Curiosities of London: A-B

ADMIRALTY OFFICE, THE

FORMS the left flank of the detachment of Government Offices on the north side of Whitehall. It occupies the site of Wallingford House, from the roof of which Archbishop Usher saw King Charles I. led out to execution in the front of Whitehall Palace, and swooned at the sad scene.

Wallingford House was sold to the Crown in 1680, and thither the business of the Admiralty was removed from Crutched Friars, and Duke-street, Westminster. The street front was rebuilt by Thomas Ripley, about 1726.

The Admiralty is a most ugly edifice. To conceal its ugliness, the court-yard was fronted with a stone screen, by Adam, in the reign of George III. This screen is a very characteristic composition; its sculptured hippocampi, and prows of ancient vessels, combining with an anchor in the pediment of the portico of the main building, to denote the purposes of the office — the administration of the affairs of the Eoyal Navy.

In one of the large rooms the body of Lord Nelson lay in state, January 8, 1806 ; and next day took place the solemn funeral procession, with a military force of nearly 8000 men, from this spot to St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The office of Lord High Admiral was, in 1827, revived, after the sleep of a century, and was conferred by patent (similar to that of Prince George of Denmark), upon the Duke of Clarence, who resided at the Admiralty. His Royal Highness was thought by the Duke of Wellington, then Premier, to have mixed up with the business of the office too much jaunting and cruising about, presenting of colours, and shows, on sea and land, ” more expensive and foolish than in any way serviceable.” On a long account for travelling expenses being sent in to the Treasury by the Duke of Clarence, the
Premier endorsed the paper, ” No travelling expenses allowed to the Lord High Admiral,” and dismissed it ; when His Royal Highness retired ; the salary was 5000Z. a year.

On the roof of the Admiralty Office, many years since, was placed a Semaphore (the invention of Sir Home Popham) ; the arms of which, extending laterally at right angles, communicated orders and intelligence to and from the sea-ports ; previous to which was used the shuttle telegraph, invented by R. L. Edgeworth. The Semaphore has, however, been superseded by the Electric Telegraph, of which wires are laid from the office in Whitehall to the Dockyard at Portsmouth, &c.

ALCHEMISTS

SOME sixty years since, there died in his chamber, in Barnard’s Inn, Holborn, Peter Woulfe, the eminent chemist, a Fellow of the Royal Society. According to Mr. Brande, Woulfe was ” the last true believer in alchemy.” He was a tall, thin man ; and his last moments were remarkable. In a long journey by coach, he took cold ; ‘ inflammation of the lungs followed, but he strenuously resisted all medical advice. ‘ By his desire, his laundress shut up his chamber, and left him. She returned at midnight Avhen Woulfe was still alive; next morning, however, she found him dead; his countenance was calm and serene, and apparently he had not moved from the position in which she had last seen him. These particulars of Woulfe’s end were received by the writer from the Treasurer of Barnard’s Inn, who was one of the executors of Woulfe’s last will and testament. Little is known of Woulfe’s life. Sir Humphry Davy tells us that he used to affix written prayers, and inscriptions of recommendations of his processes to Providence. His chambers were so filled with furnaces and apparatus, that it was difficult to reach the fireside. Dr. Babington told Mr. Brande that he once put down his hat, and could never find it again, such was the confusion of boxes, packages, and parcels, that lay about the room. His breakfast-hour was four in the morning : a few of his friends were occasionally invited, and gained entrance by a secret signal, knocking a certain number of times at the inner-door of the chamber.

He had long vainly searched for the Elixir, and attributed his repeated failure to the want of due preparation by pious and charitable acts. Whenever he wished to break an acquaintance, or felt himself offended, he resented the supposed injuries by sending a present to the offender, and never seeing him afterwards. These presents sometimes consisted of an expensive chemical product, or preparation. He had an heroic remedy for illness, which was a journey to Edinburgh and back by the mail-coach ; and a cold taken on one of these expeditions terminated in inflammation of the lungs, of which he died. — A Century of Anecdote, vol. ii., pp. 315, 316.

“About 1801, an adept lived, or rather starved, in the metropolis, in the person of an Editor of an evening journal, who expected to compound the alkahest if he could only keep his materials digested
in a lamp-furnace for the space of seven years. The lamp burnt brightly during six years, eleven months, and some odd days besides, and then, unluckily, it went out. Why it went out the adept never could guess ; but he was certain that if the flame could only have burnt to the end of the septenary cycle his experiment must have succeeded.” — Paper on Attrology and Alchemy, by Sir Walter Scott ; Quarterly Review, 1821.

In Catherine-street, Strand, lived for many years, one John Denley, a bookseller, who amassed here a notable collection of the works of alchemist, cabalist, and astrologer. He is the individual so characteristically portrayed by Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, in the introduction to his Zanoni.

Within the last fifteen years, there has been printed in England, a volume of considerable extent, entitled, A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery : London, T. Saunders, 1850. This work, which a Correspondent of Notes and Queries describes as ” a learned and valuable book,” is by a lady (anonymous), and has been suppressed by the author. By this circumstance we are reminded of a concealment of alchemical practices and opinions, some thirty years since, when it came to our knowledge that a man of wealth and position in the metropolis, an adept of Alchemy, was held in terrorem by an unprincipled person, who extorted from him considerable sums of money under a threat of exposure, which would have affected his mercantile credit.

ALMACK’S ASSEMBLY-ROOMS, on the south side of King-street, St. James’s, were built by Robert Mylne, architect, for Almack, a Scotchman, and were opened Feb. 12, 1765, with an Assembly, at which the Duke of Cumberland, the hero of Culloden, was present. Gilly Williams writes to George Selwyn : —

” There is now opened at Almack’s, in three very elegant new-built rooms, a ten-guinea subscription,
for which you have a ball and supper once a week, for twelve weeks. You may imagine by the sum
the company is chosen ; though, relined as it is, it will be scarce able to put old Soho (Mrs. Comelys’)
out of countenance. The men’s tickets are not transferable, so, if the ladies do not like us, they have
no opportunity of changing us, but must see the same persons for ever.” . . . . ” Our female Almack’s
flourishes beyond description. Almack’s Scotch face, in a bag-wig, waiting at supper, would divert
you, as would his lady, in a sack, making tea and curtseying to the duchesses.”

The large ball-room is about one hundred feet in length, by forty feet in width ; ifc is chastely decorated with gilt columns and pilasters, classic medallions, mirrors, &c, and is lit with gas, in cut-glass lustres. The largest number of persons ever present in this room at one ball was 1700.

The rooms are let for public meetings, dramatic readings, lectures, concerts, balls, and dinners. Here Mrs. Billington, Mr. Braham, and Signor Naldi, gave concerts, from 1808 to 1810, in rivalry with Madame Catalan), at Hanover-square Rooms; and here Mr. Charles Kemble gave, in 1814, his Readings from Shakespeare.

Almack’s Rooms are often called ” Willis’s,” from the name of their present proprietor. Many public dinners now take place here.

Almack’s has declined of late years ; ” a clear proof that the palmy days of exclusiveness are gone by in England ; and though it i^ obviously impossible to prevent any given number of persons from congregating and re-establishing an oligarchy, we are quite sure that the attempt would be ineffectual, and that the sense of their importance would extend little beyond the set.” — Quarterly Review, 1840.

Many years ago was published Almack’s, a novel, in which the leaders of fashion were sketched with much freedom : they were identified in A Key to Almack’s, by Benjamin Disraeli.

ALDERMAN.

THE oldest office in the Corporation of London, and derived from the title of the superior Saxon noble. The more aged were so called ; for aide in Saxon means ” old,” and alder is our word “older : ” hence, as the judgment is most vigorous in persons of more mature years, the dignitary who, among the Romans, was known as ” Consul ” or ” Senator,” among us is called ” Alderman.” And yet, in the case of aldermen, maturity of mind is to be considered rather than of body, and gravity of manners in preference to length of years : hence it is that in the ancient laws of King Cnut, and other kings in Saxon times, the person was styled ” Alderman ” who is now called ” Judge ” and ” Justiciar,” as set forth in the Liber Custumarum. These aldermen, too, in respect of name as well as dignity, were anciently called ” Barones,” and were buried with baronial honours ; a person appearing in the church upon a caparisoned horse in the armour of the deceased, with his banner in his hand, and carrying upon him his shield, helmet, and the rest of his arms.* This gorgeous ceremonial was gradually discontinued; but the alderman still retained great state, and enjoyed
special immunities. He could not be placed on inquests; he was exempt from fees on the enrolment of deeds or charters relating to himself; and any person who assaulted or slandered him was liable to be imprisoned, to be put in the pillory, or to have his hand struck off. The aldermen were privileged to be arrayed, on particular occasions, in certain grand suits, lined with silk. But if a mayor or alderman gave away, or in any manner parted with, his robe within his year of office, he was mulcted in a forfeiture of one hundred shillings for the benefit of the community, without remission ; or if he wore his cloak single, or not trimmed with fur, he was subjected to a penalty.

Madox says : ” Alderman was a name for a chief governor of a secular guild, and in time it became also a name for a chief officer in a guildated city or town ;” and he quotes, in illustration, the circumstance of the Prior of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, becoming an Alderman of London, in consequence of the grant to that priory of the ” English Knightengild.” According to Norton’s Commentaries on London, ” there is no trace when the name of Alderman was first applied to the presidents of the London wards or guilds : the probability is it was introduced after the Conquest ; and there is reason
to believe that the appellation was not used in that sense until the time of Henry IL,” when Aldermen are first mentioned as presiding over guilds, some of which were territorial and others mercantile. Each has his title from his ward, as ” Alderman of Cheap,” u Alderman of Queenhithe,” &c. ; but, anciently, the Ward was styled after the name of its alderman; as Tower Ward was called “the Ward of William de Hadestok.” The present ward of Farringdon was bought by William Faryngdon in 1279, and remained in his family upwards of eighty years ; it was held by the tenure
of presenting at Easter a gillyflower, then of great rarity.

Among the early Aldermen we find, in the reign of Henry III., Arnald FitzThedmar, who compiled a Chronicle of the Mayors and Sheriffs of London, from 1188 to 1274, in the Liber de Antiquis Legibus, translated in 1846 and 1863. Somewhat later, we find William de Leyre, Alderman of the Ward of Castle Baynard : he had once acted as gaoler to the heroic William Wallace ; for it was in his house, situate in the parish of All Saints, Fcnchurch -street, that the patriot was confined (22nd August, 1305), the day and night before his barbarous execution at the Elms in Smithfield.

Aldermen have, at various times, suffered by the caprice of sovereigns. In 1545, when Henry VIII. demanded a “benevolence” from his subjects, to defray the charges of his war with France and Scotland, Richard Read, an Alderman of London, refused to pay the sum required from him. For this offence, Henry compelled the recusant Alderman to serve as a foot-soldier with the army in Scotland, where he was made prisoner; and after enduring great hardships, he purchased his discharge by a considerable ransom. (See Lord Herbert’s Life of Henry VIII.)

Alderman Barber, the first printer Lord Mayor (1733), was the friend of Bolingbroke, Swift, and Pope ; and in 1721 erected a tablet to Samuel Butler, in Westminster Abbey, with an eulogistic Latin inscription, notwithstanding Butler’s satiric ” Character of an Alderman :” —

” He does no public business without eating and drinking 1 ; and when he comes to be a lord-mayor,
he does not keep a great house, but a very great house-warming for a whole year ; for though he invites
all the Companies in the City, he does not treat them, but they club, to entertain him and pay the
reckouing before the meal. His fur gown makes him look a great deal bigger than he is, like the
feathers of an owl ; and when he pulls it off, he looks as if he were fallen away, or like a rabbit, had his
skin pulled off.”

The notorious Alderman Wilkes was a man of talent, though profligate and unprincipled. Alderman Boydell was a generous and discriminating promoter of the fine arts, and was honoured with a public funeral. Alderman Birch was an accomplished scholar, and wrote dramatic pieces. Alderman Salomons, who joined the Court in 1847, was the first Jew admitted to that privilege. The Aldermen form the bench of magistrates for the City : each, on his election by Wardmote, receives a present of law-books; and in the absence of any prisoners for examination at the Police Court in which the Alderman sits, he receives a pair of white kid gloves. The Aldermen receive no salary, but exercise many influential privileges ; their duties are onerous. Probably the history of the Court presents a greater number of instances of self-advancement than any other records of personal history. Pensions or allowances are paid annually by the Court to the widows or descendants of their less fortunate brethren.

Each of the twenty-six City Wards elect, one Alderman for life, or ” during good behaviour.” The fine for the rejection of the office is 500/. ; but it is generally sought as a stepping-stone to the Mayoralty, each Alderman heing in rota Lord Mayor, he having previously served as Sheriff of London and Middlesex. The Aldermen form a court, the Lord Mayor presiding ; and sit in a superb apartment of the Guildhall, which has a rich stucco ceiling, painted mostly by Sir James Thornhill ; in the cornice are carved and emblazoned the arms of all the Mayors since 1780 ; each Alderman’s
chair bears his name and arms : he wears a scarlet cloth gown, hooded and furred ; and a gold chain, if he hath served as Mayor. Upon state visits of sovereigns to the City, the several Aldermen ride in procession on horseback. At the opening of the New Royal Exchange, October 28, 1844, the Aldermen rode thus, wearing their scarlet gowns and chains, and cocked hats, carrying wands, and preceding the Queen’s procession from Temple Bar to the Exchange.

ALMSHOUSES,

BUILT by Public Companies, Benevolent Societies, and private individuals, for aged and infirm persons, were formerly numerous in the metropolis and its suburbs. The Companies’ Almshouses were originally erected next their Halls, that the almspeople might be handy to attend pageants and processions ; but these almshouses have mostly been rebuilt elsewhere, owing to decay, or the increased value of ground in the City.

Almshouses succeeded the incorporated Hospitals dissolved by King Henry VIII.

Among the earliest erected were the Almshouses founded in Westminster by Lady Margaret, mother of King Henry VII., for poor women ; in one of these houses lived Thomas Barker, who aided Izaak Walton in writing his Complete Angler. They were converted into lodgings for the singing-men of the Abbey, and called Choristers’ Rents : they were taken down about 1800.

Westminster contains several of these munificent foundations : as the Red Lion Almshouses, in York^treet, founded in 1577, for eight poor women, by Cornelius Van Dun, of Brabant, a soldier who served under King Henry VIII., at Tournay. Next are, in the same neighbourhood, the Almshouses for twelve poor housekeepers of St. Margaret’s, with a school and chapel — the boys clad in black : these were founded in 1566, by the Rev. Edward Palmer, B.D., many years preacher at St. Bride’s, Fleet-street, and who used to sleep in the church-tower. Emmanuel Hospital, James-street, was founded by the will of Lady Ann Dacre, in 1601, for aged parishioners of St. Margaret’s ; and in one of its almshouses, on January 22, 1772, died Mrs. Windimore, cousin of Mary (consort of William III.) and of Queen Anne.

The Drapers’ Company, in 1720, maintained Almshouses at Crutched-friars, Beach-lane, Greenwich, Stratford-le-Bow, Shoreditch, St. George’s-fields, St. Mary Newington, and Mile End. The Almshouses at Crutched-friars were erected and endowed by Sir John Milborn, Mayor of London, in 1521, for thirteen decayed members of the Drapers’ Company (of which Sir John was several years Master), or bedemen, who daily prayed at the tomb of their benefactor, in the adjoining church. The stone carving of the Assumption of the Virgin, over the Tudor gateway leading towards the pleasant little garden, — the shields with heraldic devices, — the old-fashioned roof, and dark, rich, red-coloured brickwork, — formed a picturewell remembered; taken down 1862.

The Almshouses and School-house at Mile End were built in 1735, with the ill-gotten fortune bequeathed by Francis Bancroft, grandson of Archbishop Bancroft, and an officer of the Lord Mayor’s Court; and so hated for his mercenary and oppressive practices, that at his funeral, a mob, for very joy, rang the church-bells of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, where a monument to his memory had been erected in his life-time. The almsmen are twenty-four poor old members of the Drapers’ Company ; and the School boards, clothes, educates, and apprentices 100 boys.

The Trinity Almshouses, in the Mile End-road, were erected by the Corporation of the Trinity House, in 1695, for decayed masters and commanders of ships, mates, and pilots, and their wives or widows. The thirty houses have characteristic shipping on their roofs ; there is a chapel, and on the green is a statue of Captain Robert Sandes, a benefactor to the establishment; he died 1721.

The Salters’ Company had Almshouses for their decayed brethren in Monkwell-street and Bow-lane ; in 1864, they were rebuilt, at Watford, Herts, at a cost of 8000/., besides that of the site and adjacent grounds.

Traditionally, we owe the foundation of Dame Owen’s School and Almshouses, at Islington, to Archery. In 1610, this rich brewer’s widow, in passing along St. John-street-road, then Hermitage-fields, was struck by a truant arrow, and narrowly escaped ” braining ;” and the grateful lady, thinking such close shooting dangerous, in commemoration of her providential escape, built, in 1613, a Free School and ten Almshouses upon the scene of her adventure. Since 1839 they have been handsomely rebuilt by the Brewers’ Company, trustees for the Charity.

Whittington’s College, or Almshouses, founded in 1621, on College-hill, were rebuilt by the Mercers’ Company, at the foot of Highgate-hill, about 1826; cost 20,000/. Upon the old site, College-hill, was built the Mercers’ Schools.

The Fishmongers’ Company’s Almshouses, or St. Peter’s Hospital, Newington Butts,
founded 1618, consisted of three courts, dining-hall, and chapel : they were rebuilt on
Wandsworth Common, in 1850; cost 25,000/.

Edward Alleyn, the distinguished actor, and friend of Ben Jonson and Shakspeare,
besides founding Duhvich College, built and endowed three sets of Almshouses in the
metropolis : in Lamb-alley, Bishopsgate-street ; in Bath-street, St. Luke’s ; and in Soapyard, Southwark. Of the Bath-street Almshouses, the first brick was laid by Alleyn
himself, July 13, 1620 ; they were rebuilt in 1707.

Cure’s College, in Deadman’s-place, Southwark, was founded in 1584, by Thomas
Cure, saddler to King Edward VI. and the Queens Mary and Elizabeth, for 16 poor
pensioners, with 20d. a week ; president, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas for
the time being. The College has been rebuilt.

The East India Almshouses, Poplar, were established at the granting of the first
charter, in the 17th century, for widows of mates and seamen dying in the Company’s
service. There are also houses, with gardens, for the widows of captains, receiving
pensions of from 30?. to 80?. yearly.

In Bath-street, City-road, are Almshouses for poor descendants of French Protestant
Refugees, founded in 1708, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes.

The Goldsmiths’ Company have Almshouses at Woolwich, Acton, and Hackney ; each
house has its little garden.

The Clock and Watchmakers’ Asylum was founded in 1857 at Colney Hatch.

At Hoxton, are the Haberdashers’ Company’s Almshouses, founded by Robert Aske,
in 1692, for poor men of the Company, and boys ; here is a statne of the founder.

Morden College, Blackheath, was founded by Sir John Morden, in 1695, for decayed
merchants, each 72?. a year, with coals, candles, washing-bath, medical and clerical
attendance. The chapel has some fine carvings, reputed to be by Gibbons.

Norfolk Almshouses, or Trinity Hospital, Greenwich, is an Elizabethan building,
founded by Henry, Earl of Northampton, 1613. The Trustees were the Mercers’
Company ; revenue, 12,000?. a year.

Surrey Chapel Almshouses, erected 1811, were founded and principally endowed by
the Rev. Rowland Hill, for twenty-three destitute females.

The Marylebone Almshouses, built in St. John’s-wood-terrace, Regent’s-park, in
1836, originated in a legacy of 500?. from Count Woronzow; the site being leased for
ninety-nine years, at a pepper-corn rent, by Colonel Eyre, who is also entitled to two
presentations to the Charity.

The London Almshouses were erected by subscription, at Brixton, in 1833, to commemorate the passing of the Reform Bill, instead of by illumination.

The King William Naval Asylum, at Penge, opened 1849, for the widows of Commanders, Lieutenants, Masters and Pursers in the Royal Navy, was founded by Queen
Adelaide, to the memory of King William IV.

The Dramatic College has its retreat ” for poor players,” a central hall, residences,
and external cloisters, in the Tudor style, at Maybury, in Surrey.

Recently also have been erected Almshouses for the parishes of St. Pancras, St.
Martin, and Shoreditch. For Bootmakers, Mortlake ; Pawnbrokers, Forest-gate ;
Booksellers, King’s Langley; Aged Pilgrims, Edgware-road ; Butchers, Walham-
green ; Bookbinders, Ball’s-pond ; Printers, Wood-green ; Tailors (journeymen), Haverstock-hill; and Poulterers and Fishmongers, Southgate; besides many others provided
by Companies ; and Provident, Trades, and other societies, for decayed members.

The Almshouses erected of late years are mostly picturesque buildings, in the old
English style, with gables, turrets, and twisted chimney-shafts, of red brick, with handsome stone dressings. In Weale’s London Exhibited in 1851 will be found a more
copious List of Almshouses (pp. 214 — 219) than the above.

ARCHERY is mentioned among the summer pastimes of the London youth by Fitzstephen, who wrote in the reign of Henry II.; and the repeated statutes from the 13th to the 16th centuries, enforcing the use of the Bow, invariably ordered the holidays to be passed in its exercise. Finsbury appears to have been a very early locality for Archery ; for in the reign of Edward I. there was formed a society entitled the Archers of Finsbury. Here, in the reign of Henry VII., all the gardens were destroyed by law, ” and of them was made a plain field for archers to shoot in ;” this being the early appropriation of what is now called ” the Artillery Ground.”

There is also preserved a MS. enumeration of the Archers’ Marks in Finsbury Fields, compiled in 1601 : it gives, in flight shooting, nineteen score as the distance between Allhollows and Daie’s Deed marks. Indeed, Miss Banks, Sir Joseph’s daughter, an enthusiastic lover of the bow, has left a MS. note that a friend, Mr. Bates, often shot eighteen score in Finsbury Fields ; the length of the plain being about one mile, and the breadth three-quarters. Among the curious books on Archery are the Ayme for Finsburie Archers, 1628 ; and the Ayme for the Archers of St. George’s Fields, 1664.

Henry VIII. shot with the longhow as well as any of his guards : he chartered a society for shooting ; and jocosely dignified a successful archer as Duke of Shoreditch, at which place his Grace resided. This title was long preserved by the Captain of the London Archers, who used to summon the officers of his several divisions under the titles of Marquis of Barlo, of Clerkenwell, of Islington, of Hoxton, of Shacklewell, &.c, Earl of Pancras, &c. We read of a grand pageant in this reign, of three thousand archers, guarded by whifflers and billmen, pages and footmen, proceeding from Merchant Taylors’ Hall, through Broad-street, the residence of their captain ; thence into Moorfields by Finsbury, and so on to Smithfield, where they performed evolutions, and shot at a target for honour.

Edward VI. was fond of Archery ; in his reign the scholars of St. Bartholomew, who held their disputations in cloisters, were rewarded with a bow and silver arrows.

Stow (who died in 1605) informs us, that before his time it bad been customary at Bartholomew-tide for the Lord Mayor, with the sheriffs and aldermen, to go into the fields at Finsbury, where the citizens were assembled, and shoot at the standard with broad and flight arrows for games, which were continued for several days.

Charles I. was an excellent archer, and forbade by proclamation the inclosure of shooting-grounds near London. Archery, however, seems then to have soon fallen into disrepute. Sir William Davenant, in a mock poem, entitled The Long Vacation in London, describes idle attorneys and proctors making matches in Finsbury Fields :—

” With loynes in canvas bow-case tied,
Where arrows stick with mickle pride;
Like ghosts of Adam Bell and Clymme,
Sol sets — for fear they’ll shoot at him ?”

Pepys records, in his Diary, that, when a boy, he used to shoot with his bow and arrows in the fields of Kingsland.

In the reign of Henry VIII., a shout through the City of “Shovels and spades ! Shovels and spades I” assembled a band of ‘prentice lads, who speedily levelled the hedges, dykes, and garden-houses, by which trespassers had encroached on the shooting-fields. Even as late as 1786, the Artillery Company, preceded by a detachment of their pioneers, marched over Finsbury, pulling down the fences again illegally erected.

The brick wall enclosing a lead-mill was also attacked ; but, on the entreaty of the proprietor, the Hon. Company ordered it to be spared, contenting themselves with directing one of their archers to shoot an arrow over it, in token of their prescriptive right.
—Proc. Soc. Antiquaries, London, vol. iv. No. 47.

In 1781, the remains of the “Old Finsbury Archers” established the Toxophilite Society, at Leicester House, then in Leicester Fields. They held their meetings in Bloomsbury Fields, behind the present site of Gower-street ; here, in 1794, the Turkish Ambassador’s secretary shot, with a bow and arrow, 482 yards. In about twenty-five years they removed on ” target days” to Highbury Barn ; from thence to Bayswater ; and in 1834, to the Inner Circle, Regent’s Park, where they have a rustic lodge, and between five and six acres of ground. The Society consisted in 1850 of 100 members ;
terms, hi. annually, entrance-fee 51., and other expenses : they possess the original silver badge of the old Finsbury Archers. They meet every Friday during the Spring and Summer ; the shooting is at 60, 80, and 100 yards ; and many prizes are shot for during the season ; Prince Albert was patron.

The most numerous Society of the kind now existing is, however, “The Royal Company of Archers, the Queen’s body-guard of Scotland,” whose captain-general, the Duke of Buccleuch, rode in the coronation procession of Queen Victoria.

In 1849, the Society of Cantelows Archers was established ; their shooting-ground is at Camden Square, Camden New Town ; the prize, a large silver medal. There was a fine display of Archery at the Fete of the Scottish Society of London, in Holland Park, Kensington, June 20, 21, 1849, when 300/.-worth of prize plate was shot for.

BALLOON ASCENTS.

THE following are the more memorable Balloon Ascents made from the metropolis since the introduction of aerostation into England. In most cases the aeronauts were accompanied by friends, or persons who paid for the trip various sums.

Nov. 25,1783, the first Balloon (filled with hydrogen) launched in England, from the Artillery Ground, Finsbury, by Count Zambeccari. The Balloon was found 48 miles from London, near Petworth.

Sept. 15, 1784, Lunardi ascended from the Artillery Ground, Moorfields; being the first voyage made in England; he was accompanied by a cat, a dog, and a pigeon.

March 23, 1785, Admiral Sir Edward Vernon, accompanied by Count Zambeccari.

June 29, 1785, ascent of Mrs. Sage, the first Englishwoman aeronaut.

July 5, 1802, M. Garnerin made his second ascent in England, from Lord’s Cricket Ground. The same year he ascended three times from Ranelagh Gardens; and descended successfully from a Balloon by a Parachute, near the Small-pox Hospital, St. Pancras.

1811, James Sadler, ascended from Hackney; his two sons, John and Windham, were also aeronauts; the latter killed, Sept. 29, 1824, by falling from a Balloon.

July 19, 1821, Mr. Charles Green first ascended in a Balloon inflated with coal gas, substituted for hydrogen, on the coronation day of George IV. Cost of inflation, from 251. to 5(M.: this was Mr. Green’s first aerial voyage. Up to May, 1850, he had made 142 ascents from London only. Ten persons named Green have ascended in Balloons.*

Sept. 11,1823, Mr. Graham ascended from White Conduit House.

May 25, 1824, Lieutenant Harris, R.N., ascended from the Eagle Tavern, City Koad, with Miss Stocks; the former killed by the too rapid descent of the Balloon.

July, 1833, Mr. Graham ascended from Hungerford Market; day of opening. One of Mr. Graham’s companions, on this occasion, shortly after made a second ascent, which caused a derangement of intellect, from which he never entirely recovered.

Sept. 17, 1835, Mr. Green ascended from Vauxhall Gardens, and remained up during the whole of the night.

August 22, 1836, the Duke of Brunswick ascended.

Sept. 9, 1836, Mr. Green’s first ascent in his great Vauxhall Balloon.

Nov. 7, 1836, Mr. Green, Mr. Monck Mason, and Mr. Holland ascended in the great Vauxhall Balloon, and descended, in eighteen hours, at Weilburg, in Nassau. Of this ascent, Mr. Mason published a detailed account.

July 24, 1837, Mr. Green ascended from Vauxhall Gardens, in his great Balloon, with Mr. Cocking in a parachute, in which the latter was killed in descending.

May 24,1838, unsuccessful attempt to ascend with a large Montgolfier Balloon from the Surrey Zoological Gardens. The Balloon was destroyed by the spectators ; it was the height of the York Column, and half the circumference of the dome of St. Paul’s, and would contain, when fully inflated, 170,000 cubic feet of air.

Sept. 10, 1838, Mr. Green and Mr. Rush ascended from Vauxhall Gardens in the Nassau Balloon, and descended at Lewes, Sussex ; having reached the then greatest altitude ever attained—27,146 feet, or 5 miles 746 feet.

July 17, 1840, the Vauxhall, or great Nassau Balloon, sold to Mr. Green for 500Z.; in 1836 it cost 2100Z.

August 19,1844, perilous night ascent with Mr. Gypson’s Balloon from Vauxhall Gardens, with fireworks. Mr. Albert Smith and Mr. Coxwell accompanied the aeronaut. At 7000 feet high the Balloon burst, but, by Mr. Coxwell cutting some lines, the Balloon assumed a parachute form, and descended safely.

Aug. 7, 1850, Mrs. Graham’s Balloon destroyed by fire, after her descent, near Edmonton.

Sept. 7, 1854, ascent of Mr. Coxwell’s War Balloon, from the Surrey Zoological Gardens, with telegraphic signals.

June 15, 1857, night voyage from Woolwich to Tavistock, 250 miles, made by Mr. Coxwell, in five hours.

July 17, 1862, Mr. Glaisher and Mr. Coxwell first ascended in a large Balloon made by the latter for the experiments of the British Association: ascent from Wolverhampton ; elevation attained, 26,177 feet above the sea-level.

Sept. 5, 1862, the highest and most memorable ascent on record. Mr. Glaisher and Mr. Coxwell attained an elevation of 37,000 feet, or 7 miles. Mr. Glaisher became insensible; and Mr. Coxwell, his hands being frozen, had to pull the valve-cord with his mouth, and thus escaped death.

Jan. 12, 1864, Mr. Glaisher’s seventeenth scientific ascent in Mr. Coxwell’s large Balloon; the only ascent made in England during the month of January.

Aug. 3, 1864, M. Godard ascended from Cremorne Gardens, in his huge Montgolfier Balloon, and made a perilous descent at Waltbamstow.

Mr. Glaisher, by his scientific ascents, has proved that the Balloon ‘does aflbrd a means of solving with advantage many delicate questions in physics; and the Committee of the British Association report that Science and the Association owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Glaisher for the ability, perseverance, and courage with which he has voluntarily undertaken the hazardous labour of recording meteorological phenomena in the several ascents. The following survey of Loudon, Oct. 9, 1863, sixteenth ascent, as the Balloon passed over London Bridge, at the height of 7000 feet, in an unusually clear atmosphere, is picturesquely descriptive.

” The scene around,” says Mr. Glaisher, ” was probably one that cannot be equalled in the world at one glance—the homes of 3,000,000 of people were seen, and so distinctly that every large building at every part was easily distinguished; while those almost under us—viz., the Bank and Newgate, the Docks and surrounding buildings, &c, in such detail that their inner courts were visible, and their ground-plans could have been drawn. Cannon-street was easily traced; but it was difficult to believe at first sight that small building to be St. Paul’s. Looking onward, Oxford-street was visible; the Parks, the Houses of Parliament, and Millbank Prison, with its radiating lines from the centre, at oncfe attracted notice. In fact, the whole of London was visible, and some parts of it very clearly. Then all around there were lines of detached villas, imbedded as it were in shrubs; and beyond, the country, like a garden, with its fields well marked, but becoming smaller and smaller as the eye wandered further away.

“Again looking down, there was the Thames, without the slightest mist, winding throughout its whole length, with innumerable ships, apparently very long and narrow, and steamboats like moving toys. Gravescnd was visible, as were the mouth of the Thames and the coast leading on to Norfolk. The southern boundary of the mouth of the Thames was not quite so clear, but the sea beyond was discernible for many miles; and when higher up I looked for the coast of France, but I could not see it. On withdrawing the eye it was arrested by the garden-like appearance of the county of Kent, till again London claimed attention. Smoke, thin and blue, was curling above it and slowly moving away in beautiful curves, from all but south of the Thames; here the smoke was less blue and became apparently more dense, till the cause was evident, it being mixed with mist rising from the ground, the southern limits of which were bounded by an even line, doubtless indicating the meeting of the subsoils of gravel and clay.

” The whole scene was surmounted by a canopy of blue, the sky being quite clear and free from cloud everywhere except near the horizon, where a circular band of cumuli and strata clouds, extending all round, formed a fitting boundary for such a scene. The sun was seen setting, but was not itself visible, except a small part seen through a break in a dark stratus cloud—like an eye overseeing all. Sunset, as seen from the earth, is described as fine, the air being clear and shadows sharply defined. As we rose the golden hues decreased in intensity and richness both right and left of the place of the sun; but their effects extended to fully one-fourth part of the circle, where rose-coloured clouds limited the scene. The remainder of the circle was completed partly by pure white cumulus of very rounded and symmetrical forms. 1 have seen London from above by night, and I have seen it by day when four miles high, but nothing could exceed the view on this occasion at the height of one mile, varying to one mile and three-quarters, with a clear atmosphere. The roar of London even at the greatest height, was one unceasing rich and deep sound, and added impressive interest to the general circumstances in which we were placed.”

BANK OF ENGLAND, THE,

an insulated assemblage of buildings and courts, occupying three acres, minus nine or ten yards, north of the Royal Exchange, Cornhill; bounded by Prince’s-street, west;

Lotbbury, north; Bartholomew-lane, ut olomew-east ; and Threadneedle-street, south. Its exterior measurements are 365 feet south, 410 feet north, 245 feet east, and 440 feet west. Within this area are nine open courts; a spacious rotunda, numerous public offices, court and committee-rooms, an armoury, engraving and printing-offices, a library, and apartments for officers, servants, &c.

The Bank, ” the greatest monetary establishment in the world,” was projected in 1691, by Mr. William Paterson, a Scotsman; was established by a company of Whig merchants, and incorporated by William III., July 27, 1694, Paterson being placed on the list of Directors for this year only ; the then capital, 1,200,OOOZ., being lent to Government. The first chest used was somewhat larger than a seaman’s.

The first Governor was Sir John Houblon, whose house and garden were on part of the site of the present Bank ; and the first Deputy-Governor was Michael Godfrey, who, July 17, 1695, was shot at the siege of Namur, while attending King William with a communication relating to the Bank affairs.

The Bank commenced business at Mercers’ Hall, and next removed to Grocers’ Hall, then in the Poultry; at this time the secretaries and clerks numbered but 54, and their united salaries amounted to 4350/. In 1734 they removed to the premises built for the Bank, the earliest portion of which part is still remaining—the back of the Threadneedle-street front, towards the court—was designed by an architect named Sampson. To this building Sir Robert Taylor* added two wings of columns, with projections surmounted by pediments, and other parts. On Jan. 1, 1785, was set up the marble statue of William III., amid the firing of three volleys, by the servants of the establishment, Cheere, sculptor, in the Pay Hall, 79 feet by 40 feet, which, in the words of Baron Dupin, would ” startle the administration of a French bureau, with all its inaccessibilities.”

In 1757, the Bank premises were small, and surrounded by St. Christopher-le-Stocks Church (since pulled down), three taverns, and several private houses. Between 1766 and 1786 east and west wings were added by Taylor : some of his work is to be seen in the architecture of the garden court. Upon Sir Robert Taylor’s death, in 1788, Mr. John Soane was appointed Architect to the Bank; and, without any interruption to the business, he completed the present Bank of brick and Portland stone, of incombustible materials, insulated, one-storied, and without external windows. The general architecture is Corintbian, from the Temple of the Sibyi at Tivoli, of which the southwest angle exhibits a fac-simile portion. The Lotbbury court is fine; and the chief Cashier’s office is from the Temple of the Sun and Moon at Rome. The embellishments throughout are very beautiful; and the whole well planned for business—high architectural merit. The Rotunda has a dome 57 feet diameter ; and the Bank Parlour, where the Governor and Company meet, is a noble room by Taylor. Here the Dividends are declared; and here the Directors are baited half-yearly by every Proprietor who has had 500Z. Bank-stock in his possession for six months. In the Parlour lobby is a portrait of Daniel Race, who was in the Bank service for more than half a century, and thus amassed upwards of 200,000Z. In the ante-chamber to the Governor’s room are fine busts of Pitt and Fox, by Nollekens. The ante-room to the Discount Office is adapted from Adrian’s Villa at Tivoli. The private Drawing Office, designed in 1836, by Cockerell (Soane’s successor), is original awd scenic; and the Drawing Office, completed by the same architect in 1849, is 138 feet 6 inches long, and lit by four lahe it by frge circular lanterns. In 1850, the Cornhill front was heightened by an attic; and a large room fitted up as a Library for the clerks.

The entrance to the Bullion Yard is copied from Coustantine’s Arch at Rome, and has allegories of the Thames and Ganges, by T. Banks, R.A. The Bullion Office, ou the northern side of the Bank, consists of a public chamber and two vaults—one for the public deposit of bullion, free of charge, unless weighed; the other for the private stock of the Bank. The duties are discharged by a Principal, Deputy-Principal, Clerk, Assistant-Clerk, and porters. The public are on no account allowed to enter the Bullion Vaults. Here the gold is kept in bars (each weighing 16 lbs. and worth about

* The late Professor Cockerell, in his earlier lectures, used to exhibit, as a specimen of clever arrangement, a plan of the triangular block of buildings, by Sir Kobert Taylor, that formerly stood between the Bank and the Mansion House, where the Wellington Statue is now.

8007.), and the silver in pigs and bars, and dollars in bags. The value of the Bank bullion in May, 1850, was sixteen millions. This constitutes, with their securities, the assets which the Bank possess against their liabilities, on account of circulation and deposits: and the difference between the several amounts is called ” the Rest,” or balance in favour of the Bank. For weighing, admirably-constructed machines are used: the larger one, invented by Mr. Bate, for weighing silver in bars from 50 lbs. to 80 lbs. troy; second, a balance, by Sir John Barton, for gold; and a third, by Mr. Bate, for dollars, to amounts not exceeding 72 lbs. 2 oz. troy. Gold is almost exclusively obtained by the Bank in the bar form; although no form of deposit would be refused. A bar of gold is a small slab, weighing 16 lbs., and worth about 8007.

In the Weighing Office, established in 1842, to detect light gold, is the ingenious machine invented by Mr. William Cotton, then Deputy-Governor of the Bank. About 80 or 100 light and heavy sovereigns are placed indiscriminately in a round tube ; as they descend on the machinery beneath, those which are light receive a slight touch, which moves them into their proper receptacle; and those which are of legitimate weight pass into their appointed place. The light coins are then defaced by a machine, 200 in a minute; and by the weighing-machinery 35,000 may be weighed in one day. There are six of these machines, which from 1844 to 1849 weighed upwards of 48,000,000 pieces without any inaccuracy. The average amount of gold tendered in one year is nine millions, of which more than a quarter is light. The silver is put up into bags, each of one hundred pounds value, and the gold into bags of a thousand; and then these bagfuls of bullion are sent through a strongly-guarded door, or rather window, into the Treasury, a dark gloomy apartment, fitted up with iron presses, and made secure with huge locks and bolts.

The Bank-note machinery, invented by the Oldhams, father and son, exerts, by the steam-engine, the power formerly employed by the mechanic in pulling a note. The Bank-notes are numbered on the dexter and sinister halves, each bearing the same figures, by Bramah’s machines: as soon as a note is printed, and the handle reversed to take it out and put another in its place, a steel spring attached to the handle alters the number to that which should follow.

The Clock in thef b Clock roof is a marvel of mechanism, as it is connected with all the clocks in the Stock offices: the hands of the several dials indicate precisely the same hour and second, by means of connecting brass-rods (700 feet long, and weighing 6 cwt.), and 200 wheels; the principal weight being 350 lbs.

The Bank has passed through many perils: it has been attacked by rioters, its notes have been at a heavy discount, it has been threatened with impeachment, and its credit has been assailed by treachery. In 1696 (the great re-coinage) the Directors were compelled to suspend the payment of their notes. They then increased their capital to 2,201,2717. The Charter has been renewed from 1697 to the present time.

The earliest panic, or run, was in 1707, upon the threatened invasion of the Pretender. In the run of 1745, the Corporation was saved by their agents demanding payment for notes in sixpences, and who, paying in the same, thus prevented the bond fide holders of notes presenting them. Another memorable run was on February 26, 1797, upon an alarm of invasion by the French, when the Privy Council Order and the Restriction Act prohibited the Bank from paying cash, except for sums under 20s. During the panic of 1825, from the evidence of Mr. Harman before Parliament, it appears that the quantity of gold in the treasury, in December, was under 1,300,0007. It has since transpired that there was not 100,0007., probably not 50,0007.! The Bank then issued one-pound notes, to protect its remaining treasure; which worked wonders, though by sheer good luck : ” because one box containing a quantity of one-pound notes had been overlooked, and they were forthcoming at the lucky moment.”

Panics have been produced sometimes by extraordinary means. In May, 1832, a ” run upon the Bank of England ” was produced by the walls of London being placarded with the emphatic words, ” To stop the Duke, go for Gold;” advice which was followed, as soon as given, to a prodigious extent. The Duke of Wellington was then very unpopular; and on Monday, the 14th of May, it being currently believed that the Duke had formed a Cabinet, the panic became universal, and the run upon the Bank of England for coin was so incessant, that in a few hours upwards of half a million was carried off. Mr. Doubleday, in his Life of Sir Robert Peel, states it to be well known that the above placards were ” the device of four gentlemen, two of whom were elected members of the reformed Parliament. Each put down 20J.: and the sura thus clubbed was expended in printing thousands of these terrible missives,

which were eagerly circulated, and were speedily seen upon every wall in London. The effect is hardly to be described. It was electric.”

The Bank is the banker of the Government; for here are received the taxes, the interest of the National Debt paid, the Exchequer business transacted, &c. The amount paid by the Government to the Bank for the management of the National Debt is at the rate of 340Z. per million for the first 600,000,000?., and 300Z. per million for the remainder. This amounts to about 250,OOOZ. a year. “The Old Lady of Threadneedle-street,” applied to the Bank, is a political sobriquet now almost forgotten.

The forgeries upon the Bank supply a melancholy chapter in its history. The first forger of a note was a Stafford linendraper, who, in 1758, was convicted and executed. Through the forgeries of one person, Kobert typrson, KAslett, the Bank lost 320,000?.; and by another, Fauntleroy, 360,000Z. In 1862, there were forgeries to a large amount, by paper expressly manufactured for the Bank, which had been stolen, for which four persons suffered penal imprisonment.

The Committee of Treasury sit weekly, and is composed of all the Directors who have passed the chair. The Accountant, the Secretary, and the Cashier reside within the Bank; and a certain number of Clerks sit up nightly to go the round of the building, in addition to the military guard.

The Bank possesses a very fine collection of ancient coins. Visitors are shown in the old Note Office, paid notes for ten years ; and some bank-notes for large amounts which have passed between the Bank and the Government, including a single note for one million sterling, kept in a frame.

Madox, who wrote the History of the Exchequer, was first Cashier; but more popularly known was Abraham Newland, Chief-Cashier from 1778 to 1807, who had slept twenty-five years within the Bank, without absenting himself a single night. He signed every note: his name was long remembered in a popular song, ” as one that is wrote upon every bank-note,” to forge which, in street slang, was to “sham \ Abraham.”

In 1852 was placed in the Garden Court a fountain, constructed by the then Governor, Mr. Thomas Hankey. The water is thrown by a single jet, 30 feet high, amongst the branches of two of the finest lime-trees in London, and is part of the Bank system of waterworks. An Artesian well sunk 330 feet—100 in the chalk—yields soft water, free from lime, and without a trace of organic matter. The water is pumped into the tanks at the top of the building, which contain 50,000 gallons, and the fountain is connected with these tanks; the pumping being by the steam-engine employed also in printing the bank-notes. The fountain is placed on the site of St. Christopher’s churchyard. The last person buried there was Jenkins, a Bank clerk, 7^ feet in height, and who was allowed to be buried within the walls of the Bank, to prevent disinterment, on account of his unusual height.

There are in the Bank upwards of eight hundred clerks, at salaries ranging from 65Z. per annum to 800Z.; the patronage is in the hands of the directors, of whom there are twenty-four, each having a nomination to admit one clerk, provided he be found qualified on examination. The vacancies are not, as in most public offices, filled up as they occur by deaths, resignations, &c, but by electing from twenty-five to thirty junior clerks every four or five months; it is also usual to admit one-fifth of this number from the sons of clerks already in the service. The scale of pensions for length of service is the same as in the Government offices.

Among the Curiosities are the bank-note autograph-books—two splendidly-bound folio volumes, each leaf embellished with an illuminated border, exactly surrounding the space required to attach a bank-note. When any distinguished visitor arrives he is requested to place his autograph to an unsigned note, which is immediately pasted over one of the open spaces. They are thus illustrated by the signatures of various royal and noble personages. That of Napoleon III., Henry V., the Kings of Sweden, Portugal, and Prussia, a whole brigade of German Princes, Ambassadors from Siam, Persia, Turkey—the latter in Oriental characters—and some of our higher nobcleur highility. There are some scientific names, but few literary celebrities; among them those of Lady Sale; and Mehemet Ali, the Pasha of Egypt.

” The circulation of the Bank of England has been stationary or slightly retrogressive for some years past, notwithstanding the increase of trade, wealth, and population. The authorities even of the Currency principle no longer insist upon the variations of the bank-note circulation as the symptoms to be chiefly regarded. They, with the rest of the world, have discovered that the state of the banking reserve at the Bank of England, the condition of credit, and the effects of a high or low rate of interest, are the cirenmstances which really control the financial phenomena of the country from week to week and month to month.”— Economist.

Upwards of a million is paid into the Bank daily, in the shape of notes. “When cashed a corner is torn off, and this now valueless piece of paper, after being duly entered in the hooks, is deposited in chambers beneath the sorting-room, where it is kept ten- years, in case it may be required as testimony at some future trial, or to settle any other legal difficulties. In one of the court-yards of the building is a large circular cage, within which is an octagonal furnace constructed of bricks, laid only half over each other, so as to afford ample ventilation. In this furnace, once a month, all the notes that were received during the month previous ten years back are consumed. The furnace is five feet high, by at least ten in diameter ; yet we are assured that it is completely filled by the number returned during one month.

Notes of the Bank, at its establishment, 20 per cent, discount; in 1745 under par. Bank Bills paid in silver, in 1745. Bank Post Bills first issued, 1754. Small Notes issued, 1759. Cash payments discontinued, Feb. 25, 1797, and Notes of 1/. and 21. put into circulation. Cash payments partially resumed, Sept. 22,1817. Bestriction altogether ceased, 1821. May 14, 1832, upwards of 300,000/. weighed and paid to bankers and others. Quakers and Hebrews not eligible as Directors. Qualification for Director, 2000/. Bank Stock; Deputy-Governor, 3000/.; Governor. 4000/. Highest price of Bank Stock, 299; lowest 91. The Bank has paid Dividends at the rate of 21 per cent., and as low as 4-J per cent, per annum. Silver Tokens issued, Jan., 1793. Issue on paper securities not permitted to exceed 14,000,000/. Capital punishment for forgery, excepting only forgeries of wills and powers of attorney, abandoned in li.32.— (See Francis’s popular History of the Bank of England, 3rd edit. 1848.)

1852, Oct. 1, West-end Branch opened at Uxbridge House, Burlington Gardens.

The total of deposits held ten years ago by the Bank of England was about 1 i,300,O00Z.; it is now (1866) 20,140,000Z.

In the Riots of 1780, the Bank was defended by military, the City volunteers, and the officers of the establishment, when the old inkstands were cast into bullets. It was attacked by the mob, when Wilkes rushed out and seized some of the ringleaders. Since this date a military force has been stationed nightly within the Bank; a dinner is provided for the officer on guard and two friends. (See a clever sketch in Meliboeus in London?) In the political tumult of November, 1830, provisions were made at’ the Bank for a state of siege. At the Chartist Demonstration of April 10, 1848, the roof of the Bank was fortified by Sappees fied byrs and Miners, and a strong garrison within. The Bank has now its own company of Rifles,, 150 strong, with two subdivisions each, having a lieutenant and ensign, and fully armed and equipped.

BANKSIDE.,

THAT part of the Liberty of Paris Garden called by old writers the “Bank” simply, and afterwards Bankside, bordering on the Thames, was the site of several early theatres, namely, the Globe, the Hope, the Rose, and the Swan; and superseded the circus for ” Bull-bayting” and ” Bear-baiting,” shown in Aggas’s Map, about 1560. (See Theatees.) The stews here were as old as the reign of Henry II., and in the time of Richard II. belonged to Sir William Walworth who slew Wat Tyler, who had several stew-houses on the Bankside. They had signs painted on the walls; as a Boar’s Head, the Cross Keys, the Gun, the Castle, the Cranes, the Cardinal’s Hat, the Bell, the Swan, &C. These stews, which were regulated by Parliament, were put down by sound of trumpet in 1546; about 1506 this part was known as Stews-bank. Bears were baited here from a very early period, but the bear-garden was removed to Clerkenwell about 1686; the site at Bankside is now occupied by the Eagle iron foundry and Bear-garden wharf. In 1720, the Bank was chiefly inhabited by dyers, ” for the conveniency of the water.” In the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I., Edward Alleyn, the founder of Dulwich College, kept the garden on the Bankside, in conjunction with his father-in-law, Philip Henslowe, who was originally a dyer here. Here were the Bishop of Winchester’s park and garden and palace: of the latter a fragment remains; and here is ” Cardinal’s Cap-alley,” and ” Pike-garden.”,

BARBICAN.

THIS old street, which is a portion of the line of thoroughfare, eastward from “West Smithfield to Finsbury-square, is named from its proximity to a barbican, or watch-tower, attached to the City wall, the remains of which were visible within the last eighty years. It was the advanced post of Cripplegate; and, like the others that surrounded the City, was intrusted to some person of consequence in the State. This tower was granted by Edward III. to the Earl of Suffolk, and he made it his town residence. After the removal of the City gates all vestiges of the Barbican disappeared, except its name; this became applied to the street, which R. B., in Strype, describes as * a good broad street, well inhabited by tradesmen, especially by salesmen for apparel both new and old ; and, fronting Redcross-street, is the watchhouse, where formerly stood a watch-tower called Burgh, and Ken, a place to view or ken from,” which is the derivation given by Sir Henry Spelman, the antiquary, who resided in tins street at the time of his death in 1640.

Camden, in his Britannia (published 1586), says: ” The suburb also which runs out on the north-west side of London is large, and had formerly a watch-tower or military fence, from whence it came to be called by an Arabiek name— Barbacan.”

The tower is described as built on high ground, and of some good height: from thence ” a man,” says Stow, ” might behold and view the whole city towards the south, and also into Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, and likewise every other way, east, north, or west.” Mr. Godwin, F.S.A., in 1850 read to the British Archaeological Association an ingenious paper illustrative of the term Barbican.

Milton lived here, 1646-7, in a house, No. 17, on the north side of the street: it was taken down in 1864. In Barbican was the mansion of the poet’s early patrons, the Bridgevvater family; and here lived Sir Thomas Wriothesley, Garter King-at-arms; whence Bridgewater-square, Brackley-street, and Garter-court. Beech-street, the east continuation of Barbican, was, peradventure, named fioin Nicholas de la Beech, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, temp. Edward III. Here, in Drury House, lived Prince Rupert. Its remains in 1766 were engraved by J. T. Smith. Barbican was, in 1865-6, in part taken down, to make room for the Metropolitan (Extension to Finsbury) Railway.

BARTHOLOMEW FAIR.

THIS ancient Fair presents, through its seven centuries’ existence, many phases of our social history with such graphic force, that ” he may run that readeth it.” The Fair originated in two Fairs, or Markets, one begun by a grant of land from Henry I. to his jester, Rayer, or Rahere, who founded a Priory to St. Bartholomew, in West Smithfield, previous to which, however, a market called ” the King’s Market,” had been held near Smithfield. Out of the two elements, the concourse of pilgrims to the Miraculous Shrine of St. Bartholomew, and the concourse of traders to the King’s Market, Bartholomew Fair grew up. Rayer’s miracles were most ingenious, for he cured a woman who could not keep her tongue in her mouth : if the wind went down, as sailors far at sea were praying to the denuded saint, they called it a miracle, and presented, in procession, a silver ship at the Smithfield shrine. The forged miracles gave way to the imitative jugglers and mvstery players; and these three elements—the religious, the dramatic, and the commercial—flowed on till the Reformation.

The Priory Fair, which was proclaimed on the Eve of St. Bartholomew, and continued during the next day, and the next morrow, was granted for the clothiers of England and the drapers of London, who had their booths and standings within the Priory churchyard (the site now Cloth Fair), the gates of which were locked every night, and watched, for the safety of the goods and wares. Within its limits was held a court of justice, named Pie Poudre, from pieds poudreux —dusty feet—by which, persons infringing upon the laws of the Fair, its disputes, debts, and legal obligations, &c., were tried the same day, and the punishment of the stocks, or whipping-post, summarily inflicted; and tins court was held, to the last, at the Hand and Shears, Cloth Fair, by the Steward of the Lord of the Manor.

” Thus we have in the most ancient times of the Fair, a church full of worshippers, among whom were the sick and maimed, praying for health about its altar; a graveyard full of traders, and a place of jesting and edification, where women and men caroused in the midst of the throng; where the minstrel anb the story-teller and the tumbler gathered knots about them; where the sheriff caused new laws to de published by loud proclamation in the gathering places of the people; where the young men bowled at nine-pins, while the clerks and friars peeped at the young maids; where mounted knights and ladies curvetted and ambled, pedlars loudly magnified their wares, the scholars met for public wrangle, oxen lowed, horses neighed, and sheep bleated among their buyers; where great shouts of laughter answered to the ‘ Ho ! ho !’ of the devil on the stage, above which flags were flying, and below which a band of pipers and guitar beare ch guitarrs added music to the din. That stage also, if ever there was presented on it the story of the Creation, was the first Wild Beast Show in the Fair; for one of the dramatic effects connected with this play, as we read in an ancient stage direction, was to represent the creation of beasts by unloosing and sending among the excited crowd as great a variety of strange animals as could be brought together, and to create the birds by sending up a flight of pigeons. Under foot was mud and filth, but the wall that pent the city in shone sunlit among the trees, a fresh breeze came over the surrounding fields and brooks, whispering among the elms that overhung the moor glittering with pools, or from the Fair’s neighbour, the gallows. Shaven heads looked down on the scene from the adjacent windows of the buildings bordering the Priory inclosure, and the poor people whom the friars cherished in their hospital, madj holiday among the rest. The curfew bell of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, the religious house to which William the Conqueror had given with its charter the adjacent moorland, and within whose walls there was a sanctuary for loose people, stilled the hum of the crowd at nightfall, and the Fair lay dark under the starlight.”— Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair. By Henry Morley. 1858.

After the Reformation, Bartholomew Fair flourished with unabated vigour, the clergy having no longer any interest in veiling its debaucheries. The Priory, together with the rights formerly exercised by the monks, had been granted to the founder of the Rich family, who was Solicitor-General to Henry VIII., and afterwards Lord Chancellor; they were enjoyed by his descendants till the year 1830, when they were purchased from Lord Kensington by the Corporation of London. The Fair greatly declined, as a cloth fair, from the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and the mysteries and moralities being succeeded by productions more nearly resembling the regular drama, the Corporation granted licences to mountebanks, conjurors, &c, and allowed the Fair to be extended to fourteen days, the Sword-bearer and other City officers being paid out of the emoluments. Hentzner, in 1578, describes a tent pitched for the proclamation of the Fair, and wrestling after the ceremony, with the crowd hunting wild rabbits, for the sport of the Mayor and Aldermen. Here was also formerly a burlesque proclamation on the night before, by the drapers of Cloth Fair snapping their shears and loudly shouting all through Smithfield.

Ben Jonson, in his play of Bartholomew Fair, tell us of its motions, or puppet-shows, of Jerusalem, Nineveh, and Norwich; and the ” Gunpowder Plot, presented to an eighteen or twenty pence audience nine times in an afternoon.” The showman paid three shillings for his ground; and a penny was charged for every burden of goods and little bundle brought in or carried out. A rare tract, of the year 1641, describes the ” variety of Fancies, the Faire of Wares, and the several enormityes and misdemeanours” of the Fair of that period. At these, the sober-minded Evelyn was shocked. Pepys (Aug. 30, 1667) found at the Fair ” my Lady Castlemaine at a puppet-show,” her coach waiting, ” and the street full of people expecting her.” The sights and shows included wild beasts, dwarfs, and other monstrosities; operas, and tight-rope dancing, and sarabands; dogs dancing the Morrice, and the hare beating the tabor; a tiger pulling the feathers from live fowls; the humours of Punchinello, and drolls of every degree. An ox roasted whole, and piping-hot roast pig, sold in savoury lots, were among the Fair luxuries: the latter, called Bartholomew Pigs, were railed at by the Puritans, and eating them was “a species of idolatry.” The pig-market was at Pye Corner, and pig was not out of fashion in Queen Anne’s time.

Among the celebrities of the Fair was Tom Dogget, the old comic actor, who ” wore a farce in his face,” and was famous for dancing the Cheshire Round. One Ben Jonson, the actor, was celebrated as the grave-digger in Hamlet, in which he introduced a song preserved in Durfey’s Fills. Tom Walker, the original Macheatb, was another Bartholomew hero. William Bullock, from York, is alluded to by Steele, in The Father, and is censured for ” gagging:” in 1739 he had the largest booth in the Fair. Theophilus Cibber was of the Fair, but there is no evidence that Colley Cibber ever appeared fihere. Cadinan, the famous flyer on the rope, immortalized by Hogarth, was a constant exhibitor at Bartholomew, as well as Southwark Fair. William Phillips was a famous Merry Andrew, and some time fiddler to a puppet-show, in which he held many a dialogue with Punch. Edward Phillips wrote Britons Strike Home for the Fair; and Kitty Clive played at the booth of Fawkes, Winchbeck, &c, in that very farce. Harlequin Phillips was in Mrs. Lee’s company, and afterwards became the celebrated Harlequin at Drury-lane, under Fleetwood. Penkethman and Dogget, though of very unequal reputation, are noticed in the Spectator. The first in that humorous account of the Projector, in the 31st number, where it is proposed that ” Penkethman should personate King Porus upon an elephant, and be encountered by Powell, representing Alexander the Great, upon a dromedary, which, nevertheless, Mr. Powell is desired to call by the name of Bucephalus.” Dogget is commended (No. 502) as an admirable and genuine actor.

The public theatres were invariably closed at Bartholomew Fair time ; drolls, like Estcourt and Penkethman, finding Bartholomew Fair a more profitable arena for their talents than the boards of Dorset-garden or old Drury-lane. Here Elkanah Settle, the rival for years of Dryden, was reduced at last to string speeches and contrive machinery; and here, in the droll of St. George for England, he made his last appearance, hissing in a green leather dragon of his own invention.

Here we may mention another class of sights,—” a large and beautiful young camel from Grand Cairo, in Egypt,” says the advertisement: ” this creature is twenty-three years old; his head and neck are like that of a deer,” and he ” was to be seen or sold at the first house on the pavement from the end of Hosier-lane, during Bartholomew Fair.” And we read that later, Sir Hans Sloane employed a draughtsman to sketch the wonderful foreign animals in the Fair.

There are scores of other Bartholomew celebrities—actors, mummers, tumblers, nonjurors, and exhibitors of various grades, as Burling and his famous monkey; William Joy, the English Samson; Francis Battalia, the Stone Eater; Topham, the Strong Man; Hale, the Piper; the Auctioneer of Moorfields, who regularly, for a series of years, transferred his book-stall to Smithfields Rounds; James Spiller, the original Mat o’ the Mint of the Beggar’s Opera, at one time the ” glory of the Fair :” this piece was played at Smithfield in 1728. Punchinello was another Bartholomew attraction :—

” ‘Twas then, when August near was spent,
That Bat, the grilliado’d saint,
Had ushered in his Smithfield revels,
Where Punchinellos, popes and devils,
Are by authority allowed,
To please the giddy, gaping crowd.”

Hudibras Sedivivut, 1707.

Powell, too, the Puppet-show man, was a great card at the Fair, especially when his puppets played such incomparable dramas as Whittington and his Cat, The Children in the Wood, Dr. Faustus, Friar Bacon, Robin Hood and Little John, Mother Shipton, ” together with the pleasant and comical humours of Valentini, Nicolini, and the tuneful warbling pig of Italian race.” No wonder that such attractions thinned the theatres, and kept the churches empty. Steele makes mention of ” Powell’s books:” if they were books of his performances, what a treasure they would be in our day! The two great characters of Jewish history— Judith and Holophernes —long kept in popular favour; for Setchel’s fan-print of 1728 depicts Lee and Harper’s great theatrical booth, with an announcement of the play of Judith’s Adventures as its chief attraction: elevated from puppet performers to regular living actors, Judith herself being seated on the platform of the show in a magnificent dress, and the high headdress and false jewellery that captivated the wicked Holophernes, who strides towards her in the full costume of a Roman general.

Among Bagford’s collection in the British Museum, is a Bartholomew Fair bill of the time of Queen Anne, of the playing at Heatly’s booth, of ” a little opera, called the Old Creation of the World newly revived, with the addition of the Glorious battle obtained over the French and Spaniards by his Grace the Luke of Marlborough !” Between the acts* jigs, sarabands, and antics were performed, and the whole entertainment concluded with The Merry Humours of Sir John Spendall and Punchinello ;

Kith several other things not yet exposed” Heatly is supposed to have had no better scenery than the pasteboard properties of our early theatres:—

” The chaos, too, he had descried And seen quite through, or else he lied; Kot that of pasteboard which men shew For groats at Fair of Barthol’mew.”— Hudibrag, canto i.

Henry Fielding had his booth here, Dr. Rinibault tells us, after his admission into the Middle Temple. That Fielding should have turned ” strolling actor,” and have the audacity to appear at Bartholomew at the very moment when the whole town was ringing with Pope’s savage ridicule of the ” Smithfield Muses,” would of course be an unpardonable offence. Fielding’s last appearance at Bartholomew Fair was in 1736, as usual, in the George Inn Yard, at ” Fielding and Hippisley’s Booth.” Don Carlos and the Cheats of Scapin, adapted from Moliere, were the two plays; and Mrs. Pritchard played the part of Loveit, in which she had made her first hit at Bartholomew. Other celebrities, who kept up the character of the Fair for another quarter of a century, were Yates, Lee, Woodward, and Shuter, the two last well known for their connexion with Goldsmith’s comedies. Shuter played Croaker in the Good-natured Man, and llardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer. Woodward played Lofty in the fThaofty inormer piece. With Shuter, ” the history of the English stage ” (says Mr. Morley) “parted entirely from the story of the Fair.” Garrick’s name is connected only with the Fair by stories which regard him as a visitor: although Edmund Kean is stated to have played here when a boy.

Among the notorieties of the Fair was Lady Holland’s Mob (Lord Rich having been ancestor of the Earl of Warwick and Holland),—hundreds of loose fellows, principally journeyman tailors, who used to assemble at the Hand and Shears, in Cloth Fair. They were accustomed to sally forth knocking at the doors and ringing the bells of the peaceable inhabitants, and assaulting and ill-treating passengers. These ruffians frequently united in such strength as to defy the civil power. . As late as 1822, a number of them exceeding 5000 rioted in Skinner-street, and were for hours too powerful for the police.

The Fair was annually proclaimed by the Lord Mayor, on the 2nd of September, his lordship proceeding thither in his gilt coach, ” with City Officers and trumpets;” and the proclamation for the purpose read before the entrance to Cloth Fair. It was the custom for the Lord Mayor, on this occasion, to call upon the keeper of Newgate, and partake, on his way to Smithfield, of ” a cool tankard of wine, nutmeg, and sugar.” This custom, which ceased in the second mayoralty of Sir Matthew Wood in 1818, was the cause of the death of Sir John Shorter, Lord Mayor in 1688. In holding the tankard, he let the lid slip down with so much force, that his horse started, and he was thrown to the ground with great violence. He died the next day.

The Fair dwindled year by year : the writer remembers it at midnight, before gas had become common : viewed from Richardson’s, the shows, booths, and stalls, with their flaring oil-lamps and torches, shed a strange glare over the vast sea of heads which filled the area of Smithfield and the adjacent streets. As lately as 1830, upwards of 200 booths for toys and gingerbread crowded the pavement around the Fair, and overflowed into the adjacent streets. Richardson, Saunders, and Wombwell were late in the ascendant as showmen. Among the latest ” larks ” was that of young men of caste disguising themselves in working clothes, to enjoy the loose delights of “Bartlemy” Fair, in September.

For 300 years the Lord Mayor and Aldermen had in vain attempted to suppress the Fair; when, in 1840, upon the recommendation of the City Solicitor, Mr. Charles Pearson, having purchased Lord Kensington’s interest, they refused to let the ground for the shows and booths but upon exorbitant prices, and limited the Fair to one day; and the State proclamation of the Lord Mayor was given up. In 1849, the Fair was reduced to one or two stalls for gingerbread, gambling-tables for nuts, a few fruit-barrows and toy-stalls, and one puppet-show. In 1852, the number was still less.

” The Mayors had withdrawn the formality as much as possible from public observation, until in the year 1850, and in the mayoralty of Alderman Musgrove, his lordship having walked quietly to the appointed gateway, with the necessary attendants, found that there was not any Fair left worth a Mayor’s proclaiming. After that year, therefore, no Mayor accompanied the gentleman whose duty it was to read a certain form of words outtab of wor of a certain parchment scroll, under a quiet gateway. After live years this form also was dispensed with, and Bartholomew lair was proclaimed for the last time in the year 1855. The sole existing vestige of it is the old fee of three and sixpence still paid by the City to the Rector of St. Bartholomew the Great, for a proclamation in his parish.”— Morley.

It was held that the proclamation was part of the charter for holding the market, on which account it continued to he read, until the Act of Parliament for removing the market to Copenhagen-fields at length relieved the Corporation of going through the useless ceremony.

Hone, in his Every-day Boole, describes the Bartholomew Fair of 1825, with the minuteness of Dutch painting: Hone visited the several sights and shows, accompanied by Samuel Williams, by whom the wood-cut illustrations were cleverly drawn and engraved. Mr. Morley’s History of the Fair, which has been referred to, is a laborious work, with some original views.

BARTHOLOMEWS (ST.) HOSPITAL,

IN West Smithfield, is one of the five Royal Hospitals of the City, and the first institution of the kind established in the metropolis. It was originally a portion of the Priory of St. Bartholomew, founded by Rahere, in 1102, who obtained from Henry I. a piece of waste ground, upon which he built an hospital for a master, brethren and sisters, sick persons, and pregnant women. Both the Priory and the Hospital were surrendered to Henry VIII., who, at the petition of Sir Richard Greshara, Lord Mayor, and father of Sir Thomas Gresham, re-founded the latter, and endowed it with an annual revenue of 500 marks, the City agreeing to pay an equal sum; since which time the Hospital has received princely benefactions from charitable persons. It was first placed under the superintendence of Thomas Vicary, sergeant-surgeon to Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth; Harvey was physician to the Hospital for thirty-four years; and here, in 1619, he first lectured on the discovery of the Circulation of the Blood.

The Hospital buildings escaped the Great Fire in 1666; but becoming ruinous, were taken down in 1730, and the great quadrangle rebuilt by Gibbs; over the entrance next Smithfield is a statue of Henry VIII., and under it, ” St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, founded by Rahere, A.D. 1102, re-founded by Henry VIII., 1546;” on the pediment are two reclining figures of Lameness and Sickness. The cost of these buildings was defrayed by public subscription, to which the munificent Dr. Radcliffe contributed largely; besides leaving 5002. a year for the improvement of the diet, and 100Z. a year to buy linen. The principal entrance, next Smithfield, was erected in 1702 ; it is of poor architectural character.

The Museums, Theatres, and Library of the Hospital are very extensive; as is also the New Surgery, built in 1842. The Lectures of the present day were established by Mr. Abernethy, elected Assistant-Surgeon in 1787. Prizes and honorary distinctions for proficiency in medical science were first established in 1834; and their annual distribution in May is an interesting scene. In 1843 was founded a Collegiate Establishment for the pupils’ residence within the Hospital walls. A spacious Casualty Room has since been added.

The interior of the Hospital, besides its cleanly and welnexeanly al-regulated wards, has a grand staircase; the latter painted by Hogarth, for which he was made a life-governor. The subjects are—the Good Samaritan; the Pool of Bethesda; Rahere, the founder, laying the first stone; and a sick man carried on a bier, attended by monks. In the Court Room is a picture of St. Bartholomew holding a knife, as the symbol of his martyrdom; a portrait of Henry VIII. in Holbein’s manner; of Dr. Radcliffe, by Kneller; Perceval Pott, by Reynolds; and of Abernethy, by Lawrence.

In January, 1846, the election of Prince Albert to a Governorship of the Hospital was commemorated by the president and treasurer presenting to the foundation three costly silver-gilt dishes, each nearly twenty-four inches in diameter, and richly chased with a bold relief of—1. The Election of the Prince; 2. The Good Samaritan; 3. The Plague of London.

The Charity is ably managed by the Corporation : the president must have served as Lord Mayor; the qualification of a Governor is a donation of 100 guineas.

” From a search made in the official records of the City, it appears that for more than three hundred years, namely, since 1549, an alderman of London had always been elected president of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital; until 1854, whenever a vacancy occurred in the presidency of the Royal Hospitals (St. Bartholomew’s, Bethlehem, Bridewell, St. Thomas’s, or Christ’s Hospitals), it was customary to elect the Lord Mayor for the time being, or an alderman who had passed the chair. This rule was first broken when the Duke of Cambridge was chosen President of Christ’s Hospital over the head of Alderman Sidney, the then Lord Mayor ; and again when Mr. Cubitt, then no longer an alderman, was elected President of St. Bartholomew’s in preference to the then Lord Mayor. This question is, however, contested by the foundation-governors or the Corporation, and the donation-governors.”

It has been shown that King Henry VIII. in 1546 vested the Hospital of St. Bartholomew in the mayor, commonalty, and citizens of London, and their successors, for ever, in consideration of a payment by them of 500 marks a year towards its maintenance, and with it the nomination and appointment of all the officers. In September, 1557, at a general court of the Governors of all the Hospitals, it was ordered that St. Bartholomew’s should henceforth be united to the rest of the Hospitals, and be made one body with them, and on the following day ordinances were made by the Corporation for the general government of all the Hospitals. The 500 marks a year have been paid by the Corporation since 1546, besides the profit of many valuable leases.

This charity has an existence of nearly seven centuries and a half. The Hospital receives, upon petition, cases of all kinds free of fees; and accidents, or cases of urgent disease, without letter, at the Surgery, at any hour of the day or night. There is also a ” Samaritan Fund,” for relieving distressed patients. The present buildings contain 25 wards, consisting of 650 beds, 400 being for surgical cases, and 250 for medical cases and the diseases of women. Each ward is presided over by a “sister” and nurses, to the number of nearly 180 persons. In addition to a very extensive medical staff, there are four resident surgeons and two resident apothecaries, who are always on duty, day and night, throughout the year, to attend to whatever may be brought in at any hour of the twenty-four. It further possesses a College within itself, a priceless museum ; and a first-class Medical Schoos aMedicall, conducted by thirty-six professors and assistants. The “View-day,” for this and the other Royal Hospitals of the City, is a day specially set apart by the authorities to examine, in their official collective capacity, every portion of the establishment; when the public are admitted.

BATHS, OLDEN.

THE most ancient Bath in the metropolis is ” the old Soman Spring Bath” in Strand-lane ; but evidently unknown to Stow, though he mentions the locality as ” a lane or way down to the landing-place on the banks of the Thames.” This Bath is in a vaulted chamber, and is formed of thin tile-like brick, layers of cement and rubble-stones, all corresponding with the materials of the Roman wall of London; the water is beautifully clear and extremely cold. The property can be traced to the Danvers, or D’Anvers, family, of Swithland Hall, Leicestershire, whose mansion stood upon the spot.

St. Agnes-le- Clair Baths, Tabernacle-square, Finsbury, are supposed originally to have been of the above age, from finding the Roman tiles through which the water was once conveyed. Stow mentions them . as ” Dame Anne’s the clear.” The date assigned to these Baths is 1502. This famous spring was dedicated to St. Agnes; and, from the transparency and salubrity of its waters, denominated St. Agnes-le-Clair. It has claims to antiquity, for it appears that in the reign of Henry VIII. it was thus named :— ” Fons voc’ Lame Agnes a Clere.” It is described as belonging to Charles Stuart, late king of England. This spring was said to be of great efficacy in all rheumatic and nervous cases, headache, &c.

Peerless Pool, Baldwin-street, City-road, is referred to by Stow as near St. Agnes-le-Clair, and •’ one other clear water, called Perilous Pond, because divers youths, by swimming therein, have been drowned ;” but this ominous name was change to Peerless Pool; in 1743, it was enclosed, and converted into a bathing-place.

The Cold Bath, Clerkenwell, was originally the property of one Walter Baynes, who purchased a moiety of the estate, in 1696; when it comprised Windmill-hill, or Sir John Oldcastle’s Field, extending westward from Sir John Oldcastle’s to the River

Fleet, or, as it was then called, Tuminill-brook; and southward, by Coppice-row, to the same brook, near the Clerks’ Wells: while Gardiner’s Farm was the plot on which stands the Middlesex House of Correction. Baynes’s attention was first directed to the Cold Spring, which, in 1697, he converted into a Bath, spoken of, eleven years afterwards, in Hatton’s New View, as ” the most noted and first about London,” which assertion, written so near the time at which it states the origin of our Cold Bath, disproves the story of its having been the bath of Nell Gwynn, whom a nude figure, on porcelain, preserved by the proprietor, is said to represent. In Mr. Baynes’s time, the charge for bathing was 2s. : or, in the case of patients who, from weakness, required the ” chair,” 2s. 6d. The chair was suspended from the ceiling, in such a manner that a person placed in it coidd be thereby lowered into the water, and drawn up again in the same way. The spring was at the acme of its reputation in 1700. Of its utility, in cases of weakness more especially, there can be no question. Besides which, its efficacy is stated in the cure of scorbutic complaints, nervous affections, rheumatism, chronic disorders, &c. It is a chalybeate, and deposits a saline incrnota salinustation. The spring is said to supply 20,000 gallons daily. The height to which it rises in the marble receptacles prepared for it, is four feet seven inches. Until the sale of the estate in 1811, the Bath House, with the garden in which it stood, comprised an area of 103 feet by 60, enclosed by a brick wall, with a summer-house (resembling a little tower) at each angle: the house had several gables. The garden was let on building-leases, and the whole is now covered with houses, the Bath remaining in the midst. In 1815, the exterior of the Bath House was nearly all taken down, leaving only a small portion of its frontage, which it still retains.

The Duke’s Bath, or Bagnio, is minutely described by Samuel Haworth, in 1683, as ” erected near the west end of Long Acre, in that spot of ground called Salisbury Stables.” Here dwelt Sir William Jennings, who obtained the royal patent for making all public bagnios or baths, either for sweating, bathing, or washing. ” In one of the ante-rooms hangs a pair of scales, to weigh such as out of curiosity would know how much they lose in weight while they are in the bagnio. The bagnio itself is a stately oval edifice, with a cupola roof, in which are round glasses to let in light. The cupola is supported by eight columns, between which and the sides is a * sumptuous walk,’ arched over with brick. The bagnio is paved with marble, and has a marble table; the sides are covered with white gully-tiles, and within the wall were ten seats, such as are in the baths at Bath. There are also fourteen niches in the walls, in which are placed so many fonts or basins, with cocks over them of hot or cold water. On one side of the bagnio hangs a very handsome pendulum-clock, which is kept to give an exact account how time passeth away. Adjoining to the bagnio there are four little round rooms, about eight feet over, which are made for degrees of heat, some being hotter, others colder, as persons can best bear and are pleased to use. These rooms are also covered with cupolas, and their walls with gully-tiles.” We refer the reader to Haworth’s account for the details of “the entertainment,” as the bath is termed.

On the east side of the Bagnio fronting the street, is ” The Duke’s Bagnio Coffeehouse.” A great gate opens into a courtyard, for coaches. In this courtyard is visible the front of the Bagnio, having this inscription upon it in golden letters, upon a carved stone :—” The Duke’s Bagnio.” On the left of the yard is a building for the accommodation required for the bath, on the outside of which is inscribed in like manner— ” The Duke’s Bath.” The building is about 42 feet broad, 21 feet deep, and three stories high. There is on the lower story a room for a laboratory, in which are chemic furnaces, glasses, and other instruments necessary for making the bath waters. On the accession of the Duke of York to the throne, the Baths were improved, and reopened, under the name of the ” King’s Bagnio,” in 1686, by Leonard Cuuditt, who, in his advertisement, says—”There is no other Bagnio in or about London besides this and the Royal Bagnio in the City.” This, Malcolm supposes, was in allusion to the Bagnio we shall next describe, which seems to have been the first we had in the capital.

The Bagnio, in Bagnio-court (altered to Bath-street in 1843), Newgate-street, was built by Turkish merchants, and first opened in December, 1679, for sweating, hot bathing, and cupping. It has a cupola roof, marble steps, and Dutch tile walls, and was latterly used as a cold Bath.

Queen Anne’s Bath was at the Lack of the house No. 3, Endell-street, Long-acre, on the west side of the dit side ostreet. It has been converted into a wareroom by an ironmonger whose shop is in the front of the premises. The part occupied by the water has been boarded over, leaving some of the Dutch tiles which line the sides of the Bath visible. The water, which flows from a copious spring, is a powerful tonic, and contains a considerable trace of iron. Thirty years ago it was much used in the neighbourhood, when it was considered good for rheumatism and other disorders. The house in which the Bath is situate was -formerly No. 3, Old Belton-street: it was newly-fronted in 1845 ; the exterior had originally red brick pilasters, and a cornice, in the style of Inigo Jones. It does not seem clear how this place obtained the name of Queen Anne’s Bath. It might be supposed that this had been a portion of the King’s Bagnio. Old maps of London, however, show this could scarcely be correct, for the Duke’s, afterwards the King’s Bagnio was on the south side of Long-acre, and the above Bath is about a hundred yards to the north of that thoroughfare. ” Queen Anne’s Bath” is engraved from a recent sketch in the Builder, Oct. 12, 1861; whence the preceding details of the three Baths are abridged.

The Summums, in Covent-garden, now an hotel, with baths, was formerly “a Bagnio, or Place for Sweating;” in Arabic ” Hammam.” Malcolm says: ” The Arabic root hatna, [+>., signifies calescere, to grow warm : hence by the usual process of deriving nouns from verbs in that language, hummum, *?», a warm bath. They are known by that name all over the East.” The Bagnio at the hot Baths at Sophia, in Turkey, is thus described by Lady Mary Wortley Montague, in her Letters, vol. i., and probably her description suggested the name of the Old and New Hummums:”—

” It is built of stone, in the shape of a dome, with no window but in the roof, which gives light enough. There are live of these domes joined together; the outermost being less than the rest, and serving as a hall, where the portress stood at the door. Ladies of quality generally gave this woman a crown or ten shillings. The next room was a large one, paved with marble, and all round it are two raised sofas of marble, one above the other. There were four fountains of cold water in this room, falling first into marble basins, and then running on the floor in little channels cut for that purpose, which carried the streams into the next room, which is something less, and fitted with the same sort of marble sofas; but from the streams of sulphur proceeding from the bath adjoining to it, it is impossible to stay with one’s clothes on. Through the other two doors were the hot baths; one of which had cocks of cold water turned into it—tempering it to what degree of warmth the bather please to have.”

Queen Elizabeth’s Bath formerly stood among a cluster of old buildings adjoining the King’s Mews, at Charing Cross, and was removed in 1831. Of this Bath a plan and view were presented to the Society of Antiquaries, Feb. 9, 1832, and are engraved in the Archaologia, xxv. 588-90. The building was nearly square on the plan, and was constructed of fine red brick. Its chief merit consisted in its groined roof, which was of very neat workmanship, and formed by angular ribs springing from corbels. The form of the arch denoted the date of this building to be the fifteenth century.

The Floating Baths (of which there were two in our day) upon the Thames, in plan remind one of the Folly described by Tom Brown as a ” musical summer-house,” usually anchored opposite Somerset House abemerset Gardens. The Queen of William III. and her court once visited it; but it became a scene of low debauchery, and the bath building was left to decay, and be taken away for firewood.

The Turkish Bath, which closely resembles the Bath of the old Romans, was introduced into Ireland and England in 1856: and in London handsome baths were erected in Victoria-street, Westminster; these were taken down in 1855-6. The most extensive establishment of this class in London is the Hammam, or hot-air Bath, opened in 1862, No. 76, Jermyn-street, St. James’s, and formed under the superintendence of Mr. David TJrquhart ; its cost is stated at 6000?.; the architecture is from Eastern sources.

Baths and Wash-houses, for the working classes, originated in 1844, with an ” Association for Promoting Cleanliness among the Poor,” who fitted up a Bath-house and a Laundry in Glass-house Yard, East Smithfield; where, in the year ending June 1847, the bathers, washers, and ironers amounted to 81,584; the bathers and washers costing about one penny each, and the ironers about one farthing. The Association also gave whitewash, and lent pails and brushes, to those willing to cleanse their own wretched dwellings. And so strong was the love of cleanliness thus encouraged, that

women often toiled to wash their own and their children’s clothing, who had been compelled to sell their hair to purchase food to satisfy the cravings of hunger. This successful experiment led to the passing of an Act of Parliament (9 and 10 Vict. c. 74), ” To Encourage the Establishment of Paths and Wash-houses.” A Committee sat at Exeter Hall for the same object; a Model Establishment was built in Goulston-square, Whitechapel; and Baths and Wash-houses were established in St. Pancras, Maryle-bone, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and other large metropolitan parishes.

BAYNARD’S CASTLE.

A STRONGHOLD, ” built with walls and rampires,” on the banks of the Thames below St. Paul’s, by Bainiardus, a follower of William the Conqueror. In 1111 it was forfeited, and granted by Henry I. to Robert Fitzgerald, son of Gilbert, Earl of Clare; from whom it passed, by several descents, to the Fitzwalters (the chief bannerets of London, probably in fee for this castle), one of whom, at the commencement of a war, was bound to appear at the west door of St. Paul’s, armed and mounted, with twenty attendants, and there receive from the Mayor the banner of the City, a horse worth 20/., and 20Z. in money. In 1428, the castle became, probably by another forfeiture, crown property; it was almost entirely burnt, but was granted to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, by whom it was rebuilt; upon his attainder, it again reverted to the Crown. Here Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, presented to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, a parchment purporting to be a declaration of the three estates in favour of Richard; and in the “Court of Baynard’s Castle” Shakspeare has laid scenes 3 and 7, act hi., of King Richard III. ; the latter between Buckingham, the Mayor, Aldermen, and citizens, and Gloucester. Baynard’s Castle was repaired by Henry VII., and used as a royal palace until the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when it was let to the Earls of Pembroke; and here, in 1553, the Privy Council, “changing their mind from Lady Jane,” proclaimed Queen Mary. The castle subsequently became the residence of the Earls of Shrewsbury. Pepys records King Charles II. supping here, 19th June, 1660; and six years after the castle was destroyed in the Great Fire. The buildings surrounded two court-yards, with tht aards, we south front to the Thames, and the north in Thames-street, where was the principal entrance. ‘ Two of the towers, incorporated with other buildings, remained till the present century, when they were pulled down to make way for the Carron Iron Company’s premises. The ward in which stood the fortress-palace is named Castle-Baynard, as is also a wharf upon the site; and a public-house in the neighbourhood long bore the sign of ” Duke Humphrey’s Head.”

In Notes and Queries, No. 11, it is shown that Bainiardus, who gave his name to Baynard’s Castle, held land here of the Abbot of Westminster; and in a grant of 1G53 is described ” the common field at Paddington” (now Bayswater Field), as being ” near to a place commonly called Baynard’s Watering.” Hence it is concluded ” that this portion of ground, always remarkable for its springs of excellent water, once supplied water to Baynard, his household, or his castle; that the memory of his name was preserved in the neighbourhood for six centuries;” and that this watering-place is now Bayswater.

BAZAARS.

THE Bazaar is an adaptation from the East, the true principle of which is the classification of trades. Thus, Paternoster-row, with its books; Newport Market, with its butchers’ shops; and Monmouth-street with its shoes; are more properly Bazaars than the miscellaneous stalls assembled under cover, which are in London designated by this name. Exeter ‘Change was a great cutlery bazaar; and the row of attorneys’ shops in the Lord Mayor’s Court Office, in the second Royal Exchange, were a kind of legal Bazaar, the name of each attorney being inscribed upon a projecting signboard. The Crystal Palace of 1851, and the Great Exhibition of 1862, were vast assemblages of Bazaars. The Crystal Palace at Sydenham partakes of this character.

The introduction of the Bazaar into the metropolis dates from 1816, when was opened the Soho Bazaar, at 4, 5, and 6, Soho-square. It was planned solely by Mr.

John Trotter, with a truly benevolent motive. At the termination of the War, when a great number of widows, orphans, and relatives of those who had lost their lives on foreign service were in distress and without employment, Mr. Trotter conceived that an establishment in the hands of Government would promote the views of the respectable and industrious (possessing but small means) by affording them advantages to begin business without great risk and outlay of capital. Mr. Trotter having at that time an extensive range of premises unoccupied, without any idea of personal emolument, offered them to Government, free of expense, for several years, engaging also to undertake their direction and management on the same disinterested terms. His scheme was, however, considered visionary, and his offer rejected. Mr. Trotter then undertook the responsibility himself; the Bazaar was opened 1st February, 1816, and by excellent management, the establishment has since nourished; this success being mainly attributable to the selection of persons of respectability as its inmates, for whose protection an efficient superintendence of several matrons is provided. The counters are mostly for fancy goods, and to obtain a tenancy requires a testimonial respectably signed. The success of the Soho Bazaar led to establishments formed by private individuals, but with only temporary success.

The Western Exchange, Old Bond-street (with an entrance from the Burlington Arcademanington ), was burnt down, and not re-established.

The Queen’s Bazaar, on the north side of Oxford-street, the rear in Castle-street, was destroyed, May 23, 1829, by a fire which commenced at a dioramic exhibition of “the Destruction of York Minster by fire.” The Bazaar was rebuilt; but proving unsuccessful, was taken down, and upon the site was built the Princess’ Theatre.

The Pantheon Bazaar, on the south side of Oxford-street, with an entrance in Great Marlborough-street, was constructed in 1834, from the designs of Sydney Smirke, A.R.A., within the walls of the Pantheon Theatre, built in 1812; the fronts to Oxford-street and Poland-street being the only remains of the original structure. The magnificent staircase leads to a suite of rooms, in which pictures are placed for sale; and thence to the great Basilical Hall or Bazaar, which is 116 feet long, 8S feet wide, and 60 feet high ; it is mostly lighted from curved windows in the roof, which is richly decorated, as are the piers of the arcades, with arabesque scrolls of flowers, fruit, and birds; the ornaments of papier-mache by Bielefield. The style of decoration is from the loggias of the Vatican. The galleries and the floor are laid out with counters, and promenades between. From the southern end of the hall is the entrance to an elegant conservatory and aviary, mostly of glass, ornamented in Saracenic style. Here are birds of rich plumage, with luxuriant plants, which, with the profusion of marble, gilding, and colour, have a very pleasing effect in the heart of the smoky town.

The Bazaar in Baker-street, Portman-square, was originally established for the sale of horses; but carriages, harness, furniture, stoves, and glass are the commodities now sold here. Madame Tussaud’s Wax-work Exhibition occupies the greater part; and here, annually, in December, the Smithfield Club Cattle Show formerly took place.

The Pantechnicon, Halkin-street, Belgrave-square, is a Bazaar chiefly for carriages and furniture. Here, too, you may warehouse furniture, wine, pictures, and carriages, for any period, at a light charge compared with house-rent.

The Lowther Bazaar, nearly opposite the Lowther Arcade, Strand, was a repository of fancy goods, besides a ” Magic Cave,” and other exhibitions. The establishment was frequently visited by Louis Philippe from 1848 to 1850. The Magic Cave, with its cosmoramic pictures, realized 1500^. per annum, at 6d. for each admission. This and the house adjoining, eastward, have fronts of tasteful architectural design.

St. James’s Bazaar, King-street, St. James’s-street, was built for Mr. Crockford, in 1832, and has a saloon nearly 200 feet long by 40 wide. Here were exhibited, in 1841, three dioramic tableaux of the second obsequies of Napoleon, in Paris, at December, 1841. And in 1844 took place here the first exhibition of Decorative Works for the New Houses of Parliament.

The Cosjiorama, No. 207-209, Regent-street, originally an exhibition of views of places through large convex lenses, was altered into a Bazaar, subsequently, the Prince of Wales’s Bazaar.

The Anti-Coen-Law League Bazaab was held in the spring of 1845, when the auditory and stage of Covent-garden Theatre were fitted up for this purpose, and in six weeks 25,000Z. was cleared by the speculation, partly by admission-money. The Theatre was painted as a vast Tudor Hall, by Messrs. Grieve, and illuminated with gas in the day-time; the goods being exhibited for sale on stalls, appropriated to the great manufacturing localities of the United Kingdom. At this time the Theatre was let to the League at 3000 guineas for the term of holding the Bazaar, and one night per week for public meetings throughout one year.

The Portland Bazaar, 19, Langham-place, is noted for its ” German Fair,” and its display of cleverly-modelled toy figures of animals.

BEGGING, although illegal, and forbidden by one of our latest statutes, is followed as a trade in the metropolis, perhaps more systematically than in any other European capital. It has been stated that the number of professional Beggars in and about London amounts to 15,000, more than two-thirds of whom are Irish.

The vigilance of the Police, and the exposure of Beggars’ frauds by the press and upon the stage (from the Beggars Opera to Tom and Jerry), have done much towards the suppression of Begging. The Mendicity Society, in Bed Lion-square, Holborn, established in 1818, has also moderated the evil by exposing and punishing impostors, and relieving deserving persons. The receipts of this institution are upwards of 4000Z. a year. In one day it has distributed 3300 meals. The Society has a mill, stone-yard, and oakum-room, in which, during one day, there have been employed 763 persons, who would otherwise have been begging in the streets. A record is kept of all begging-letter cases, from which police-magistrates obtain information as to the character of persons brought before them. There are other societies for similar objects.

Sir John Fielding, in his ” Cautions,” published in 1776, gives a curious picture of the Sky Farmers who imposed upon the benevolent, as ” good old charitable ladies,” with dreadful stories of losses by fire, inundations, &c., for which the cheats collected subscriptions entered in a book, setting out with false names. Sir John says:—

There are persons in this town who get a very good livelihood by writing letters and petitions of this stamp. A woman stuffed up as if she was ready to lie in, with two or three borrowed children and a letter, giving an account of her husband’s falling off a scaffold and breaking his limbs, by being drowned at sea, is an irresistible object.

Many years ago, there died in Broad-street Buildings, aged 81, John Yardley Vernon, who wore in the streets the garb of a beggar, though he possessed 100,000^.,. which he realized as a stockbroker.

Mr. Henry Mayhew has given us the fullest report of the Beggar-life of our time : which has been supplemented by Mr. Halliday: all tending to prove that indiscriminate relief of street-being of strggars is most delusive and dangerous. .

With the ordinary types of ” disaster beggars,” such as shipwrecked mariners, blown-up miners— ” those having real or pretended sores vulgarly known as the scaldman dodge,” we are all familiar. But there are oddities and niceties even in this humble department of the Begging art. There are, for instance, the lucifer droppers. The business of these persons is to take a box or two of lucifers, and offer them for sale at a crowded and dirty corner. They choose a victim, and contrive to get in his way. Down go the lucifers in the mud, and the professional sets up a piteous howl. The gentleman is ashamed of having done so much mischief, and to quiet the complainant, who is generally of the softer sex, he gives her many times the worth of her dropped lucifers. ” Famished Beggars ” seem highly successful in their own line, but their success demands the natural advantages of a corpse-like face, an emaciated frame, and a power of enduring the winter’s cold in rags. Among those endowed with these requisites, the more accomplished performers have invented many ingenious subtleties. One device is the ” choking dodge.” The famished beggar seizes on a crust and eagerly devours it; but he has been too long without food—he tries in vain to swallow it, and it sticks in his throat. Another device is that of the ” offal-eaters.” These people decline absolutely to eat anything but what they find in the gutters. When we hear of all the trouble and ingenuity that is expended in deceiving us, we may well feel inclined to ask, as a beggar was once asked, ” Don’t you think you would have found it more profitable had you taken to labour or to some honester calling than your present one ?” But the candid answer returned is suggestive. ” Well, sir, p’raps I might,” he replied j “but going on the square is so dreadfully confining.”— Saturday Bevieto, 1862.

BELGRAVIA

WAS originally applied as a sobriquet to Belgrave and Eaton Squares and the radiating streets, but is now received as the legitimate name of this aristocratic quarter. In 1824, its site was ” the Five Fields,” intersected by mud-banks, and occupied by a few sheds. The clayey swamp retained so much water, that no one would build there; and the ” Fields” were the terror of foot-passengers proceeding from London to Chelsea after nightfall. At length, Mr. Thomas Cubitt found the strata to consist of gravel and clay, of considerable depth: the clay he removed, and burned into bricks; and by building upon the substratum of gravel, he converted this spot from the most unhealthy to one of the most healthy, to the immense advantage of the ground-landlord and the whole metropolis. This is one of the most perfect adaptations of the means to the end to be found in the records of the building art. In 1829, the same land, consisting of about 140 acres, was nearly covered with first and second class houses, the nucleus being Belgrave-square, designed by George Basevij the detached mansions, at the angles, by Hardwick, Kendall, and others; the area, originally a nursery garden, about ten acres. The level is low; for it has been ascertained that the ground-floor of Westbourne-terrace, Hyde Park Gardens, 70 feet above the Thames high-water mark, is on a level with the attics of Eaton and Belgrave Squares. Yet Chelsea acquired a proverbial salubrity in the last century by Doctors Arbuthnot, Sloane, Mead, and Cadogan residing there.

Mr. Thomas Cubitt, who died in 1856, was, in his nineteenth year, working as a journeyman carpenter; he then took one voyage to India and back as captain’s joiner, and on his return to London with hereLondon is savings, commenced business in the metropolis as a carpenter. In about six years, upon a tract of ground in Gray’s Inn-road, he erected large workshops. About 1824, he engaged with the Duke of Bedford and Lord Southampton for the ground on which Tavistock-square and Gordon-square, with Woburn-place, and adjoining streets, now stand. In the same year he engaged witli the Marquis of Westminster and Mr. Lowndes, to cover large portions of ” the Five Fields,” and ground adjacent: the results are Belgrave-square, Lowndes-square, Chesham-place, and other ranges of houses. He subsequently engaged to cover the vast open district lying between Eaton-square and the Thames, now South Bel-gravia. His works and establishment were at Thames Bank: they were destroyed by fire, by which Mr. Cubitt lost 30,0007.; when he was apprised of the calamity, his noble reply was, ” Tell the men they shall be at work within a week, and I will subscribe 6CKM. towards buying them new tools.” His large engagements as to Belgrave-square, begun in 1825, hadjust been completed in the year of liis death; and his own dwelling-house at Denbies, in which he died, had only been just finished, as the future residence of his family. His portrait has been painted and engraved. He had two brothers, Alderman Cubitt, twice Lord Mayor’; and Lewis Cubitt, the eminent engineer, architect of the Great Northern Railway Terminus.— Memoir in the Builder, 1856.

BULLS AND CHIMES.

THE histories of the various peals of Bells in the metropolis, and the Societies by which their ringing has been reduced to scientific standards are interesting. Commencing from the Conquest, we have

The Curfew. —Although the Couvrefeu law was abolished by Henry I., who restored the use of lamps and candles at night after the ringing of the Curfew-bell, which had been prohibited by his predecessors (Will. Malmesb., fol. 88), yet the custom of ringing the bell long continued ; and in certain parishes of the metropolis, and in some parts of the country, to the present time,

“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.”

Among the charges directed for the wardmote inquests of London, in the second mayoralty of Sir Henry Colet (a.d. 1495), it is said: ” Also yf there be anye paryshe clerke that ryngeth curfewe after the curfewe be ronge at Bowe Chyrche, or Saint Brydes Chyrche, or Saint Gyles without Cripelgat, all suche to be presented.” (Knight’s Life of Lean Colet). The same charge is in the wardmote inquest 1649.

” The church of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, with those of Bow, St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, and Barkin, had its Curfew-bell long after the servile injunction laid on the Londoners had ceased. These were sounded to give notice to the inhabitants of those districts to keep within, and not to wander in the streets; which were infested by a set of ruffians, who made a practice of insulting, wounding, robbing, and murdering the people whom they happened to meet abroad during the night.”— Strype’s Stow, v. L book iii. p. 106.

“The Couvre-few is still rung, at eight o’clock, at St. Edmund the King, Lombard-street. At Bishopsgate (St. Botolph’s); St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch; Christchurch, Spitalfields; St. Michael’s, Queenhithe; St. Mildred’s, Bread-street ;* St. Antholin’s, Budge-row ; and in some other City churches,

* The bell at this church was silenced by order of vestry, December, 1847.

There are bells, which are popularly known as the couvre-feu, but some of which are really, I believe prayer-bells.

“On the southern side of the Thames, the couvre-feu was, till within these six or seven years, nightly rung at St. George’s Church, Borough.”—Mr. Syer Cuming : Proceedings of the British Archceologieal Association, April 12, 1848. *

• Mr. Cuming also states that at St. Peter’s Hospital, Newington (the Fishmongers’ Almshouses, taken down in 1851), there was ” a bell rung every evening from eight o’clock till nine, which the old parishioners were wont to denominate the couvre-feu ; but it is now said that this was rung to warn all strangers from the premises, and the almspeople to their several apartments.”

The Curfew was not always rung at eight o’clock, for the sexton in the old play of the Merry Devil of Edmonton (4to. 1631) says :—

” Well, ’tis nine a cloke, ’tis time to ring curfew.”

The Curfew-hell, strictly as such, had prohahly fallen into disuse previous to the time of Shakspeare, who, in Romeo and Juliet, applies the term to the morning bell:—

” The second cock hath crow’d, The curfew-bell has rung, ’tis three o’clock.”

At Charterhouse, the Chapel-hell (which hears the arms and initials of Thomas Sutton, the founder, and the date 1631) is rung at eight and nine to warn the absent pensioner of the approaching hour; and this practice is, we think, erroneously adduced as a relic of Curfew-ringing.

” There is one peculiarity attached to the ringing, which is calculated to serve the office of the ordinary passing-bell; and that is the number of strokes, which must correspond with the number of pensioners. So that when a brother-pensioner has deceased, his companions are informed of their loss by one stroke of the bell less than on the preceding evening.”— Chronicles of Charterhouse.

The Couvre-feu formerly in the collection of the Rev. Mr. Gostling, and so oftd tg, and en engraved, passed into the possession of Horace Walpole, and was sold at Strawberry Hill, in 1842, to Mr. William Knight. It is of copper, riveted together, and in general form resembles the ” Dutch-oven” of the present day. It is stated to have been used for extinguishing a fire, by raking the wood and embers to the back of the hearth, and then placing the open part of the couvre-feu close against the back of the chimney. In February, 1842, Mr. Syer Cuming purchased of a curiosity-dealer in Chancery-lane a couvre-feu closely resembling Mr. Gostling’s; and Mr. Cuming considers both specimens to be of the same age, of the close of the loth or early part of the 16th century; whereas Mr. Gostling’s specimen was stated to bo of the Norman period. A third example of the couvre-feu exists in the Canterbury Museum. Another Couvre-feu was sold by Messrs. Foster, in Pall Mall, April 11,I860; reputed date 1068.

The Bell of the Clochard, or Bell-tower, of the ancient Palace at Westminster had a curious destination. Although we find the details of building the tower, by King Edward III., we find nothing respecting the construction or even placing of the clock, or the casting of not one, but three bells; but bell-ropes and a vice or engine are mentioned. In later accounts (Henry VI.) we, however, have the expense of maintaining the clock and bells, for the superintendence of which Thomas Clockmaker received 13s. Ad. a year as his salary; he was but a subordinate officer; the account being rendered by Agnes de la Van, the wife of Jeffrey de la Van, who was himself the deputy of John Lenham, who is designated ” Custos orologii domini Regis infra pala-tium suum Westmonasterio.”—Rev. J. Hunter, F.S.A.: Archceologia, xxxvii. 23.

Aubrey, in his Natural History of Wiltshire, ed. Britton, p. 102, has this note: ” The great bell at Westminster, in the Clockiar at the New Palace Yard, 36,000 lib, weight. * * It was given by Jo. Montacute, Earle of (Salisbury, I think). Part of the inscription is thus, so. ‘ ., annis ab acuto monte Johannis.'” The three clock-bells when taken down, however, weighed less than 20,000 lb. The metal of the largest bell is now part of the great bell of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The Great Bell for the Westminster Palace Clock was cast at Norton, near Stockton-on-Tees, from the design of E. B. Denison, Q.C., in 1856, by Warner and Sons, Cripplegate; its metal was nearly as hard as spring-steel, and it cracked in the sounding at Westminster, before it was attempted to be raised. It was then broken into pieces, and carted away to Mears’s Foundry, Whitechapel, and there re-cast, with 2\ tons less metal; the clapper weighs about 6 cwt.: the former weighed 12 cwt. It was raised Nov. 18, 1858; weight of bell, 1\\ tons: name, ” St. Stephen j ” note, nearer the true E natural than that of the first bell. This great bell having cracked, the clock for a time struck the quarters on the four qnarter-bells, and the hour also on the largest of them, which is smaller, but more powerful, as well as sweeter in tone, than the great bell of St. Paul’s: its weight is 4 tons. The great or hour bell has been repaired, and is now in use.

St. Paul’s Cathedral has four bells,—one in the northern, and three in the southern or clock-tower : the former is tolled for prayer three times a day, and has a clapper; butneither of the four can be raised upon end and rung, as other church-bells. In ths a-bells.e clock-tower are hung two bells for the quarters, and above them is hung the Great Bell, on gudgeons or axles, on which it moves when struck by the hammer of the clock. It was cast principally from the metal of a bell in the clock-tower opposite Westminster Hall Gate, which, before the Reformation, was named ” Edward ;” subsequently to the time of Henry VIII., as appears by two lines in Eccles’s Glee, it was called “Great Tom,” as Gough conjectures, by a corruption of grand ton, from its deep, sonorous tone. On August 1, 1698, the clochard, or tower, was granted by William III. to St. Margaret’s parish, and was taken down: when the bell was found to weigh 82 cwt. 2 qrs. 21 lbs., and was bought at 10c?. per lb., producing 3S5£. Vis. 6d., for St. Paul’s. While being conveyed over the boundary of Westminster, under Temple Ear, it fell from the carriage ; it stood under a shed in the Cathedral Yard for some years, and was at length re-cast, with additional metal, the inscription stating it to have been “brought from the ruins of. Westminster.” It was cast in 1709, by Richard Phelps, of Whitechapel, whose successors in the foundry, Charles and George Mears, state the dimensions, &c, as follows:—” Diameter, 6 feet 9| inches; height to top of crown, 6 feet 4^ inches; thickness at sound bow, 5^- inches; weight, 5 tons 4 cwt. We have a portion of the agreement made between the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s and Mr. Phelps, dated July 8th, 1709, it which it is stipulated that the hour-bell and quarters should be delivered at the Cathedral by the 1st of October in the same year.”

” The key-note (tonic) or sound of this bell is A flat (perhaps it was A natural, agreeably to the pitch at the time it was cast), but the sound heard at the greatest distance is that of E flat, or a fifth above the key-note; and a musical ear, when close by, can perceive several harmonic sounds.”— W. Parry.

The Great Bell is never used, except for the striking of the hour, and for tolling at the deaths and funerals of any of the Royal Family, the Bishop of London, the Dean of the Cathedral; and the Lord Mayor, should he die in his mayoralty. The same hammer which strikes the hours has always been used to toll the bell, on the occasion of a demise; but the sound then produced is not so loud as when the hour is struck, in consequence of the heavy clock-weight not being attached when the bell is tolled, and causing the hammer to strike with greater force than by manual strength.

It was the Westminster ” Great Tom” which the sentinel on duty at Windsor Castle, during the reign of William III., declared to have struck thirteen instead of twelve times at midnight, and thus cleared himself of the accusation by the relief-guard of sleeping upon his post. The story is told of St. Paul’s Bell; but the Cathedral had no heavy bell until the above grant by King William, who died in 1702; the circumstance is thus recorded in the Public Advertiser, Friday, June 22, 1770 :—

“Mr. John Hatfield, who died last Monday at his house in Glasshouse Yard, Aldersgate, aged 102 years, was a soldier in the reign of William and Mary, and the person who was tried and condemned by a court-martial for falling asleep on his duty upon the Terrace at Windsor. He absolutely denied the charge against him, and solemnly declared that he heard St. Paul’s clock strike thirteen; the truth of which was much doubted by the court, because of the great distance. But whilst he was under sentence of death, an affidavit was made by several persons, that the clock actually did strike thirteen instead of twelve; whereupon he received his Majesty’s pardon.”p> This striking thirteen, instead of twelve, is mechanically possible, and was caused by the lifting-piece holding on too long.

The ancient Societies of Bell-ringers in London, called ” College Youths,” ” Cumberland Youths,” &c, it is very probable, are relics of the ancient Guilds; for, as early as the time of Edward the Confessor, there was in Westminster a guild of ringers. They were re-organized by Henry III.; and by a patent roll in the 39th year of his reign, the brethren of the Guild of Westminster, who were appointed to ring the great bells there, were to receive annually out of the exchequer 100 shillings—50 at Easter and 50 at Michaelmas—until was provided the like sum for them payable out of lands for the said ringing. And “that the brethren and their successors for ever enjoy all the privileges and free customs which they have enjoyed from the time of Edward the Confessor, to the date of these presents.”

In the library of All Souls’, Oxon, is a manuscript of ” The orders agreed upon by

the company exercising the arte of ringing, knowne and called hy the name of the Schollers of Cheapsyde, in London, hegun 2nd February, 1603.” This MS. contains the names of all the members down to the year 1634. After this date, in 1637, the Society of College Youths was established by Lord Brereton, Sir Cliff Clifton, and several other gentlemen, for the practice of ringing. They used to ring at St. Martin’s Vintry, on College-hill, near Doctors’ Commons, upon a peal of six bells. This church was burnt in the Great Fire of London, and never rebuilt; but the Society still retains the name derived from College-hill, and has in its possession a massive silver bell, which formed the top of the staff which used to be carried by the beadle of the Society when the members attended divine service at Bow Church, on the anniversary of its foundation, and other occasions; also an old book, in which the names of its members are entered. This book was lost at the time of the Great Fire, but was subsequently recovered. The names in it are sufficient to show that ringing was considered an amusement worthy of nobles, divines, and scholars. Among the notables who have been elected members are the Hon. Robert Cecil (Marquis of Salisbury), Sir John Bolles and Sir Watkin W. Wynne, baronets; Sirs Francis Withins, Martin Lomly; Richard Everard, Henry Tulse, aldermen, Richard Atkins, Henry Chauncey, Thomas Samnell, Gilbert Dolbin, William Culpeper; John Tash, alderman; Henry Hicks, and Watkin Lewis, knights.

About 1700, another Society was formed, which was called ” The London Scholars.” In 1746, the name was changed to the present title, ” The Cumberland Youths,” in consequence of the great victory under the Duke of Cumberland, at the battle of Culloden in that year. The London Scholars rang the bells of Shoreditch Church as the victorious Duke passed by on his return from the battle; for which a medal of the Duke and his chargers was presented to the Society, and is still worn by the master of the Society of Cumberland Youths, at their general meetings. The St. James’s Youths, another society, was established on St. James’s-day, 25th July, 1824, at St. James’s Church, Clerkenwell. The grandsire ringing principally belongs to this society, as it is the first rudiment of the half-pull ringing. About 1841, the Society rang a peal of 12,000 changes of grandsire quatres at All Saints’ Church, Fulham; also 7325 of grandsire cinques at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, in 1837; and many other peals besides, as recorded in erl recordLondon church-belfries. The head-quarters of the society are at St. Clement Danes, Strand. The parochial ringing churches are St. Andrew’s, St. Sepulchre’s, St. Dunstan’s in the West, St. Clement’s, Westminster Abbey, St. John’s, Waterloo-road j and St. Mary’s, Lambeth :—

There are certain Bells still remaining in London, notwithstanding the Great Fire, which have historical notes. That, for instance, at the top of the Bell-tower which adjoins the Governor’s lodgings in the Tower, which was probably tolled at the execution of Lady Jane Grey, Anne Boleyn, and other State prisoners, and probably sounded alarms of fire and other calamities in early days. This bell seems to have been more particularly used by the Tower authorities than that in St. Peter’s Church, which stands near the spot where the scaffold was usually erected. The bells of St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, are old, and were probably rung when the Court has come to the tournaments and jousting at Smithfield. With the exception of Westminster Abbey, St. Saviour’s, All Hallows Barking, Cripple-gate, and Old St. Pancras, there are few of the ancient bell-towers of the metropolis remaining. Several of the bells, however, may have been saved from the ruins of the Great Fire. There is also the bell of the Charter-house, which has tolled at the departure of a brother from soon after the death of Thomas Sutton. Many will still remember that, while the fire of the second Royal Exchange was raging, the self-acting bells played merrily the tune of ” There is nae luck about the house,” and eventually fell with a crash amidst the blazing ruins.— Communication* to the Builder.

The curious custom of a new rector tolling himself into his new benefice, is observed in the City churches. Before the Reformation, no layman was allowed to be a ” ringer,” and the ecclesiastics had to perform their office in surplice. The ” tolling-in” is as follows:—” The rector is met at the door of the church by the trustees of the church property belonging to the parish, and the churchwardens. Having obtained possession of the keys of the church, the new rector unlocks the doors: then, having closed them, he proceeds alone to the belfry, and for a few minutes tolls one of the bells, thus complying with the custom imposed by the ordinances of the Church, by announcing to the parishioners at large his acceptance of the rectorship, and his possession of the church property.

Bow Bells are of ancient celebrity and it was from the extreme fondness of the citizens for them in old times that a genuine Cockney has been supposed to be born within the sound of Bow Bells. According to Fynes Morison, the Londoners, and all within the sound of Bow Bells, are, in reproach, called Cockneys, and eaters of ” buttered toasts.” Beaumont and Fletcher speak of ” Bow Bell suckers,” i.e., as Mr. Dyce properly explains it, ” children born within the sound of Bow Bells.”

From a book of ordinances of the City of Worcester, Mr. Burtt quotes certain annual payments, dating from very early times, for ringing “day-bell” and “bow-bell,” the latter being doubtless the same as the curfew, although now rung at eight instead of at nine, as at the time of the ordinances. There is no local explanation of the term bow-bell, but Mr. Burtt considers Mr. Wolf’s suggestion feasible—that as the curfew bell of London was rung at Bow Church, the name of that church was adopted in other places, and applied to the bell.— Proceedings of the British Archaeological Association, April, 1866.

In 1469, by an Order of Common Council, Bow bell was to be rung nightly at nine o’clock, and lights were to be exhibited in the steeple to direct the traveller. When the church was rebuilt, the belfry was prepared for twelve bells, but only eight were placed: these got out of order, and in 1758 the citizens petitioned the vestry, that the tenor bell being the completest in Europe, and the other seven very inferior, they requested to be allowed, at their own expense, to recast the seven smaller bells, and to add two trebles. This was permitted, after Dance and Chambers, the architects, had reported that ” neither such additional weight, nor any weight that can be put upon the steeple, will have any greater effect than the bells now placed there.” Accordingly, the set of ten bells was completed by subscription, and was first rung June 4, 1762, the anniversary of the birth of King George III. In the year 1822, some fear was expressed that the use of the bells would endanger the steeple, when,by order of vestry, the bells were rung for trial; and from a subsequent examination, there did not appear to be any cause for alarm. The present set is much heavier, and much more powerful in tone, than the first peal of bells: it requires two men to ring the largest (the tenor, 53 cwt., key C), in consequence of its not having been properly hung. In 1837, the College Youths rang a grand peal of Stedman quatres on Bow Bells; also, in 1840, a peal of triple ten, at the same church. Mr. W. H. Burwash, the sexton of St. James’s, Clerkenwell, rang the triple to both peals, and conducted them; and Mr. A. C. Frost rang the tenor to both : weight, 2 tons 13 cwt. 22 lb., stated to be the greatest bell rung by a single man in England.

St. Bride’s has a fine peal. A century ago, the College Youths, at their own expense, placed the two small bells in St. Bride’s tower, to make the present peal of twelve bells; and, about 1730, twelve members of the Society rang the first peal of triple-bob maximus that was ever known to be rung on twelve bells. Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Grey and Lord Chief-Justice Hale were members of this Society, and rang in the peal. There is still a record of this feat in St. Bride’s ringing-room. On Monday evening, March 13, 1843, the Cumberland Society rang a complete peal of cinques on Stedman’s principle, consisting of 5146 changes, in four hours two minutes, at St. Bride’s; it being the first peal in that scientific method ever performed on the bells.

Christchtjrch, Spitalfields’, Bells are scarcely inferior to any in the kingdom; the tenor weighs 44 cwt., or 4928 lbs. In the spring of 1836, by a fire which broke out in the belfry, and reached the loft, the tenor fell upon the other bells, and the whole were shivered to pieces, or fused by the heat of the conflagration; the clock and chimes were also destroyed: they have all been replaced.

St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch.—Here the London Society of Cumberland accomplished their greatest achievement in olden times—a peal of 12,000 changes of triple-bob royals, which took nine hours and five minutes on 10 bells, March 27th, 1784, of which there is a record in the tower, written on copper. The Society, in 1820, added two new small bells to St. Leonard’s, to make a peal of 12 bells, at their own cost-over 1001. ; but it is to be regretted that the great bell of the peal has been cracked.

St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields. —The peal of 12 bells has been put in good ringing order, and all the bells made to strike true, to the satisfaction of the parochial rfone parocingers and the Cumberland Society, who regard the ringing as now more easy and more

merry, as well as more musically true. The hammer of the church-clock, too, has been altered so as to strike downwards instead of upwards, thus giving greater force and clearness to the tone. The ringing-room itself has also been improved; boxes have been placed to the bells, and the place lit with gas, as well as the staircase and bell-chamber. On Nov. 19, 1862, the Cumberland Society rang here a peal of 5050 changes of Stedman’s quatres, in three hours and twenty-eight minutes, in honour of the Prince of Wales attaining his majority.

St. Michael’s, Cornhill, had in Stow’s time, six bells, the sixth being ” rung by one man by the space of 160 yeares”; (?) Upon one St. James’s night, on the ringing of a peal, during a storm, the lightning entered at the north window, which so terrified the ringers that “they lay down as dead.” The present tower, rebuilt 1723, has a fine peal of 12 bells, with which, in March, 1866, twelve members of the College Youths rang a fine and good peal of treble-bob maximus, consisting of 5088 changes, occupying three hours and fifty-two minutes; this being the first peal on treble-bobs, on twelve bells ever rung, when the tenor man conducted the peal.

St. Saviour’s, Southwark, has a beautiful tenor and 12 large bells; a spacious ringing-room with great marble tablet, put up at the expense of the various societies of ringers in London: a record of a grand peal by the Cumberland Society cost 20 guineas. The 12 bells of St. Saviour’s, were not rung at the opening of New London Bridge, in 1831, on account of the alleged insecurity it would occasion to the tower. The tenor of this peal weighs 52^ cwt.; that of Bow, 53 cwt.

St. Sepulchre’s Bell has a melancholy history. In 1605, Mr. R. Dowe left 501. to this parish, on condition that a person should go to Newgate in the still of the night before every execution-day, and, standing as near as possible to the cells of the condemned, should, with a hand-bell (which he also left), give twelve solemn tolls, with double strokes, and then deliver this impressive exhortation :—

” All you that in the condemned hole do lie, Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die; Watch, all, and pray, the hour is drawing near That you hefore the Almighty must appear; Examine well yourselves, in time repent, That you may not t’ eternal flames be sent. And when St. Sepulchre’s Bell to-morrow tolls, The Lord have mercy on your souls !

Past twelve o’clock!”

Dowe likewise ordered that the great bell of the church should toll on the morning; and that, as the criminals passed the wall to Tyburn, the bellman or sexton should look over it and say, “All good people, pray heartily unto God for these poor sinners, who are now going to their death;” for which he who says it is to receive 11. 6s. 8d.; let us hope that the gift ere long will be a free one.

St. Stephen’s, Rochester-row, Westminster.—Miss Burdett Coutts has given to this church, built at her cost, a fine peal of eight bells, with a tenor of 1 ton 5 cwt.; and to St. Ann’s, Highgate-rise, a peal of eight bells.

Chimes. —The only church chimes now existing in the metropolis are those of St. Clement Danes, in the Strand; St. Giles’s, Cripplegate; St. Dionis, Fenchurch-street; and St. Bride’s, Fleet-street. The Cripplegate chimes are the finest in London ; they were constructed by a poor working man. Formerly, several churches in London, including those of St. Margaret and St. Sepulchre, had chime-hammers annexed to their bells.

In each Royal Exchange, the business has been regulated by a bell: in Gresham’s original edifice was a tower ” containing the bell, which twice a day summoned merchants to the spot—at twelve o’clock at noon, and at six o’clock in the evening.” (Burgon’s Life and Times of Sir T. Oresliam, ii. 345).

The Chimes at the Royal Exchange, destroyed by fire in 1S38, played, at intervals of three hours, ” God save the Queen,” ” Life let us cherish,” ” The Old 104th Psalm (on Sundays), and ” There’s nae luck about the house,” which last air they played at twelve o’clock on the night of the fire, just as the flames reached the chime-loft.

In the new Exchange, chimes have not been forgotten. The airs have been arranged

by Mr. E. Taylor, the Gresham Professor of Music ; which Mr. Dent has applied on the chime-barrel. The airs are :—

1. A Psalm tnne, by Henry Lawes, the friend of Milton; it is in the key of B flat, so as to exhibit the capability of the chimes to play in different keys.

2. God save the Queen, in E flat. 3. Rule Britannia.

4. An air selected by Professor Taylor to exhibit the power of the bells. The key in which the bells are set is E flat. There are fifteen bells, and two hammers to several, so as to play ra,pid passages. There are frequently three hammers striking different bells simultaneously, and sometimes five. The notes of the bells are as follows:—B flat, A natural, A flat, G, F, E flat, D natural, D flat, C, B flat, A natural, A flat, G, P, and E flat. The first bell, B flat, weighs 4cwt. 261bs., and its cord, 8cwt. 2 qrs. 5 lbs.; the four bells, A flat, G, F, and E flat» weigh severally, lOcwt. lqr. 9 lbs., 12cwt. 2 qrs. 27 lbs., 15 cwt. 2 qrs. lllbs., and 23 cwt. 2 qrs. 24 lbs. The united weight of them is 131 cwt. 1 qr. They were cast by Messrs. Mears, of Whitechapel.

BERMONDSEY

IS a large parish in Surrey, adjoining the borough of Southwark; and named Beor-mund’s eye, or island, from its having been the property of some Saxon or Danish Thane, and the land being insulated by watercourses connected with the Thames. In 1082, a wealthy citizen built here a convent, wherein some Cluniac Monks settled in 1089, to whom William Rufus gave the manor of Bermondsey; and numeroxis donations and grants followed, until this became one of the most considerable alien priories in England. From its vicinity to London, the monastery occasionally became the residence of royal personages. Katherine of France, widow of Henry V., retired to this sanctuary, and- died here, Jan. 3, 1437; and Elizabeth Widvile, relict of Edward IV., was committed to the custody of the monks by her son-in-law, Henrlat-in-lawy VII., and ended her days here, in penury and sorrow, in 1492. Among the persons of note interred here is said to have been Margaret de la Pole, wife of Edmund de la Pole, afterwards Earl of Suffolk, who was executed by Henry VIII., in 1513. The Abbey occupied the ground between Grange-walk (where was a farm) and Long-walk, which was a passage between the monastic buildings and the conventual church; the latter a little south of the present parish church of St. Mary Magdalene, originally founded by the Priors of Bermondsey for their tenantry; rebuilt in 1680, and since repaired. Among the communion-plate is an ancient silver alms-dish, supposed to have belonged to the abbey.

A drawing formerly in Mr. Upcott’s collection shows the monastery as rebuilt early in the reign of Edward III., and the cloisters and refectory in 1380. After the surrender of the establishment to Henry VIII., he granted it to Sir Robert Southwell, Master of the Bolls : it was by him sold to Sir Thomas Hope, who, in 1545, pulled down the ancient Priory Church, and with the materials built Bermondsey House, where died Thomas Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex (Lord Chamberlain to Queen Elizabeth), in 1583. The east gate of the monastery was taken down about 1760; the great gate-house was nearly entire in 1806, shortly after which all the ancient buildings were removed, and Abbey-street built on their site. Bermondsey-square now occupies the great close of the Abbey, and Grange-road was its pasture-ground, extending to the farm; the ancient watercourse, Neckinger, was once navigable from the Thames to the Abbey. Adjoining was an Almonry, or Hospital, for ” indigent children and necessitous converts,” erected by Prior Richard in 1213, but not to be traced after the Reformation.

There is, in the Spa-road, St. James’s Chapel, a Grecian edifice, opened in 1829; pr>. the altar-piece is a large picture of ” the Ascension,” painted by John Wood, in 1844, and the prize picture selected from among eighty competitors for 500£. bequeathed for this purpose by Mr. Harcourt, a parishioner, and awarded by Eastlake and Haydon. St. Paul’s Gothic Church and Schools were opened in 1848; and Christ Church and Schools, Neckiuger-road (Romanesque), in 1849.

The Roman Catholic population of Bermondsey exceeds 5000 persons; they have a large church near Dockhead, opened in 1835. Precisely three centuries after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, was founded here, in 1838, a Convent for the ” Sisters of Mercy.” The inmates are mostly ladies of fortune, and support a school for 200 children. Sister Mary, the Lady Barbara Eyre, second daughter of the sixth Earl of Newburgh, took the vows December 12, 1839; with Miss Ponsonby, Sister Vincent.

At Bermondsey, perhaps, is carried on a greater variety of trades and manufactures than in any other parish of the kingdom. It has been the seat of the Leather Market for nearly two centuries ; its series of tidal streams from the Thames twice in twenty-four hours supplying water for the tanners and leather-dressers. At the Neckinger Mills here, nearly half a million of hides and skins are converted into leather yearly; and in the great Skin Market are sold the skins from nearly all the sheep slaughtered in London., Steam-machinery is much employed in the manufactories; and in Long-lane is an engine chimney-shaft 175 feet high. Here is Christy’s Hat Manufactory, employing 500 persons, and cvarersons,onsidered the largest establishment of the kind in the world. Here, too, abound paper and lead mille, chemical works, boat and ship builders, mast and block makers, rope and sail makers, coopers, turpentine works, &c. ol r> The tidal ditches, with their filthy dwellings, produced cholera in 1832 and 1848-49; in the latter year 189 deaths occurred in 1000 inhabitants. Here is Jacob’s Island, so powerfully pictured in Dickens’s novel of Oliver Twist.

Bermondsey Spa, a chalybeate spring, discovered about 1770, was opened in 1780, as a minor Vauxhall, with fireworks, and a picture-model of the siege of Gibraltar, painted by Keyse, and occupying about four acres. He died in 1800, and the garden was shut up about 1805. There are tokens of the place extant j the Spa-road is named from it.

In the parish was born Mary Johns, the daughter of a cooper, in 1752, who wrote the Lord’s Prayer in the compass of a silver penny.

In the Registers, 1604, is the ” forme of a solemne Vowe made betwixt a Man and his Wife, having been longe absent, through which occasion the Woman beinge married to another Man, took her again.”

Viewed from the Greenwich Railway, which crosses its north-eastern side, Bermondsey presents a curious picture of busy life, amid its streams and tan-pits, its narrow streets, close rents and lanes, by no means tributary to the public health. Yet the district has long been noted for longevity; and from 90 to 105 years are not uncommon in the burial registers.

BETHNAL GREEN,

VILLAGE or large green, formerly a hamlet of Stepney, but made a parish (St. Matthew) in 1743. The old English ballad of The Blind Beggar of Bednall Green has given the district a long celebrity j the story ” decorates not only the signposts of the publicans, but the staff of the parish beadle.”— (Lysons.) The incidents }> \b have been poetically wrought into a drama by Sheridan Knowles. The mansion traditionally pointed to as ” the Blind Beggar’s House” was, however, built by John Thorpe, in 1570, for a citizen of London, and called after him, ” Kirby’s Castle.” Pepys describes his visits to this house, then Sir W. Rider’s, to dinner: his ” fine merry walk with the ladies alone after dinner, in the garden; the greatest quantity of strawberries he ever saw, and good.” It was then said that only some of the outhouses, and not the mansion, were built by the Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green.

Robert Ainsworth, author of the Latin Dictionary which bears his name, kept an academy at Bethnal Green.

Here was a large house said to have been a palace of Bishop Bonner’s, and taken down in 1849, in forming Victoria Park. Between 1839 and 1849, there were builfc here ten district churches, principally through the exertions of Dr. Blomfield, Bishop of London: the tenth of these churches (St. Thomas’s) was erected at the sole cost of a private individual. Silk-weavers live in great numbers at Bethnal Green.

Nichol-street, New Nichol-street, Half Nicbol-street, Nichol-row, Turvil-street, comprising within the same area numerous blind courts and alleys, form a densely-crowded district in Bethnal Green. Among its inhabitants may be found street vendors of every kind of produce, travellers to fairs, tramps, dog-fanciers, dog-stealers, men and women sharpers, shoplifters and pickpockets. It abounds with the young Arabs of the streets, and its outward moral degradation is at once apparent to any one who passes that way. Here the police are certain to be found, day and night, their presence being required to quell riots and to preserve decency. Sunday is a day much devoted to pet pigeons and to bird-singing clubs: prizes are given to such as excel in note, and a ready sale follows each award. Time thus employed was formerly devoted to cock-fighting. In this locality, twenty-five years ago, an employer of labour, Mr. Jonathan Duthoit, made an attempt to influence the people for good by the hire of a room for meeting purposes. The first attendance consisted of one person. Persistent efforts were, however, made; other rooms have from time to time been taken and enlarged; here is a Hall for Christian instruction; and another for Educational purposes; Illustrated Lectures are delivered; a Loan Library has been established, also a Clothing Club and Penny Bank, and Training Classes for industrial purposes.— Athenaeum, 1862.

BETHLEM OR BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL.

THE history of the word Bedlam, by which this Hospital was called, within recollection, has been the subject of much curious inquiry. Our lexicographers commonly refer its introduction into our language to the conversion of a religious house of this name into a lunatic asylum, or about 320 years ago. The word Bedlem, however, occurs in Tyndale’s quarto testament, twenty or two-and-twenty years before the above date; and Mr. Gairdner has proved it to have been so applied still earlier:—

It is quite true, says Mr. Gairdner, that the Hospital was granted to the City of London for the purpose to which it is still applied, either by Henry the Eighth or Edward the Sixth ; but it is a mistake to suppose it had never been so used before. The royal grant changed the government of the hospital, not its use. Monastic institutions, whatever evils they may have been answerable for, were undoubtedly the medium of much practical good that we seldom give them credit for, and to mental and bodily disease they offered such assistance as the skill and science of the age afforded. I have myself met with a passage in the works of Tyndale’s great opponent, Sir Thomas More, who died even before (a martyr, too, though for a different cause), which proves beyond a doubt that Bethlehem Hospital was a place for lunatics before the dissolution of the religious houses. ” Think not,” he says, in his treatise De Quatuor Novissimis (page 73 of his English works),—” Think not that every thing is plesant that men for madnes laughe at. For thou shalt in Bedleem see one laugh at the knocking of his own hed against a post, and yet there is little pleasure therein.”

Bethlem Hospital originated in an establishment founded as a ” Priory of Canons, with brethren and sisters,” in 1246, by Simon Fitz-Mary, a sheriff of London ; towards which he gave all his lands in St. Botolph without Bishopsgate, being the spot afterwards known as Old Bethlem, now Liverpool-street. This priory stood on the east side of Moorfields, from which it was divided by a deep ditch. It is described as ” an Hospital” in 1330; in 1346 it was received under the protection of th” htectione City of London, who purchased the patronage, lands, and tenements in 1546; and in the same year, Henry VIII. gave the Hospital to the City, though not before he had endeavoured to sell it to them: it was united to Bridewell Hospital in 1557.

Bethlem is, however, first mentioned as an hospital for lunatics in 1402. The earliest establishment of the kind in the metropolis appears, from Stow, to have been ” by Charing Cross,” though when founded is unknown; ” but it was said that some time a king of England, not liking distraught and lunatic people to remain so near his palace caused them to be removed farther off to Bethlem ;” to which Hospital the site of the house in question belonged till 1830, when it was exchanged with the Crown to make way for the improvements at Charing Cross.

The priory buildings becoming dilapidated, another Hospital was built in 1675-76, on the south side of Moorfields, north of the London Wall, on ground leased to the Governors by the Corporation for 999 years, at 1*. annual rent, if demanded. This, the centre of Old Bethlem Hospital, cost 17,000/., raised by subscription: it was designed by Robert Hooke; but there is no foundation for the traditional story of its so closely resembling the palace of the Tuileries, that Louis XIV., in retaliation, ordered a copy of our King’s palace at St. James’s to be built for his offices.

This second Bethlem was 540 feet in length and 40 feet in breadth; it was surrounded by gardens, in one of which the convalescent lunatics were allowed to walk; the whole was enclosed by a high wall and gates; the posterns of the latter were surmounted with two finely-sculptured figures of Raving and Melancholy Madness, by Caius Gabriel Cibber, the father of Colley.

In 1733, two wings were added for incurable patients. In 1754, the Hospital is described as consisting chiefly of two galleries, one over the other, divided in the middle by two iron gates, so that all the men were placed at one end of the house and all the women at the other ; there was also ” a bathing-place for the patients, so contrived as to be a hot or cold bath.” The Hospital then held 150 patients. The favourite resort of the poor inmates was the Fore-street end of the building, from the windows of which we have seen them look out upon the unafflicted passengers in the streets below. Here Nat Lee, the tragic poet, was confined four years; he did not live long after his release. Here too was confined Oliver Cromwell’s gigantic porter, who is traditionally said to have been the original of one of Gibber’s figures. Hannah Snell, the female soldier, who received a pension for wounds received at the siege of Pondicherry, died a patient of Bethlem, in 1792. ” Tom o’ Bedlam” was the name given to certain out-door patients, for whom room could not be found in the Hospital. They wore upon their arms metal plates, licensing them to go a-begging, which many cunning impostors adopted, until a caution from the Governor put a stop to the fraud. In 1799, the Hospital was reported by a committee to be in a very bad condition : it had been built in sixteen months, upon part of the City ditch filled in with rubbish, so that it was requisite to shore-up and underpin the walls. At length it was resolved to rebuild the Hospital; and in 1810 its site, 2\ acres, was exchanged for about 11 acres in St. George’s Fields, including the gardens of the infamous Dog and Duckal Dog an. The building fund was increased by grants of public money, and benefactions, from the Corporation, City companies, and private individuals. The first stone of the new edifice, for 200 patients, was laid in April 1812, and completed in August 1815, at a cost of 122,572Z. 8s., the exact sum raised for the purpose. It was built from three prize designs, superintended by the late Mr. Lewis: it consists of a centre and two wings, the entrance being beneath a hexastyle Ionic portico of six columns, with the royal arms in the pediment, and underneath the motto:— Hen. tiii. eege ¦ fun-datvm • civium ¦ 1AKGITAS ‘ PEEFECIT. Two wings, for which the Government advanced 25,144Z., were appropriated to criminal lunatics. Other buildings have since been added, for 166 patients, by Sydney Smirke, A.R.A., the first stone of which was laid July 26, 1838, when a public breakfast was given at a cost of 4647. 8s. to the Hospital, and a narrative of the proceedings was printed at a charge to the charity of UOl. The entire building is three stories in height, and 897 feet in length. To the Y^ centre was added a large and lofty dome in 1815; the diameter is 37 feet, and it is about 150 feet in height from the grouud. The Hospital and grounds extend to eight acres; the adjoining three acres being devoted to the House of Occupation, a branch of Bridewell Hospital.

In the entrance-hall are placed Gibber’s two statues, from the old Hospital: they are of Portland stone, and were restored by the younger Bacon in 1814; they are screened by curtains, which are only withdrawn upon public occasions: some of the irons formerly used are also shown as (curiosities. The basement and three floors are divided into galleries. The improved management was introduced about 1816. The patients employ themselves in knitting and tailoring, in laundry-work, at the needle, and in embroidery; the women have pianos and occasionally dance in the evening; the men have billiards and bagatelle tables, newspapers, and periodicals; and they play in the grounds at trap-ball, cricket, fives, leap-frog, &c. Others work at their trades, in which, though dangerous weapons have been entrusted to them, no mischief has ensued, and the employment often induces speedy cure. The railed-in fire-places and the bone knives are almost the only visible peculiarities; there are cells lined and floored with cork and india-rubber for refractory patients. The building is fire-proof throughout, and warmed by hot air and water.

From the first reception of lunatics into Bethlem, their condition and treatment was wretched in the extreme. In a visitation of 1403 are mentioned iron chains with locks and keys, and manacles and stocks. In 1598, the house was reported so loathsome and so filthily kept, as not fit to. be entered; and the inmates were termed prisoners. In a record of 1619 are expenses of straw and fetters. Up to the year 1770, the public were admitted to see the lunatics at Id. each, by which the Hospital derived a revenue of at least 400£. a year: hence Bethlem became one of ” the sights of London;” and such was the mischief occasioned by this brutal and degrading practice, that, to prevent disturbances, the porter was annually sworn a constable, and attended with other servants to keep order. So late as 1814, the rooms resembled dog-kennels; the female patients chained by one arm or leg to the wall, were covered by a blanket-gown only, the feet being naked; and they lay upon straw. The male patients were chained, handcuffed, or locked to the wall; and chains were universally substituted for the strait-waistcoat. One Norris, stated to be refractory, was chained by a strong iron ring, riveted round his neck, his arms pinioned by an iron bar, and his waist similarly secured, so that he could only advance twelve inches from the wall,

the length of his chain; and thus he had heen ” encaged and chained more “than twelve years;” yet he read books of various kinds, the newspapers daily, and conversed rationally : a drawing was made of Norris in his irons, and he was visited by several members of Parliament, shortly after which he died, doubtless from the cruel treatment he had received. This case led to a Parliamentary inquiry, in 1815, which brought about the X adoption of a new method of treatment in Bethlem ; although, in two years, 6601. were expended from the Hospital funds in opposing the bill requisite for the beneficial change.

The last female lunatic released from her fetters was a most violent patient, who had been chained to her bed eight years, her irons riveted, she being so dangerous that the matron feared being murdered if she released her ; in May 1838, she was still in the New Hospital, and was the only patient permitted to sleep at night with her door unlocked; the slightest appearance of restraint exasperated her; but on her release she became tranquil, and happy in nursing two dolls given to her, which she imagined to be her children.

The criminal lunatics were formerly maintained and clothed here at the expense of Government, and cost nearly 4000Z. a year. Most of the criminals were confined for murder, committed or attempted. Amongst them was Margaret Nicholson for r attempting to stab George III.; she died here in 1828, having been coufined forty- o two years. In 1841, died James Hadfield, who had been confined here since 1802, for i >g shooting at George III., at Drury Lane Theatre. He was a gallant dragoon, and his face was seamed with scars got in battle before his crime : he employed himself with writing verses on the death of his birds and cats, his only society in his long and wearying imprisonment. Many,including Edward Oxford, who so nearly assassinated theQueen, ^ ‘ in 1840; Macnaughten, who murdered Sir Robert Peel’s secretary, at Charing Cross; ft and the celebrated Captain Johnston, who under such terrible circumstances killed all V? the crew of his ship, the Tory; were kept at Bethlehem, but have been removed to the great Broadmoor Asylum, built by Government near the Wellington College Station /^] of the South Eastern Railway.

Bethlem stands in eleven acres of ground, which is judiciously laid out. It was placed under the jurisdiction of the Commissioners in Lunacy in 1853. In 1841 only 23 60 per cent, of the patients attended chapel on Sunday, and there was a weekly average of 2’64 per cent, under restraint; in 1862, 55 per cent, attended chapel, and restraint had been for several years unknown. Of the 115 curable patients in the hospital in 1862 only eight were unemployed, and of the 61 incurables 24. The annual cost of maintenance, furniture, and clothing was about 361. in 1862. The following cases are inadmissible lunatics: those who have been insane for more than twelve months; who have been discharged uncured from other hospitals; afflicted with idiotcy, palsy, or epileptic or convulsive fits, or any dangerous disease. The patients are not allowed to remain more than one year : preference is given to patients of the educated classes, to secure accommodation for whom no one will be received who is a proper object for admission into a county lunatic asylum.

Although Bethlem receives only those cases of madness which it deems most likely to terminate in recovery ; of these simple and select cases nearly 40 per cent, (including deaths) are eventually discharged from Bedlam unrelieved. ” The aitueved. “nnual rate of mortality in Bethlem is 7 per cent.; in other asylums, from 13 to 22 per cent.”— {Registrar-General’s Report, 1850.)

The income of Bethlem and Bridewell Hospitals amounts to about 33,000^. per annum, mostly the accumulation of private benevolence.

From November 22, 1841, Bethlem Hospital, with its purlieus and approaches, was considered to be within the rules of the Queen’s Bench, by an order of that Court, until their abolition.

Patients are admitted by petition to the Governors from a near relation or friend; forms to be obtained at the Hospital. The visiting days are two Mondays in each month ; for taking in and discharging patients, every Friday.

Strangers are admitted, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, to view the Hospital by Governors’ orders ; and foreigners and Members of Parliament by orders from the president, treasurer, or Secretary of State; but the average yearly number of visitors does not exceed 550. Still, few sights can be more interesting than the present condition of the interior of Bethlem. The scrupulous cleanliness of the house, the decent attire of the patients, and the unexpectedly small number of those under restraint, (sometimes not one person throughout the building), lead the visitors, not unnaturally, to conclude that the management of lunatics has here attained perfection; while the quiet and decent demeanour of the inmates might almost make him doubt that he is really in a madhouse. The arrangements, however, are comparatively, in some instances, defective: the building being partly on the plan of the old Hospital in Moor-fields, in long galleries, with a view to the coercive system there pursued, is, consequently, ill adapted to the present improved treatment.

Above the door of the entrance-lodge are sculptured the arms of the Hospital,— Argent, two bars sable, a file of five points gules, on a chief azure an etoile of sixteen rays or, charged with a plate, thereon a cross of the third, between a human skull placed on a cup, on the dexter side, and a basket of Wastell bread, all of the fifth, on the sinister.

Bishop Tanner observes, however, that he was informed by John Anstis, Garter King of Arms, that the ensigns were, Argent, two bars sable, a label of three points gules, on a chief azure a comet with ten rays or, oppressed with a torteau charged with a plain cross of the field, between a chalice or, with an hosty of the first, and a basket of the same. AVith respect to any signification to be assigned to these bearings, there is, probably, no positive information extant; but, supposing them to be really ancient, it may be observed, that the bars and file in the principal part of the shield were, most likely, the arms of Simon Fitz-Mary, the founder, which would account for their very prominent situation. The etoile, or blazing star, on the blue chief, evidently refers to the star seen in the sky at the birth of Christ, which led the wise men to Bethlehem, and, therefore, properly became its peculiar badge; whilst the cross in the centre indicates the crucifixion of the Saviour for all mankind. The basket of bread has, probably, also an allusion to Bethlehem; since en lehem; the best translation of that word is considered to be ” the house of bread,” as implying a fertile soil in the production of barley and wheat, noticed in the book of Ruth, chapter ii.; but, as wastell cakes were, anciently, especially used in Christian ceremonies and festivals, they might be designed as the English emblem of the birth-place of the Lord. Perhaps, no satisfactory signification can be assigned to the present bearing of a cup containing a skull; but if the blazon of these arms, given by Anstis to Uishop Tanner, be accepted, the chalice, surmounted by the consecrated wafer, will then be intended for the usual ecclesiastical figure of the sacrament; and, perhaps, also expresses that the Saviour, born at Bethlehem, the house of bread, was ” the living bread which came down from heaven.” Upon the same principle of interpretation, however, if the star be regarded as indicating Christ and his passion, the cup with the skull might be meant to designate, the ” death which he tasted for every man,” in the cup of his own sufferings at Gethsemane, and at Golgotha, ” the place of a skull.” Another armorial ensign, assigned to the ancient hospital of Bethlehem, is, Azure, an etoile of eight points or; and the connexion between this foundation and that of Bridewell, which is under the same governor, is indicated by the latter bearing the star of Bethlehem, on a chief azure, between two fleurs-de-lis.— Pamphlet by Peter Laurie, Esq., LL.B.; privately printed.

BILLINGSGATE

IS stated to take its name from having been the gate of Belin, a king of the Britons, about 400 B.C. But this rests upon no better authority than Geoffrey of Monmouth, and is doubted by Stow, who suggests that the gate was called from some owner named Beling or Billing: Stow describes it as ” a large water-gate, port, or harborough for ships and boats, commonly arriving there with fish, both fresh and salt, shell-fishes, salt, oranges, onions, and other fruits and roots, wheat, rye, and grain of divers sorts, for the service of the City. It has been a quay, if not a market, for nearly nine centuries—since the customs were paid here under Ethelred II., a.d. 979; and fishing-boats paid toll here, according to the laws of Athelstan, who died 940 Its present appropriation dates from 1699, when, by an Act of William III., it was made ” a free and open market for all sorts of fish;” and was fixed at the western extremity of the Custom House, a short distance below London Bridge.

The Market, for many years, consisted of a collection of wooden pent-houses, rude sheds, and benches: it commenced at three o’clock A.M. in the summer and five in the winter: in the latter season it was a strange scene, its large flaring oil-lamps showing a crowd struggling amidst a Babel din of vulgar tongues, such as rendered “Billingsgate ” a byword for low abuse: ” opprobrious, foul-mouth language is called Billingsgate discourse.”—(Martin’s Dictionary, 1754, second edit.) In Bailey’s Dictionary we have ” a Billingsgate, a scolding, impudent slut.” Tom Brown gives a very coarse picture of her character; and Addison refers to ” debates which frequently arise among the ladies of the British fishery.” She wore a strong stuff gown, tucked up, and showing a large quilted petticoat; her hair, cap, and bonnet flattened into a mass by carrying a basket upon her head; her coarse, cracked cry, and brawny limbs, and red, bloated face, completing a portrait of the ” fish-fag ” of other days.

Not only has the virago disappeared, but the market-place has been rebuilt, and its business regulated by the City authorities, with especial reference to the conditioe i the con of the fish; and in 1849 was commenced the further extension of the market. There is no crowding, elbowing, screaming, or fighting, as heretofore; coffee has greatly superseded spirits; and a more orderly scene of business can scarcely be imagined. The market is daily, except Sundays, at five A.M., summer and winter, announced by ringing a bell, the only relic of the olden rule. The fishing-vessels reach the quay during the night, and are moored alongside a floating wharf, which rises and falls with the tide. The oyster-boats are berthed by themselves, the name of the oyster cargo is painted upon a board, where they are measured out to purchasers. The other fish are carried ashore in baskets, and there sold, by Dutch auction, to fishmongers, whose carts are waiting in the adjoining streets. The wholesale market is now over; the hummarees supply the costermongers, &c.

All fish is sold by tale, except oysters and shell-fish, which are sold by measure, and salmon by weight. In February and March, about thirty boxes of salmon, each one cwt., arrive at Billingsgate per day; the quantity gradually increases, until it amounts in July and August, to 1000 boxes (during one season it reached to 2500 tons)—the fish being finest when it is lowest in price. Of lobsters, Mr. Yarrell states a twelvemonths’ supply to be 1,901,000 ; of turbots, 87,958. The speculation in lobsters is very great: in 1816, one Billingsgate salesman is known to have lost 1200Z. per week, for six weeks, by lobsters! Periwinkles are shipped from Glasgow, fifty or sixty tons at a time, to Liverpool, and sent thence by railway to London, where better profits are obtained, even after paying so much sea and land carriage. Sometimes there is a marvellous glut of fish : thus, in two days from 90 to 100 tons of plaice, soles, and sprats have been landed at Billingsgate, and sold at two and three lbs. a penny; soles, 2d. ; large plaice, Id. each.

A full season and scarce supply, however, occasionally raise the price enormously; as in the case of four guineas being paid for a lobster for sauce, which, being the only one in the market, was divided for two London epicures! During very rough weather, scarcely an oyster can be procured in the metropolis. In the Time.?, Nov. 9,1859, we read: “In consequence of the gales which have recently prevailed, the price of fish \^ has risen so much, that cod-fish fetched the enormous sum of 11. 15s., yesterday morn- ^ ing in Billingsgate market.”

Mackerel were, in 1698, first allowed to be cried through the streets on a Sunday; but, by the 9 and 10 Victoria, passed August 3, 1846, the sale of mackerel on a Sunday was declared illegal.

The wholesale fish-trade of Billingsgate having greatly increased in 1854, Mr. Dunning, the City architect, completed a sub-market on the site of Billingsgate Dock; the carriage of fish by railway to London having greatly superseded the use of sailing vessels for that purpose. A new granite wharf-wall extends the entire river frontage of the market; and the foundations of the fish-market were constructed on the blue clay beneath the bed of the river, without the aid of a coffer-dam.

Few persons are aware of the great consumption of fish in the metropolis. In the Parliamentary Keport on the Sea Fisheries, 1866, is a calculation showing that nearly as much fish as beef is consumed in London. About 90,000 tons of fish are brought yearly, of which some 80,000 tons are large fish, the remainder being whiting and small fish.

BLACKFRIARS

IS the district between Ludgate Hill and the river Thames; where anciently a monastery of Black or Dominican Friars, removed from Holborn in 1276, to a piece of ground given them by Gregory Rocksley, Mayor. The monastery, church, and a mansion were erected with the stone from the tower of Montfichet, and from part of the City wall. Edward I. and his Queen Eleanor were great benefactors to the new convent. Here the King kept his charters and records; and great numbers of the nobility dwelt in the precinct. In the church, divers parliaments and other great meetings were held. In 1522 the Emperor Charles V. of Spain was lodged here by Henry VIII.; and here, 1524, was begun the sitting of a parliament, adjourned to the

Black Monks at Westminster, and therefore called the Black Parliament. Henry’s divorce from Katherine of Arragon was decided there; and the parliament which condemned Wolsey, assembled at Blackfriars. The precinct was very extensive, was walled in, had four gates, and contained many shops, the occupiers of which were allowed to carry on their trades, although not free of the City, privileges maintained even after the dissolution of the monasteries. Part of the church was altered and fitted up for parochial use; it was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666, and the church of St. Andrew by the Wardrobe erected in its place. Beneath the Times office, upon the site of the King’s Printing-house, is a fragment of the Roman wall, upon which is a Norman or early English reparation; and upon that are the remains of a passage and window, which probably belonged to the Blackfriars monastery.

Taking advantage of the sanctuary privilege, Richard Burbage and his fellows, when ejected from the City, built a playhouse in the Blackfriars precinct, and here maintained their ground against the powerful opposition of the City and the Puritans. Shakspeare had a share in this theatre.

In the volume of the Calendar of State Papers, edited by Mr. Bruce, F.S.A., we get some interesting information of the Blackfriars theatre, part of the site of which is still called Playhouse-yard, where was a piece of ground ” to turne coaches in.” Under the date of Nov. 16, 1633, we find—”Notes by Sec. Windebank, of business transacted at the council this day.—Blackfriars Playhouse. The players demand 21,0002. The commissioners valued it at near 30002. The parishioners offer towards the removing of them 1001. An order of the board to remove the coaches from thence, and to lay the coachmen of whomsoever by the heels. That no coaches stay between Paul’s Chain and the Fleet Conduit. The officers to be punished if they do not their duties. The Lord Mayor to have his commandment directed to him, and every ward to be answerable.”

Hard by is another Shakspearean locality of note, the town property of the poet, first pointed out by Mr. Halliwell—viz., the site of the house purchased by Shakspeare of Henry Walker, in March, 1612-13, the counterpart of the conveyance of which is preserved in the Guildhall Library (bought in 1841, for 1652. 15*.,) with Shakspeare’s signature attached, and which is there described as ” abutting upon a streete leading doune to Pudle Wharfe (Blackfriers), in the east part, right against the Kinge’s Majesties Wardrobe.” The very house was, most probably, destroyed in the Great Fire; but the present one stands upon its exact site; and, until these few years, it had been tenanted by the Robinson family, to dmen familwhom Shakspeare leased it. The house was bequeathed by the poet to his daughter, Susannah Hall.

Three eminent painters resided in Blackfriars: Isaac Oliver, the celebrated miniature-painter, who died in 1617, and is buried in St. Anne’s; Cornelius Jansen, the portrait-painter, employed by King James I., and who painted Milton at ten years old. And here Vandyck was lodged amongst the King’s artists, in 1631, when he arrived a second time in London; thither His Majesty Charles I. frequently went by water, and viewed his paintings. The painter kept here a splendid establishment and a sumptuous table; but his luxurious and sedentary life brought on gout; he died here in the Blackfriars, in 1641, and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral, with great funeral pomp.

In 1735, the right of the City to the jurisdiction of the precinct was decided in their favour in an action against a shalloon and drugget seller, tried in the Court of King’s Bench; since which Blackfriars has been one of the precincts of Farringdon Ward.

At Hunsdon House, in the Friary, occurred the catastrophe long remembered as the ” Fatal Vespers.” It was on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot that some 300 persons had assembled in a small gallery over the gateway of the lodgings of the French ambassador, to hear a sermon from the Jesuit, Father Drury, when the whole congregation were precipitated, with the timber, plaster, and rubbish, into the vacant apartments some 20 feet below. Drury was killed, and with him about 100 persons of his congregation; the bodies were buried, coffinless, in two large pits.

In a ” Note of Liberties,” in the State Paper Office, we find in a list of persons ” as well honourable as worshipful, inhabiting the Precincts of the Blacke and White Friers,” in the middle of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, or about the year 1581, the following:—

” The Earl of Lincoln, Lord Admirall of England; the Bishop of Wigorne; the Lord Cobham; the Lord Chcynie; the Lord Laware; the Lord Kussell; the Lord Clinton; Sir Ambrose Jermyn; Sir Nicholas Povnes; Sir Thomas Gerrarde; Sir William Morgan; the Lord Buekhurst; the Lord Chief Justice of England; the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; the Master of the Holies; the Queen e’s Sollicitour; Mr. Thomas Faushawe; Peter Osborne; Mr. Powle, of the Chancery.”

In Earl-street was the house of the British and Foreign Eible Society, upon the exact site of the premises in which the Committee of six of the forty-seven ” distinguished scholars” ordered by James I. to furnish our present translation of the Bible used to meet in the early part of the seventeenth century, to review the whole work; and which was finally revised there by Dr. Smith and Dr. Bilson, Bishop of Winchester, then approved of by the King, and printed in the year 1611. When the Bible Society purchased the above house of Mr. Enderby, there was in it a curious fourpost bedstead, carved and painted, and the following inscription in capitals at the head:— ” Henri, by the Grace of God, Kynge of Englonde and of Fraunce, Lorde of Irelonde, Defendour of the Faythe, and Supreme Heade of the Churche of all Englonde. An. Dmi. mcccccxxxix.” Below the inscription, on each side, is the t wside, iKing’s motto, with the initials of Henry and his Royal Consort, Anne Boleyn: ” Dieu et mon droit.” ” H. A.” A new house for the Bible Society was founded in June, 1866.

In the operations necessary for carrying the London, Dover, and Chatham Railway from the viaduct across the Thames at Blackfriars, great part of the east side of Bridge-street was removed in 1863-4; the railway being carried on brick arches parallel with the street line; and a large passenger-station, 150 feet in width, was erected. In the requisite clearances was removed the York Hotel, the house which Mylne, the architect of Blackfriars Bridge, built for his private residence. On its southern face, in Little Bridge-street, was a medallion, with the initials, ” R. M.,” surmounted by his crest and the date mdcclxxx. ; the walls of the principal rooms bore several medallions of classic figures. Mylne also planned the noble approach to Blackfriars Bridge, and superintended the covering of the Fleet ditch. He planned well his houses in Blackfriars, although many of them were altered or rebuilt for insurance offices. In the house No. 5, opposite the York Hotel, lived Sir Richard Phillips: in the rear, Bride-court, he published his Monthly Magazine ; and here, as became i L an author-publisher, he formed a considerable collection of pictures, mostly portraits of ‘ eminent men of letters.

BLACKWALL,

ON the north bank of the Thames, and at the eastern extremity of the West India Docks, is said to have been originally called Bleakwall, from its exposed situation on the artificial bank or wall of the river, through the winding of which it is nearly eight miles from the City, though less than half that distance by land. Here, on the Brunswick Wharf or Pier, is the handsome Italianized terminus (by Tite) of the Blackwall Railway from Fenchurch-street, A\ miles in length.

To the large taverns at Blackwall and Greenwich gourmets flock to eat whitebait, a delicious little fish caught in the Reach, and directly netted out of the river into the frying-pan. They appear about the end of March or early in April, and are taken every flood-tide until September. Whitebait are caught by a net in a wooden frame, the hose having a very small mesh. The boat is moored in the tideway, and the net fixed to its side, when the tail of the hose, swimming loose, is from time to time handed in to the boat, the end untied, and its contents shaken out. Whitebait were thought to be the young of the shad, and were named from their being used as bait in fishing for whitings. By aid of comparative anatomy, Mr. Yarrell, however, proved whitebait to be a distinct species, Clupea alia.

Pennant describes whitebait as esteemed by the loioer order of epicures. If this account be correct, there must have been a strange change in the grade of the epicures frequenting Greenwich and Blackwall since Pennant’s days; for at present the fashion of eating whitebait is sanctioned by the highest authorities, from the Court of St. James’s in the West to the Lord Mayor and his court in the East; besides the philosophers of the Royal Society and her Majesty’s Cabinet Ministers, who wind up the Parliamentary session with their ” annual fish dinner,” the origin of which is stated to be as follows:—

On the banks of Dagenham Lake or Reach, in Essex, many years since, there stood a cottage, occupied by a princely merchant named Preston, a baronet of Scotland and Nova Scotia, and sometime M.P. for Dover. He called it his ” fishing cottage,” and often in the spring he went thither, with a friend or two, as a relief to the toils of parliamentary and mercantile duties. His most frequent guest was the Right Hon. George Rose, Secretary of the Treasury, and an Elder Brother of the Trinity House. Many a day did these two worthies enjoy at Dagenham Reach; and Mr. Rose once intimated to Sir Robert, that Mr. Pitt, of whose friendship they were both justly proud, would, no doubt, delight in the comfort of such a retreat. A day was named, and the Premier was invited; and he was so well pleased with his reception at the ” fishing cottage”—they were all two if not three bottle men—that, on taking leave, Mr. Pitt readily accepted an invitation for the following year. For a few years the Premier continued a visitor, always accompanied by Mr. George Rose. But the distance was considerable; the going and coming were somewhat inconvenient for the First Minister of the Crown. Sir Robert Preston, however, had his remedy, and he proposed that they should in future dine nearer London. Greenwich was suggested: we do not hear of Whitebait in the Dagenham dinners; and its introduction, probably, dates from the removal to Greenwich. The party of three was now increased to four; Mr. Pitt being permitted to bring Lord Camden. Soon after a iifth guest was invited—Mr. Charles Long, afterwards Lord Farnborough. All were still the guests of Sir Robert Preston; but, one by one, other notables were invited—all Tories—and, at last, Lord Camden considerately remarked, that, as they were all dining at a tavern, it was but fair that Sir Robert Preston should be relieved from the expense. It was then arranged that the dinner should be given, as usual, by Sir Robert Preston, that is to say, at his invitation; and he insisted on still contributing a buck and champagne: the rest of the charges were thenceforth defrayed by the several guests, and, on this plan, the meeting continued to take place annually till the death of Mr. Pitt.

Sir Robert was requested, next year, to summon the several guests, the list of whom, by this time, included most of the Cabinet Ministers. The time for meeting was usually after Trinity Monday, a short period before the end of the Session. By degrees the meeting, which was originally purely gastronomic, appears to have assumed, in consequence of the long reign of the Tories, a political, or semi-political character. Sir Robert Preston died; but Mr. Long, now Lord Farnborough, undertook to summon the several guests, the list of whom was furnished by Sir Robert Preston’s private secretary. Hitherto, the invitations had been sent privately: now they were despatched in Cabinet boxes, and the party was, certainly for some time, limited to the members of the Cabinet.— Communicated to the Timet.

An important thing to be noticed is the vast extent of iron shipbuilding carried on here, an art of construction but of thirty years’ growth. A great portion of Black-wall and the Isle of Dogs is occupied in this building trade, with its clanking boiler-works, and its Cyclopean foundries and engineering shops, in which steam istheprimum mobile.

In the East India Docks, at Blackwall, arrived, April, 1848, a large Chinese Junk, the first ever seen in England.

BLIND-SCHOOL (THE),

OR the School for the Indigent Blind, was established in 1799, at the Dog and Duck premises, St. George’s Fields; and for some time received only fifteen blind persons. The site being required by the City of London for the building of Bethlem Hospital, about two acres of ground were allotted opposite the Obelisk, and there a plain school-house for the blind was built. In 1826, the School was incorporated; and in the two following years three legacies of 500£. each, and one of 10,000£., were bequeathed to the establishment. In 1834, additional ground was purchased, and the school-house remodelled, so as to form a portion of a more extensive edifice in the Tudor or domestic Gothic style, designed by John Newman, F.S.A. The tower and gateway in the north front are very picturesque ; the School will now accommodate 220 inmates. The pupils are clothed, lodged, and boarded, and receive a religious and industrial education; so that many of them have been returned to their families able to earn from 6*. to 8s. per week. Applicants are not received under twelve, nor above thirty, years of age; nor if they have a greater degree of sight than will enable them to distinguish light from darkness. The admission is by votes of the subscribers; and persons between the ages of twelve and eighteen have been found to receive the greatest benefit from the instruction.

The pupils may be seen at work between ten and twelve A.M., and two and five p.m., daily, except Saturdays and Sundays. The women and girls are employed in knitting stockings and needlework; in spinning, and making household and body linen, netting silk, and in fine basket-making; besides working baby-hoods, bags, purses, watch-¦oockets, &c., of tasteful design, both in colour and form. The women are remarkably /uick in superintending the pupils. The men and boys make wicker baskets, cradles,

and hampers; rope door-mats and worsted rugs; and they make all the shoes for the inmates of the School. Reading is mostly taught by Alston’s raised or embossed letters, in which have been printed the Old and New Testament, and the Liturgy. Both males and females are remarkably cheerful in their employment: they have great taste and aptness for music, and they are instructed in it, not as a mere amusement, but with a view to engagements as organists and teachers of psalmody; and once a year they perform a concert of sacred music in the chapel or music-room: the public are admitted by tickets, the proceeds from the sale being added to the funds of the institution. An organ and pianoforte are provided for teaching; and above each of the .inmates of the males’ working-room usually hangs a fiddle. They receive, as pocket-money, part of their earnings, and on leaving the school, a sum of money and a set of tools, for their respective trades, are given to them.

Among the other Charities for the Blind is the munificent bequest of Mr. Charles Day (of the firm of Day and Martin, High Holborn), who died in 1836, leaving 100,000/. for the benefit of persons afflicted, like himself, with loss of sight ; the dividends and interest to be disbursed in sums, of not less than 10/., or more than 20/., per year, to each blind person, the selection being left to Trustees: the Charity is named ” The Blind Man’s Fund.”

BREWERIES.

THE great Breweries of London are described by Stow, in 1598, as for the most part remaining “near to the friendly water of Thames,” which was long thought to be superior to any otw Rior to her for brewing; but Richardson, an experienced authority, alleges this to be a mistake, as some of the principal brewers find the New River water equally good; they have also been at great expense in sinking wells upon their own premises. In the Annual Register for 17G0 the London beer trade is traced from the Revolution down to the accession of George the Third. The great increase in the trade appears to date from the origin of Porter.

” Prior to the year 1730, publicans were in the habit of selling ale, beer, and two-penny, and the ‘thirsty souls’ of that day were accustomed to combine either of these in a drink called half-and-half. From this they proceeded to spin ‘ three threads,’ as they called it, or to have their glasses filled from each of the three taps. In the year 1730, however, a certain publican, named Horwood, to save himself the trouble of making this triune mixture, brewed a liquor intended to imitate the taste of the ‘ three threads,’ arid to this he applied the term ‘ entire.’ This concoction was approved, and being puffed aa good porter’s drink, it speedily came to be called Porter itself.”— Quarterly Seciew, 1854.

By Act of Parliament, beer and porter can only be made of malt and hops, the great council of the nation having omitted all mention of the water, which the brewers have added as a necessary ingredient. It has been well said that all nations know that London is the place where porter was invented; and Jews, Turks, Germans, Negroes, Persians, Chinese, New Zealanders, Esquimaux, Copper Indians, Yankees, and Spanish Americans, are united in one feeling of respect for the native city of the most universally favourite liquor the world has ever known.

The increase of brewers has kept pace with London’s increase in other respects. Whitbread’s Brewery, in Chiswell-street, Finsbury, dates more than two centuries back: we find it at the head of the list in 1787; and so it continued until 1806 in the Picture of London, for which year Whitbread’s is described as the largest Brewery in the metropolis, the year’s brewing of Porter being above 200,000 barrels.

¦ There is one stone cistern,” says the account, ” that contains 3600 barrels; and there are 49 large oak vats, some of which contain 3500 barrels; one is 27 feet in height and 22 feet in diameter. There are three boilers, each of which holds about 5000 barrels. One of Mr. Watt’s steam-engines works the machinery. It pumps the water, wort, and beer; grinds the malt, stirs the mash-tubs, and raises the casks out of the cellars. It is able to do the work of seventy horses, though it is of a small size, being only a twenty-four inch cylinder, and does not make more noise than a spinning-wheel. Whether the magnitude or ingenuity of contrivance is considered, this Brewery is one of the greatest curiosities that is to be anywhere seen; and little less than half a million sterling is employed in machinery, buildings, and materials.”

To the Brewery of Barclay, Perkins and Co., in Park-street, Southwark, has, however, attached a greater celebrity, from its great extent. It may be inspected by a letter of introduction to the proprietors; and a great number of the foreigners of distinction who visit the metropolis avail themselves of such permission. The Brewery and its appurtenances occupy about twelve acres of ground, immediately adjoining Bankside, and extending from the land-arches of Southwark Beref Southridge nearly half of the distance to those of London Bridge. Within the Brewery walls is said to be included the site of the famous Globe Theatre, ” which Shakspeare has bound so closely up with his own history.” In an account of the neighbourhood, dated 1795, it is stated that” the passage which led to the Globe Tavern, of which the playhouse formed a part, was, till within these few years, known by the name of Globe-alley, and upon its site now stands a large storehouse for Porter.” We are inclined to regard this evidence merely as traditional. However, the last Globe Theatre was taken down about the time of the Commonwealth; and so late as 1720, Maid-lane (now called New Park-street), of which Globe-alley was an offshoot, was a long, straggling place, with ditches on each side, the passage to the houses being over little bridges with little garden-plots before them (Strype’s Stow).

Early in the last century there was a Brewery here, comparatively very small; it then belonged to a Mr. Halsey, who, on retiring from it with a large fortune, sold it to the elder Mr. Thrale; he became Sheriff of Surrey and M.P. for Southwark, and died in 1758. About this time the produce of the Brewery was 30,000 barrels a year. Mr. Thrale’s son succeeded him, and found the Brewery so profitable and secure an income, that, although educated to other tastes and habits, he did not part with it; yet the Brewery, through Thrale’s unfortunate speculation elsewhere, was at one time, according to Mrs. Thrale, 130,0002. in debt, besides borrowed money ; but in nine years every shilling was paid. Thrale was the warm friend of Dr. Johnson, who, from 1765 to the brewer’s death, lived partly in a house near the Brewery, and at his villa at Streatham. Before the fire at the Brewery, in 1832, a room was pointed out, near the entrance gateway, which the Doctor used as a study. In 1781 Mr. Thrale died, and his executors, of whom Johnson was one, sold the Brewery to David Barclay, junior, then the head of the banking firm of Barclay and Co., for the sum of 135,0002. ” We are not here,” said Johnson, on the day of the sale, ” to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.” While on his tour to the Hebrides, Johnson mentioned that Thrale paid 20,0002 a year to the revenue, and that he had four vats, each of which held 1600 barrels, above 1000 hogsheads. David Barclay placed in the brewing firm his nephew from America, Robert Barclay, who became of Bury Hill; and Mr. Perkins, who had been in Mr. Thrale’s establishment—hence the firm of ” Barclay and Perkins.” Robert Barclay was succeeded by his son, Charles Barclay, who sat in Parliament for Southwark ; and by his sons and grandsons. Forty years since, the Brewery was of great extent; in 1832 a great portion of the old premises was destroyed by fire, but was rebuilt, mostly of iron, stone, and brick. The premises extend from New Park-street, southward, tbrough Park-street, both sides of which are the Brewery buildings, connected by a light suspension bridge; to the right is the vast brewhouse and principal entrance. There are extensive ranges of malt-houses extending northward, with a wharf to Bankside. From the roof of nearly the middle of the premises may be had a bird’s-eye view of the whole.

The water used for brewing is pumped up by a steam-engine through a large iron main, which passes under the malt warehouses, and leads to the ” liquor-backs,” two cast-iron cisterns, on columns, reaching an elevation of some 40 feet. By this means the establishment may be supplied with water for brewing to the extent of a hundred thousand gallons daily. There is on the premises an Artesian well 367 feet deep; but its water, on account of its low temperature, is principally used for cooling the beer in hot weather.

The machinery is worked throughout the Brewery by steam. The furnace-shaft is 19 feet below the surface, and 110 feet above; and, by its great height, denotes the situation of this gigantic establishment among the forest of Southwark chimneys.

The malt is deposited in enormous bins, each of the height or depth of an ordinary three-storied house. The rats are kept in check by a standing army of cats, who are regularly fed and maintained.

The malt is conveyed to be ground in tin buckets upon an endless leather band (” Jacob’s Ladder”) ; and thus carried to the height of 60 or 70 feet, in the middle of the Great Brewhouse, built entirely of iron and brick, and lighted by eigbt large and lofty windows. The Brewhouse is 225 feet long by 60 in width, and of prodigious height, with an elaborate iron roof, the proportions reminding us of Westminster Hall. Within this compass are complete sets of brewing apparatus, perfectly distinct in themselves, but connected with the great supply of malt from above, of water from below, and of motive force from the steam-engine behind, vast coolers, fermenting vats, &c. Each of the copper boilers cost nearly 5000/., and consists of a furnace, a globular copper holding 320 barrels, and a cylindrical cistern to contain 120 barrels, an arrangement equally beautiful and useful from its compactness and the economy of heat. There is no continuous floor; but looking upwards, whenever the steamy vapour permits, there may be seen at various heights, stages, platforms, and flights of stairs, all subsidiary to the Cyclopean piles of brewing vessels. The coals, many tons per day, are drawn up from below by tackle, and wheeled along a railway.

” The hot water is drawn from one of the copper boilers to the corresponding mash-vat below; and machinery working from a centre on a cog-rail that extends over the circumference of the vat, stirs the malt. The mash-vat has a false bottom, which in due time lets off the wort through small holes to an under-pan, whence it is pumped back to the emptied copper, from whence it receives the hot water, and there, mixed with hops, it is boiled, and again run otf into a vast cistern, where passing through a perforated bottom, it leaves the hops, and is pumped through the cooling tubes or refrigerators into the open cooler, and thence to the fermenting cases; whence, in a few days, it is drawn off into casks, again fermented, and when clearer put into the large vat.”

The surface of one of the fermenting cases nearly filled is a strange sight: the yeast rises in rock-like masses, which yield to the least wind, and the gas hovers in pungent mistiness over the ocean of beer. The largest vat will contain about 3500 barrels of porter, which, at the retail price, would yield 9000/. The ” Great Tun of Heidelberg” would hold hut half this quantity.

Nearly every portion of the heavy toil is accomplished by the steam-engine. The malt is conveyed from one building to another, even across the street, by machinery, and again to the crushing rollers and mash vat. The cold and hot water, the wort and beer, are pumped in various directions, almost to the exclusion of human exertions. With so much machinery and order, few men comparatively are required for the enormous brewing of 3000 bushels of malt a day. The stables are a psesables aattern of order. The name of each horse is painted upon a board over the rack of each stall. The horses are mostly from Flanders, are about 200 in number, and cost from 70/. to 80/. each.

Truman, Haribury, Buxton, Sf Co.’s Brewery is situated in Brick-lane, Spitalfields, and covers nearly six acres of ground. Here are two mash tuns, each to contain 800 barrels, the mashing being performed by a revolving spindle with huge arms, like a chocolate-mill. The wort is then pumped into large coppers, of which there are five, containing from 300 to 400 barrels each ; it is then boiled with the hops, of which often two tons are used in a day. The boiling beer is now pumped up to the cooler on the roof of the brewery, which presents a black sea of 32,000 square feet, partly open to the air. There are sixteen large furnace-chimneys connected with this brewery, the smoke of which is consumed by Juckes’s apparatus. There is a vast cooperage for the 80,000 barrels; a farrier’s, millwright’s, carpenter’s and wheelwright’s shop ; a painter’s shop for sign-boards; all which surround the central gear or beer-barrel dep6t. The malt bins are 20 feet across and 35 deep. The stables are of great extent, and there are a score of farriers. The drayman is sui generis ; there are some 80 in number, taller than the Guardsmen, and heavier by two stone.

Meux’s Brewery (now Held Sf Co.’s), in Liquorpond-street, Gray’s Inn-lane, was described by Pennant, in 1795, as ” of magnificence unspeakable.” In this year Meux built a vessel 60 feet in diameter, and 23 feet in height, which cost 5000/. building, and would contain from 10,000 to 12,000 barrels of beer, valued at 20,000/. Their vats then held 100,000 barrels. Messrs. Meux removed from Liquorpond-street to their great brewery at the end of Tottenham Court-road. The head of the firm, Sir Henry Meux was created a baronet in 1831, when he had a fortune of 200,000/., which by his income from the brewery, increased in after years to between 500,000/. and 600,000/.

The handsomest edifice of this class in the metropolis is the Lion Brewery, built for Goding, in 1836, in Belvedere-road, next Waterloo-bridge, and surmounted with a colossal stone lion. The top of the building is a tank to contain 1000 barrels of water, pumped up from a well 230 feet deep, or from the Thames; this supplies the floor

below, where the boiled liquor is cooled—200 barrels in less than an hour; when cooled it is received on the floor beneath into the fermenting tuns j next it descends to the floor for fining; and lastly, to the cellars or store-vats. The steam-engine passes the beer under the Belvedere-road; loads or unloads barges; conveys malt by the Archimedes Screw or Jacob’s Ladder; and pumps water and beer to every height and extreme position, displaying the advantage of mechanic power, by its steady, quiet regularity.

The Metropolitan Breweries have their signs, which figure upon the harness of their dray-horses; thus, Barclay and Perkins, the Anchor; Calvert’s (now the City of London), the Hour-glass; Meux, Horseshoe, &c.

BRIDEWELL HOSPITAL.

UPON one of the oldest historic sites in the City of London stood the ancient palace of Bridewell, which extended nearly from Fleet-street to the Thames at Black-friars. It was founded upon the remains of a building suppo exuildingsed to be Roman, and inhabited by the Kings of England previous to the Conquest. Here our Norman Kings held their Courts. Henry I. gave stone towards rebuilding the palace; and in 1847, in excavating the site of Cogers Hall, in Bride-lane, was discovered a vault, with Norman pellet-moulding, and other remains of the same date. The palace was much neglected until, upon the site of the old Tower of Mountfiquit, Henry VIII. built “a stately and beautiful house thereupon, giving it to name Bridewell, of the parish and well there.”— (Stow.) This house was erected for the reception of Charles V. of Spain, though only his nobles were lodged here, ” a gallery being made out of the house over the water [the Fleet], and through the wall of the City into the Emperor’s lodgings in the Blackfriars.”— (Stoio.) The whole third act of Shakspeare’s Henry VIII. is laid in ” the palace at Bridewell,” which is historically correct. Subsequently the King, taking a dislike to the palace, let it fall to decay. The ” wide, large, empty house” was next presented to the City of London by King Edward VI., after a sermon by Bishop Ridley, who begged it of the King as a workhouse for the poor and a house of correction; the gift was made for ” sturdy rogues,” and as ” the fittest hospital for those cripples whose legs are lame through their own laziness.” It was endowed with lands and furniture from the Savoy. All this history is, by a curious licence, transferred to Milan, by Decker, in the second part of the old play of the Honest Whore. The account is very exact, compared with Entick’s History of London, iv. 284. (Nares’s Glossary, new edit. 1859.) The gift was confirmed by charter only ten days before the death of the King. Nearly two years elapsed before Queen Mary confirmed her brother’s gift ; and in February, 1555, the Mayor and Aldermen entered Bridewell and took possession, with seven hundred marks land, and all the bedding and other furniture of the house of the Savoy. But the gift soon proved costly and inconvenient to the citizens by attracting thither idle and abandoned people from the outskirts of London, when the Common Council issued acts against ” the resort of masterless men.” In 1608, the City erected here twelve large granaries for corn and two storehouses for coals. In Aggas’s plan of London, the buildings and gardens of the hospital extend from the present site to the Thames, on the bank of which a large castellated mansion is represented; as also in Van der Wyngrerde’s (1542) view, in the Bodleian Library; but in Hollar’s view, after the Great Fire, most of the buildings are consumed.

The Hospital was rebuilt as we see it in Kip’s view, 1720, in two quadrangles, the principal of which fronted the Fleet River, now a vast sewer under the middle of Bridge-street. Within the present century were built the committee-room and prisons ; the chapel was rebuilt and the whole latterly formed only one large quadrangle, with a handsome entrance from Bridge-street; the keystone of the archway is sculptured with the head of King Edward VI. Hatton thus minutely describes the hospital in 1708:—

It is a prison and house of correction for idle vagrants, loose and disorderly servants, night-walkers, strumpets, &c. These are set to hard labour, and have correction according to their deserts; but have their clothes and diet during their imprisonment at the charge of the house.

It is also an hospital for indigent persons, and where twenty art-masters (as they are called), being decayed traders—as shoemakers, taylors, flax-drapers, &c. have houses, and their servants or apprentices (being about 140 in th about all) have clothes at the house charge, and their masters having the profit of their work, do often advance by this means their own fortunes. And these boys, having served their time faithfully, have not only their freedom, but also £10 each towards carrying on their respective trades, and many have even arrived from nothing to be governors.

The Bridewell boys were distinguished by a particular dress, and were very active at fires with an engine belonging to the hospital. In 1755 they had, however, grown unruly, and so turbulent in the streets as to be a great annoyance to peaceable citizens. Their peculiar costume was then laid aside, and they became more peaceable. The Hogging at Bridewell for offences committed without the prison is described by Ward in his London Spy ; both men and women were whipped on their naked backs, before the Court of Governors. The president sat with his hammer in his hand, and the culprit was taken from the post when the hammer fell. Hogarth, in his ” Harlot’s Progress,” gives the peculiar features of the place. In the Fourth Plate men and women are beating hemp under the eye of a savage taskmaster; and a lad, too idle to work, is seen standing on tiptoe to reach the stocks, in which his hands are fixed, while over his head is written, ” Better to work than stand thus.” * When Howard visited Bridewell he found the building damp and unhealthy, and the rooms, cells, and corridors confined and dark, and altogether a bad specimen of a prison.

” Lob’s Pound ” was a cant name for Bridewell, the origin of which so puzzled Archdeacon Nares, that he said : ” Who Lob was, is as little known as the site of Lipsbury Pinfold.” In Sudibras the term is employed as a name for the stocks into-which the Knight put Crowdero :—

Crowdero, whom, in irons bound, L/hi

Thou basely threw’st into Lob’s Pound. ^ ‘

Miss Baker suggests, in her Northamptonshire Glossary, that the name originated from ” lob,” a looby or clown, rather than any specific individual—Bridewell being the place of correction for the petty offences of that class.

Bridewell is named from the famous well in the vicinity of St. Bride’s Church; and this prison being the first of its kind, all other houses of correction, upon the same plan, were called Bridewells. In the Nomenclator, 1585, occurs ” a workhouse where servants be tied to their work at Brideivell; a house of correction; a prison.” We read of a treadmill at work at Bridewell in 1570.

Bridewell was, until lately, used as a receptacle for vagrants committed by the Lord Mayor and sitting Aldermen; as a temporary lodging for persons previous to their being sent home to their respective parishes; and a certain number of boys were brought up to different trades; and it is still used for apprentices committed by the City Chamberlain. The male prisoners sentenced to and fit for hard labour were employed on the treadwheel, by which corn was ground for the supply of Bridewell, Bethlehem, and the House of Occupation ; the younger prisoners, or those not sentenced to hard labour, were employed in picking junk and cleaning the wards; the females were employed in washing, mending, and getting up the linen and bedding of the prisoners, or in picking junk and cleaning the prison. The punishments for breaches of prison rules were diminution of food, san”on of folitary confinement, and irons, as the case might be.] In 1842 were confined here 1324 persons, of whom 233 were under seventeen, and 466 were known or reputed thieves. In 1818 no employment was furnished to the prisoners. The seventh Report of the Inspectors of Prisons returned Bridewell as answering no one object of improvement except that of safe custody; it does not correct, deter, or reform; and nothing could be worse than the association to which all but the City apprentices were subjected. However, in 1829, there was built, adjoining Bethlehem Hospital, in Lambeth, a ” House of Occupation,” whither young prisoners were thenceforth sent from Bridewell to be taught useful trades.

The prison of Bridewell was taken down in 1863; and the committals are now made to the City Prison, at Holloway. Meanwhile a portion of Bridewell Hospital will be reserved for the detention and reformation of incorrigible City apprentices committed here by the Chamberlain from time to time; this jurisdiction being preserved by the Court of Chancery in dealing with the matters which concern the

* This background is, however, incorrect; since the harlot, being 1 sentenced by a Westminster magistrate, would not have been flogged in the City Bridewell.

disposal of the building and the estates of the governors of the Hospital. Reformatory schools are also to be built from the revenue of Bridewell, stated at 12,000/. per annum. At the Social Science Congress, in 1862, the worthy Chamberlain read a paper on the peculiar jurisdiction of his Court. In the prison, special care was taken to prevent the apprentices making the acquaintance of the low vagrants and misdemeanants who ordinarily occupied the building. The apprentices were placed in small cells, closed in with double doors, which shut out sound as effectually as sight; communication was, therefore, nearly impossible. Hereafter, only the apprentices will be confined here. The number of committals rarely exceeds twenty-five annually. At the date of our last visit there was but one apprentice confined here. Although the number is so small, the power of committal, which the Chamberlain has most praise-worthily asserted and successfully maintains, acts as a terror to evildoers, keeping in restraint about 3000 of these lads of the City.

In a piece of ground, leased for the burial-place of Bridewell Precinct, Robert Levett, the old and faithful friend of Dr. Johnson, and an inmate of his house, was buried, in 1732. Not a vestige of the ancient Bridewell remains. The noblest feature of the later buildings was the court-room—85 ft. 4 in. by 29 ft. 8 in., wainscoted, and hung with the great picture of Edward VI. granting the Boyal Charter of Endowment to the Mayor. Beneath was a cartoon of ” The Good Samaritan,” by the youthful artist Dadd. The other pictures are a fine full-length of Charles II., by Sir Peter Lely; and portraits of the Presidents, including Sir William Withers, 1708, a very large equestrian portrait, with St. Paul’s in the background. But the most valuable embellishments were the tables of benefactions, ranging from 500/. to 50/., ” depensilled in gold characters.” In this hall the governors dined annually, each steward contributing 15/. towards the expenses, the dinner being dressed in the spacious kitchen beneath, only used for this purpose. This hall and kitchen were taken down at the close of the year 1862—the official buildings facing Bridge-street remain. The great picture of Edward VI. transferring Bridewell Palace to the City of London, which was engraved by Vertue in 1750, and afterwards adopted into the series of historical prints publ Sal printished by the Society of Antiquaries, was long accredited as painted by Holbein, whereas, it represents an occurrence which took place in 1553, ten years after Holbein’s death. Consequently, it is simply impossible that he could have painted it, notwithstanding that one of the figures in the background was asserted by Vertue and by Walpole to be Holbein’s own portrait, Upon this picture, Mr. J. Gough Nichols, F.S.A., remarked, in 1859, that ” it is not now regarded as Holbein’s work, as it bears no comparison with his capital picture at Barber-Surgeons’ Hall of King Henry VIII. granting his charter to that Company.” ” But,” adds Mr. Nichols, ” after all, though not a masterly work of art, it is a valuable item among a very few historical pictures, and it would be desirable to recover its real history, of which we literally know nothing.”— ArchcBologia xxxix. 21.

A very interesting historical fact in connexion with Bridewell remains to be noticed. Mr. Lemon, of the State Paper Office, has discovered in that depository a manuscript showing that in the old Bridewell were imprisoned the members of the Congregational Church first formed after the accession of Elizabeth. On the evening of the 20th of June, 1567, the gates of the old prison were opened to receive a company of Christian men and women, who were committed to the custody of the gaoler for an indefinite term, at the pleasure of the authorities, who consigned them to his care. The Lord Mayor, in pity for their condition, urged them to make the required acknowledgment ; but they conscientiously refused. Then were led to their cells, men unknown to fame, but who discovered the long-neglected principles of Church Government in the New Testament, which have wrought in silence much mighty and beneficial changes. It is, no doubt, to this company that Bishop Grindal refers, in his letter to Bullinger, July 11, 1568 : ” Some London citizens,” he says, ” with four or five ministers, have openly separated from us, and sometimes in private houses, sometimes in fields, and, occasionally, even in ships, they have held meetings and administered the Sacraments. Besides this, they have ordained ministers, elders, and deacons after their own way. The number of the sect is about two hundred, but consisting of more women than men. The Privy Council have lately committed the heads of this faction to prison, and are now using means to put a timely stop to the sect.”

Dr. Waddington has also discovered some papers written by the members of this Church in the Bridewell, signed chiefly by Christian women ; together with a document containing a brief statement of their principles, by Richard Fitz, their pastor. It appears from these records—which have been kept for nearly three hundred years— that Richard Fitz, their minister; Thomas Rowland, deacon; Partridge, and Giles Fowler; died in prison. From the enlarged proportions the congregational denomination has since reached in Great Britain and America, considerable interest is attached to Bridewell because of these associations. Dr. Waddington, following the current of history from this hidden source, shows, by indisputable evidence from original papers in the public archives, that the succession of Congregational Churches from this period is continuous : the Bridewell may thus be regarded as the starting-point of Congregationalism after the Reformation.*

These touching and simple memorials have been preserved by the Metropolitan Bishop, and finally transferred to the royal archives. The name of Fitz was known to the Christian exiles in Holland associated with the Pilgrim Fathers. Henry Ains-worth speaks of ” that separated Church, whereof Mr. Fitz was pastor, in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign.” It was derign.” Ireserved for us to identify him in his relation to the ” Flock of Slaughter,” suffering bonds and imprisonment in the Bridewell. These original papers enable us with certainty to trace the origin of the first voluntary Church in England after the Marian persecution, as contemporaneous with the Anglican movement.—See Historical Papers: No. 1, Richard Fitz.

BRIDGES.

THERE is no feature of the metropolis calculated to convey so enlarged an idea of the wealth, enterprise, and skill of its population, as the Eight Bridges, which have been thrown across the Thames within the present century. Until the year 1750, the long narrow defile of Old London Bridge formed the sole land communication between the City and the suburbs on the Surrey bank of the Thames; whereas now, westward of the structure built to replace the ancient Bridge, are Southwark, Blackfriars, Waterloo, Lambeth Suspension, Westminster, Vajixhall, and Chelsea Bridges, besides the Railway Bridges to be described elsewhere.

London Beidge, the first Bridge across the Thames at the metropolis, was of wood, erected in the year 994, opposite the site of the present St. Botolph’s Wharf: it is mentioned in a statute of Ethelred II., fixing the tolls to be paid by boats bringing fish to ” Bylynsgate.”

The first wooden bridge is stated to have been built by the pious Brothers of St. Mary’s monastery, on the Bankside; which house was originally a convent of sisters, founded and endowed with the profits of a ferry at this spot, by Mary, the only daughter of the ferryman, who is traditionally said to be represented by an antique monumental figure in St. Saviour’s Church. This bridge is described with turrets and roofed bulwarks in the narrative of the invasion of the fleet of Sweyn, King of Denmark, in 994; and it was nearly destroyed by the Norwegian Prince Olaf in 1008. It was rebuilt before the invasion of Canute in 1016, who is said to have sunk a deep ditch on the south side, and dragged his ships to the west side of the bridge. It was easily passed by Earl Godwin in 1052; but it was swept away by flood in 1091; rebuilt in 1097 ; burnt in 1136 ; and a new bridge erected of elm-timber in 1163, by Peter, chaplain of St. Mary Colechurch, Poultry.

The same pious architect began to build a stone bridge, a little to the west of the wooden one, in 1176; when Henry II. gave towards the expenses the proceeds of a tax on wool, which gave rise to the popular saying that ” London Bridge was built upon woolpacks.” Peter of Colechurch died in 1205, having, it would appear, left the bridge unfinished four years previously; since the Patent Roll of the third year of the reign of King John informs us that the King was anxious to bring the Bridge to perfection, and in 1201 took upon himself to recommend to the Mayor and citizens of London for that purpose, Isenbert, Master of the Schools of Xainctes, who had already constructed a bridge there, and at Rochelle. A translation of this Royal Writ is given in the Chronicles of Old London Bridge (pp. 70, 71). In it the King states that, hy the advice of Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury, and others, he had entreated Isenbert to undertake the building (or rather completion) of the bridge, and that he had granted the profits of the edohnits of ifices Isenbert was to build on the bridge to be for ever applied to its repair and sustentation; in another document mention is made of the houses built upon the bridge, as well as to a plan of lighting the bridge by night, according to Isenbert’s plan. {See Mr. Hardy’s Introduction to the Patent Rolls, and Mr. W. Sidney Gibson’s communication to Notes and Queries, 2nd s., ix., 119.) The bridge was, accordingly, finished in 1209. It consisted of a stone platform, 926 feet long and 40 in width, standing about 60 feet above the level of the water; and of a drawbridge and 19 broad-pointed arches, with massive piers. It had a gate-house at each end; and towards the centre, on the east side, a Gothic chapel, dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury; in the crypt of which, within a pier of the bridge, was deposited, in a stone tomb, the body of Peter of Colechurch. Up to the year 1250, a toll of twelve pence, a considerable sum at that time, had been levied upon every ship passing under London Bridge, i.e. through the drawbridge in the middle. The many edicts about the nets used upon the Thames show how carefully the fisheries were watched, and how productive they must have been.

Norden describes the bridge, in the reign of Elizabeth, as “adorned with sumptuous buildings and statelie and beautiful houses on either syde,” like one continuous street, ” except certain voyd places for the retyre of passengers from the danger of cars, carts, and droves of cattle, usually passing that way,” through which vacancies only could the river be seen over the parapet-walls or palings. Some of the houses had platform roofs, with pretty little gardens and arbours. Near the drawbridge, and overhanging the river side, was the famed Nonsuch House, of the Elizabethan age: it was constructed in Holland, entirely of timber, put together with wooden pegs only, and was four stories high, richly carved and gilt.

There is a view of London Bridge by Norden, which is a pearl of great price among print collectors. One impression, in the Sutherland Clarendon, in the Bodleian Library, is in the second state, and differs materially from the view published by Norden, in the reign of Elizabeth, twenty-seven years earlier than the Sutherland impression. Of the first named view, an early impression was discovered in Germany in 1863, by Mr. J. Holbert Wilson; the old houses upon the bridge are neatly engraved; and a cluster of traitors’ heads is placed upon poles on the top of the bridge gate. The print in the second state has lost five inches in depth, and the dedication states that Norden had described it in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but the plate had been “neare these twenty years, embezzed and detained by a person till of late unknown j” it was, therefore, not published until late in the reign, of James I., then in a mutilated state; though the above is evidence of impressions of the first state. This is, therefore, the oldest known view of London Bridge.

We may here mention another old view of London Bridge—one of a series published by Boydell and Co., in 1818, with a note stating it to have been copied from a print engraved in 1751, from a “very antient picture; but the plate (which was a private one) was afterwards mislaid.” This view is birds-eye, reaching from the bridge to St. Katharine’s; in it appears St. Paul’s, with the spire, which was burnt in 1561. Beneath the view this is stated to be ” the oldest view of London extant;” but we have Van den Wyngrerde’s (1543) view, in the Sutherland Collection. In neither of these views, however, is London Bridge so distinctly shown as in Norden’s horizontal view: the detail of the houses on the bridge is surprisingly minute.

The chronicles of this stone bridge through nearly six centuries and a quarter form, perhaps, the most interesting episode in the history of London. The scenes of fire and siege, insurrection and popular vengeance, of national rejoicing and of the pageant victories of man and of death, of fame or funeral—it were vain for us to attempt to recite. In 1212, within four years after the bridge being finished, there was a terrific conflagration at each end, when nearly 3000 persons perished; in 1264, Henry III. was repulsed here by De Montfort, Earl of Leicester, and the populace attacked the Queen in her barge as it was preparing to shoot the Bridge; in 1381, the rebel Wat Tyler entered the City by this road; in 1392, Richard II. was received here with great pomp by the citizens; in 1415, it was the scene of a grand triumph of Henry V., and in 1422 of his funeral procession; in 1428, the Duke of Norfolk’s barge was lost by upsetting at the bridge, and his Grace narrowly escaped; in 1450—

” Jack Cade hath gotten London Bridge; the citizens Fly and forsake their houses:”

but the rebel was defeated, and his head placed upon the Gate-house: in 1477, Falcon-bridge attacked the Bridge, and fired several houses; in 1554, it was one of the daring scenes of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion; in 1632 more than one-third of the houses

were consumed in an accidental conflagration; and in 16(16 the labyrinth of dwellings was swept away by the Great Fire : the whole street was rebuilt within twenty years; but, in 1757, the houses were entirely removed, and parapets and balustrades erected on each side; in this state the Bridge remained till its demolition in 1832.

In 1582, at the west side of the City end of the Bridge, Waterworks were commenced by Morice, with water-wheels turned by the flood and ebb current of the Thames passing through the purposely contracted arches, and working pumps for the supply of water to the metropolis; this being the earliest example of public water service by pumps and mechanical powers which enabled water to be distributed in pipes to dwelling-houses. Previously, water had only been supplied to public cisterns, from whence it was conveyed at great expense and inconvenience in buckets and carts. These Waterworks were not removed until 1822, when the proprietors received for their interest 10,000Z. from the New River Company.

The Bridge shops had signs, and were ” furnished with all manner of trades.” Holbein is said to have lived here; as did also Herbert, the printseller, and editor of Ames’s Typographical Antiquities, at the time the houses were taken down. On the first night Herbert spent here, a dreadful fire took place on the banks of the Thames, which suggested to him the plan of a floating fire-engine, soon after adopted. Tradesmen’s Tokens furnish but few records of the Bridge shopkeepers. “As fine as London Bridge” was formerly a proverb in the City; and many a serious, sensible tradesman used to believe that heap of enormities to be one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and, next to Solomon’s Temple, the finest thing that ever art produced. Pin-makers, the first of whom was a negro, kept shops in considerable numbers here, as attested by their printed shop-bills.

The Bridge was also the abode of many artists: here lived Peter Monamy, the marine painter, who was taught drawing by a sign and house painte. O house r on London Bridge. Dominic Serres once kept shop here ; and Hogarth lived here when he engraved for old John Bowles, in Cornhill. Swift and Pope have left accounts of their visits to Crispin Tucker, a waggish bookseller and author-of-all-work, who lived under the southern gate. One Baldwin, haberdasher, born in the house over the Chapel, at seventy-one could not sleep in the country for want of the noise of the roaring and rushing tide beueath, which ” he had been always used to hear.”

A most terrific historic garniture of the Bridge was the setting up of heads on its .gate-houses : among these ghastly spectacles were the head of Sir William Wallace, 1305; Simon Frisel, 1306; four traitor knights, 1397; Lord Bardolf, 1408; Boling-broke, 1440; Jack Cade and his rebels, 1451; the Cornish traitors of 1497; and bf Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, 1535, displaced in fourteen days by the head of Sir Thomas More. In 1577, the several heads were removed from the north end of the Drawbridge to the Southwark entrance, thence called Traitors’ Gate. In 1578, the head of a recusant priest was added to the sickening sight; and in 1605, that of Garnet the Jesuit, as well as those of the Romish priests executed under the statutes of Elizabeth and James I. Hentzner counted above thirty heads on the Bridge in 1598. The display was transferred to Temple Bar in the reign of Charles II.

The narrowness of the Bridge arches so contracted the channel of the river as to cause a rapid; and to pass through them was termed to ” shoot the bridge,” a peril taken advantage of by suicides. Thus, in 1689, Sir William Temple’s only son, lately made Secretary at War, leaped into the river from a boat as it darted through an arch: he had filled his pockets with stones, and was drowned, leaving in the boat this note: ” My folly in undertaking what I could not perform, whereby some misfortunes have befallen the King’s service, is the cause of my putting myself to this sudden end; I wish him success in all his undertakings, and a better servant.” Pennant adds to the anecdote that Sir William Temple’s false and profane reflection on the occasion was, that ” a wise man might dispose of himself, and make his life as short as he pleased !” In 1737, Eustace Budgell, a soi-disant cousin of Addison, and who wrote in the Spectator and Guardian, when broken down in character and reduced to poverty, took a boat at Somerset Stairs; and ordering the waterman to row down the river, Budgell threw himself into the stream as they shot London Bridge. He, too, had filled his pockets with stones, and rose no more : he left in his secretary a slip of papa ,

If 2

on which was written a broken distich : ” What Cato did, and Addison approved, cannot be wrong.” This is a wicked sophism; there being as little resemblance between the cases of Budgell and Cato as there is reason for considering Addison’s Cato written in defence of suicide.

Of a healthier complexion is the anecdote of Edward Osborne, in 1536, leaping into the Thames from the window of one of the Bridge houses, and saving his master’s infant daughter, dropped by a nurse-maid into the stream. The father, Sir William Hewet, was Lord Mayor in 1559, and gave this daughter in marriage to Osborne, whose great-grandson became the first Duke of Leeds.

In 1716, a very remarkable phenomenon occurred at London Bridge. The Thames, from long continued drought, and the consequent stom; onsequepping of the supplies by its tributaries, was reduced to so low a pitch, that many persons walked over its bed from Southwark to the city, and vice versa. During the twenty-four hours which this extraordinary ebb—assisted as it was by a gale of wind from W.S.W.—lasted, many interesting observations were made in respect to the foundation of the bridge, and a variety of relics were found. To allow of extensive changes and repairs, a temporary wooden bridge was built on the sterlings, or ancient coffer-dams, to protect the piers; it was burnt April 10, 1758, but rebuilt in a month. The centre pier and two arches adjoining were then taken down and replaced by one large arch, the bridge widened several feet, and reopened in 1759. These alterations are said to have cost the large sum of 100,000*.

The annual loss of life and property that occurred through the dangerous state of the navigation under the arches (the fall being at times five feet), and the perpetually recurring expense of keeping the Bridge in repair, suggested, about the beginning of \o the present century, its demolition and rebuilding; but not until 1824 was the new structure commenced, the first pile being driven March 15. It was designed by John Rennie, F.R.S., and is about 100 feet westward of the old Bridge. In excavating the foundations, were discovered brass and copper coins of Augustus, Vespasian, and later Roman emperors; Venetian tokens, Nuremberg counters, and a few Tradesmen’s Tokens; brass and silver rings and buckles, ancient iron keys and silver spoons, the remains of an engraven and gilt dagger, an iron spear-head, a fine bronze lamp (head of Bacchus), and a small silver figure of Harpocrates: the latter preserved in the British Museum. We may here notice, that upon the old Bridge grew abundantly Sisymbrium Iris, or London Rocket, with small yellow flowers and pointed leaves : this plant probably appeared here soon after the Great Fire of 1666, when it sprung up thickly from among the City ruins.

Mr. Rennie died in 1821; but the works were continued by his sons, Mr. (now Sir John) Rennie and Mr. George Rennie; the builders being Mr. W. Jolliffe and Sir Edward Banks. On June 15, 1825, the first stone was laid in a coffer-dam nearly forty-five feet below high-water mark, opposite the southern arch (fourth lock), with great ceremony, by the Lord Mayor (Garratt), in the presence of the Duke of York; and in the evening the Monument was illuminated with portable gas, to commemorate the event. Two large gold medals were also struck on the occasion. The first arch was keyed August 4, 1827; the last Nov. 19, 1828; and the Bridge was opened with i ‘ great state, August 1, 1831, by King William IV. and Queen Adelaide, who went and returned by water, and were present at the banquet given on the Bridge; the Lord Mayor (Key) presiding; and the King and Queen partaking of the loving-cup.

New London Bridge is unrivalled in the world ” in the perfection of proportion and the true greatness of simplicity.”

” It consists of five semi-elliptical arches, viz. two of 130 feet, two of 140 feet; and the centre, 152 feet 6 inches span, and 37 feet 6 inches rise, is perhaps the largest elliptical arch ever attempted : the roadway is 52 feet wide. This bridge deserves remark, on account of the difficult situation in which it was built, being immediately above the old bridge, in a depth of from 25 to 30 feet at low water, on a soft alluvial bottom, covered with large loose stones, scoured away by the force of the current from the foundation of the old bridge, the whole of which had to be removed by dredging, before the coffer-dams for the piemans for trs and abutments could be commenced, otherwise it would have been extremely difficult, if not impracticable, to have made them water-tight; the difficulty was further increased by the old bridge being left standing, to accommodate the traffic, whilst the new bridge was building; and the restricted water-way of the old bridge occasioned such an increased velocity of the current as materially to retard the operations of the new bridge, and at times the tide threatened to carry away all before it. The great magnitude and extreme flatness of the arches demanded unusual care in the selection of

the materials, which were of the finest blue and white granite from Scotland and Devonshire; great accuracy in the workmanship was also indispensable. The piers and abutments stand upon platforms of timber resting upon piles about 20 feet long. The masonry is from 8 feet to 10 feet below the bed of the river.— Sir John Rennie, FM.S.

The time occupied in the erection of the Bridge, from driving the first pile, March 15, 1824, to its completion in July, 1831, was seven years five months and thirteen days, during which it employed upwards of 800 men. Its huilding was attended with so many local difficulties, that forty persons lost their lives in the progress of the works. The total quantity of stone in the bridge is stated at 120,000 tons; and the ends of the parapets consist of the largest blocks of granite ever brought to this country. A single cornice runs along the upper part of the bridge, supported on dentils formed of solid beams of granite, marking externally the line of the roadway; this is surmounted by a close parapet, four feet high, upon which are lofty and massive bronzed standards, with gas lanterns.

The amount paid to Messrs. Jolliffe and Banks for this bridge was 425,0812. 9s. 2d. ; but the whole sum expended on it, including the approaches, was 1,458,3112. 8s. 11-jd. The latter are very fine, especially the roadway into the City, where, at the suggestion of Mr. Alderman Gibbs, a granite statue of King William was set up, to commemorate the opening; and a bronze equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, in front of the Royal Exchange, was erected as an acknowledgment by the citizens of his Grace’s exertions in facilitating the means of erecting the new bridge.

The old Bridge was not entirely removed until 1832, when the bones of the builder, Peter of Colechurch, were found beneath the masonry of the chapel, as if to complete the eventful history of the ancient structure. The superstructure was enormously thick. The roadway was 8| feet above the crowns of the arches, and had apparently risen by the accumulations of five different strata, one of which was composed of charred wood, the debris of the houses that had been destroyed by fire. The foundations were very defective. The masonry was but 2^ feet below low-water mark, and rested on oak planking 16 inches wide by 9 inches thick, which in turn was supported by a mass of Kentish rubble, mixed with chalk and flints, thrown in and held together by starlings. Parts of the piers had been faced at some early period, but very ill and carelessly, and no part of the original work rested on piles.

At the sale of the materials of this Bridge, Mr. Weiss, the cutler, of the Strand, purchased all the iron, amounting to fifteen tons, with which the piles had been shod; and such portions as had entered the ground produced steel infinitely superior to any which Mr. Weiss had ever met with. Upon examination, it was inferred that the extre dehat themities of the piles having been charred, the straps of iron closely wedged between them and the stratum in which they were imbedded, must have been subjected to a galvanic action, which, in the course of some six or seven hundred years, produced the above effects.

The stone proved finely-seasoned material : a portion of it was purchased of Alderman Humphery by Alderman Harmer, and used in building his seat, Ingress Abbey, near Greenhithe; the balustrades, of good proportions, were preserved. Many snuff-boxes and other memorials were turned from the pile-wood.

The traffic across the old Bridge, in one day of July, 1811, amounted to 89,640 persons on foot, 769 waggons, 2924 carts and drays, 1240 coaches, 485 gigs and taxed carts, and 764 horses. The present Bridge is capable of accommodating four continuous streams of vehicles, with the addition of wide pavements for foot-passengers. The traffic over the Bridge during the 24 hours ending at 6 P.M. has comprised :—Vehicles— cabs, 4483; omnibuses, 4286; waggons, carts, &c, 9245; other vehicles, 2430; horses, led or ridden, 54—total, 20,498. Passengers:—In vehicles, 60,836; on foot, 107,074—total, 167,910.—[See Chronicles of London Bridge, by an Antiquary (Richard Thomson), 1827; where the researches of a lifetime appear to be condensed into a single volume.]

Westminster Bridge was opened in 1750, until when the only communication between Lambeth and Westminster was by the ferry-boat near Lambeth Palace Gates, the property of the Archbishop of Canterbury, granted by patent under a rent of 20d. and for the loss of which ferry 22052. were given to the see.

Attempts to obtain another bridge over the Thames, besides that of London, were made in the several reigns of Elizabeth, James I., Charles I. and II., and George I.; but it was not until the year 1736 (10 Geo. II.), that Parliament authorized the building of a second bridge. The architect was Charles Labelye, a native of Switzerland: the first stone was laid by the Earl of Pembroke, Jan. 29, 1738-9; and the bridge was opened Nov. 18, 1750. It consisted of fifteen semicircular arches, the centre seventy-six feet span ; 1223 feet long by 44 feet wide. It was originally intended for a wooden bridge, and was partly commenced on this principle. The bottom courses of the piers, were laid, or built, in floating-vessels, or caissons, which when so loaded, were conducted to their proper positions, and there sunk upon the natural alluvial bed of the river; the bottom of the caissons thus forming, when the sides had been removed, the platforms or foundations of the masonry, unsustained by underpiling, or any other support than that of the gravel or sand on which they rested.

In the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1750, a view of Westminster Bridge as then finished is given, with this memorandum:—” This structure is certainly a very great ornament to our metropolis, and will be looked on with pleasure or envy by all foreigners. The surprising echo in the arches, brings much company with French horns to entertain themselves under it in summer; and with the upper part, for an agreeable airing, none of the public walks or gardens can stand in competition.” For the protection of passengers over it at night there was at this time a watch of twelve men !

Labelye states the quantity of stone in this Bridge to be nearly double that employed in building St. Paul’s Cathedral. ” The caissons conta”Boaissonsined upwards of 150 loads of timber, and were of more tonnage than a forty-gun vessel.” (Sutton’s Tracts). The original cost of the Bridge is given as 393,189Z., of which 145,057/. went to contractors and 248,132/. to other parties. The approaches cost 109,054?. It is worthy of note that long before Labelye’s bridge was erected, the place of crossing was known as Westminster Bridge. (See Dr. Wallis to S. Pepys, Oct. 24, 1699.) In the old maps the landing-place on the north shore is so marked.

Vast sums were expended in the repair of this Bridge. Within forty years it cost nearly half a million of money; whereas the property of the Bridge only realized 7464/. 11*. 8d. In 1838, Mr. W. Cubitt found the caissons in a perfect state, the wood (fir) retaining its resinous smell. After the removal of London Bridge, as Telford foresaw, more than one of the Westminster piers gave way; to stay their sinking, in Aug. 1846 the thoroughfare was closed; the balustrades and heavy stone alcoves were removed, the stone-work stripped to the cornice, and the roadway lowered, thus lightening it of 30,000 tons weight j timber palings were put up at the sides, and the Bridge was re-opened. The proportions of the sides are stated to have been so accurate, that if a person spoke against the wall of any of the niches on one side of the way, he might be distinctly heard upon the opposite side; even a whisper was audible in the stillness of the night. This was the last metropolitan bridge which had a balustrade parapet, that of Blackfriars Bridge having been removed in 1839.

Westminster Bridge was built of magnesian limestone, containing from 24 to 42 per cent, of carbonate of magnesia, from which Epsom salts are obtained by the application of sulphuric acid. ” If,” said Dr. Ryan, in a lecture before ‘the Royal Agricultural Society, ” Westminster Bridge, built of that rock, were covered with water and sulphuric acid, it would be converted into Epsom salts.”

It was upon Westminster Bridge, September 3,1803, that Wordsworth poured forth this truly majestic sonnet:—

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, •
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples, lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In hi3 first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at its own sweet will:
Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep,
And all that mighty heart is lying still 1

At length the construction of a new Bridge was commenced as near as possible to the old one, the latter being used as a temporary bridge. The works were commenced by T. Page, C.E., somewhat lower down the river, in the middle of 1859. No coffer-dams were used; hut on the site of each pier, elm piles were driven deep below the bed of the river into the London clay. Round these again were forced massive iron circular piles, grooved at the edges, so as to admit of great sheets of cast iron being slid down like shutters between them; the space they shut in being carefully dredged out of mud to the bed of the river, the piles tied together with iron rods, and the space filled in between with concrete up to low-water mark, when the masonry—euormous slabs of granite, weighing from eight to twelve tons—was fixed for the pier, and on these were raised the massive stone piers themselves. The arches of the Bridge are seven in number, each formed of seven ribs, which are of cast-iron nearly up to the crown, where, to avoid danger from the concussion of heavy loads, they are of wrought metal. The arches vary in span, from the smallest, of 90 ft., to the largest in the centre, of 120 ft., and from a height above high-water level of from 16 ft. to 20 ft. In the spandrels of the arches are Gothic quatrefoils, filled with shields of the arms of Westminster and England. The materials used in the constraction of the whole bridge were 4200 tons of cast and 1400 tons of wrought-iron, 30,000 cubic yards of concrete, 21,000 cubic yards of brickwork set in Portland cement, 165,000 cubic feet of granite, and 46,000 cubic feet of timber. Its gradient is 12 ft. lower than the old Bridge, and its total width more than double, so that it is, size for size, the cheapest Bridge over the Thames that has yet been built, costing per superficial foot less than half the price of any similar structure in London.

Thus it will be seen that the new Bridge is very nearly twice as wide as any of the bridges over the Thames. Within the parapets it is 84 ft. 2 in. Of this the footways occupy 28 ft., the road for the light traffic 39 ft., the tramways 14 ft. 8 in., and the space between them 2 ft. 6 in. The tramways consist of iron-plates, bolted to timbers, and laid upon an elastic bed of cork and bitumen. The kerb of the footway is formed of Ross of Mull granite; the footway itself is of Blashfield’s terra-cotta, in diamond-shaped tiles, grooved transversely. The Bridge was completed in 1863, and opened May 24, Her Majesty’s birthday, at a quarter to 4 o’clock, the precise time when the Queen was born ; and at that hour a salute of 25 guns was fired, a number corresponding to the years of her reign.

” The unparalleled width produces a most striking effect as yon pass on to the Bridge: if you approach it from the Surrey side of the river, it is singularly imposing, as it stretches its wide way before you, spanning the broad unseen river, and backed by the magnificent mass of the Houses of Parliament,— never so well seen before, the visitor should see it for the first time thus—it is a thing to remember. From the river the Bridge is less impressive. It is not so majestic as London Bridge, nor so beautiful as Waterloo. The arches seem to press upon the water.”— Companion to the Almanack, 1863. Still, with certain artistic defects, this is a noble bridge.

The old Bridge was taken down in 1861; the last arch, April 25, and the foundations three months later : altogether, including the arches, more than 2,100,000 cubic feet of masonry and brickwork were taken out.

Blacktkiabs Beidge originated with a committee appointed, in 1746, to examine Labelye’s designs for improving London Bridge; though the architect of Blackfriars Bridge was Robert Mylne, a native of Edinburgh. ” The first pile of it was driven in the middle of the Thames, June 7, 1760; and the foundation-stone was laid by Sir Thomas Chitty, Lord Mayor, Oct. 31. On Nov. 19, 1768, it was made passable as a bridle-way, exactly two years after its reception of foot-passengers; and it was finally and generally opened on Sunday, Nov. 19, 1769. There was a toll of one halfpenny

for every foot-passenger, and one penny on Sundays; but on January 22, 1785, the tolls were redeemed by Government. The toll-house was burnt down in the Riots of 1780, when all the account-books were destroyed.”— (Chronicles of London Bridge, pp. 568, 569.) The total cost of building and completing the Bridge and avenues thereto was 261,5792.0*. %\d:; including 21,2502. lis. 6d. paid to the Watermen’s Company for the Sunday ferry.

” Under the foundation-stone were placed several pieces of gold, silver, and copper coins of George II., together with a silver medal given to Mr. Mylne, the architect, by the Academy of St. Luke, with a copper rim round it, having the following inscriptions. On the one side, ‘ In architectura prastantise prremium (ipsa Roma judice), Roberto Mylne pontis hujus architectoni grato animo posuit.*” Upon ” a plate oe tn ” a pr plates of pure tin” was a Latin inscription, stating the Bridge to have been undertaken by the Common Council of London (amidst the rage of an extensive war), and that there might remain to posterity a monument of this city’s affection to the man, who, by the strength of his genius, the steadiness of his mind, and a certain kind of happy contagion of his probity and spirit (under the Divine favour and fortunate auspices of George II.) recovered, augmented, and secured the British Empire in Asia, Africa, and America, and restored the ancient reputation and influence of this country amongst the nations of Europe, the citizens of London unanimously voted this bridge to be inscribed with the name of William Pitt. It was for a short time called ‘* Pitt Bridge,” which was soon changed to Blackfriars Bridge; but the names of William and the Earl of Chatham still live in William-street, Earl-street, and Chatham-place.

Mylne’s success was owing, in a great measure, to the exertions of his friend, John Paterson, City Solicitor; and they being of the Anti-Wilkes party, and of the same country as Lord Bute, the unpopular First Minister of the Crown, Churchill, in his poem founded on the Cock-lane Ghost story, has scathed both Mylne and Paterson.

The Bridge was built of Portland stone, and consisted of nine semi-elliptical arches, then introduced about the first time in this country, in opposition to Gwyn, who, in his design, proposed the semicircular arch. The columns were the most objectionable feature in Mylne’s design, architecturally; for the line of the parapet being a curve, the pillars were necessarily of different heights and diameters. Between 1833 and 1840, the Bridge was thoroughly repaired by Walker and Burgess, at an expense of 74,0352., it is stated at a loss to the contractors. The foot and carriage ways were lowered; the removal of the balustrades, and the substitution of a plain parapet, altogether spoiled the architectural beauty of the structure. It is traditionally said that our great landsape-painter, Richard Wilson, used to make frequent visits to Blackfriars Bridge, to study the magnificent view of St. Paul’s Cathedral obtained from it. q At length, the Court of Common Council resolved to build a new Bridge upon the

W-” site of the old Bridge, but much wider; and the design of Joseph Cubitt was selected ¦—to consist of five iron arches, surmounted by an ornamental cornice and parapet, and the iron floor covered with a layer of concrete, and paved with granite; each of the four piers having a massive i lumn o” red polished granite. A temporary wooden bridge 900ft. in length, having three arches of 75ft. span tor the river traffic; the carriage-way is 26ft. wide, aid above it, at an elevation of 16ft., two footways, each 9ft. wide, were erected: the old bridge was then closed, and its demolition commenced forthwith; the rubble and masonry above the arch-turnings was nearly 20,000 tons weight. The cost of this Bridge, four equestrian statues, and the temporary bridge, is stated at 265,0002., or 32. per foot super. At 150 feet eastward an iron lattice girder-bridge hud been constructed for the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway.

Vauxhall Bridge, communicating with Millbank, had, in consequence of disputes, four engineers : Ralph Dodd, Sir Samuel Bentham, John Rennie, F.R.S.; and lastly, James Walker, who carried the design into effect at the expense of a public Company. The Bridge is of cast-iron, but was originally intended to be of stone: hence the narrowness of the nine arches, which would not have been necessary for an iron structure. The first stone of the pier begun byhe pier be Mr. Rennie was laid by Lord Dundas, as proxy for the Prince Regent, May 9, 1811. The building was then suspended, but transferred to Mr. James Walker; the first stone of the resumed works was laid by the late Duke of Brunswick, August 21, 1813; and on June 4, 1816, the bridge was opened.

The width of the river is 900 feet at this Bridge, the length of which, clear of the abutments, is 806 feet; its 9 arches are each 78 feet span, and its 8 piers, each 13 feet wide; height of centre arch, at high water, 27 feet. The bridge cost upwards of 300,0002.; its half-year’s clear revenue from tolls in 1849-50 was 29862. 3*. 4d. The low grounds west of the bridge, and formerly known as the Neathouse Gardens, were elevated to a level with the Pimlico-road, by transporting hither the soil excavated from St. Katherine’s Docks; and upon this artificial foundation several streets were built. The roadway on the south side crosses the site of the Cumberland Tea Gardens.

Waterloo Bridge has been dignified by Canova as ” the noblest bridge in the world,” and by Baron Dupin as ” a colossal monument worthy of Sesostris and the Caesars.” It was partly projected by George Dodd, the engineer, and designed for him by John Linnell Bond, architect, who died in 1837 ; but the bridge was eventually built for a public Company by John Rennie, F.R.S. It crosses the Thames from the Strand, between Somerset Place and the site of the Savoy, to Lambeth, at the” centre . ^, of the site of Cuper’s Gardens, where the first stone was laid October 11, 1811.

This Bridge consists of nine semi-elliptical arches, each 120 feet span and 35 feet high, supported on piers 20 feet wide at the springing of the arches; with “useless and inappropriate Grecian-Doric columns between the piers, surmounted by the anomalous decoration of a balustrade upon a Doric entablature.”— (Elmes.) The width of the Thames at this part is 1326 feet at high water; the entire length of the bridge is 2456 feet—the bridge and abutments being 1380 feet, the approach from the Strand 310 feet, and the land-arch causeway on the Surrey side 766 feet. The roadway upon the summit of the arches is carried upon brick arches to the level of the Strand ,• and by a gentle declivity upon a series of brick arches over the roadway upon the Surrey bank of the river to the level of the roads near the Obelisk by the Surrey Theatre. This district, until the building of the Bridge, was known as Lambeth Marsh, was low-lying and swampy, with thinly scattered dwellings; but in a few years it became covered with streets of houses.

The Bridge is built of granite, ” in a style of solidity and magnificence hitherto unknown. There elliptical arches, with inverted arches between them to counteract the lateral pressure, were carried to a greater extent than in former bridges; and isolated coffer-dams upon a great scale in a tidal river, with steam-engines for pumping out the water, were, it is believed, for the first time employed in this country; the level line of roadway, which adds so much to the beauty as well as the convenience of the structure, was there adopted.”— (Sir John Rennie, F.R.S!) The Bridge was opened by a procession of the Prince Regent and the Dukes of York and Wellington, y^ and a grand military cavalcade, on June 18, 1817, the second anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, whence it is named. The Bridge itself cost about 400,000?., which, by the expense of the approaches, was increased to above a million of money—a larger sum than the cost of building St. Partoilding ul’s, the Monument, and seven of our finest metropolitan churches. It has been a ruinous speculation to the Company, the tolls amounting to little more than 20,000?. per annum.

Formerly, the average number of suicides annually committed from Waterloo Bridge was 40; in September, 1841, there were nine attempts made, within a few days, to commit suicide from Blaekfriars Bridge.

Southwark Bridge, designed by John Rennie, F.R.S., was built by a public Company, and cost about 800,000/. It consists of three cast-iron arches: the centre 240 feet span, and the two side arches 210 feet each, about forty-two feet above the highest spring-tides : the ribs forming, as it were, a series of hollow masses, or voussoirs, similar to those of stone, a principle new in the construction of cast-iron bridges, and very successful. The whole of the segmental pieces and the braces are kept in their places by dove-tailed sockets and long cast-iron wedges, so that bolts are unnecessary ; although they were used during the construction of the bridge, to keep the pieces in their places until the wedges had been driven. The spandrels are similarly connected, and upon them rests the roadway of solid plates of cast iron, joined by iron cement. The piers and abutments are of stone, founded upon timber platforms, resting upon piles driven below the bed of the river. The masonry is tied throughout by vertical and horizontal bond-stones, so that the whole acts as one mass in the best position to resist the horizontal thrust. The first stone was laid by Admiral Lord Keith, May 23, 1815, the Bill for erecting the Bridge having been passed May 6, 1811. The iron-work, weight 5700 tons, had been so well put together by the Walkers, of Rotherham, the founders, and the masonry hy the contractors, Jolliffe Banks; that when the work was finished, scarcely any sinking was discernible in the arches. From experiments made to ascertain tWI extent of the expansion and contraction between the extreme range of winter and summer temperature, it was found that the arch rose in the summer about 1 inch to 1| inch. The works were commenced in 1813, and the bridge was opened by lamp-light, March 24, 1819, as the clock of St. Paul’s Cathedral tolled midnight. Towards the middle of the western side of the bridge is a descent from the pavement to a steamboat pier. The bridge was opened free of toll, for six months, by the Lord Mayor (Lawrence), Nov. 8, 1864, with a view to its purchase, ultimately, by the City of London.

” Within a fraction, London Bridge has as much traffic as all the rest put together, the proportions being—London equal to all; Westminster half of London; Blackfriars half of Westminster; Waterloo one third of Blackfriars; and Southwark one-fourth of Waterloo.”— Bennoch on the Bridges of London, 1853.

Hungerford Suspension-Bridge,from Hungerford Market to Belvedere Road, Lambeth, was constructed by I. K. Brunei, F.R.S., and was a fine specimen of mechanical skill. It consisted of two lofty brick piers, or towers, in the Italian style, designed by Bun-ning, 58 feet above the road, and built in brickwork and cement on the natural bed of the river, without pi/p>r, withles. In the upper part of these towers, four chains passed over rollers, so as to equalize the strain: they carried the platform or roadway, in two lines, with single suspension rods, 12 feet apart; the chains being secured in tunnels at the abutments to iron girders, embedded in brickwork and cement, and strengthened with concrete. There were three spans, the central one between the piers being 676^ feet, or 110 feet wider than the Menai Bridge; and second only to the span of the wire suspension-bridge atFribourg, which is nearly 900 feet. The length between the abutments of the Hungerford Bridge was 1352^ feet. The roadway was in the centre 32 feet above high-water mark, or 7 feet higher than the crown of the centre arch of Waterloo Bridge. The height above the piers was 28^ feet. Thus was gained additional height for the river traffic, and a graceful curve, with the appearance of swagging prevented. The Bridge was commenced in 1841, and was built without any scaffolding but a few ropes, consequently, without impediment to the navigation of the river. The iron-work, between 10,000 and 11,000 tons, was by Sandys and Co., Cornwall. The entire cost of the Bridge was 110,000/., raised by a public Company. The toll was a halfpenny each person each way. The Bridge was opened May 1, 1845, when, between noon and midnight, 36,254 persons passed over. Hungerford was then the great focus of the Thames steam-navigation, the embarkations and landings here exceeding 2,000,000 per annum. The Bridge was taken down in 1863, and the chains were carried to Clifton, for the Suspension-Bridge erecting there. Upon its site has been constructed the Bridge for the Charing Cross Extension of the South Eastern Railway : it has on each side a foot-path and ornamental balustrade ; and in the centre four lines of rails, expanding fanwise into seven lines on approaching the Charing Cross terminus. The Bridge for carrying the Railway across the Thames to the City terminus, in Upper Thames-street, is similar to the Charing Cross Bridge, but 12 feet wider.

Hammersmith Suspension-Bridge is one of the most elegant structures of its kind j and, unlike other suspension-bridges, has part of the roadway supported on, and not hanging from, the main chains. The weight of the masonry abutments on each bank is 2160 tons, to resist the pull of the chains. Cost, 80,000/.; engineer, W. Tierney Clarke; first stone laid by the Duke of Sussex, May 7,1826; finished 1827.

Chelsea Sttspension-ISbidge, opened in 1858, forms a communication between Pimlico, Belgravia, and Chelsea, on one side of the Thames, and Battersea Park, and the neighbourhood, on the other (the Middlesex roadway crossing the site of Rane-lagh), and was built with funds granted by Parliament in 1846; Geo. Gordon Page, engineer. The length of the Bridge is 704 feet: it consists of a centre opening of 333 feet, with two side openings 166 feet 6 inches each. The piers terminate in

curved cutwaters: the width of the Bridge is 47 feet; the roadway at the centre of the Bridge is 24 feet 6 inches above high-water, and has a curve of 18 inches rise, commencing at the abutments. The towers and ornamental portions are of cast-iron. The girders and flooring of the platform are of wrought iron: ironwork by Howard, Ravenhill, & Co. The piers are built upon caissons, below which the ironwork spreads out at the bottom on bed-plates that rest upon York stone landings, laid on piles, and concrete supports; externally, the piers are cased with ornamental ironwork. The abutments and piers rest upon piles driven 20 feet beyond low-water mark. On each side of the carriage way is a tram for heavy traffic. A very large amount of additional strength is obtained over the ordinary suspensionPalry susp construction by two longitudinal lattice girders, of wrought iron, which separate the roadway from the footpaths. At each end of the bridge are rectangular lodges, with terra-cotta terminations. The four iron towers that rise from the caissons and piers have their upper portions of moulded copper, gilded and painted to resemble bronze, and crowned with globular lamps. The towers bear the royal arms and V. A. Yet, this public way across the Thames—although built ostensibly with the public money to afford the inhabitants of Middlesex access to Battersea/ree park—had a horse, carriage, and foot toll, an anomaly which was loudly reprehended.

At a short distance eastward is the Bridge for the Victoria Station and Pimlico Railway; the ironwork by Bray and Waddington, of Leeds; Fowler, engineer; opened in 1860. The stone piers, and the framework of the spandrels of the four flat and segmental iron arches, each 175 feet span, and the iron cornice, render this one of the handsomest railway bridges over the Thames.

Lambeth Suspension Bridge, connects Horseferry-road, Westminster, with Church-street, Lambeth, P. W. Barlow, engineer; and though constructed for both carriage and foot traffic, it cost, including the approaches, only 40,000Z. Its entire length is 1040 feet; it has three spans of 280 feet each, of wire cable, bearing wrought-iron platforms, suspended from piers, each of two iron cylinders, 12 feet in diameter, sunk into the London clay, 18 feet below the bed of the river, filled with concrete and brickwork; the novelty consists in placing under the bridge, on each side, a longitudinal tubular iron girder, a cross girder between, so as to reduce to the minimum the upward, downward, and lateral movement.

BUCKLERSBURY,

A SHORT street at the point where the Poultry meets Cheapside: here formerly stood the great Conduit which brought water from Conduit Mead, near Oxford-road and Paddington. Stow writes: ” Bucklersbury, so called of a manor and tenements pertaining to one Buckle, who dwelt there, and kept his courts.” The manor-house, in Stow’s time, bore the sign of the Old Barge, from its being said, that when Walbrook lay open, barges were rowed or towed out of the Thames up here: hence the present Barge Yard. Bucklersbury was a noted place for grocers and apothecaries, drugsters and furriers. In Shakspeare’s days it was, probably, a herb-market; for he has the comparison of smelling ” like Buckler’s-bury in simple-time.”— {Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iii. sc. 3.)

BUNHILL-FIELDS,

NEAR Finsbury-square, one of the three great fields of the manor of Finsbury, J-‘ named Bonhill Field, Mallow Field, and the ” High Field, or Meadow Ground, where the three windmills stand;” Bonhill was erected in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, on a deposit made of ” more than 1000 cartloads” of bones removed from the charnel of old St. Paul’s, which, it is believed, gave rise to the name Bonehill or Bunhill Fields. In 1553, a lease was granted to the Corporation of this with other land, being the property of the Prebendal Stall of Finsbury, in St. Paul’s Cathedral; and by various renewals of this lease, the Corporation held the land until 1769, when the last of the leases expired. Prior to this the Statute of Charles II. had passed, by which persons of all degrees were prohibited from granting leases of Church property

for longer periods than forty years; and thus, in 1769, the growth of London having rendered it desirable that the land should be built over, a private Act was passed authorizing the then Prebend, Dr. Wilson, to lease the land to the Corporation for ninety-nine years, upon the terms of two-sixths of the net income to be received by them being paid to the Prebend as his own property (in lieu of any fine for the grant of the lease), one-sixth to the Prebendal Stall, and the remaining three-sixths to be retained by the Corporation. This lease will expire in 1868. Wilson-street is named from the Prebend, the Rev. Dr. Wilson.

The earliest known record of the Bunhill-fields themselves, as distinguished from the rest of the land in the lease, is that the City leased them to one Tindal, for fifty-one years, from Christmas, 1661: in that lease they are described as meadow-land, and the lease contains a provision for the citizens using them for recreation. Both this provision and the description of the land are at direct variance with its having been used as a place of burial up to that date. In four years, afterwards, however (1665), London was visited with the Great Plague, and in the next year with the Great Fire; and it is extremely probable that in the disturbance of social order which these two visitations caused, the living sought for their dead a burial-place outside the City, and found it at Bunhill-fields. Certain it is, that before the expiration of Tindal’s lease it had become a burial-ground. As such, however, the Corporation had nothing to do with it, until the year 1788, when they determined not to renew the lease, but take it into their own hands, and so it has remained to this day.

Since 1788 the Prebend has year by year received his moiety of the income of the ground as a cemetery, and as that cemetery now reverts to those claiming under the Prebend, i.e., the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, they have imposed upon them the obligation of preserving the ground for the purpose for which they have received the money. There remains but one point from which liability is sought to be imposed upon the Corporation. It is said the Act of Parliament authorized the renewal of the lease in perpetuity, and that the City, through their negligence in not having obtained a renewal of the lease, must indemnify the owners of graves. It were to be wished, for the City’s sake, that the renewal were authorized, as they lose in 1868, through the expiring of the lease, an income of 4O,000Z. per annum; but, unfortunately, this is not the fact. The mistake has arisen from the marginal note saying the lease is renewable ; but there is nothing in the Act to warrant the note, and no one at this distance of time can explain how the error has arisen.— (Communicated to the City Press.)

Curll published a Register of the interments here to 1717, with the inscriptions, &c Among these are the following:—

” Here lyeth interred the body of Edward Tucker, late of Weymouth, who (by his own prediction) departed this life, March 4th, 1706-7, aged 86 years.” “This ground, six foot long eastward, is bought for Elizabeth Chapman.” This notice is valuable, as conclusively showing that, even at that early period, graves were sold in perpetuity, and any attempt to sell the soil for secular purposes would be a most unwarrantable desecration. ” Here lyeth the body of Francis Smith, Bookseller, who in his youth was settled in a separate congregation, sustaining, between 1659 and 1688, great persecutions, by Imprisonments, exile, fines, and for printing petitions for caling of a Parliamene if a Part, with several things against Popery. After nearly 40 imprisonments, he was fined 5001. for printing and selling the speech of a noble peer, and three times suffered corporeal punishment. He was for said fine five years a prisoner in the King’s Bench, ‘which hard duress utterly impaired his health. He dyed House-keeeper in the Custom House, December 22nd, 1691.” Engraved on the side of a handsome tomb, ” Mordecai Abbott, Esq., Receiver-General of His Majesty’s Customs, obiit 29 Feby. 1699, setat. 43:

Here Abbott, virtue’s great example, lies, The charitable, pious, just, and wise; But how shall fame in this small Table paint The Husband, Father, Master, Friend, and Saint? A soul on Earth so ripe for glory found; So like to theirs, who are with glory crown’d, That ’tis less strange such worth so soon should go To Heaven, than that it staid so long below.”

Mr. A. J. Jones, in a volume published in 1849, gives a transcript of most of the inscriptions that remained in Bunhill-fields at that period, about three hundred.

Among the eminent persons interred here, in an altar-tomb, east end of the ground, is Dr. Thomas Goodwin, the Independent preacher, who attended Oliver Cromwell on his deathbed. Also Dr. John Owen, Dean of Christchurch and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford when Cromwell was Chancellor j he preached the first sermon before the Parliament after the execution of Charles I. But more attractive is the resting-place of John Bunyan, in the vault of his friend Strudwick, the grocer, Holborn Bridge, at whose house Bunyan died. His name is not recorded in the Register, nor is it in Curll’s List; hut the place was long marked by a monument, with this inscription:—” Mr. John Bunyan, Author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, oh. 31 Aug. 1688, aet. 60.

The ‘ pilgrim’s* progress now is finished, And Death has laid him in this earthly bed.”

This inscription was cut many years after Bunyan’s funeral. Southey tells us, with grave humour, ” People like to be buried in company, and in good company. The Dissenters regarded Bunhill Fields’ Burial-ground as their Campo Santo, and especially for Bunyan’s sake. It is said that many have made it their desire to be interred as near as possible to the spot where his remains are deposited.” In May, 1852, the above me- ^ morial was replaced by an altar-tomb, upon which is the recumbent figure of Bunyan, book in hand; the end panels have sculptures from The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Here, too, sleeps Lord-Deputy Fleetwood, of the Civil Wars, Oliver Cromwell’s sou-in-law, and husband of the widow of Ireton: there was a monument to his memory, which has been obliterated or removed.

Here also rest Dr. Daniel Williams, founder of the Library in Redcross-street; John ^ Dunton, author of his own Life and Errors ; the Rev. D. Neal, author of the History of the Puritans; Dr. Lardner, author of the Credibility of the Gospel History; Dr. John Guise, Dr. Gill, Dr. Stennett, Dr. Harris; Dr. Richard Price, author of Reversionary Payments; Dr. Henry Hunter, Dr. Fisher, the Rev. Theophilus Lindsey; Dr. A. Rees, editor of the Cyclopaedia; George Walker, of Nottingham and Manchester ; and the Rev. Thomas Belsham, the Unitarian Minister.

Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, who was born and died in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, is buried in Bunhill-fields, with his second wife, the spot unknown. The entry in the register, written, probably, by some ignorant person who made a strange blunder of his name, is as follows :— ” 1731, April 26. Mr. Dubow, Cripple-gate.” Here lies, with a headstone to her memory, Susannah Wesley, mother of John Wesley, founder of the people called Methodists; and Charles Wesley, the first person who was called a Methodist. Near the centre of the ground is a monument to Dr. Isaac Watts; Joseph Ritson, the antiquary, lies here, spot unmarked; William Blake, the painter and poet, 25 feet from the north wall, without a monument; and Thomas Stothard, R.A., best known by his Canterbury Pilgrimage. Near the street rails is a monument to Thomas Hardy, who was tried for treason in company with John Home Tooke. Hardy’s memorial bears a long and somewhat defiant semi-political inscription.

In 1864, Mr. Deputy Charles Reed, F.S.A., presented to the Common Council a memorial, influentially signed, praying the Court to take steps for the preservation of Bunhill-fields burial-ground. This memorial eloquently says :—

” In this burying-ground are interred men whose memory and writings are among the most precious of our national heirlooms ; some of the most fearless asserters of civil and religious liberty at critical periods of our history; notable men of all professions and of all religious communities; divines, artists, reformers; a crowd of worthies and confessors whose learning, piety, and public services not only adorned the age in which they lived, but have proved a permanent blessing to the land, and whose names the world will not willingly let die. The Nonconformist bodies, especially, look upon this as the holy field of their illustrious dead, because here lie buried those whose remains were refused interment in the graveyards of the churches in which they had long faithfully ministered, and whose memory is reverently cherished in the hearts and homes of their religious descendants.”

George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, is erroneously said to have been buried here ; but he lies in Coleman-street, which was part of Finsbury Manor Farm, and was, before Fox’s death, acquired by the Friends as their place of interment; besides, the Friends were looked upon in no favourable manner by the other dissenting bodies, who had acquired Bunhill-fields. In Fox’s diary it is related how, after the meeting in White Hart Court, Gracechurch-street, he went to Henry Goldney’s, close by, and there admitted to others that ” he thought he felt the cold strike to his heart as he came out of the meeting.” It was ” the 13th of the 11th month,” 1690, being in the 67th year of his age, that Fox died. On the day appointed for his interment a meeting of Friends was held in White Hart Court, and ” the body was borne, accompanied by very great numbers, to the Friends’ burying-ground, near Bunhill Fields.” Hasty readers have inferred from this that it was in the larger cemetery George Fox was buried.

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