In 1509 (1 Henry VIII.) the dwellers about the Stocks obtained leave of the Common Council to substitute for a leaden water-pipe at the south-east of the market a stone conduit, or, as it is called in the petition, “a portico of stone, with a cesterne of lead therein” from which water was “to bee drawne out by cocks.” Time wrought changes in the market and its uses. After the Great Fire, the fishmongers and most of the butchers gave place to the sellers of fruits, roots, and herbs. It was of note, says Strype (1720), “for having the choicest in the kind of all sorts, surpassing all other markets in London.” The post-Fire market was increased by the addition of the sites of St. Mary Woolchurch Haw and its churchyard, the sites of three houses belonging to the parish, purchased for £350, and of the site of the rectory house, obtained at a perpetual rental of £10 per annum. Thus the new market was 230 feet from north to south, and 108 feet from east to west, measured at the middle; besides the open roadways or passages on the west and east sides. The eastern side was planted with “rows of trees, very pleasant.” The market-place itself had twenty-two covered fruit stalls, most of them at the north side; two ranges of covered butchers’ stalls, with racks, blocks, and scales, in the south-east corner; the remaining space was occupied by gardeners and others who sold “fruits, roots, herbs, and flowers” (Strype, 1720). Well might Shadwell ask in his _Bury Fair_ (1689), “Where is such a garden in Europe as the Stocks Market?” Here follows an amusing description of it taken from a paper called _The Wandering Spy_ (1705): “I saw Stocks Market, all garnished with nuts, and pears, and grapes, and golden pippins, all in rank and file most prettily. And then on the other side for physic herbs there is enough to furnish a whole country, from the nourishing Eringo, to the destructive Savine, where a man may buy as much for a penny as an apothecary will afford for half-a-crown, and do a man twice as much good as their specific bolusses, hipnotic draughts, sudorific hausteses, anodyne compositions, and twenty other flip-flops with hard names, which only disorder the body, put nature into convulsions, and prepare a man for the sexton. But here a man may consult a female doctor in a straw hat without fee, have what quantity he pleases, of what herb he pleases, be his distemper what it will, and convert it into a juice, concoction, syrup, purge, or glister, in a quarter of an hour, without any danger to body or pocket” (Malcolm, _Londinium Redivium_).