Although the present church, which was the choir of the more ancient structure belonging to the Priory, stands some distance backwards from Smithfield, there is little doubt that its front was originally on a line with the small gateway yet remaining, and that the latter indeed was the entrance from Smithfield into the southern aisle of the nave, the part of the church now entirely lost. It is useless to inquire what kind of front was here presented to the open area before it; but if we may judge of it by this gateway, and by the general style of the interior parts of the choir, it must have been a grand work. The gateway is of a very beautiful character, with a finely pointed arch, consisting of four ribs, each with numerous mouldings, receding one within the other, and decorated with roses and zigzag ornaments. Straight before us as we pass through this gateway are the churchyard and church, the former having around it a range of large and very dingy-looking lath-and-plaster houses, which, however, derive somewhat of a picturesque appearance from their gable ends, and their windows scattered about in “most admired disorder.” The exterior of the church, as it here appears to us, consists of a brick tower, erected in 1628, and by its side the end of the church, from which the nave has been cut away, and the wall and large window erected to terminate the structure at this point. The foundations of the nave still lie below the soil of the churchyard some three or four feet. The wall of the latter, on the right or southern side, now faced with brick, is very ancient and of immense thickness, and forming most probably the original wall of the south aisle. On stepping into the apartments of the adjoining public-house, to which the wall now belongs, we find traces of a past very different from what we see at present. Rooms with arched ceilings, a cornice with a shield extending through two or three of them, and thus showing that they have formed but one room, and a chalk cellar below the house--all betoken that we are wandering among the ruins of the old Priory. By the side of this house is a yard, filled with costermongers and their donkeys, and surrounded by black and decayed sheds and habitations, with balconied galleries.