Highways and Byways in LondonCook, Emily Constance Baird
History
Highways and Byways in London
Cook, Emily Constance Baird
London (England) -- Description and travel
The Clothworkers' Hall,
close by, is reached through an iron gate; its garden, or court, is
formed by the ancient churchyard of All Hallows, Staining, a church
destroyed, all but its tower, by the Great Fire, and not rebuilt. The
tower of All Hallows, a stranded fragment of antiquity, forms the
centre piece of the garden court, where its effect is most curious and
striking.
The narrow old streets that lead north out of Cheapside, the "Chepe"
of the middle ages, with their quaint old names, afford many pleasant
rambles. In Wood Street, the old plane-tree, still standing, recalls
Wordsworth's poem. Milk Street leads by the old church of St. Mary
Aldermanbury, with the statue of Shakespeare in its little churchyard,
to the still visible bastions of London Wall, and along the street of
that name, to Cripplegate. The church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, is
interesting; its churchyard, too, is a green and favoured spot. A
street of warehouses near it was burned down quite recently with
terrible loss, and the church itself was threatened, but fortunately
escaped; but the streets, now rebuilt, look, thanks to the City's
wonderful recuperative powers, as solid and as flourishing as ever.
The noisy thoroughfare of Fore Street, lined with warehouses and
foundries, is built upon the ancient line of wall, which also appears,
black against sunflowers, asters, and greenery, in St. Giles's
churchyard and rectory garden. This part of the City wall is probably
of Edward IV.'s time. Portions of the old Roman wall have indeed been
discovered here and there in the City; a large fragment of it was, for
instance, laid bare at the building of the new departments of the
General Post Office in 1891. But the oldest fragments of wall
existing near Cripplegate are, though black, grimy, and mouldering,
probably Norman or Saxon. Roman relics that have been discovered in
the City are on view, some at the Guildhall, others in the British
Museum; the most interesting of them all, however, is still _in situ_,
being the large fragment called "London Stone," built into St.
Swithin's Church opposite the Cannon Street Terminus; supposed to be a
"milliarium," or milestone, and possibly, like the golden milestone in
the Roman Forum, "a central mark whence the great Roman roads radiated
all over England."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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