In 1792 an interesting discovery was made in St. Martin's Court, Ludgate Hill. Workmen came upon the remains of a small barbican, or watch-tower, part of the old City wall of 1276; and in a line with the Old Bailey they found another outwork. A fragment of it in a court is now built up. A fire which took place on the premises of Messrs. Kay, Ludgate Hill, May 1, 1792, disclosed these interesting ruins, probably left by the builders after the fire of 1666 as a foundation for new buildings. The tower projected four feet from the wall into the City ditch, and measured twenty-two feet from top to bottom. The stones were of different sizes, the largest and the corner rudely squared. They had been bound together with cement of hot lime, so that wedges had to be used to split the blocks asunder. Small square holes in the sides of the tower seemed to have been used either to receive floor timbers, or as peep-holes for the sentries. The adjacent part of the City wall was about eight feet thick, and of rude workmanship, consisting of irregular-sized stones, chalk, and flint. The only bricks seen in this part of the wall were on the south side, bounding Stone-cutters' Alley. On the east half of Chatham Place, Blackfriars Bridge, stood the tower built by order of Edward I., at the end of a continuation of the City wall, running from Lud Gate behind the houses in Fleet Ditch to the Thames. A rare plan of London, by Hollar (says Mr. J.T. Smith), marks this tower. Roman monuments have been so frequently dug up near St. Martin's Church, that there is no doubt that a Roman extra-mural cemetery once existed here; in the same locality, in 1800, a sepulchral monument was dug up, dedicated to Claudina Mertina, by her husband, a Roman soldier. A fragment of a statue of Hercules and a female head were also found, and were preserved at the "London" Coffee House.
Ludgate Hill and Street is probably the greatest thoroughfare in London. Through Ludgate Hill and Street there have passed in twelve hours 8,752 vehicles, 13,025 horses, and 105,352 persons.
St. Martin's, Ludgate, though one of Wren's churches, is not a romantic building; yet it has its legends. Robert of Gloucester, a rhyming chronicler, describes it as built by Cadwallo, a British prince, in the seventh century:—
"A chirch of Sent Martyn livying he let rere,
In whyche yet man should Goddy's seruys do,
And singe for his soule, and al Christine also."
The church seems to have been rebuilt in 1437 (Henry VI.). From the parish books, which commence in 1410, we find the old church to have had several chapels, and to have been well furnished with plate, paintings, and vestments, and to have had two projecting porches on the south side, next Ludgate Hill. The right of presentation to St. Martin's belonged to the Abbot of Westminster, but Queen Mary granted it to the Bishop of London. The following curious epitaph in St. Martin's, found also elsewhere, has been beautifully paraphrased by the Quaker poet, Bernard Barton:—
| Earth goes to | } | { | As mold to mold, | |
| Earth treads on | Earth, | Glittering in gold, | ||
| Earth as to | Return nere should, | |||
| Earth shall to | Goe ere he would. | |||
| Earth upon | } | { | Consider may, | |
| Earth goes to | Earth, | Naked away, | ||
| Earth though on | Be stout and gay, | |||
| Earth shall from | Passe poore away. |
Strype says of St. Martin's—"It is very comely, and ascended up by stone steps, well finished within; and hath a most curious spire steeple, of excellent workmanship, pleasant to behold." The new church stands farther back than the old. The little black spire that adorns the tower rises from a small bulb of a cupola, round which runs a light gallery. Between the street and the body of the church Wren, always ingenious, contrived an ambulatory the whole depth of the tower, to deaden the sound of passing traffic. The church is a cube, the length 57 feet, the breadth 66 feet; the spire, 168 feet high, is dwarfed by St. Paul's. The church cost in erection £5,378 18s. 8d.
The composite pillars, organ balcony, and oaken altar-piece are tasteless and pagan. The font was the gift of Thomas Morley, in 1673, and is encircled by a favourite old Greek palindrome, that is, a puzzle sentence that reads equally well backwards or forwards—
"Tripson anomeema me monan opsin."
(Cleanse thy sins, not merely thy outward self.)
This inscription, according to Mr. G. Godwin ("Churches of London"), is also found on the font in the basilica of St. Sophia, Constantinople. In the vestry-room, approached by a flight of stairs at the north-east angle of the church, there is a carved seat (date 1690) and several chests, covered with curious indented ornaments.