began gradually to take down the City wall; they built against it, before it, and behind it; and, no one interfered.
The lower part of the town was by far the more crowded: if we take a map of London and count the churches immediately north and south of Cheapside and Cornhill, this fact comes home to us very clearly. Thus, there are north of that boundary, thirty-one; south of the boundary there are sixty-eight, counting roughly. The lower part of the town contained the wharves and the warehouses, the lodgings of the people employed in the work of loading and unloading the ships, the taverns and the places of refreshment for the sailors and such persons; the narrow lanes and the absence of any historical houses in the part south of Thames Street show that the place, after the reclaiming of the foreshore, was always what it is now, either a place for warehouses or for the residence of the service. A great many of the merchants lived on the rising ground north of Thames Street. Hence we find here a great many Companies’ Halls: here Whittington, later on, had his lordly house in which he interviewed kings; here, in the time we are considering, such Norman nobles and knights as had houses in the City all lived. Thus in Elbow Lane lived Pont de l’Arche, second founder of St. Mary Overies. The Earls of Arundel had a house in Botolph Lane, Billingsgate; Lord Beaumont—but this was later—lived beside Paul’s Wharf; Henry FitzAylwin, first Mayor of London, lived close beside London Stone.
I do not suppose that any of the houses in Norman London could compare with the palaces erected by the merchants of the fourteenth century,—there was no such place as Crosby Hall among them; but still they were good and stately houses. There was a large hall in which the whole family lived: the fire was made in a fire-place with open bars; the smoke ascended to the roof, where it found a way out by the lantern; the windows were perhaps glazed; certainly glass merchants appeared in the country in the eleventh century; if they were not glazed they were covered with a white cloth which admitted light; the two meals of the day were served on tables consisting of boards laid on trestles; the servants all slept on the floor on the rushes, each with a log of wood for a pillow, and wrapped in his blanket; the master of the house had one or more bedrooms over the kitchen called the Solar, where he slept in beds, he and his wife and family. At the other end of the hall was a room called the Ladies’ Bower, where the ladies of the house sat in the daytime with the maids. If you want to see an admirable specimen of the mediæval house with the Hall, the Solar, and the Bower, all complete, you may see it at Stokesay Castle, near Ludlow.
In the craftsmen’s cottages the people seem to have all slept on straw. In the fourteenth century, however, we find the craftsmen amply provided with blankets, pillows, and feather-beds.
We can, in fact, at this period, divide the City into parallel belts, according to the character and calling of the residents. Everything to do with the export, import, and wholesale trade was conducted in Thames Street, and on its wharves: the porters, stevedores, servants, and sailors lived in the narrow lanes about Puddle Dock at one end of Thames Street, and Tower Hill at the other. That is the first belt—the belt of the port. The rising ground on the north was the residence of the merchants and the better sort. That is the second belt. Next comes the breadth of land bounded by Watling Street and Eastcheap on the south, and by an imaginary line a little north of Cheapside on the north, this was mainly given over to retail trade, and it is the third belt. My theory is illustrated by the names. Thus I find in this retail belt all the names of streets indicating markets, not factories.
A NORMAN HALL
The fourth belt is that quarter where the industries were carried on: namely, the large part of the City lying north of Cheapside and Cornhill. Let me repeat that London was a hive of industries: I have counted belonging to the fourteenth century as many as 284 crafts mentioned in the books; and of course there must have been many others not mentioned.