Wormwood Street is a continuation of London Wall, facing it. “In the street,” says Strype, “briefly, there be divers courts and alleys.” In other words, that part of London was occupied as lately as 1720 or 1750 by a population of industrial folk not yet driven out by the increase of merchants’ offices and banks. There appear to have been no antiquities in this street, unless we reckon a small burial-ground belonging to St. Martin Outwich, which lay in the point of the wall.
Of London Wall we have already spoken.
Northward are three stations, Broad Street, Bishopsgate Street, and Liverpool Street.
There are dreary rows of old brick houses on either side of the part of New Broad Street which runs east and west. Towards the west end of the street are one or two well-built business houses. The site of the Jews’ Synagogue is occupied by Blomfield House, largely inhabited by secretaries of companies and syndicates. When we turn the corner into the part of New Broad Street running north and south, we find some large modern buildings. On the east the building is uniform for a considerable way. Broad Street House occupies all the frontage between the two passages of St. Botolph’s Churchyard. It is stone fronted and is in an Italian style. Dashwood House behind it covers a very large area of ground. It is of ugly design in red brick with each line of windows in a different style. Both of these are largely occupied by agents, engineers, secretaries of companies, etc. Dashwood House looks out on the churchyard. This is an uninviting strip of ground surrounded on the south by the backs of warehouses. A small house at the east end is called “The Old Watchhouse,” and bears an inscription to the effect that it was rebuilt in 1771 by an alderman named James Townsend.
In Blomfield Street was formerly the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital, now removed to the City Road. The Hospital had its origin in 1804 when some gentlemen founded a free dispensary for eye diseases.
There are some large buildings on the east known as Blomfield Buildings, also the London Provident Institution Savings Bank, and the headquarters of the London Missionary Society. The bank bears an inscription to the effect that it was erected 1835 and enlarged 1875. This Society was first formed a hundred years ago (January 15, 1795) in the Castle and Falcon Inn, Aldersgate Street, and it now sends missionaries to every quarter of the world. Close by is St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Chapel, stucco-covered, and a Roman Catholic School. At the corner of East Street is a fine building called Finsbury House, with grey granite columns of considerable strength running from the ground-floor upwards. It is well proportioned and has a well-finished angle.
Finsbury Circus is surrounded by a uniform line of dull brick houses having their ground-floors covered with yellow stucco. At one point only do the area railings give way, and that is at the London Institution, built of Portland stone, with a heavy portico and fluted columns. The Institution was established in 1806 in Old Jewry and afterwards removed to King’s Arms Yard, Coleman Street. It was incorporated a year after its establishment. The present building was founded in 1815 and opened four years later.
A great many solicitors have their offices in the Circus, and there is also a sprinkling of surgeons, accountants, and secretaries of companies. The centre of the Circus is occupied by a wide space of grass surrounded by a thick shrubbery of trees.
Northward of this is Finsbury Square, built in 1789 by George Dance. At the junction of Finsbury Pavement and Moorgate Street stood Moor Gate from which northwards outside the walls stretched the great open moor, the playground of the London citizens; this is now all built over with the exception of the Square and Circus mentioned above.
Moorfields so frequently occurs in documents before the end of the eighteenth century, and played so large a part in the life of the Londoner, that it deserves some notice. The earliest mention made of it is in the reign of Henry II., and was apparently a large open mere or marsh on which water lay in parts, so that in winter it was covered with ice, and formed a playground where the young citizens practised a primitive kind of skating. It was drained in 1627, and in Queen Elizabeth’s time was much resorted to for the practice of archery. It was also used as a general rendezvous for all who desired to meet without the gates, a perpetual fair, a drying ground, a preaching place, and many other things. It is generally said that the houseless people assembled here after the Great Fire; but Moorfields could have accommodated but a tenth part of them, so that the camps must have extended northward and westward far beyond the limits of Moorfields into Finsbury Fields northwards and to Islington.