The high value of every inch of space, in this crowded colony of workers, had in course of centuries caused many and various irruptions into the sacred precincts. But some of the worst encroachments may possibly have arisen in the beginning more from the action of venal and careless officials and rectors, than from outside greed. Thus, supposing that a parishioner had, by some means or other, obtained a corner of the church for the stowing of his lumber, and that he paid rent for it duly to the churchwardens; he being in time himself nominated churchwarden, the rent would lapse, himself and his heirs becoming eventually proprietors of the said corner. Thus it is that abuses creep in. The state of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, a half-century ago, must indeed have been grief, almost despair to the antiquary. A fringe factory occupied the "Lady-Chapel" and even projected into the apse; a school was held in the triforium; and a blacksmith's forge filled one of the transepts. The fringe factory cost no less than £6,000 to buy out; the blacksmith whose forge had been inside the church for 250 years, was removed for a sum of £2,000. In the north transept you may still see the stone walls and arches blackened with the smoke of the forge, and a curious white patch, yet remaining on the pillared wall, testifies to the exact spot where the blacksmith's tool-cupboard used to stand. The feet of the horses can hardly be said to have improved the Norman pillars. Pious legend is already busy with the history of the reconstruction of the church, and I was assured that in one case the compensation money did its recipient little good; for he immediately set himself, as the phrase goes, to "swallow it." But, indeed, all that remained of the old church was before 1864 so hemmed in on all sides by encroaching houses, that the work of "buying out" must have been one of immense difficulty and patience. Some few of the tenants have, it seems, proved very obdurate and grasping; these, however, are wisely left to deal with till the last. One window in the now cleared and restored "Lady-Chapel" is still blocked by a red-tiled, rambling building, a highly unnecessary but most picturesque parasite which has at some period or other attached itself limpet-like to the old church wall.