London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History -- 18th century
Not far from the Tower stands London Bridge. This bridge has nineteen
arches besides the drawbridge, and is built with hewn stone, being one
thousand two hundred feet in length, and seventy-four in breadth, whereof
the houses built on each side take up twenty-seven feet, and the street
between the houses twenty feet; there being only three vacancies about
the middle of the bridge where there are no houses, but a low stone wall,
with an iron palisade, through which is a fine view of the shipping and
vessels in the river. This street over the bridge is as much thronged,
and has as brisk a trade as any street in the city; and the perpetual
passage of coaches and carriages makes it troublesome walking on it,
there being no posts to keep off carriages as in other streets. The
middle vacancy was left for a drawbridge, which used formerly to be drawn
up when shipping passed that way; but no vessels come above the bridge at
this day but such as can strike their masts, and pass under the arches.
Four of the arches on the north side of the bridge are now taken up with
mills and engines, that raise the water to a great height, for the supply
of the city; this brings in a large revenue which, with the rents of the
houses on the bridge, and other houses and lands that belong to it, are
applied as far as is necessary to the repair of it by the officers
appointed for that service, who are, a comptroller and two
bridge-masters, with their subordinate officers; and in some years, it is
said, not less than three thousand pounds are laid out in repairing and
supporting this mighty fabric, though it be never suffered to run much to
decay.
I come next to describe that circuit of ground which lies without the
walls, but within the freedom and jurisdiction of the City of London.
And this is bounded by a line which begins at Temple Bar, and extends
itself by many turnings and windings through part of Shear Lane, Bell
Yard, Chancery Lane, by the Rolls Liberty, &c., into Holborn, almost
against Gray’s-Inn Lane, where there is a bar (consisting of posts,
rails, and a chain) usually called Holborn Bars; from whence it passes
with many turnings and windings by the south end of Brook Street,
Furnival’s Inn, Leather Lane, the south end of Hatton Garden, Ely House,
Field Lane, and Chick Lane, to the common sewer; then to Cow Cross, and
so to Smithfield Bars; from whence it runs with several windings between
Long Lane and Charterhouse Lane to Goswell Street, and so up that street
northward to the Bars.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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