London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History -- 18th century
From the hall we ascend by nine stone steps to the Mayor’s Court, Council
Chamber, and the rest of the apartments of the house, which,
notwithstanding it may not be equal to the grandeur of the City, is very
well adapted to the ends it was designed for, namely, for holding the
City courts, for the election of sheriffs and other officers, and for the
entertainment of princes, ministers of State, and foreign ambassadors, on
their grand festivals.
17. Coleman Street Ward. The principal streets in this ward are the Old
Jewry, part of Lothbury, Coleman Street, part of London Wall, and all the
lower part of Moorfields without the walls.
The public buildings are Bethlem or Bedlam Hospital, Founders’ Hall,
Armourers’ Hall, the churches of St. Olave Jewry, St. Margaret, Lothbury,
and St. Stephen, Coleman Street.
New Bethlem, or Bedlam, is situated at the south end of Moorfields, just
without the wall, the ground being formerly part of the town ditch, and
granted by the City to the governors of the hospital of Old Bethlem,
which had been appropriated for the reception of lunatics, but was found
too strait to contain the people brought thither, and the building in a
decaying condition.
The present edifice, called New Bedlam, was begun to be erected anno
1675, and finished the following year. It is built of brick and stone;
the wings at each end, and the portico, being each of them adorned with
four pilasters, entablature and circular pediment of the Corinthian
order. Under the pediment are the King’s arms, enriched with festoons;
and between the portico and each of the said wings is a triangular
pediment, with the arms of the City; and on a pediment over the gate the
figures of two lunatics, exquisitely carved. The front of this
magnificent hospital is reported to represent the _Escurial_ in Spain,
and in some respects exceeds every palace in or about London, being 528
feet in length, and regularly built. The inside, it is true, is not
answerable to the grand appearance it makes without, being but 30 feet
broad, and consisting chiefly of a long gallery in each of the two
storeys that runs from one end of the house to the other; on the south
side whereof are little cells, wherein the patients have their lodgings,
and on the north the windows that give light to the galleries, which are
divided in the middle by a handsome iron gate, to keep the men and women
asunder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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