At the end of Swan Lane (west side) is the entrance to the subway called Waterside. It passes beneath Tennants’, Commercial, and Dyers’ Hall wharves, in front of Red Bull Wharf (the only place where it emerges into the open), and ultimately runs under the City of London Brewery into All Hallows Lane. In Strype’s 1754 map the whole of the riverside from Swan to All Hallows Lane is shown as a broad path (40 feet wide) open to the water, and called New Key, upon which debouch all the lanes leading from Thames Street to the shore. It was part of a design of Wren for improving the river-bank after the Great Fire. In a map of 1819 the “key,” though mostly open, is shown to be a subway under a portion of the brewery. It is marked as a “Public Way.” It has been gradually covered over by the extension of the brewery and the wharves, so that now what was once a riverside walk has become a subway, from which the water is nowhere visible, unless one of the wharf doors happens to be open. The Fishmongers’ Hall rises squarely beside London Bridge, and not far off is the Monument, with an absurd _chevaux de frise_ of spikes rising from its golden ball, and representing flames, very much as they are represented in the contemporary illustrations of the Fire. St. Magnus’s white steeple makes a good foreground. THE FISHMONGERS COMPANY The origin of the Fishmongers Company is lost in remote antiquity; it is unquestionable that it existed prior to the reign of Henry II., and originated in an association or brotherhood. The Fishmongers Company lost the greater part of its earlier records, books, and muniments in the Great Fire of London; the earliest existing record in the possession of the Company being a court book dating from 1592. The privileges of the Company were confirmed by royal charters in the reign of Edward I., 1272, Edward II., 1307, and Edward III., 1327. The first extant charter is in Norman French, dated July 10, 1364, 37 Edward III. It recites that from ancient times, whereof memory runs not, it was a custom that no fish should be sold in the City of London but by fishmongers, except stockfish, which belongs to the mistery of stockfishmongers (subsequently incorporated with the fishmongers), and further recites that the mistery of fishmongers had grants from the King’s progenitors in ancient times, that the fishmongers should choose yearly certain persons of the mistery to well and lawfully rule the same. The foregoing charter was confirmed by a proclamation of the following year, July 12, 1365, 38 Edward III., which granted further power and privileges to the mistery of fishmongers of the City of London. [Illustration: _Pictorial Agency._ FISHMONGERS’ HALL, PRESENT DAY ]