North-east of Moorfields are Finsbury Fields. Cripplegate Without and Clerkenwell are thickly populated, including the Barbican, Chiswell, Red Cross, White Cross, and Grub Street. Goswell Street, as far north as the Charterhouse, Little Britain, Long Lane, and St. John Street, West Smithfield, were enclosed. There were houses as far west as St. Giles’s. Between Holborn and the Strand, or Fleet Street, lay Fetter Lane and Chancery Lane; between them large gardens; Lincoln’s Inn Fields was an open area of irregular shape, the gardens of Lincoln’s Inn occupying the same position as to-day. New Inn and Clement’s Inn have a garden behind them; Drury Lane is an open road; Covent Garden is the “Piazzo.” Along the river-side are Bridewell, Whitefriars, nearly all a garden; the Temple, Essex House, Arundel House, Somerset House, The Savoy, Worcester House, Durham House, Buckingham House, Northampton House, Whitehall, each in its own broad garden. There are no houses in Pall Mall; none in the Haymarket, except a “Gaming House” in the north-east corner. Piccadilly is “Pecadilly Mall” without a single house. Westminster consists of King Street and the lanes round the Abbey.
SOMERSET PALACE, 1650
From a contemporary print.
On the south side there is a fringe of houses on the river wall, forming a street extending for nearly a mile east of London Bridge; there are houses in “Barmisie” Lane; a single street, ending with St. George’s Church; another fringe of houses west of the Bridge, nearly as far as the bend of the river to the south. A theatre is still standing—or is it a house for bear-baiting?—apparently on the site of the Globe. There is a strange and unexpected street, with houses on either side, in the very middle of Lambeth Marsh. And with these exceptions, and a few cottages dotted about, there are no houses south of the river at all. The whole of the low-lying ground is covered with gardens, orchards, and meadows.
From an old print published by William Herbert, Lambeth.
Turning now to the new London as it was after the Fire, we have Ogilby’s excellent map of 1677 (see Map) showing the whole of London from Somerset House to St. Katherine by the Tower, and from the river to Clerkenwell, Chiswell Street, and Norton Folgate. It does not, indeed, include Westminster or Southwark. This map is an exact survey of the town as it was during the latter part of the seventeenth century, making allowance for some increase of houses in the northern suburbs. It is on the large scale of 100 feet to the inch; it presents every building, every street, and every lane, court, and alley. It consists of twenty sheets. I propose to pass this map under review, taking the streets in line from west to east.
The area of the City within the walls, according to Ogilby, was 380 acres; including the Liberties, it was 680 acres; the length from Temple Bar to Whitechapel Bar is 9256 feet, or one mile, six furlongs, and a pole; the breadth from the Bars of Bishopsgate to the Bridge 4653 feet, or seven furlongs and two poles. If we include the suburbs, the distance between Blackwall inclusive and St. James’s Street is nearly six miles; between St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, and the end of Blackman Street, Southwark, is two and a half miles.