Wood Street—Pleasant Memories—St. Peter's in Chepe—St. Michael's and St. Mary Staining—St. Alban's, Wood Street—Some Quaint Epitaphs—Wood Street Compter and the Hapless Prisoners therein—Wood Street Painful, Wood Street Cheerful—Thomas Ripley—The Anabaptist Rising—A Remarkable Wine Cooper—St. John Zachary and St. Anne-in-the-Willows—Haberdashers' Hall—Something about the Mercers.
Wood Street runs from Cheapside to London Wall. Stow has two conjectures as to its name—first, that it was so called because the houses in it were built all of wood, contrary to Richard I.'s edict that London houses should be built of stone, to prevent fire; secondly, that it was called after one Thomas Wood, sheriff in 1491 (Henry VII.), who dwelt in this street, was a benefactor to St. Peter in Chepe, and built "the beautiful row of houses over against Wood Street end."
At Cheapside Cross, which stood at the corner of Wood Street, all royal proclamations used to be read, even long after the cross was removed. Thus, in 1666, we find Charles II.'s declaration of war against Louis XIV. proclaimed by the officers at arms, serjeants at arms, trumpeters, &c., at Whitehall Gate, Temple Bar, the end of Chancery Lane, Wood Street, Cheapside, and the Royal Exchange. Huggin's Lane, in this street, derives its name, as Stow tells us, from a London citizen who dwelt here in the reign of Edward I., and was called Hugan in the Lane.
That pleasant tree at the left-hand corner of Wood Street, which has cheered many a weary business man with memories of the fresh green fields far away, was for long the residence of rooks, who built there. In 1845 two fresh nests were built, and one is still visible; but the sable birds deserted their noisy town residence several years ago. Probably, as the north of London was more built over, and such feeding-grounds as Belsize Park turned to brick and mortar, the birds found the fatigue of going miles in search of food for their young unbearable, and so migrated. Leigh Hunt, in one of his agreeable books, remarks that there are few districts in London where you will not find a tree. "A child was shown us," says Leigh Hunt, "who was said never to have beheld a tree but one in St. Paul's Churchyard (now gone). Whenever a tree was mentioned, it was this one; she had no conception of any other, not even of the remote tree in Cheapside." This famous tree marks the site of St. Peter in Chepe, a church destroyed by the Great Fire. The terms of the lease of the low houses at the west-end corner are said to forbid the erection of another storey or the removal of the tree. Whether this restriction arose from a love of the tree, as we should like to think, we cannot say.
St. Peter's in Chepe is a rectory (says Stow), "the church whereof stood at the south-west corner of Wood Street, in the ward of Farringdon Within, but of what antiquity I know not, other than that Thomas de Winton was rector thereof in 1324."
The patronage of this church was anciently in the Abbot and Convent of St. Albans, with whom it continued till the suppression of their monastery, when Henry VIII., in the year 1546, granted the same to the Earl of Southampton. It afterwards belonged to the Duke of Montague. This church being destroyed in the fire and not rebuilt, the parish is united to the Church of St. Matthew, Friday Street. "In the year 1401," says Maitland, "licence was granted to the inhabitants of this parish to erect a shed or shop before their church in Cheapside. On the site of this building, anciently called the 'Long Shop,' are now erected four shops, with rooms over them."
Wordsworth has immortalised Wood Street by his plaintive little ballad—
THE REVERIE OF POOR SUSAN.
"At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
Hangs a thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years;
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the bird.
"'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? she sees
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;
Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.
"Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,
Down which she so often has tripped with her pail;
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's,
The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.
"She looks, and her heart is in heaven; but they fade,
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade;
The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,
And the colours have all passed away from her eyes."
Perhaps some summer morning the poet, passing down Cheapside, saw the plane-tree at the corner wave its branches to him as a friend waves a hand, and at that sight there passed through his mind an imagination of some poor Cumberland servant-girl toiling in London, and regretting her far-off home among the pleasant hills.