London Before the ConquestLethaby, W. R. (William Richard)
History
London Before the Conquest
Lethaby, W. R. (William Richard)
London (England) -- History -- To 1500
Into the Fleet, down the still well-marked valley by Farringdon Road, ran
a stream sometimes called the Fleet River; it is plotted on some of the
earlier maps, and its course has been traced in detail by Mr. Waller.[35]
In an agreement as to the land of the nunnery at Clerkenwell, made at the
end of the twelfth century, this stream is unmistakably called the
Hole-burn; its valley ran north and south by Clerkenwell, and the river
and gardens of the Hospitallers of Jerusalem are said to have been upon
it.[36] It gave its name to Holborn Bridge and to some extra-mural
cottages near by, on the road which passed over it. The modern name should
mean Hole-burn-Bridge Street, just as Fleet Street meant Fleet-Bridge
Street. Holeburn Street is found in 1249.[37] Cottages at "Holeburne,"
which had existed in the time of the Confessor, are mentioned in Domesday,
and we may conclude that the Holeburn and Fleet had these names not only
in King Edward's day, but in Alfred's. The upper part of the stream was
also called Turnmill brook; it was the mill stream of London.
Stow also gives the name of the River of Wells to this western stream just
described, saying: "That it was of old called of the Wells may be proved
thus: William the Conqueror in his charter to the College of St. Martin le
Grand hath these words, 'I do give and grant ... all the land and the Moor
without Cripplegate, on either side of the postern, that is to say, from
the north corner of the wall as the river of the Wells, there near
running, departeth the same moor from the wall, unto the running water
which entereth the city.'"[38] He goes on to say that the stream
(Hole-burn) was still called Wells in the time of Edward I., citing the
Parliament and Patent Rolls of 1307; but on referring to the calendars of
these documents I find that this name of Wells appears in neither. The
first speaks of "the water-course of Fleet running under the bridge of
Holburn," and the second of them calls it "the Fleet River from Holburn
Bridge to the Thames." Moreover, the Hole-burn was far away from the north
corner of the city wall by Cripplegate, and the land granted cannot have
extended all the way to the present Farringdon Road (the bed of the old
stream) and have included Smithfield. The land of "Crepelesgate," taken by
William Rufus and restored to St. Martin's by Henry I., is probably the
same, and to-day it may be represented by the parish of St. Giles. Surely
the whole construction of the passage requires that the north-west angle
of the walls should be the western limit of the land granted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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