London is too vast a place to be traversed in the limited time which strangers usually have at their disposal. Nevertheless, we may rapidly survey the main lines of route from east to west, with some of the branching offshoots. All the more important buildings, and places of public interest, will be found specially described under the headings to which they properly belong.
The most striking view in the interior of the city is at the open central space whence Threadneedle Street, Cornhill, Lombard Street, King William Street, Walbrook, Cheapside, and Princes Street, radiate in seven different directions. (See illustration.) While the corner of the Bank of England abuts on this space on the north, it is flanked on the south by the Mansion House, and on the east by the Royal Exchange. It would be a curious speculation to inquire how much money has been spent in constructions and reconstructions in and around this spot during half a century. The sum must be stupendous. Before new London Bridge was opened, the present King William Street did not exist; to construct it, houses by the score, perhaps by the hundred, had to be pulled down. Many years earlier, when the Bank of England was rebuilt, and a few years later, when the Royal Exchange was rebuilt, vast destructions of property took place, to make room for structures larger than those which had previously existed for the same purposes. For some distance up all the radii of which we have spoken, the arteries which lead from this heart of the commercial world, a similar process has been going on to a greater or less extent. Banking-houses, insurance-offices, and commercial buildings, have been built or rebuilt at an immense cost, the outlay depending rather on the rapidly increasing value of the ground than on the actual charge for building. If this particular portion of the city, this busy centre of wealth, should ever be invaded by such railway schemes as 1864, 1865, and 1866 produced, it is difficult to imagine what amounts would have to be paid for the purchase and removal of property. Time was when a hundred thousand pounds per mile was a frightful sum for railways; but railway directors (in London at least) do not now look aghast at a million sterling per mile—as witness the South-Eastern and the Chatham and Dover Companies, concerning which we shall have to say more in a future page.
Bank of England, Royal Exchange, Mansion House, &c. (Cornhill, Lombard, Threadneedle Streets.) [16]
The seven radii of which we have spoken may be thus briefly described, as a preliminary guide to visitors: 1. Leaving this wonderfully-busy centre by the north, with the Poultry on one hand and the Bank of England on the other, we pass in front of many fine new commercial buildings in Princes and Moorgate Streets; indeed, there is not an old house here, for both are entirely modern streets, penetrating through what used to be a close mass of small streets and alleys. Other fine banking and commercial buildings may be seen stretching along either side in Lothbury and Gresham Streets. Farther towards the north, a visitor would reach the Finsbury Square region, beyond which the establishments are of less important character. 2. If, instead of leaving this centre by the north, he turns north-east, he will pass through Threadneedle Street between the Bank and the Royal Exchange; King William Street, Gracechurch Street, &c. (Bank and Royal Exchange in the distance.) next will be found the Stock Exchange, on the left hand; then the Sun Fire Office, and the Bank of London (formerly the Hall of Commerce); on the opposite side the City Bank, Merchant Taylor’s School, and the building that was once the South Sea House; beyond these is the great centre for foreign merchants in Broad Street, Winchester Street, Austin Friars, and the vicinity. 3. If, again, the route be selected due east, there will come into view the famous Cornhill, with its Royal Exchange, its well-stored shops, and its alleys on either side crowded with merchants, brokers, bankers, coffee-houses, and chop-houses; beyond this, Bishopsgate Street branches out on the left, and Gracechurch Street on the right, both full of memorials of commercial London; and farther east still, Leadenhall Street, with new buildings on the site of the late East India House, leads to the Jews’ Quarter around Aldgate and Houndsditch—a strange region, which few visitors to London think of exploring. “Petticoat Lane,” perhaps one of the most extraordinary marts for old clothes, &c., is on the left of Aldgate High Street. It is well worth a visit by connoisseurs of queer life and character, who are able to take care of themselves, and remember to leave their valuables at home. 4. The fourth route from the great city centre leads through Lombard Street and Fenchurch Street—the one the head-quarters of the great banking firms of London; the other exhibiting many commercial buildings of late erection: while Mincing Lane and Mark Lane are the head-quarters for many branches of the foreign, colonial, and corn trades. 5. The fifth route takes the visitor through King William Street to the Monument, Fish Street Hill, Billingsgate, the Corn Exchange, the Custom House, the Thames Subway, the Tower, the Docks, the Thames Tunnel, London Bridge, and a host of interesting places, the proper examination of which would require something more than merely a brief visit to London. Opposite this quarter, on the Surrey side of the river, are numerous shipping wharfs, warehouses, porter breweries, and granaries. The fire that occurred at Cotton’s wharf and depÔt and other wharfs near Tooley Street, in June, 1861, illustrated the vast scale on which merchandise is collected in the warehouses and wharfs hereabout. [18] Of the dense mass of streets lying away from the river, and eastward of the city proper, comprising Spitalfields, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Stepney, &c., little need be said here; the population is immense, but, excepting the Bethnal Green Museum and Victoria Park, there are few objects interesting; nevertheless the observers of social life in its humbler phases would find much to learn here. 6. The southern route from the great city centre takes the visitor, by the side of the Mansion House, through the new thoroughfare, Queen Victoria Street—referred to at a previous page—to the river-side.
It will therefore be useful for a stranger to bear in mind, that the best centre of observation in the city is the open spot between the Bank, the Mansion House, and the Royal Exchange; where more omnibuses assemble than at any other spot in the world; and whence he can ramble in any one of seven different directions, sure of meeting with something illustrative of city life. The 7th route, not yet noticed, we will now follow, as it proceeds towards the West End.
The great central thoroughfare of Cheapside, which is closely lined with the shops of silversmiths and other wealthy tradesmen, is one of the oldest and most famous streets in the city—intimately associated with the municipal glories of London for centuries past. Many of the houses in Cheapside and Cornhill have lately been rebuilt on a scale of much grandeur. Some small plots of ground in this vicinity have been sold at the rate of nearly one million sterling per acre! On each side of Cheapside, narrow streets diverge into the dense mass behind—Ironmonger Lane, King Street, Milk Street, and Wood Street, on the north; and among others, Queen Street, Bread Street, where Milton was born, and where stood the famous Mermaid Tavern, where Shakespeare and Raleigh, Ben Jonson and his young friends, Beaumont and Fletcher, those twin-dramatists, loved to meet, to enjoy “the feast of reason and the flow of soul,” to say nothing of a few flagons of good Canary wine, Bow Lane, and Old ’Change, on the south. The greater part of these back streets, with the lanes adjoining, are occupied by the offices or warehouses of wholesale dealers in cloth, silk, hosiery, lace, &c., and are resorted to by London and country shopkeepers for supplies. Across the north end of King Street stands the Guildhall; and a little west, the City of London School and Goldsmiths’ Hall. At the western end of Cheapside is a statue of the late Sir Robert Peel, by Behnes. Northward of this point, in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, are the buildings of the Post and Telegraph Offices; beyond this the curious old Charter House; and then a line of business streets leading towards Islington. Westward are two streets, parallel with each other, and both too narrow for the trade to be accommodated in them—Newgate Street, celebrated for its Blue Coat Boys and, till the recent removal of the market to Smithfield, for its carcass butchers; and Paternoster Row, still more celebrated for its publishers and booksellers. In Panyer Alley, leading out of Newgate Street, is an old stone bearing the inscription:
When ye have sovght the citty rovnd,
Yet stil this is the highst grovnd.
Avgvst the 27, 1688. [20]
Old stone
At the west end of Newgate Street a turning to the right gives access to the once celebrated Smithfield and St. John’s Gate. South-west of Cheapside stands St. Paul’s Cathedral, that first and greatest of all the landmarks of London. In the immediate vicinity of St. Paul’s, the names of many streets and lanes (Paternoster Row, Amen Corner, Ave Maria Lane, Creed Lane, Godliman Street, &c.) give token of their former connection with the religious structure and its clerical attendants. The enclosed churchyard is surrounded by a street closely hemmed in with houses, now chiefly dedicated to trade: those on the south side being mostly wholesale, those on the north retail. An open arched passage on the south side of the churchyard leads to Doctors’ Commons, once the headquarters of the ecclesiastical lawyers.
St. Paul’s, West End of Cheapside, Paternoster Row, &c. (Newgate Street and Fleet Street in the distance.)
Starting from St. Paul’s Churchyard westward, we proceed down Ludgate Street and Ludgate Hill, places named from the old Lud-gate, which once formed one of the entrances to the city ‘within the walls.’ The Old Bailey, on the right, contains the Central Criminal Court and Newgate Prison, noted places in connection with the trial and punishment of criminals. On the left of Ludgate Hill is a maze of narrow streets; among which the chief buildings are the new Ludgate Hill Railway Station, Apothecaries’ Hall, and the printing office of the all-powerful Times newspaper, in Printing-House Square. The printer of the Times, Mr. Goodlake, if applied to by letter, enclosing card of any respectable person, will grant an order to go over it, at 11 o’clock only, when the second edition of “the Thunderer” is going to press. At the bottom of Ludgate Hill we come to the valley in which the once celebrated Fleet River, now only a covered sewer, ran north and south from St. Pancras to Blackfriars, where it entered the Thames. A new street, called Victoria Street, formed by pulling down many poor and dilapidated houses, marks part of this valley; while Farringdon Street, where a market, mostly for green stuff, is held, occupies another part. Newgate Street and Ludgate Hill are on the east of the Fleet Valley; Holborn and Fleet Street on the west. The Holborn Valley Viaduct crosses at this spot. And of this wonderful triumph of engineering skill we have now to speak.
Holborn Valley Viaduct
It was an eventful day in the annals of the Corporation of the City of London, when Queen Victoria, on November 6, 1869, declared Blackfriars Bridge—about which more hereafter—and Holborn Valley Viaduct formally open. The Holborn Valley improvements, it should be remembered, were nothing short of the actual demolition and reconstruction of a whole district, formerly either squalid, over-blocked, and dilapidated in some parts, or over-steep and dangerous to traffic in others. But a short time ago that same Holborn Valley was one of the most heart-breaking impediments to horse-traffic in London. Imagine Holborn Hill sloping at a gradient of 1 in 18, while the opposite rising ground of Skinner Street—now happily done away—rose at about 1 in 20. Figure to yourself the fact, that everything on wheels, and every foot passenger entering the City by the Holborn route, had to descend 26 feet to the Valley of the Fleet, and then ascend a like number to Newgate, and you will at once see the grand utility of levelling up so objectionable a hollow. To attempt to give a stranger to London even a faint idea of what has been accomplished by Mr. Haywood’s engineering skill, by a necessarily brief description here, is an invidious task. Nevertheless, we must essay it; premising, by-the-by, that if our readers while in London do not go to see the Viaduct for themselves, our trouble will be three parte thrown away. The whole structure is cellular, to begin with. To strip the subject of crabbed technicalities, imagine for a moment a long succession of—let us call them—railway-like arches supporting the carriage-way: these large vaults being available for other purposes. Outside this carriage-way, and under the edge of the foot-paths on either side, is a subway, some 7 feet wide and 11 feet or so high. Against the walls of this sub-way are fixed, readily connectable, gas mains and water mains and telegraph tubes. This was the first time all these important pipes had been so cleverly arranged in one easily accessible place. They are ventilated and partially lighted through the pavement, and by gas. Under each sub-way goes a sewer, with a path beside it for the sewer men when at work. Outside the sub-way are ordinary house vaults of two or three storeys high, according to the height of the Viaduct. These are divided by transverse walls; and, when houses are built against it, the Holborn Valley Viaduct will be shut out from sight, except in the case of the simple iron girder bridge over Shoe Lane, and the London, Chatham, and Dover bridge, with its sub-ways for gas and water pipes, and the fine bridge over Farringdon Street. You will, we trust, now see how marvellously every yard of space has been utilized by the engineer, from the roadway down to the very foundations. A few words must now be said about the splendid bridge over Farringdon Street. This has public staircases running up inside handsome stone buildings—the upper parts of which have been let for business purposes. It is a handsome skew bridge of iron, toned to a deep bronze green by enamel paint, and richly ornamented; its plinths above ground, its moulded bases, and its shafts, are respectively of grey, black, and exquisitely polished red granite. Its capitals are of grey granite, also polished, and set off by bronze foliage. Bronze lions, and four statues of Fine Art, Science, Commerce, and Agriculture, stand on the parapet-line on handsome plinths. These, and the projecting balconies and dormer window of the stone buildings just named, with their four statues of bygone civic worthies,—Fitz Aylwin, Sir William Walworth, Sir Thomas Gresham, and Sir Hugh Myddleton,—enhance the effect of the whole.
Poor Chatterton, “the marvellous boy, the sleepless soul that perished in his pride,” after poisoning himself, in 1770, ere he was eighteen years of age, in Brooke Street, on the north side of Holborn, was laid in a pauper’s grave, in what was then the burying-ground of Shoe Lane Workhouse, and is now converted to very different purposes.
Let us now come to Fleet Street. This thoroughfare—the main artery from St. Paul’s to the west—for many years has been emphatically one of literary associations, full as it is of newspaper and printing-offices. The late Angus B. Reach used humorously to call it, “The march of intellect.” Wynkyn de Worde, the early printer, lived here, and two of his books were “fynysshed and emprynted in Flete Streete, in ye syne of ye Sonne.” The Devil tavern, which stood near Temple Bar, on the south side, was a favourite hostelrie of Ben Jonson. At the Mitre, near Mitre Court, Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, and Boswell, held frequent rendezvous. The Cock was one of the oldest and least altered taverns in Fleet Street. The present poet-laureate, in one of his early poems, “A Monologue of Will Waterproof,” has immortalized it, in the lines beginning—
“Thou plump head waiter at the Cock,
To which I most resort,
How goes the time? Is ’t nine o’clock?
Then fetch a pint of port!”
Fleet Street from Mitre Court to Temple Bar. (The Temple, the River, Lambeth, and Houses of Parliament in the distance.)
Dr. Johnson lived many years either in Fleet Street, in Gough Square, in the Temple, in Johnson’s Court, in Bolt Court, &c., &c.; and in Bolt Court he died. William Cobbett, and Ferguson the astronomer, were also among the dwellers in that court. John Murray (the elder) began the publishing business in Falcon Court. Some of the early meetings of the Royal Society and of the Society of Arts took place in Crane Court. Dryden and Richardson both lived in Salisbury Court. Shire Lane (now Lower Serle’s Place), close to Temple Bar on the north, can count the names of Steele and Ashmole among its former inhabitants. Izaak Walton lived a little way up Chancery Lane. At the confectioner’s shop, nearly opposite that lane, Pope and Warburton first met. Sir Symonds D’Ewes, ‘Praise-God Barebones,’ Michael Drayton, and Cowley the poet, all lived in this street. Many of the courts, about a dozen in number, branching out of Fleet Street on the north and south, are so narrow that a stranger would miss them unless on the alert. Child’s Banking House, the oldest in London, is at the western extremity of Fleet Street, on the south side, and also occupies the room over the arch of Temple Bar. St. Bride’s Church exhibits one of Wren’s best steeples. St. Dunstan’s Church, before it was modernized, had two wooden giants in front, that struck the hours with clubs on two bells—a duty which they still fulfil in the gardens belonging to the mansion of the Marquis of Hertford in the Regent’s Park. North of Fleet Street are several of the Inns of Court, where lawyers congregate; and southward is the most famous of all such Inns, the large group of buildings constituting the Temple. In the cluster of buildings lying east from the Temple once existed the sanctuary of Whitefriars, or Alsatia, as it was sometimes called, a description of which is given by Scott in the Fortunes of Nigel. The streets here are still narrow and of an inferior order, but all appearance of Alsatians and their pranks is gone. The boundary of the city, at the western termination of Fleet Street, is marked by Temple Bar, consisting of a wide central archway, and a smaller archway at each side for foot-passengers. There are doors in the main avenue which can be shut at pleasure; but, practically, they are never closed, except on the occasion of some state ceremonial, when the lord mayor affects an act of grace in opening them to royalty. The structure was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and erected in 1672. The heads of decapitated criminals, after being boiled in pitch to preserve them, were exposed on iron spikes on the top of the Bar. Horace Walpole, in his Letters to Montague, mentions the fact of a man in Fleet Street letting out “spy-glasses,” at a penny a peep, to passers-by, when the heads of some of the hapless Jacobites were so exposed. The last heads exhibited there were those of two Jacobite gentlemen who took part in the rebellion of 1745, and were executed in that year. Their heads remained a ghastly spectacle to the citizens till 1772, when they were blown down one night in a gale of wind.Having thus noticed some of the interesting objects east of Temple Bar, we will now take
