Guilds -- England -- London; London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
The parish churchyard is situated in Salters’ Hall Court, by which it is
separated from the church. It is elevated above the court and contains
two trees, two or three bushes and shrubs, and a few tombstones. Across
it is a right-of-way to the premises of the National Telephone Company,
to which it has the appearance of being a garden.
=George Street= was anciently Bearbinder Lane. Riley notes
“Berbynderslane” in the City records so early as 1358. It was renamed
George Street within the nineteenth century. If Charlotte Row, west of
the Mansion House, was so called in honour of Queen Charlotte, surely
this was rechristened in honour of George III., whom she married in
1761. It is quite small compared with its former extent, for it once ran
from Walbrook past the south side of St. Mary Woolchurch into St.
Swithin’s Lane, and also had a northern limb, passing the west end of
Dove Court, into Lombard Street. Now the Mansion House stands upon all
the old course west of Walbrook churchyard, and the northern limb is
built over. This was the fatal spot where the plague of 1665 first made
its appearance within the City. Defoe, in his history of the dire
disease, relates how a Frenchman living in Long Acre, near the
plague-stricken houses, moved hither “for fear of the distemper.” Alas!
he was already stricken, and in the beginning of May he died, the first
victim within the City walls. Strype calls Bearbinder Lane “a place of
no great account as to trade: well inhabited by merchants and others.”
In his time about thirty yards at the east end were reckoned in
Langbourn ward, and apparently also most of the northern arm. It now
belongs wholly to Walbrook ward, and is merely a narrow passage
containing no houses older than the nineteenth century.
We now take =Walbrook=, leaving Cannon Street to be dealt with
subsequently. The memory of the stream of the Walbrook coming down from
the heights to the north is preserved in the name of this short street.
In 1279 and in 1290 we find that there were houses on the banks of the
stream. In the year 1307, there was one William le Marischale living
beside the stream. It must have been almost impossible, even then, to
live near the stream, because it was a common open sewer with latrines
built over it. These were farmed by certain persons. Part of the stream,
however, was covered over by the year 1300; it was not till the close of
the sixteenth century that it was completely covered over. Empson and
Dudley, the instruments of Henry VII.’s extortions, lived in Walbrook;
and later Sir Christopher Wren is said to have lived here at the house
afterwards No. 5.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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