ANCIENT BUILDINGS, HIGH STREET, BOROUGH
(From a Drawing by T. Higham, 1820)
THE FALCON TAVERN, BANKSIDE
The High Street of Southwark is now a crowded thoroughfare, because it is the main artery of a town containing a population of many hundreds of thousands. In the last century it was quite as animated because it was one of the main arteries by which London was in communication with the country. An immense number of coaches, carts, waggons, and 'caravans' passed every day up and down the High Street, some stopping or starting in Southwark itself; some going over London Bridge to their destination in the City. The coach of the first half of the century can be restored from Hogarth. That of the latter half of the century was in all respects like the revived coaches of the present day, adapted for rapid travelling along a smooth road. The carts were carriers' carts on two wheels with a tilt or cover; they carried parcels and small packages, and on occasions, but not always, one or two passengers. The waggons, which carried heavy goods and passengers not in a hurry, were also covered with a tilt; their broad wheels and capacious interior can be restored, as well as the coach, from that most trustworthy painter of his own time. As for the caravans, I am in some doubt. I suppose, however, that a caravan was then what it is now, in which case it was an elementary Pullman's car, in which people and their effects were drawn slowly along the road, in a four-wheeled covered cart. Perhaps the passengers slept in the car at night, drawn up by the roadside, like the gipsies. But of this theory I have no kind of proof.
AN OLD MILL, BANKSIDE