Chapter 2
The graveyard which surrounds the church is supposed to have been the ancient interment-ground of the hospital. The first mention of it in the parish books is in 1628, when three cottages were pulled down to increase its size. It was enlarged again in 1666. Part of the old hospital wall enclosing it remained until 1630, when it fell down, and after the lapse of some time a new wall was built. In St. Giles's Churchyard were buried Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Shirley, Roger L'Estrange, Andrew Marvell, and Richard Pendrell, who assisted in Charles II.'s escape; his altar-tomb is easily seen near the east end of the church. By 1718 the graveyard had risen 8 feet, so that the church stood in a pit or well. The further burial-ground at St. Pancras was taken in 1805, and after that burials at St. Giles's were not very frequent. Pennant was one of the first to draw attention to the disgraceful overcrowding of the old graveyard. There seem to have been several gates into the churchyard with the right of private entry, one of which was used by the Duchess of Dudley. The most remarkable gate, however, was at the principal entrance to the churchyard, and was known as the Resurrection Gate, from an alto-relievo of the Last Day. This was erected about 1687, and was of red and brown brick. The composition of the relievo is said to have been borrowed, with alterations, from Michael Angelo's work on the same subject. In 1765 the north wall of the churchyard was taken down, and replaced by the present railing and coping. In 1800 the gate was removed, and replaced by the present Tuscan gate, in which the sculpture has been refixed. This stood at first on the site of the old one on the north of the churchyard, but was removed to the west side, where it at present stands in an unnoticeable and obscure position. It was probably placed there in the idea that the new road, Charing Cross Road, would run past.
Denmark Street "fronts St. Giles Church and falls into Hog Lane, a fair broad street, with good houses well inhabited by gentry" (Strype).
This description is no longer applicable. Denmark Place was once Dudley Court, and the house here with a garden was given by the Duchess of Dudley as a rectory for the parish. The Court or Row was built on the site of the house previous to 1722.
Broad Street is one of the most ancient streets in the parish, and there were a few houses standing on the north side when the rest of the district was open ground. It was the main route westward for many centuries, until New Oxford Street was made.
The procession from Newgate to Tyburn used to pass along Broad Street, and halt at the great gate of the hospital, in order that the condemned man might take his last draught of ale on earth. An enterprising publican set up a tavern near here in 1623, and called it the Bowl. He provided the ale free, and no doubt made much profit by the patronage he received thereby. The exact site of the tavern was in Bowl Yard, which ran into Broad Street near where Endell Street now is. Among Cruikshank's well-known drawings is a series illustrating Jack Sheppard's progress to the gallows.
The parish almshouses were built in the wide part of Broad Street on ground granted by Lord Southampton, but were removed as an impediment to traffic in 1783 to the Coal Yard, near the north of Drury Lane. A row of little alleys--Salutation, Lamb's, Crown, and Cock--formerly extended southward over the present workhouse site. There are still one or two small entries both north and south. The immense yard of a well-known brewery fills up a large part of the south side, and a large iron and hardware manufactory on the north gives a certain manufacturing aspect to the street. The Holborn Municipal Baths are in a fine new building on the south side.
About High Street, which joins Broad Street at its west end, there is surely less to say than of any other High Street in London. In 1413 the gallows were set up at the corner where it meets Tottenham Court Road. But even previously to this executions had taken place at Tyburn, and soon Tyburn became the recognised place of execution. Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, is the most notable name among the victims who suffered at St. Giles. He was hung in chains and roasted to death over a slow fire at this spot as a Lollard.
After they had been removed from the end of Broad Street, to make way for the almshouses, the parish pound and cage stood on the site of the gallows until 1765. There was here also a large circular stone, where the charity boys were whipped to make them remember the parish bounds.
The space to the north of the High and Broad Streets was previously a notorious rookery. Dyott Street, which still exists, though cut in half, had a most unenviable reputation. The Maidenhead Inn, which stood at the south-east corner of this, was a favourite resort for mealmen and country waggoners. There was in this street also a tavern called the Turk's Head, where Haggart Hoggarty planned the murder of Mr. Steele on Hounslow Heath in 1802. Walford mentions also Rat's Castle, a rendezvous for all the riff-raff of the neighbourhood. Dyott Street was named after an influential parishioner of Charles II.'s time, who had a house here. It was later called George Street, but has reverted to the original name.
South of Great Russell Street there were formerly Bannister's Alley and Eagle and Child Yard running northwards. From the former of these continued Church Lane, to which Maynard Lane ran parallel. Bainbridge, Buckridge, and Church Streets ran east and westward. Of these Bainbridge remains, a long, narrow alley bounded by the brewery wall. Mayhew says that here "were found some of the most intricate and dangerous places in this low locality."
The part of the parish lying to the north, including Bedford Square, must be for the present left (see p. 98), while we turn southwards.
New Compton Street is within the former precincts of the hospital. When first made it was called Stiddolph Street, after Sir Richard Stiddolph, and the later name was taken from that of Sir Frances Compton. Strype says, "All this part was very meanly built ... and greatly inhabited by French, and of the poorer sort," a character it retains to this day.
Shaftesbury Avenue, opened in 1885, has obliterated Monmouth Street, named after the Duke of Monmouth, whose house was in Soho Square (see _The Strand_, this series). Monmouth Street was notorious for its old-clothes shops, and is the subject of one of the "Sketches by Boz." Further back still it was called Le Lane, and is under that name mentioned among the hospital possessions.
The north end of Shaftesbury Avenue is in the adjoining parish of St. George's, Bloomsbury, but must for sequence' sake be described here. A French Protestant chapel, consecrated 1845, which is the lineal descendant of the French Church of the Savoy, stands on the west side. Near at hand is a French girls' school. Further north is a Baptist chapel, with two noticeable pointed towers and a central wheel window. Bedford Chapel formerly stood on the north side of this. In the lower half of the Avenue there are several buildings of interest. The first of these, on the east side, is for the medical and surgical relief of all foreigners who speak French. Below this is a chapel belonging to the Baptists, and further southward a working lads' home, established in 1843, for homeless lads at work in London. In connection with it are various homes in the country, both for boys and girls, and two training ships, the _Arethusa_ and _Chichester_.
All the ground to the south of Shaftesbury Avenue was anciently, if not actually a pond, at all events very marshy ground, and was called Meershelands, or Marshlands. It was subsequently known as Cock and Pye Fields, from the Cock and Pye public-house, which is supposed to have been situated at the spot where Little St. Andrew Street, West Street, and Castle Street now meet. The date at which this name first appeared is uncertain; it is met with in the parish books after 1666. In the reign of William III. a Mr. Neale took the ground, and transformed the great ditch which crossed it into a sewer, preparatory to the building of Seven Dials. The name of this notorious place has been connected with degradation and misery, but at first it was considered rather an architectural wonder. Evelyn, in his diary, October 5, 1694, says: "I went to see the building beginning near St. Giles, where seven streets make a star from a Doric pillar placed in the middle of a circular area, said to be built by Mr. Neale." Gay also refers to the central column in his "Trivia." The column had really only six dial faces, two streets converging toward one. In the open space on which it stood was a pillory, and the culprits who stood here were often most brutally stoned. One John Waller, charged with perjury, was killed in this manner in 1732.
In 1773 the column was taken down in a search for imaginary treasure. It was set up again in 1822 on Weybridge Green as a memorial to the Duchess of York, who died 1820. The dial was not replaced, and was used as a stepping-stone at the Ship Inn at Weybridge; it still lies on one side of the Green. The streets of Seven Dials attained a very unenviable reputation, and were the haunt of all that was vicious and bad. Terrible accounts of the overcrowding and consequent immorality come down to us from the newspaper echoes of the earlier part of the nineteenth century. The opening up of the new thoroughfares of New Oxford Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, and Charing Cross Road, have done much, but the neighbourhood is still a slum. The seven streets remain in their starlike shape, by name Great and Little White Lion Street, Great and Little St. Andrew Street, Great and Little Earl Street, and Queen Street.
Short's Gardens was in 1623 really a garden, and a little later than that date was acquired by a man named Dudley Short.
Betterton Street was until comparatively recently called Brownlow, from Sir John Brownlow of Belton, who had a house here in Charles II.'s time. The street is now, to use a favourite expression of Stow's, "better built than inhabited," for the row of brick houses of no very squalid type are inhabited by the very poor.
Endell Street was built in 1844, at the time of the erection of the workhouse. In it are the National Schools, a Protestant Swiss chapel, and an entrance to the public baths and wash-houses, to the south of which rise the towers of the workhouse. Christ Church is hemmed in by the workhouse, having an outlet only on the street. The church was consecrated in 1845. In Short's Gardens is the Lying-in Hospital, the oldest institution of the kind in England. On the west side, between Castle Street and Short's Gardens, the remains of an ancient bath were discovered at what was once No. 3, Belton Street, now 23 and 25, Endell Street. Tradition wildly asserts that this was used by Queen Anne. Fragments of it still remain in the room used for iron lumber, for the premises are in the occupation of an iron merchant, but the water has long since ceased to flow.
Drury Lane has been in great part described in _The Strand_, which see, p. 97. The Coal Yard at the north-east end, where Nell Gwynne was born, is now Goldsmith Street. Pit Place, on the west of Great Wild Street, derives its name from the cockpit or theatre, the original of the Drury Lane Theatre, which stood here. The cockpit was built previous to 1617, for in that year an incensed mob destroyed it, and tore all the dresses. It was afterwards known as the Phoenix Theatre. At one time it seems to have been used as a school, though this may very well have been at the same time as it fulfilled its legitimate functions. Betterton and Kynaston both made their first public appearance here. The actual date of the theatre's demolition is not known. Parton judges it to have been at the time of the building of Wild, then Weld, Street. Its performances are described, 1642, as having degenerated into an inferior kind, and having been attended by inferior audiences.
At the north-east end of Drury Lane is the site of the ancient hostelry, the White Hart. Here also was a stone cross, known as Aldewych Cross, for the lane was anciently the Via de Aldewych, and is one of the oldest roads in the parish; Saxon Ald = old, and Wych = a village, a name to be preserved in the new Crescent. It is difficult to understand, looking down Drury Lane to-day from Holborn, that this most mean and unlovely street was once a place of aristocratic resort--of gardens, great houses, and orchards. Here was Craven House, here was Clare House; here lived the Earl of Stirling, the Marquis of Argyll, and the Earl of Anglesey. Here lived for a time Nell Gwynne. Pepys says:
"Saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodgings door in Drury Lane in her smock-sleeves and bodice, looking upon one. She seemed a mighty pretty creature."
The Lane fell into disrepute early in the eighteenth century. The "saints of Drury Lane," the "drabs of Drury Lane," the starving poets of Drury Lane, are freely ridiculed by the poets of that time.
"'Nine years!' cries he, who high in Drury Lane, Lull'd by soft zephyrs through the broken pane, Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before term ends, Obliged by hunger and request of friends."
The boundary of St. Giles's parish runs down Drury Lane between Long Acre and Great Queen Street. Of the last of these Strype says: "It is a street graced with a goodly row of large uniform houses on the south side, but on the north side is indifferent." The street was begun in the early years of the seventeenth century, but the building spread over a long time, so that we find the "goodly row of houses" on the south side to have been built by Webb, a pupil of Inigo Jones, about 1646. A number of celebrated people lived in Great Queen Street. The first Lord Herbert of Cherbury had a house on the south side at the corner of Great Wild Street; here he died in 1648. Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Parliamentary General, lived here; also Sir Heneage Finch, created Earl of Nottingham; Sir Godfrey Kneller, when he moved from Covent Garden; Thomas Worlidge, the portrait-painter, and afterwards, in the same house, Hoole, the translator of Dante and Ariosto; Sir Robert Strange, the engraver; John Opie, the artist; Wolcott, better known as Peter Pindar, who was buried at St. Paul's, Covent Garden. Sheridan is also said to have lived here, and it would be conveniently near Drury Lane Theatre, which was under his management from 1776.
On the south side of the street are the Freemasons' Hall, built originally in 1775, and the Freemasons' Tavern, erected subsequently. Both have been rebuilt, and the hall, having been recently repainted, looks at the time of writing startlingly new. Near it are two of the original old houses, all that are left with the pilasters and carved capitals which are so sure a sign of Inigo Jones's influence.
On the north side of the street is the Novelty Theatre.
Great and Little Wild Streets are called respectively Old and New Weld Streets by Strype. Weld House stood on the site of the present Wild Court, and was during the reign of James II. occupied by the Spanish Embassy. In Great Wild Street Benjamin Franklin worked as a journeyman printer.
Kemble and Sardinia were formerly Prince's and Duke's Streets. The latter contains some very old houses, and a chapel used by the Roman Catholics. This is said to be the oldest foundation now in the hands of the Roman Catholics in London. It was built in 1648, and was the object of virulent attack during the Gordon Riots; the exterior is singularly plain. Sardinia Street communicates with Lincoln's Inn Fields by a heavy and quaint archway.
Even in Strype's time Little Queen Street was "a place pestered with coaches," a reputation which, curiously enough, it still retains, the heavy traffic of the King's Cross omnibuses passing through it. Trinity Church is in a late decorative style, with ornamental pinnacles, flying buttresses, and two deeply-recessed porches. Within it is a very plain, roomlike structure. The church is on the site of a house in which lived the Lambs, and where Mary Lamb in a fit of insanity murdered her mother. The Holborn Restaurant forms part of the side of this street; this is a very gorgeous building, and within is a very palace of modern luxury. It stands on the site formerly occupied by the Holborn Casino or Dancing Saloon.
Little Queen Street will be wiped out by the broad new thoroughfare from the Strand to Holborn to be called Kingsway (see plan).
Gate Street was formerly Little Princes Street. The present name is derived from the gate or carriage-entrance to Lincoln's Inn Fields.
In Strype's map half of Whetstone Park is called by its present title, and the western half is Phillips Rents. He mentions it as "once famous for its infamous and vicious inhabitants."
Great and Little Turnstile were so named from the turning stiles which in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries stood at their north ends to prevent the cattle straying from Lincoln's Inn Fields. The Holborn Music-hall in Little Turnstile was originally a Nonconformist chapel. After 1840 it served as a hall, lectures, etc., being given by free-thinkers, and in 1857 was adapted to its present purpose.
LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.--All the ground on which the present square is built formed part of Fickett's Field, which was anciently the jousting-place of the Knights Templars. A curious petition of the reign of Edward III. shows us that then it was a favourite recreation-ground or promenade for clerks, apprentices, students, as well as the citizens. In this petition a complaint is made that one Roger Leget had laid caltrappes or engines of iron in a trench, to the danger of those who walked in the fields. Inigo Jones was entrusted by King James I. to form a square of houses which should be worthy of so fine a situation. Before this time it appears that there had been one or two irregular buildings. Inigo Jones conceived the curious idea of giving his square the exact size of the Great Pyramid of Egypt, and it is accordingly the largest square in London. But when he had completed the west side only, the unsettled state of the country hindered further progress, and for many years the land lay waste, and was unenclosed save by wooden posts and rails; during this period it was the daily and nightly haunt of all the beggars, rogues, pickpockets, wrestlers, and vile vagrants in London. Gay thus speaks of it:
"Where Lincoln's Inn, wide space, is rail'd around, Cross not with venturous step; there oft is found The lurking thief, who, while the daylight shone, Made the walls echo with his begging tone: That crutch, which late compassion moved, shall wound Thy bleeding head, and fell thee to the ground. Though thou art tempted by the linkman's call, Yet trust him not along the lonely wall; In the midway he'll quench the flaming brand, And share the booty with the pilfering band. Still keep the public streets where oily rays, Shot from the crystal lamp, o'erspread the ways."
At this time three fields are mentioned as being included in the square--namely, Purse Field, Fickett's Field, and Cap Field. In 1657 the inhabitants made an agreement with Lincoln's Inn, to whom some of the rights of the Templars seem to have descended (Parton), as to the completion of the square. But even after the two further sides had been added, the centre seems to have been left in a disorderly and pestilent state, and it was not until 1735 that the place was properly laid out. In Strype's map of 1720 the sides are marked Newman's Row North, the Arch Row West, Portugal Row South, and the wall of Lincoln's Inn completes the fourth side. Strype speaks of the first two as being of large houses, generally taken by the nobility and gentry. The historical event of prominence connected with the centre of the square is the execution of William, Lord Russell, which took place here in 1683, on accusation of high treason and complicity in the Rye House Plot. He was beheaded in Lincoln's Inn Fields, lest the mob should rise and rescue him were he conveyed to the more public Tower Hill. In spite of his defiance of lawful authority, Russell's name has always been regarded as that of a patriot. He and Algernon Sydney are remembered as single-minded and high-souled men.
Many other executions were held in those fields, notably those of Babington and his accomplices in 1586, fourteen in all. They were "hanged, bowelled, and quartered, on a stage or scaffold of timber strongly made for that purpose, even in the place where they used to meet and conferre of their traitorous purposes." At present the centre of the square forms a charming garden, open free to the public, with fine plane-trees shading grass plots not too severely trimmed, and flocks of opal-hued pigeons add a touch of bird-life. It is true the grass is railed in, but the railings are not obtrusive, and do not interfere with the pleasure of those who sit on the seats or walk under the trees. Here is assuredly one of the places where we can most feel the fascination of London as we contrast the present with the past.
On the north side is the Inns of Court Hotel, a massive pile faced with stone, and with a portico of polished granite columns. This is on the site of an ancient hostelry in Holborn, the George and Blue Boar, a famous coaching inn (see p. 3).
The Soane Museum is further westward, and is differentiated from two similarly built neighbours by a slightly projecting frontage. It was the former residence of Sir John Soane, who left his collection to the nation. There are many valuable pictures, as well as curious and interesting objects. The museum is open free to the public on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday.
On the west side of the square, near Queen Street, stands a very solid mansion, known first as Powis, then as Newcastle House. The footway in Great Queen Street runs under an arcade on the north side of this house, which was built by the first Marquis of Powis, created Duke of Powis by James II., whom he followed into exile, and bought in 1705 by Holles, Duke of Newcastle, whose nephew, who led the Pelham Administration under George II., inherited it. Further south on the same side is Lindsey House, a large building with pilasters; this was built by Robert Bertie, Earl of Lindsey, and was later called Ancaster House. It was described by Hatton as a handsome building, with six spacious brick piers before it, surmounted by vases and with ironwork between. Only two of these vases remain. The fleurs-de-lis on the house over the Sardinia Street entry were put up in compliment to Queen Henrietta Maria, who was the daughter of Henry IV. of France. The third great house on this side was Portsmouth House, over Portsmouth Place.
The remainder of the houses have the same general character of stuccoed and pilastered uniformity, broken here and there by uncovered brick surfaces or frontages of stone. They are almost uninterruptedly occupied by solicitors. This is the oldest side of the square, being that built by Inigo Jones.
At the south corner of the square there is a quaint red-brick, gable-ended house, with a bit of rusticated woodwork. This is all part of the same block as the Old Curiosity Shop, supposed to be that described by Dickens.