Only two charities are recorded by Stow: 12d. per week in bread, 50s. per annum in coals for the poor, the gift of Henry Hobener; £10 : 10s. for a weekly lecture, the gift of Thomas Wetnal.
The parish churchyard is situated in Salters’ Hall Court, by which it is separated from the church. It is elevated above the court and contains two trees, two or three bushes and shrubs, and a few tombstones. Across it is a right-of-way to the premises of the National Telephone Company, to which it has the appearance of being a garden.
George Street was anciently Bearbinder Lane. Riley notes “Berbynderslane” in the City records so early as 1358. It was renamed George Street within the nineteenth century. If Charlotte Row, west of the Mansion House, was so called in honour of Queen Charlotte, surely this was rechristened in honour of George III., whom she married in 1761. It is quite small compared with its former extent, for it once ran from Walbrook past the south side of St. Mary Woolchurch into St. Swithin’s Lane, and also had a northern limb, passing the west end of Dove Court, into Lombard Street. Now the Mansion House stands upon all the old course west of Walbrook churchyard, and the northern limb is built over. This was the fatal spot where the plague of 1665 first made its appearance within the City. Defoe, in his history of the dire disease, relates how a Frenchman living in Long Acre, near the plague-stricken houses, moved hither “for fear of the distemper.” Alas! he was already stricken, and in the beginning of May he died, the first victim within the City walls. Strype calls Bearbinder Lane “a place of no great account as to trade: well inhabited by merchants and others.” In his time about thirty yards at the east end were reckoned in Langbourn ward, and apparently also most of the northern arm. It now belongs wholly to Walbrook ward, and is merely a narrow passage containing no houses older than the nineteenth century.
We now take Walbrook, leaving Cannon Street to be dealt with subsequently. The memory of the stream of the Walbrook coming down from the heights to the north is preserved in the name of this short street.
In 1279 and in 1290 we find that there were houses on the banks of the stream. In the year 1307, there was one William le Marischale living beside the stream. It must have been almost impossible, even then, to live near the stream, because it was a common open sewer with latrines built over it. These were farmed by certain persons. Part of the stream, however, was covered over by the year 1300; it was not till the close of the sixteenth century that it was completely covered over. Empson and Dudley, the instruments of Henry VII.’s extortions, lived in Walbrook; and later Sir Christopher Wren is said to have lived here at the house afterwards No. 5.
The modern street is chiefly composed of ordinary stone-faced business houses. But on the west side are three charming seventeenth-century buildings of mellow red brick, Nos. 10, 11, and 12. On the centre one is a stone tablet supported by brackets, and covered by a projecting cornice; this bears date 1668. A little farther up on the opposite side an eighteenth-century brick house stands over the entry to Bond Court. The doorway immediately opposite the entry is a nice piece of woodwork. There are also one or two doorways of different designs in the northern part of the court. These belong to old houses, though those buildings on the west facing them are quite modern.
Returning to the street, the ornamental front of the City Liberal Club, founded 1874, draws attention to itself. The front is of light stone with the windows and doorway framed in granite. Farther north on the same side is Ye Olde Deacons Tavern, next door to Bell Court, a narrow passage of no particular interest. Representations of almost every trade occupy the street; it contains two great houses let in flats, one of which, Worcester House, seems to be especially given up to the offices of company promoters.
ST. STEPHEN, WALBROOK
St. Stephen, Walbrook, stands at the back of the Mansion House. It was formerly often called St. Stephen-upon-Walbrook, from the fact that its first site was actually upon the bank of the stream so named. There is only one other church in the City dedicated to St. Stephen, viz. St. Stephen, Coleman Street. The date of its foundation is not known, but it dates back at least as far as the reign of Henry I.; Eudo Dapifer’s gift of it to his Abbey of St. John, Colchester, in 1096, being the earliest reference to it. It was rebuilt early in Henry VI.’s reign, chiefly through the agency of Robert Chicheley, Lord Mayor in 1411 and 1421. It was totally consumed by the Fire, and rebuilt by Wren in 1672, when the neighbouring parish of St. Benet Sherehog was annexed. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1315.
The patronage of the church was in the hands of: Eudo, Steward to Henry I., who gave it to the Abbot and Convent of St. John, Colchester, who held it up to 1422; John, Duke of Bedford, who sold it in 1432 to Sir Robert Whytingham, Knt., who gave it to Richard Lee in 1460, who gave it in 1502 to the Grocers Company, in whose successors it continued.