London in the Time of the Stuarts

by Walter Besant

In Clerkenwell, we observe, taking St. James’s Church as a centre, that on the north side, apparently on the site of the Cloister, there lies a garden surrounded by buildings named “The Duke of Newcastle.” On the south-east side is the churchyard; on the west and south-west are Clerkenwell Close and Clerkenwell Green. A hundred yards north-west of the church stands the “New Corporation Court Yard” with its “Bridewell Yard” and the “New Prison Walk” leading to it. Behind the Court Yard is a “Churchyard for Clerkenwell.” Beyond and west of the Court are bowling fields, ponds—one of them a ducking pond—pasture lands, and private gardens; the houses are few. In the south part, however, round Hockley in the Hole, at the east end of which is a pond, the houses stand thickly with small gardens and open courts. Clerkenwell Green leads into St. John Street where the Inns begin. Here are the White Horse Yard and the Red Bull Yard; here are Aylesbury House and Gardens, 500 feet long by 200 feet broad. The east side of the street is lined with houses, apparently of the humbler kind, for they have no gardens and are divided by narrow alleys or lanes. On the north lie “Gardiners’ Gardens,” that is, market gardens. Between St. John’s Street and Goswell Street are fields and woods, belonging to the Charter House. Old Street runs out of Goswell Street, and like the east side of that street and the east side of St. John’s Street, it is lined with small houses and narrow alleys. Between Goswell Street and Bunhill Fields lies a quarter thickly inhabited and covered with houses. Golden Lane and White Cross Street run across this district in a north-west direction. Between the two streets, on the north of Playhouse Yard, is a churchyard, and on the Bunhill side are gardens behind the houses; the largest of them is not more than 80 feet square. There is no church in this thickly populated area, more than a quarter of a mile long by nearly as much broad. It is evidently a place inhabited by the craftsmen, most of whom have ceased to live any longer in the City. The houses and gardens of Bunhill overlooking the “New Artillery Garden” remind us that many of the citizens had already begun to live out of town. Continuing east, beyond the Artillery Garden, we find Upper Moorfields, with trees planted on all four sides and paths intersecting; a large area called “Butchers’ Close or Tenter Field,” and a thickly built part bounded on the north by Hog Lane, and on the east by Norton Folgate. Here, again, the abundance of narrow alleys and the houses without gardens proclaim a humble population. Shoreditch is lined with houses; on its east side lies a large open space called Porter Close, with Spital Fields beyond. Two or three streets are fully built, but the vacant spaces are many and wide. No church is on this part of the map, except St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch. We observe on the west of Norton Folgate two or three of the little streams which formerly ran across the moor here; they lie open for a little space and then disappear again.

The Charter-House Hospital

From a contemporary print.

The second line of maps carries us from east to west in the latitude of Gray’s Inn. The only buildings of the Inn are South Square, Gray’s Inn Square, and the Hall and Chapel. The rest of the Inn is planted thickly with trees, or lies open, a beautiful garden. Not far to the east of Gray’s Inn are the great gardens of Furnival’s Inn. Between Gray’s Inn Road and the Fleet River lies a quarter thickly populated on the west and the east, but with many open spaces, especially on either side of Hatton Garden and Saffron Hill. What were these open spaces? They were not gardens, or the fact would have been indicated; they were not enclosed. Were they simply open spaces, the playground of children, the retreat of pickpockets? In this place, apparently, no gentlefolk dwelt, and there is no church.

We now cross over the Fleet and find ourselves in the classic regions of Turnmill Street, Cow Cross, and Chick Lane. Here, however, we are in a suburb which has been occupied and partly built over since the twelfth century. North of Chick Lane is the new churchyard of St. Sepulchre’s, re-discovered recently when excavations took place which revealed stacks of human bones regularly laid and piled. I believe that these bones were moved from the old churchyard, which seems the only way to account for their great number, and the regular method of laying them. They have now been moved to some consecrated ground, and the place is built over. St. John’s Lane leads to St. John’s Gate, and Berkeley House and Gardens are on the west side; the great houses of the Elizabethan period are replaced by mean tenements. On the south side of St. John’s Street is “Hix’s” Hall. Further south, again, passing through the Bars, we are in Smithfield. The church of Little St. Bartholomew was not yet within the Hospital; that of St. Bartholomew the Great shows the ambulatory and the Lady Chapel, but not the transepts. Charter House shows the Courts as at present; on the east side of Charterhouse Yard are the houses and gardens of the Marquis of Dorchester and Lord Gray. St. Bartholomew’s Close is a large open space; Cloth Fair and the narrow streets around it are much the same to-day as then; the whole area is covered with narrow alleys and courts with narrow openings. Between Aldersgate Street and Little Moor Fields lies a suburb thickly built over except on the northern portion south of Chiswell Street, where the houses are more scattered and there are gardens and, apparently, small fields. The same remarkable abundance of open courts approached by narrow passages that has been already mentioned may be observed here. East of Aldersgate, and just under the wall at the Cripplegate angle, are the gardens of Thanet House. North of Barbican are those of Bridgewater House. St. Giles’s Church has taken over a part of the town ditch for an extension of its churchyard; the wall is encroached upon on both sides by buildings, but a strip on the south side is still left free from buildings. As regards the portion of the City included in this street, it will be noticed farther on. The upper field has trees planted along its sides and diagonally from point to point shading two intersecting fields; the lower field has also trees along its sides and two paths across at right angles, also planted with trees. On these fields the people turned out by the Fire encamped until they could rebuild their houses; it is, however, impossible to describe the great number of streets east and west of the Fields, without feeling sure that the houses afforded lodgings, better or worse, for the great majority of the homeless. On the south of Moorfields stood the New Bethlehem Hospital, a long narrow building on the outside of the wall, a piece of which has been cut down to afford an entrance from the City. The old churchyard of Bethlehem, about 200 feet by 300 feet, lay on the north-east side of Lower Moorfields; the site of St. Mary Bethlehem is preserved in the name of a street or court: “Bethlehem”—between the yard and Bishopsgate Street Without. St. Botolph’s without Bishopsgate has taken a large piece of the town ditch for an extension of churchyard; the lane running along its north side leads into Petty France, now called North Broad Street. All the ground about this part is now swallowed up by the Liverpool and Broad Street Stations. Bishopsgate Street Without, with the ground east and west, is completely built up and covered with houses. The site of Old Artillery Garden is still marked by Artillery Lane, which led into it. East of Bishopsgate Street we find Petticoat Lane, Wentworth (then called Wentford) Street, Brick Lane, Carter Street, Fashion Street, Dean and Tower Streets, and other streets and lanes, lined with houses but not yet filled in with courts; the houses, in nearly all cases, have gardens behind them. One wishes for a drawing of one of these early Whitechapel streets, but in vain. Tenter fields fill up the spaces not yet built over.

We next come to the third line of maps. On the north of this line runs the noble highway of Holborn; on its north side we pass Warwick House, Gray’s Inn; and Brook House, evidently a stately building in the form of a court, with a gateway to the street and gardens behind; this is separated from Furnival’s Inn by a narrow lane. The Inn, whose gardens we have already noticed, presents in plan an oblong outer court, a hall and chapel, and an unfinished inner court; Ely House has a court, gardens and buildings, and a hall. In the street itself stands the Middle Row, only taken down a few years ago; at its east end, and just west of Staple Inn, are the Holborn Bars. We next observe Chancery Lane; its west side is largely taken up with Lincoln’s Inn. The Inn itself consists of the first two courts, the chapel, and the hall; the rest is all garden, open on the east to Chancery Lane, and on the west to the Fields. Lincoln’s Inn Fields are not enclosed and are crossed by paths; the south side is occupied by “Portugal Row.” South of the Inn, on the ground now covered by part of New Square and by part of the High Courts of Justice, is an open space called Lower Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the existence of which appears to have been neglected by writers on topography. On the east side of Chancery Lane there are continuous houses, and behind them the gardens of Staple Inn, the Rolls with the Master’s house, the chapel, and the gardens.

Following the south side of Holborn we find Staple Inn, much as it is at the present day, but with fine and spacious gardens; Barnard’s Inn, as it was before it was turned into a school; Fetter Lane, where most of the houses still had gardens; Thavies Inn, with its two courts and its small garden; and St. Andrew’s Church and Churchyard. The labyrinth of undistinguished streets called Harding Street, New Street, etc., is almost the same in 1677 as at present, save that it was not as yet the Printers’ Quarter.

At the end of Holborn is Holborn Bridge, crossing the Fleet, which is here called the New Canal; barges and boats lie upon it. At the back of the street now called Farringdon Street, facing the stream, are two burial yards, one belonging to St. Andrew’s, Holborn; the other, lower down, to St. Bride’s, Fleet Street; on the west side a great number of narrow streets branch off to the east, ending at Snow Hill and the Old Bailey. Newgate Prison lies north and south of the Gate, quite separated from the court. The Gate and wall crossed the road 200 yards east of Giltspur Street. Passing over Holborn Bridge we can walk up Snow Hill, which leads us to St. Sepulchre’s Church and Newgate, or we can keep straight on through Cock Lane to Giltspur Street, Pie Corner, and St. Bartholomew’s and Smithfield. The Hospital consists apparently of one court only. Three large churchyards lie round it: that of St. Bartholomew the Less; that called “Bartholomew Churchyard,” and the “Hospital Churchyard,” on the site of the town ditch. In front of Newgate Prison stood a block of buildings like the Middle Row of Holborn, Butcher’s Row in the Strand, or Holywell Street; on the west side the narrow street was called the Little Old Bailey. Among the courts leading out of the Little Old Bailey we observe Green Arbour Court, afterwards the residence of Oliver Cromwell.

The next sheet is altogether within the City.