George’s Church, and beyond it through Blackman Street towards New Town or Newington”--the mazes of courts and alleys on either side of the Borough Road which may be traced in the maps long after Stow’s time. So again in St Olave’s parish along the river bank eastwards from London Bridge--“continual building on both sides, with lanes and alleys, up to Battle Bridge, to Horsedown, and towards Rotherhithe.” In the Western Liberty, the lanes that had been laid out in Henry VIII.’s time, Shoe Lane, Fetter Lane and Chancery Lane, served as three main arteries to the densely populated area between Fleet Street and Holborn, but for the rest it was reached by a plexus or _rete mirabile_ of alleys and courts, notorious even in the 19th century. In like manner Drury Lane and St Martin’s Lane were the main arteries between High Holborn and the Strand. One piazza of Covent Garden was a new centre of regular streets, to which the haberdashers and other trades were beginning to remove from the City, for greater room, about 1662. The Seven Dials were a wonder when they were new, about 1694, and had the same intention of openness and regularity as in Wren’s unused design for the City after the fire. The great speculative builder of the Restoration was Nicholas Barbone, son of Praise-God Barbones. He built over Red Lion Fields, much to the annoyance of the gentlemen of Gray’s Inn[149], and his manner of building may be inferred from the following: “He was the inventor of this new method of building by casting of ground into streets and small houses, and to augment their number with as little front as possible, and selling the ground to workmen by so much per foot front, and what he could not sell build himself. This has made ground-rents high for the sake of mortgaging; and others, following his steps, have refined and improved upon it, and made a superfoetation of houses about London[150].”