In 1639 he possessed £236,000, out of which he gave large sums to the King. He died August 22, 1650. The row of houses that now stand on the site of his house have fairly good shops on the ground-floors, and there are one or two archway entrances into the station premises near the north end. The Black Raven public-house is one of these. Acorn Street, Skinner Street, and Primrose Street need very little comment. They are chiefly composed of the sides of houses fronting Bishopsgate, and some ordinary modern brick buildings.
Nos. 131-2-3 are old plaster houses, and No. 120, beyond Acorn Street, has a projecting bay window carried up two stories. This is also an old house. These are all on the west side. On the east, beginning again from the south end, the first building to attract attention is the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Station, erected 1885. It is an improvement on the monstrosities continually perpetrated in the name of the Fire Brigade. The Bishopsgate Institute is near Brushfield Street. It fronts Bishopsgate with an elaborate yellow terra-cotta façade, and has an open entry. The entrance to the Bishopsgate Chapel is under an old stuccoed house, and the chapel itself is a large stuccoed building. Beyond this, after a Great Northern Receiving Office, are some very old houses, plastered with rough stucco in imitation of stone. These are Nos. 82 to 84. One of them has wooden rusticated work from above the first story to the top of the gable end. The date 1590 is stated to have been visible on one of them within the memory of man. On the corner house of Spital Street is a tablet noting the point of the City Bounds. This was placed here in 1846.
GROUP V
We come next to those streets which run north and south of Thames Street. The area is bounded on the north by Ludgate Hill, St. Paul’s Churchyard, Cannon Street, and Fenchurch Street; on the south by the Thames; on the east by Tower Hill and the site of London Wall; and on the west by the bed of the Fleet River, now New Bridge Street. For the sake of convenience we will begin at the west end.
The wall of the City originally crossed Ludgate Hill at the gate, and ran down nearly in a straight line to the river. The Castle or Tower of Montfichet was in the middle of this piece of wall, and Baynard’s Castle was at the south end of it. The Tower of Montfichet passed into the Fitzwalter family, who also owned the soke beside it. Now, when the first enmity broke out between John and Fitzwalter, all the castles and houses of the latter were dismantled and destroyed by the King’s command. In 1276 the Dominicans begged permission to occupy a piece of ground lying between the wall and the river Fleet. Lord Fitzwalter gave the Friars the site of Castle Baynard and of Montfichet. They also obtained permission to pull down the town wall at this place, and to rebuild it farther west, so as to include their ground. Here the Black Friars settled and built great buildings, and claimed the right of sanctuary. Westward of the Black Friars was the house of the Carmelites, called the White Friars. They claimed right of sanctuary also, a right which descended to a haunt of rogues, called Alsatia, an account of which may be read in The Fortunes of Nigel:
“The ancient sanctuary at Whitefriars lay considerably lower than the elevated terraces and gardens of the Temple, and was therefore generally involved in the fogs and damps of the Thames. The brick buildings by which it was occupied crowded closely on each other.... The wailing of children, the scolding of their mothers, the miserable exhibition of ragged linens hung from the windows to dry, spoke the wants and distresses of the wretched inhabitants; while the sounds of complaint were mocked and overwhelmed in the riotous shouts, oaths, profane songs, and boisterous laughter that issued from the alehouses and taverns, which, as the signs indicated, were equal in number to all the other houses.”
Where is now Bridge Street was formerly the Fleet River, and on its western bank was Bridewell Palace, a palace where the Norman kings held Court.
The old palace, burnt down in the Great Fire, was built round two courtyards; in its later days rebuilt, it followed the frequent fate of such ancient monuments, and became partly a “hospital” for poor boys, partly a prison for vagrants and other unwanted persons. It was also a hospital for lunatics, and was put under the same management as Bethlehem in 1557. Bridewell is also fully described in London in the Eighteenth Century. The part of London bounded north and south by Fleet Street and the River, east and west by New Bridge Street and the Temple, is now almost entirely occupied by mammoth printing-offices; yet on the Embankment are one or two buildings of note: Sion College, opened here in 1886 to supersede the old building on London Wall; the Guildhall School of Music; the City of London School for Girls (all modern).
After Blackfriars Bridge, running behind the line of wharves and warehouses, begins Thames Street, Upper and Lower, once one of the principal thoroughfares in London, a London that knew nothing of what is now called the “West End.” It is now a noisy street “pestered” with drays and vans, with cranes and their accompaniments, so that to walk therein in work-hours is a perilous proceeding.
Yet this ancient street, Thames Street, is, not even excepting West Chepe, the most interesting and the most venerable of all the streets of London. It is the seat of the export and the import trade. From Thames Street the City sent abroad the products of the country—the iron, the wool, the skins and hides; from Thames Street the City distributed the imports to the various parts of the country.