CHAPTER VI

LONDON AFTER THE FIRE

Let us turn to London rebuilt after the Fire. The City now began to grow outside the walls with determination; it was found impossible to stop its expansion any longer. London spread out long arms and planted colonies, so to speak; the craftsmen, driven out of their old quarters in the City by the increase of trade, and consequently of warehouses, quays, shops, and offices, settled down in the new colonies. The City joined hands with Westminster; it ran houses along Holborn to the Tyburn Road; it reared a suburb at Bloomsbury; it turned Clerkenwell into a crowded town; it made settlements at Ratcliffe, Mile End, and Stepney; it created a river-side population beyond Wapping (_see_ Appendix VI.)

The map of Porter, _circa_ 1660 (London Topographical Society, 1898), shows us the suburbs of that date.

Beginning with the east, we find a continuous line of houses “on the wall between St. Katherine’s and Limehouse.” Wapping contains two streets parallel with the river; at intervals there are stairs. What was afterwards Ratcliffe Highway is a broad road with cottages on either side, half a mile long; on the north of this road are fields intersected by country lanes. Stepney Church stands in the middle of fields. In the Whitechapel Road there are no houses beyond the church. On the north-east of the Tower is a broad open area, on the north of which stand, apparently, some of the remains of Eastminster. In the Minories, however, we look in vain for the ruins of the nunnery, though these were undoubtedly still standing at the time. Petticoat Lane, running into Wentworth Street, is the only street leading out of Whitechapel. On the north of Wentworth Street are the Spittle Fields; the Cloister and Cross of St. Mary Spital are visible. Lines of houses run north along Bishopsgate Street as far as Shoreditch Church.

North-east of Moorfields are Finsbury Fields. Cripplegate Without and Clerkenwell are thickly populated, including the Barbican, Chiswell, Red Cross, White Cross, and Grub Street. Goswell Street, as far north as the Charterhouse, Little Britain, Long Lane, and St. John Street, West Smithfield, were enclosed. There were houses as far west as St. Giles’s. Between Holborn and the Strand, or Fleet Street, lay Fetter Lane and Chancery Lane; between them large gardens; Lincoln’s Inn Fields was an open area of irregular shape, the gardens of Lincoln’s Inn occupying the same position as to-day. New Inn and Clement’s Inn have a garden behind them; Drury Lane is an open road; Covent Garden is the “Piazzo.” Along the river-side are Bridewell, Whitefriars, nearly all a garden; the Temple, Essex House, Arundel House, Somerset House, The Savoy, Worcester House, Durham House, Buckingham House, Northampton House, Whitehall, each in its own broad garden. There are no houses in Pall Mall; none in the Haymarket, except a “Gaming House” in the north-east corner. Piccadilly is “Pecadilly Mall” without a single house. Westminster consists of King Street and the lanes round the Abbey.

On the south side there is a fringe of houses on the river wall, forming a street extending for nearly a mile east of London Bridge; there are houses in “Barmisie” Lane; a single street, ending with St. George’s Church; another fringe of houses west of the Bridge, nearly as far as the bend of the river to the south. A theatre is still standing—or is it a house for bear-baiting?—apparently on the site of the Globe. There is a strange and unexpected street, with houses on either side, in the very middle of Lambeth Marsh. And with these exceptions, and a few cottages dotted about, there are no houses south of the river at all. The whole of the low-lying ground is covered with gardens, orchards, and meadows.

{Transcription: DURHAM HOUSE SALISBURY HOUSE WORCESTER HOUSE.

_The three Houses above represented, stood on the banks of the Thames nearly adjoining each other. DURHAM HOUSE, the first in the Plate, occupied the spot called DURHAM YARD, now the ADELPHI, and was built by Ant^y. Bec Bish^p. of Durham, as a town residence for the Bishops of that See. SALISBURY HOUSE was erected by Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, in the reign of James I. and covered the site of the present Salisbury and Cecil Streets. WORCESTER HOUSE, originally belonged to the See of Carlisle. It afterwards came into the possession of the Earls of Worcester. Edw^d. the last Earl of Worcester died here in 1627. His son Hen^y. being created Duke of Beaufort, it was called BEAUFORT HOUSE, and the Site is now called BEAUFORT BUILDINGS. The above View was taken about the year 1630._}

Turning now to the new London as it was after the Fire, we have Ogilby’s excellent map of 1677 (_see_ Map) showing the whole of London from Somerset House to St. Katherine by the Tower, and from the river to Clerkenwell, Chiswell Street, and Norton Folgate. It does not, indeed, include Westminster or Southwark. This map is an exact survey of the town as it was during the latter part of the seventeenth century, making allowance for some increase of houses in the northern suburbs. It is on the large scale of 100 feet to the inch; it presents every building, every street, and every lane, court, and alley. It consists of twenty sheets. I propose to pass this map under review, taking the streets in line from west to east.

The area of the City within the walls, according to Ogilby, was 380 acres; including the Liberties, it was 680 acres; the length from Temple Bar to Whitechapel Bar is 9256 feet, or one mile, six furlongs, and a pole; the breadth from the Bars of Bishopsgate to the Bridge 4653 feet, or seven furlongs and two poles. If we include the suburbs, the distance between Blackwall inclusive and St. James’s Street is nearly six miles; between St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, and the end of Blackman Street, Southwark, is two and a half miles.

In Clerkenwell, we observe, taking St. James’s Church as a centre, that on the north side, apparently on the site of the Cloister, there lies a garden surrounded by buildings named “The Duke of Newcastle.” On the south-east side is the churchyard; on the west and south-west are Clerkenwell Close and Clerkenwell Green. A hundred yards north-west of the church stands the “New Corporation Court Yard” with its “Bridewell Yard” and the “New Prison Walk” leading to it. Behind the Court Yard is a “Churchyard for Clerkenwell.” Beyond and west of the Court are bowling fields, ponds—one of them a ducking pond—pasture lands, and private gardens; the houses are few. In the south part, however, round Hockley in the Hole, at the east end of which is a pond, the houses stand thickly with small gardens and open courts. Clerkenwell Green leads into St. John Street where the Inns begin. Here are the White Horse Yard and the Red Bull Yard; here are Aylesbury House and Gardens, 500 feet long by 200 feet broad. The east side of the street is lined with houses, apparently of the humbler kind, for they have no gardens and are divided by narrow alleys or lanes. On the north lie “Gardiners’ Gardens,” that is, market gardens. Between St. John’s Street and Goswell Street are fields and woods, belonging to the Charter House. Old Street runs out of Goswell Street, and like the east side of that street and the east side of St. John’s Street, it is lined with small houses and narrow alleys. Between Goswell Street and Bunhill Fields lies a quarter thickly inhabited and covered with houses. Golden Lane and White Cross Street run across this district in a north-west direction. Between the two streets, on the north of Playhouse Yard, is a churchyard, and on the Bunhill side are gardens behind the houses; the largest of them is not more than 80 feet square. There is no church in this thickly populated area, more than a quarter of a mile long by nearly as much broad. It is evidently a place inhabited by the craftsmen, most of whom have ceased to live any longer in the City. The houses and gardens of Bunhill overlooking the “New Artillery Garden” remind us that many of the citizens had already begun to live out of town. Continuing east, beyond the Artillery Garden, we find Upper Moorfields, with trees planted on all four sides and paths intersecting; a large area called “Butchers’ Close or Tenter Field,” and a thickly built part bounded on the north by Hog Lane, and on the east by Norton Folgate. Here, again, the abundance of narrow alleys and the houses without gardens proclaim a humble population. Shoreditch is lined with houses; on its east side lies a large open space called Porter Close, with Spital Fields beyond. Two or three streets are fully built, but the vacant spaces are many and wide. No church is on this part of the map, except St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch. We observe on the west of Norton Folgate two or three of the little streams which formerly ran across the moor here; they lie open for a little space and then disappear again.

The second line of maps carries us from east to west in the latitude of Gray’s Inn. The only buildings of the Inn are South Square, Gray’s Inn Square, and the Hall and Chapel. The rest of the Inn is planted thickly with trees, or lies open, a beautiful garden. Not far to the east of Gray’s Inn are the great gardens of Furnival’s Inn. Between Gray’s Inn Road and the Fleet River lies a quarter thickly populated on the west and the east, but with many open spaces, especially on either side of Hatton Garden and Saffron Hill. What were these open spaces? They were not gardens, or the fact would have been indicated; they were not enclosed. Were they simply open spaces, the playground of children, the retreat of pickpockets? In this place, apparently, no gentlefolk dwelt, and there is no church.

We now cross over the Fleet and find ourselves in the classic regions of Turnmill Street, Cow Cross, and Chick Lane. Here, however, we are in a suburb which has been occupied and partly built over since the twelfth century. North of Chick Lane is the new churchyard of St. Sepulchre’s, re-discovered recently when excavations took place which revealed stacks of human bones regularly laid and piled. I believe that these bones were moved from the old churchyard, which seems the only way to account for their great number, and the regular method of laying them. They have now been moved to some consecrated ground, and the place is built over. St. John’s Lane leads to St. John’s Gate, and Berkeley House and Gardens are on the west side; the great houses of the Elizabethan period are replaced by mean tenements. On the south side of St. John’s Street is “Hix’s” Hall. Further south, again, passing through the Bars, we are in Smithfield. The church of Little St. Bartholomew was not yet within the Hospital; that of St. Bartholomew the Great shows the ambulatory and the Lady Chapel, but not the transepts. Charter House shows the Courts as at present; on the east side of Charterhouse Yard are the houses and gardens of the Marquis of Dorchester and Lord Gray. St. Bartholomew’s Close is a large open space; Cloth Fair and the narrow streets around it are much the same to-day as then; the whole area is covered with narrow alleys and courts with narrow openings. Between Aldersgate Street and Little Moor Fields lies a suburb thickly built over except on the northern portion south of Chiswell Street, where the houses are more scattered and there are gardens and, apparently, small fields. The same remarkable abundance of open courts approached by narrow passages that has been already mentioned may be observed here. East of Aldersgate, and just under the wall at the Cripplegate angle, are the gardens of Thanet House. North of Barbican are those of Bridgewater House. St. Giles’s Church has taken over a part of the town ditch for an extension of its churchyard; the wall is encroached upon on both sides by buildings, but a strip on the south side is still left free from buildings. As regards the portion of the City included in this street, it will be noticed farther on. The upper field has trees planted along its sides and diagonally from point to point shading two intersecting fields; the lower field has also trees along its sides and two paths across at right angles, also planted with trees. On these fields the people turned out by the Fire encamped until they could rebuild their houses; it is, however, impossible to describe the great number of streets east and west of the Fields, without feeling sure that the houses afforded lodgings, better or worse, for the great majority of the homeless. On the south of Moorfields stood the New Bethlehem Hospital, a long narrow building on the outside of the wall, a piece of which has been cut down to afford an entrance from the City. The old churchyard of Bethlehem, about 200 feet by 300 feet, lay on the north-east side of Lower Moorfields; the site of St. Mary Bethlehem is preserved in the name of a street or court: “Bethlehem”—between the yard and Bishopsgate Street Without. St. Botolph’s without Bishopsgate has taken a large piece of the town ditch for an extension of churchyard; the lane running along its north side leads into Petty France, now called North Broad Street. All the ground about this part is now swallowed up by the Liverpool and Broad Street Stations. Bishopsgate Street Without, with the ground east and west, is completely built up and covered with houses. The site of Old Artillery Garden is still marked by Artillery Lane, which led into it. East of Bishopsgate Street we find Petticoat Lane, Wentworth (then called Wentford) Street, Brick Lane, Carter Street, Fashion Street, Dean and Tower Streets, and other streets and lanes, lined with houses but not yet filled in with courts; the houses, in nearly all cases, have gardens behind them. One wishes for a drawing of one of these early Whitechapel streets, but in vain. Tenter fields fill up the spaces not yet built over.

We next come to the third line of maps. On the north of this line runs the noble highway of Holborn; on its north side we pass Warwick House, Gray’s Inn; and Brook House, evidently a stately building in the form of a court, with a gateway to the street and gardens behind; this is separated from Furnival’s Inn by a narrow lane. The Inn, whose gardens we have already noticed, presents in plan an oblong outer court, a hall and chapel, and an unfinished inner court; Ely House has a court, gardens and buildings, and a hall. In the street itself stands the Middle Row, only taken down a few years ago; at its east end, and just west of Staple Inn, are the Holborn Bars. We next observe Chancery Lane; its west side is largely taken up with Lincoln’s Inn. The Inn itself consists of the first two courts, the chapel, and the hall; the rest is all garden, open on the east to Chancery Lane, and on the west to the Fields. Lincoln’s Inn Fields are not enclosed and are crossed by paths; the south side is occupied by “Portugal Row.” South of the Inn, on the ground now covered by part of New Square and by part of the High Courts of Justice, is an open space called Lower Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the existence of which appears to have been neglected by writers on topography. On the east side of Chancery Lane there are continuous houses, and behind them the gardens of Staple Inn, the Rolls with the Master’s house, the chapel, and the gardens.

Following the south side of Holborn we find Staple Inn, much as it is at the present day, but with fine and spacious gardens; Barnard’s Inn, as it was before it was turned into a school; Fetter Lane, where most of the houses still had gardens; Thavies Inn, with its two courts and its small garden; and St. Andrew’s Church and Churchyard. The labyrinth of undistinguished streets called Harding Street, New Street, etc., is almost the same in 1677 as at present, save that it was not as yet the Printers’ Quarter.

At the end of Holborn is Holborn Bridge, crossing the Fleet, which is here called the New Canal; barges and boats lie upon it. At the back of the street now called Farringdon Street, facing the stream, are two burial yards, one belonging to St. Andrew’s, Holborn; the other, lower down, to St. Bride’s, Fleet Street; on the west side a great number of narrow streets branch off to the east, ending at Snow Hill and the Old Bailey. Newgate Prison lies north and south of the Gate, quite separated from the court. The Gate and wall crossed the road 200 yards east of Giltspur Street. Passing over Holborn Bridge we can walk up Snow Hill, which leads us to St. Sepulchre’s Church and Newgate, or we can keep straight on through Cock Lane to Giltspur Street, Pie Corner, and St. Bartholomew’s and Smithfield. The Hospital consists apparently of one court only. Three large churchyards lie round it: that of St. Bartholomew the Less; that called “Bartholomew Churchyard,” and the “Hospital Churchyard,” on the site of the town ditch. In front of Newgate Prison stood a block of buildings like the Middle Row of Holborn, Butcher’s Row in the Strand, or Holywell Street; on the west side the narrow street was called the Little Old Bailey. Among the courts leading out of the Little Old Bailey we observe Green Arbour Court, afterwards the residence of Oliver Cromwell.

The next sheet is altogether within the City.

We then come to Aldgate and Whitechapel. The eastern limits of the map run through Goodman’s Fields, in 1677 really open fields. We observe that from Aldgate to the Tower, the site of the town ditch is still left open. A broad space not built over lies across the site of the Minories.

The last line of streets begins with Somerset House. Taking the north side we find Lyon’s Inn between Holywell Street and Wych Street; Clement’s Inn and New Inn, side by side, each with its two courts and its garden; Butcher Row, built in the middle of the Strand, and a labyrinth of courts, lanes, and yards lying between Clement’s Inn and Bell Yard, the whole now occupied by the High Courts of Justice; Clifford’s Inn lies north of St. Dunstan’s Church in Fleet Street.

On the south side we get Somerset House and Gardens, soon to be all built over; the two Temples with their gardens—a vast number of wherries are waiting at the Temple Stairs—and the Whitefriars Precinct, between Whitefriars Lane and Water Lane, where there is a dock for barges. St. Bride’s is called St. Bridget’s; the Palace of Bridewell, with its two courts and two gateways, is represented as still standing. The Duke’s Theatre on the south-east side of Salisbury Court perhaps accounts for the number of wherries gathered at the stairs.

Passing over the City we come to the Tower, and beyond the Tower to the eastern boundary of our map. As to the crowded lanes and courts on the other side of the Tower, there is nothing to say about them; they belong to the Precinct of St. Katherine, now almost entirely converted into a dock.

We have thus gone all round the City from Somerset House west to St. Katherine’s east, and from the City wall on the south to Clerkenwell on the north. These were no longer rural retreats or villages; they were, for the most part, completely built over and laid out in streets; there were among them half a dozen noblemen’s houses. As there were none left in the City, it is certain that the former connection between the City and the nobility had been well-nigh destroyed; but not quite. Prince Rupert is said to have lived in the Barbican, and there are still the houses we have found in Ogilby and those along the riverside between the Temple and Westminster. In all these suburbs there are as yet no new churches, and for all these crowded suburbs, only ten old churches. There are few schools. In the seventeenth century was begun the fatal neglect of the populace, formerly living in the City under surveillance and discipline, taught, trained, and kept in their place. This was the creating cause of the terrible London mob of the next century. What could be expected, when a vast population was allowed to grow up without guidance, without instruction, without religion, and without even a police? We observe also that outside the City there was a great number of market gardens, with gardens at the back of every house until the space is wanted, when courts and alleys are run into them. The Londoner always loved a garden, and had one as long as he could (_see_ Appendix VII.).

Let us next, very briefly, consider the City of 1677 as represented by this map. It is eleven years after the Fire. It is sometimes stated, loosely, that it took a great many years to rebuild London. The statement is only true as regards the churches and the companies’ halls. The City itself was rebuilt with every possible despatch. As for the plans prepared by Wren and Evelyn, they came under the consideration of the Council after the people had begun with feverish haste to clear away the rubbish and to rebuild. The actual alterations made by order of the Mayor were carefully enumerated by Maitland, and will be found in their place (Appendices V. and VI.).

We must remember that the people, deprived of their shops and their warehouses, huddled together in temporary huts erected on Moorfields, with the winter before them, or lodged in the mean tenements of the suburbs, living on bounty and charity, were eager to get back to their own places. Every man claimed his own ground; every heap of rubbish was the site of a house; every house had its owner or its tenant; without a workshop or his counter there was no means of making a livelihood. Therefore, even before the ashes were cooled, the people were picking their way through the encumbered lanes, crying “Mine! Mine!” and shovelling away the rubbish in order to put up the walls anew. The improvements ordered by the Mayor were not, one fears, carried out exactly; we know by sad experience the difficulty of getting such an order or a regulation obeyed. If we look into Ogilby’s map we see plainly that as regards the streets and courts, London after the Fire was very much the same as London before the Fire; there were the same narrow streets, the same crowded alleys, the same courts and yards. Take, for instance, the small area lying between Bread Street Hill on the west and Garlick Hill on the east, between Trinity Lane on the north and Thames Street on the south: is it possible to crowd more courts and alleys into this area? Can we believe that after the Fire London was relieved of its narrow courts with this map before us? Look at the closely-shut-in places marked on the maps, “1 g., m. 46, m. 47, m. 48, m. 40.” These are respectively, Jack Alley, Newman’s Rents, Sugar Loaf Court, Three Cranes Court, and Cowden’s Rents. Some of these courts survive to this day. They were formed, as the demand for land grew, by running narrow lanes between the backs of houses and swallowing up the gardens. There were 479 such courts in Ogilby’s London of 1677, 472 alleys, and 172 yards, besides 128 inns, each of which, with its open courts for the standing of vehicles, and its galleries, stood retired from the street on a spot which had once been the fair garden of a citizen’s house.

The projecting upper stories had disappeared; wooden houses and thatched roofs were no longer permitted; moreover, the hot breath of the Fire had burned up the infected soil, the noisome laystalls, and the plague-smitten churchyards; the wreck and rubbish of the Fire had choked the wells fed from the contaminated soil: these were not, for the most part, reopened. As for the churches, we know the date of the rebuilding of every one. In 1677 there were only about twenty rebuilt out of all the eighty-seven which were burned down; a white square space on the map indicates the site of a church not yet rebuilt.

The picturesqueness of London had been lost; gables, projecting stories, casement windows gave place to a straight façade, and flat square windows with sashes. In this map of 1677 we step from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century. And the most ardent admirer of Wren will hardly aver that his cathedral and his churches were externally more beautiful, while they were much less venerable, than those which they replaced.

The demand for land and its value was shown in the curious way in which many of the churches were built. Some had houses beside and over the porch; some against the north or south side: as, for instance, the church of St. Ethelburga, which still has houses built before the west front; the churches of St. Peter Cornhill, St. Mary le Bow, and St. Michael, the church of St. Alphege, all hidden by houses. The old craft quarters had by this time almost disappeared. But there were still places which continued to keep what modern tradesmen call a “line.” Linen-drapers and toymen were found in Fleet Street; here also jewellers held raffles; mutton was sold in Newgate Market; beef in Leadenhall; veal at St. James’s; the cheesemongers set up their shops in Thames Street; second-hand booksellers round Moorfields; second-hand clothes-men in Monmouth Street: fruit was sold in Covent Garden; mercers were always faithful to Cheapside; bankers and money-lenders were found in Lombard Street; milliners had stalls in the upper rooms of the Royal and the New Exchange.

The frays and feuds between the crafts, which constantly arose during the earlier centuries, had almost become things of the past: but in 1664 the weavers and the butchers reminded the elders of the good old days by one more burst of brawling and fighting. It seems strange that so peaceful a creature as the weaver came oft victorious. The weavers marched triumphantly about the streets offering a hundred pounds for the production of a butcher, and the blue smocks stayed at home in the shambles of Newgate, inglorious and defeated. And a butcher, too! a man of blood and slaughter! The streets, with the exception of Cheapside and Ludgate Hill, were not used by ladies as a place of walking and meeting. The merchants met on ’Change; the lawyers had their Inns of Court; for social and convivial purposes there were the taverns. Nor were the streets used greatly for purposes of locomotion; if a man wished to go from the Tower stairs to Blackfriars or from the Temple to Westminster, he took a boat; the Thames was, and continued until the nineteenth century, the great highway of the City; thousands of boats and barges plied up and down the river; the old ferry—the ferry of St. Mary Overies—still crossed the river above the bridge; that called the Horseferry still crossed the river at Westminster. It was a great deal easier and shorter to take oars than to walk, to ride, or to take a “glass coach”: one of the newly invented machines which replaced the old coach, with its perforated sides for windows. No one thought it a scandal that the watermen on the river should exchange language which in these days would drive every decent man or woman from the boats for ever. It was natural that rough and coarse men, like the watermen, should use rough and coarse language. The ladies of Charles the Second’s time heard coarseness unparalleled from these fellows with much the same air with which ladies of our own time pass a group of working-men energetically strengthening every assertion with the universal adjective. They hear, but they do not hear.

As we already know, shooting London Bridge was a dangerous feat except at high and low water. Some of the boats were tilt boats, covered, that is, with a tilt or awning of canvas to keep off the rain; they were a kind of omnibus, and ran between Greenwich and London, with other lines. Most of them, however, were wherries of the kind which still survive, though they are now little used. It is melancholy to look at the river of to-day above Bridge and to compare its silence and loneliness with the animation and bustle of two hundred years ago, when it was covered with boats taking passengers up and down the river, barges with parties, stately barges of the Mayor and the Companies, Royal barges, cargo-freighted barges, boats with anglers moored in mid stream, tilt boats, sailing boats, and every conceivable kind of small craft. When the Queen came down from Hampton Court ten thousand boats accompanied her.

We read a great deal about the insanitary condition of the City, the narrow lanes, the projecting storeys nearly meeting at the top, the laystalls and the stinking heaps of offal and refuse, which were not abolished by the Fire but only burnt up. No doubt these things were bad; probably they contributed to the spread of the Plague. However, the City was as healthy as any town in the world, as cities then went; it stood upon a broad tidal river which swept up a fresh wind with every tide—twice a day; the City was less than half a mile in breadth, and on all sides it was surrounded by open spaces and broad moorland. Fresh pure air on every side, without a town to speak of for twenty miles around. Moreover it stood upon a hill, or many hills; the ground sloped to the river and to the two streams; the climate had always been rainy, and the rain washed the streets and carried away the decaying matter.

There were public latrines in the streets and cesspools at the back of every house; carts went about for the collection and removal of things which require removal; they emptied their contents sometimes in the river, unless they were stopped; sometimes in “laystalls,” of which there continued to be many outside the walls. One need do no more than indicate the sanitary condition of a great town without any sewers.

Pepys, in one of his observations upon the effects of the Fire, says that the Royal Exchange “is now made pretty” by having windows and doors before all the shops to keep off the cold. So that before 1666 the shops in the Royal Exchange were mere stalls open to the cold and wind. This, I take it, was the condition of nearly all the shops at that time; they had no doors, and if any glass in front, then only in the upper parts.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS