St. Botolph’s Churchyard is a wide gravelled space with seats provided by the Metropolitan Public Spaces Association. There is an altar-tomb near the centre, and a row of flat tombstones of the usual pattern set back against the wall of the church. There are a few plane-trees and a row of little limes. It is a pleasant breathing space, used by the poorest of humanity, who come here for a little rest and sleep. =High Street, Whitechapel=, is of great width and contains some large new brick and stone buildings. The Three Nuns Hotel, an immense red-brick building erected in 1877, and recently added to, stands near the station. By Crown Place, No. 23, is an old bow-windowed chop-house. On the east the chief feature is the large number of shops or stalls open to the street, covered by an awning or by a glass roof. These belong chiefly to butchers, and have a characteristic aspect. The last five or six houses before Mansell Street are all of considerable age and very picturesque. Returning now westward we find: The church and parish of =St. Mary Axe=, which are mentioned in the _Calendar of Wills_ in the thirteenth century. Stow says of it: “In St. Marie street had ye of old time a parish church of St. Marie the Virgin, St. Ursula and the eleven thousand Virgins, which church was commonly called St. Marie at the Axe, of the sign of an axe, over against the east end thereof, or St. Marie Pellipar, of a plot of ground lying on the north side thereof, pertaining to the Skinners in London. This parish, about the year 1565, was united to the parish church of St. Andrew Undershaft, and so was St. Mary at the Axe suppressed and letten out to be a warehouse for a merchant.” Cunningham corrects this statement. The church was called St. Mary Axe because it possessed an Axe, one of the three with which the 11,000 Virgins were beheaded. The parish is now united with that of St. Andrew Undershaft. ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT The Church of St. Andrew Undershaft stands at the corner of St. Mary Axe, and on the north side is the churchyard, a little space where a few young trees grow. It derives its name from the May-day custom of setting up a pole higher than the steeple before the south door. This custom was discontinued after “Evil May Day” (see _Tudor London_, p. 24). The present building, occupying the site of the original one, of unknown date, was erected, according to Stow, in 1520, at the expense of a Sir Stephen Jennings, William Fitzwilliams, and others. The work of restoration has been carried on here during the last thirty years. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1361. The patronage has always been in the hands of the Bishop of London, in whose successors it continues; he presented to it in 1361.