The modern St. Mary Axe is not interesting. The old house at the corner of Great St. Helen’s is the first to be noticed. Next to it is another old one, stuccoed. A few doors northward is the Grapes public-house. Then follow a succession of more or less new warehouses, with narrow frontage, chiefly in red brick, not unpicturesquely designed. A very new red brick building with much ornamental detail is St. Anne’s Chambers, Nos. 37 to 41. This is succeeded by the ward school, which is of red brick and bears its name across its frontage. It is the ward school of Cornhill and Lime Street, and was established 1710. The present building was erected in 1846. A little model of St. George and the Dragon gives a touch of vivacity to its appearance. Beyond this are large brick business houses and warehouses. Bishopsgate Avenue is occupied chiefly by stationers and printers.
Bevis Marks.—“Then next is one great House, large of Rooms, fair Courts and Garden Plots, sometime pertaining to the Bassets, since that, to the Abbots of Bury in Suffolk, and therefore called Buries Marks, corruptly Bevis Marks. And since the Dissolution of the Abbey of Bury, to Thomas Heneage the Father, and Sir Thomas Heneage the Son.
“This House and Ground is now encreased into many Tenements: And among the rest, the Jews of London have of late built themselves a large Synagogue here, wainscotted round. It stands East and West like one of our Churches. The great Door is on the West: Near to which West End is a long Desk upon an Ascent, somewhat raised from the rest of the Floor; where I suppose the Law is read. The East wall is in part railed in; and before the Wall is a Door, which is to open with a Key, where their Law seems to be laid up. Aloft on this Wall are the Ten Commandments, or some part of them, inscribed in Golden Hebrew Letters without Points. There be seven great Branched Candlesticks of Brass hanging down from the Top; and many other Places for Candles and Lamps. The Seats are Benches, with Backs to them that run along from West to East” (Strype, vol. i. bk. ii. p. 73).
The modern Bevis Marks is lined on the west by substantial red-brick buildings chiefly occupied by merchants.
Heneage Lane, leading out of Bevis Marks, a narrow and dark thoroughfare, contains the synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews. It is a plain structure externally, built in the year 1700. Standing in the midst of its courts and almshouses the place has somewhat the appearance of a Spanish convent. The interior is spacious and fitted with two galleries, one for women. The children attend service under one of the galleries.
The derivation of Houndsditch as given by Stow is as unsavoury as the reputation the street later earned. “Called Hounds-ditch for that in old time when the same lay open much filth (conveyed forth of the Citie) especially dead dogges was there laid or cast.” Beyond the mud wall that enclosed the ditch was a “fayre field” where were the almshouses of the Priory of Holy Trinity.
“In my youth, I remember,” continues Stow, “devout people as well men as women of the Citie, were accustomed oftentimes, especially on Frydayes weekely, to walke that way purposely, and there to bestow their charitable almes; every poor man or woman lying in their bed within their window, which was toward the street open so low, that every man might see them.”
At present looking down Houndsditch from Bishopsgate Within the street presents a not unpicturesque appearance. On the south, indeed, it is one continuous row of dull brick box-like houses, but on the north one or two old projecting houses break the line. No. 96 is an old stuccoed house which projects in a broad bay above the first floor. Besides these old houses several high plain warehouses break up the monotony of the street line. Houndsditch is the centre of the old-clothes trade. To the north lie huge warehouses and industrial dwellings.
Bishopsgate.—There were two northern gates to the Roman wall: one of them corresponding with Newgate and the other with Bishopsgate. But the Saxon and mediæval Bishopsgate was not built on the site of the Roman gate, but a little to the west. The foundations of the Roman gate have been found in Camomile Street; they were built with carved stones taken from some Roman building, perhaps a villa, an illustration of my theory that the wall was built in great haste and that all the stone buildings of the City were used in its construction.
The massive masonry of the ancient “Newgate” has also been found close by the later gate in Giltspur Street.