Crooked Lane has been partly destroyed to make way for the approach to London Bridge, which has also swallowed up St. Michael’s Lane and Great Eastcheap. In Crooked Lane stood a house before the Fire called “the Leaden Porch,” which belonged to one Sir John Sherston in the fifteenth century. The lane also contained St. Michael’s Church, the burial-place of William Walworth.
St. Michael, Crooked Lane, was situated on the east side of Miles’s Lane, Great Eastcheap, and was one of the thirteen “Peculiars” in the City, subject to the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was repaired and redecorated in 1610, but burnt down by the Great Fire and rebuilt from Wren’s designs in 1687; the steeple was not built till 1698. In 1831 the building was pulled down, its parish being united with those of St. Magnus and St. Margaret. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1286.
The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, before 1286; the Archbishop of Canterbury, who presented in 1408, in whose successors it continued up to 1848, when the church was annexed to St. Magnus the Martyr.
Houseling people in 1548 were 354.
The church built by Wren, which was without aisles, measured 78 feet in length and 46 feet in breadth. The tower was surmounted by a circular lantern in three stages, supporting a cupola with a lofty vane and cross, and reached a height of about 100 feet.
Chantries were founded here: By William Walworth (mayor 1380) of five chaplains; he endowed it with lands, etc., which fetched £20 : 13 : 4 in 1548, when the priests were William Berte, Thomas Harper, William Hale, William Clayton, and John Nesehame; by John Rothinge, who left £6 yearly, which is appropriated to finding a Walworth chaplain; by Walter Morden, who endowed it with the “bores hedde” in Eastcheap, valued at £4 a year; by William de Burgo, who had the King’s licence June 21, 1318, whose endowment fetched £6 : 13 : 4 in 1548; by Pentecost Russel and Gerard de Staundon at the altar of St. Thomas Martyr and St. Edmund; the King granted his licence July 14, 1321, for himself, his father and mother, and G. de Staundon, late parson of Stevenage, Herts; by Henry Grubbe, for which the King granted his licence April 20, 1371; by Roger Steere, who endowed it with tenements valued at £8 : 8 : 0 yearly, which is spent towards finding the Walworth chaplains; by William Jordan, who left £5 : 16 : 8 to find a priest, but this was also appropriated to the Walworth chaplains; by Robert Brocket, who endowed it with £7 a year; by John Longe, who left 10s. per annum; March 10, 1380-81—the King granted his licence to William Walworth, citizen and merchant of London, to unite diverse chantries in this church, founded by Pentecost Russell; Matilda and Roger Steere; John Harewe; John Abell; W. Burgh; Henry Grubbe; William Jordan; Walter Mordon; and Thomas atte Leye, which by changes of time are insufficient to maintain these chantries, and he was further empowered to found a college of one master and nine chaplains there.
The church formerly contained monuments to: John Lovekin, fishmonger, four times Lord Mayor, through whom the church, 1348, 1358, 1365, and 1366, was rebuilt; also Sir William Walworth, the mayor who overthrew Wat Tyler—he enlarged the church with a new choir and side-chapels and founded a college in connection with it; Sir John Brug, mayor 1520, donor of £50.
No legacies or charitable gifts are recorded by Stow.
John Poynet (d. 1556), Bishop of Rochester and of Winchester, was rector here; also Adam Molens or Molyneux (d. 1450), Bishop of Chichester, who was slain at Portsmouth by the Marines, incited by Richard, Duke of York; Giovanni Giglii (d. 1498), Bishop of Worcester.
At the end of Swan Lane is Old Swan Pier, beneath which are the famous Old Swan Stairs; these now consist of stone steps followed by a flight of wooden ones, descending straight into the water. Stow calls them “a common stair on the Thames.” In 1441, when the Duchess of Gloucester did penance at Christchurch-by-Aldgate, she landed here, and walked the rest of the way. When persons did not care to risk “shooting London Bridge,” it was customary for them to land at these stairs, walk to the other side of the bridge, and then take to the water again. Pepys in his Diary (1661) mentions taking Mr. Salisbury to Whitehall: “But he could not by any means be moved to go through the bridge, and we were fain to go round by the Old Swan Pier”; and Boswell says that he and Johnson “landed at the Old Swan and walked to Billingsgate,” where they took oars for Greenwich.