(Originally named First Street, afterwards in the Records called Great and Broad Street; named Leyden Street in 1823.)

Walking around the brow of the hill through Carver Street, we pass the handsome vestry of the Baptist church, built in 1915, and next the Universalist church, erected in 1826 on the spot where stood the ancient Allyne House, one of the last of its architecture to disappear in the colony. Standing on this elevation, we can see the reason for the selection of this place for the settlement. There below us, are the waters of “the very sweet brook,” into which the “many delicate springs” still continue to run. How sweet they must have tasted to the palates of those poor stormtossed wayfarers, who for months had been drinking the ship’s stale water! Sweet and pure they are now as they were then. Then the brook came to the sea in its natural wildness, unfettered by bridge or dam. Where it met the waters of the ocean was quite a wide estuary, so that before the lower bridge was built schooners of considerable size were wintered here nearly up to the second bridge. Beyond it is the land where there was “much corn land cleared.” Just below the junction of Carver and Leyden streets they built their first building, a “common house.” In 1801, in digging a cellar at that place, several tools and a plate of iron were found, which without doubt were in this “common house.” This house was about twenty feet square, and thatched. It took fire in the roof Jan. 14, 1621, and the thatch was burnt. It was a common log house, such as built now by Western pioneers, and probably was not used many years. These articles found were probably left in it unnoticed when vacated and only came to light when the little colony to whom they were so useful had expanded into a great nation. A sign and bronze tablet now mark this spot.

“Mourt’s Relation” furnishes us an interesting record:—

“Thursday, the 28th (old style) of December, so many as could went to work on the hill, where we proposed to build our platform for our ordnance, and which doth command all the plain and the bay, and from whence we may see far into the sea, and might be easier impaled, having two rows of houses and a fair street. So in the afternoon we went to measure out the grounds; and first we took notice how many families there were, willing all single men that had no wives to join with some family, as they thought fit, so that we might build fewer houses; which done, and we reduced them to nineteen families.

“To greater families we alloted larger plots; to every person half a pole in breadth and three in length, and so lots were cast where every man should lie; which was done and staked out,” and this was laying out of Leyden Street, so named in 1823. An unfinished plan of this street is to be seen on the old records of the Colony, at the Registry of Deeds. The full plot of the little settlement was about as shown in the annexed line drawing.