NORTH-WEST VIEW OF THE ANTIENT STRUCTURE OF MERCHANT-TAYLORS HALL, AND THE ALMS-HOUSES ADJOINING, IN THREADNEEDLE STREET
From drawing taken by William Goodman in the year 1599 and now in possession of the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors.
The heavy barges, laden to the water’s edge, have come down from Oxfordshire and Wiltshire; observe the swans, the fishing-boats, and the swarm of watermen plying between stairs, for this is the highway of the City. Not Cheapside, or East Cheap, or Thames Street, or the Strand is the highway of the City, but the river. And as on a main road we pass the noble Lord and his retinue, on their war-horses, caparisoned and equipped with shining steel and gilded leather, and after him a band of minstrels or a company of soldiers; or a lady riding on her palfrey followed by her servants and her followers; so on the river we pass the stately barge of some great courtier, the gilded barge of the Mayor, the common wherry, the tilt-boat, the loaded lighter, and the poor old fishing-boat decayed and crazy.
Look at the riverside houses. Yonder great palace, with its watergate and stairs and its embattled walls, is Fishmongers’ Hall. It is a wealthy company, albeit never one beloved of the people, whom they must supply with food for a good fourth part of the year. That other great house is Cold Harbour, of the first building of which no man knows. Many great people have lived in Cold Harbour, which, as you see, is a vast great place of many storeys, and with a multitude of rooms. Within there is a court, invisible from the river, though its stairs may be seen.
Almost next to Cold Harbour is the “Domus Teutonicorum,” the Hall of the Hanseatic Merchants. What you see from the river is the embattled wall on the river side, one side of the Hall, some windows of the dormitories, stone houses built on wooden columns, also the great weighing-beam and the courtyard. The front of this fortress—for it is nothing less—contains three gates, viz. two small gates easily closed, and one great gate, seldom opened. You see that they have their own watergate and stairs. In everything they must be independent of the London folk, with whom they never mix if they can keep separate. The men live here under strict rule and discipline; they may not marry; they stay but a short time as a rule; and when they are recalled by the rulers of the great company they are allowed to marry. Here, from the south side of the river, we get the only good view of the church of St. Paul. ’Tis a noble Church: is there a nobler anywhere? If we consider how it stands upon a hill dominating the City and all around it, of what length it is, of what height, how its spire seeks the sky and draws the clouds, then when one realises these things one’s heart glows with pride at the possession of so great and splendid a church. See how it rises far above the houses on its south side! Was it by accident, think you, that the churches between the bank and the Cathedral, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Nicolas Cole Abbey, St. Benedict, and the others, were all provided with short square towers without steeples so as to set off the wondrous height of the Cathedral? Was it by accident that on the west side of the Cathedral rose the spire of Blackfriars, and on the east the lesser spire of St. Augustine’s, making a contrast with the lofty proportions of the great church? In front of us is the ancient port once called Edred’s Hythe after the name of a former Wharfinger or Harbour Master or Port Captain; it was afterwards called Potter’s Hythe and later Queen Hythe, because King John gave it to his mother Queen Eleanor, which name it still retains. The port is square, and open on one side to the river; there are never any storms to wreck the shipping within. It is now filled with ships, chiefly of the smaller kind, because the larger craft cannot pass through the Bridge. For this reason Billingsgate long surpassed Queenhithe in the number and importance of its ships and the magnitude of its trade. However, at Queenhithe they are busy. The cranes wheeze and grunt as they turn round; carriers with bales and sacks upon their backs toil unceasingly. All round the quay runs a kind of open cloister with an upper storey on pillars: this is the warehouse of the Harbour.
Grove and Boulton.
A SOUTH-EAST VIEW OF LONDON BEFORE THE DESTRUCTION OF ST. PAUL’S STEEPLE BY FIRE, A.D. 1560
The earliest harbour, whose mouth we passed just now, is an insignificant stream; one cannot understand how it could ever be a harbour for ships. It was once, however, a full and deep stream running rapidly down its valley, and sometimes swollen by rains. It drained Moorfields, and half a dozen rivulets joined together to make the brook, but when the ditch was dug round the wall, the brook fell into the ditch, and although a culvert was cut in the wall for the surplus water to pass down the old bed, little flowed through, and the Walbrook was only kept up as a stream by two or three springs in the northern part of the City.
There is a street in Rouen called the rue des Eaux de Robec, which suggests something of the appearance of the Walbrook before the sixteenth century. The street, which is fairly straight, contains a double row of houses, tall and ancient, projecting in three upper storeys, and decayed from former respectability. Such at the present day, were they still standing, would be the houses lining the course of the Walbrook in the fourteenth century. Along one side of the street runs a rapid stream in a deep channel; the water is black, whether from the darkness or the impurity I know not; it is partly bridged over; the bridges have been broadened until they are no longer narrow footways, but platforms on which workmen sit at their trade, and stalls are set out with things for sale. On the other side is the narrow roadway with its pavement of small uneven square blocks; there is no central gutter, because the stream carries everything off. Such was the appearance of the Walbrook. At first foot-bridges crossed it at intervals; then it was confined to a narrow channel; then other uses were made of the stream; then the footways became floors of stone or woodwork, with the stream open between them; then these openings became gradually filled up, and the stream was shut out of sight and forgotten. If you wish to understand how Walbrook appeared in our imaginary walk, go to see the rue des Eaux de Robec in Rouen.