“Some other ancient architectural remains, perhaps originally connected with the former, were also found under the houses extending up the eastern site of Bishopsgate Street. The description of their situation, given by Maitland, fixes their locality to the side of the very house at which the fire of 1765 commenced; and which appears to have continued until that time in the same kind of occupation as it was when the ensuing account of these ruins was written. ‘At the distance of 12 feet from this church,’—namely the remains already noticed at the north-east corner of Leadenhall Street—‘is to be seen, under the house at the late Mr. Macadam’s, a peruke-maker in Bishopsgate Street, a stone building of the length of 30 feet, breadth of 14, and altitude of 8 feet 6 inches above the present floor; with a door in the north-side, and a window at the east end, as there probably was one in the west. It is covered with a semi-circular arch, built with small piers of chalk in the form of bricks, and ribbed with stone, resembling those of the arches of a bridge. What this edifice at first was appropriated to is very uncertain; though, by the manner of its construction, it seems to have been a chapel; but the ground having been since raised on all sides, it was probably converted into a subterraneous repository for merchandise; for a pair of stone stairs, with a descending arch over them, seems to have been erected since the fabric was built’” (Wilkinson, Londina Illustrata).
The most important house in the street next to the Leadenhall itself was the East India House, which stood near to the Hall. The Company first met, according to tradition, at the Nag’s Head Tavern, Bishopsgate; they then had a house in Leadenhall Street; they took on lease in 1701—perhaps it was their first house—Sir William Craven’s large house in Leadenhall Street, with a tenement in Lime Street. This is probably the house pictured in a print in the British Museum.
In 1726 the “Old” East India House was built, of which several parts were retained in the new buildings of 1799.
Hardly any part of the City, unless it be the south of Cornhill, is so honeycombed with courts and passages as the quarter upon which we are now engaged. For the most part they are not distinguished by any historical associations. Some of them formerly contained taverns and inns. The courts are greatly diminished in size; some of them were narrow lanes with houses standing face to face, a few feet apart; some of them formerly contained gentlemen’s houses. Why were these houses built in a court? The explanation is easy. The town-house of noble or merchant was built like a college: a gateway with a chamber over it in front, rooms beside the gate in case of a nobleman with a retinue; in other cases a wall enclosing a garden in a square, on either side rooms, at the back the Hall and what we call reception rooms, with the private rooms of the family. When land became more valuable the rooms beside the gateway became shops, then there was building at the back of the shops, the sides became contracted, and there were left at last only the court, the gateway, and the house beyond. There are several places in the City where this history of a house may be traced, the modern offices being built on the site of the old foundation, the gateway having disappeared, and the court still remaining.
“Anno 1136. A very great fire happened in the City, which began in the house of one Ailward, near London Stone, and consumed all the way east to Aldgate, and west to St. Erkenwald’s shrine in St. Paul’s Cathedral, both which it destroyed, together with London Bridge, which was then constructed of wood.
“It is reasonable to conjecture, that the accumulation of ruins these extensive fires occasioned left the distressed inhabitants little choice in their determination; and as it would have caused infinite trouble and inconvenience to have cleared and removed the same, they wisely preferred sacrificing a few (to them) useless buildings, raised and levelled the ground, and began a foundation for new dwellings on the site of the roofs of some of their remaining habitations. The amazing descent to the banks of the Thames from several parts of the City confirms the opinion that most of the buildings denominated crypts, oratories, or undercrofts, were, in their pristine states, level in their foundations with the dwelling-places of their original builders. What greatly adds to the probability is the circumstance of our being informed that near Belzeter’s Lane (Billiter Lane) and Lime Street, three new houses being to be built, in the year 1590, in a place where was a large garden plot enclosed from the street by a high brick wall, upon taking down the said wall and digging for cellarage, another wall of stone was found directly under the brick wall with an arched gateway of stone, and gates of timber to be closed in the midst towards the street. The timber of the gates was consumed, but the hinges of iron were then remaining on their staples on both sides: moreover, in that wall were square windows with bars of iron on each side this gate. The wall was above two fathoms deep under the ground, supposed to be the remains of those great fires before mentioned. Again, we learn, on the east side of Lime Street opening into Fenchurch Street, on that site, after the fire of 1666, Sir Thomas Cullum built thirty houses, and that a short time previous to 1757, the cellar of one of the houses giving way, there was discovered an arched room, ten feet square and eight feet deep, with several arched doors round it stopped up with earth” (Wilkinson, Londina Illustrata, vol. ii. p. 43).
In 1660 the mayor, Sir Thomas Allen, resided in Leadenhall Street and entertained Monk. At the corner of St. Mary Axe stood, in the fifteenth century, the town-house of the De Veres, Earls of Oxford.
Gibbon’s great-grandfather, one of the last of the younger sons of county families who came to London and went into trade, had his shop as a draper in Leadenhall Street.
In this street Peter Anthony Motteux, translator of Don Quixote, kept an “East India” shop. He was a Huguenot, and could speak and understand many languages. He was also employed as a linguist at the Post Office. In addition to his shop and his office, he worked as a poet and man of letters generally; being the author of plays, prologues, and epilogues. He is best known by his completion of Urquhart’s Translation of Rabelais. He was a loose liver, and died in a disorderly house in St. Clement Danes. Like the lady of Père la Chaise, “Resigned unto the Heavenly Will, His wife kept on the business still.”