Great St. Helen’s is being so rapidly ‘improved’ that it will soon become quite commonplace and uninteresting. A piece was shorn off the churchyard some years ago, no one exactly knew why, and several picturesque plastered houses, immediately west of Nos. 8 and 9, have been pulled down within my memory. At the corner, opposite to the pretty south porch of the church, attributed by the Rev. Thomas Hugo to Inigo Jones, a quaint and very old building still remains, which actually touched the house of the Lawrences. No. 10 is constructed of wood and plaster, with projecting upper stories and massive timbering; it dates from long before the Great Fire; the inside, however, has been modernized. Tradition boldly asserts that Anne Boleyn’s father, Sir Thomas, afterwards Viscount Rochford and Earl of Wiltshire, at one time lived here. It is an undoubted fact that one of the name was intimately connected with St. Helen’s, for ‘on the 24th December, 26th Hen. VIII., 1534, the Prioress and Convent appointed Sir James Bolleyne, knt., to be steward of their lands and tenements in London and elsewhere, the duties to be performed either by himself or a sufficient deputy, during the life of the said James, at a stipend of forty shillings a year, payable at Christmas. If in arrear for six weeks the said James might enter and distrain.’ Query: was this Sir Thomas Boleyn’s elder brother? There was a right of way hereabout from very early times, for Dugdale tells us that in the Hundred Roll of 3rd Edward I. several entries occur relating to an attempt which the nuns made to stop up the lane or passage through the court of their nunnery from Bishopsgate Street to St. Mary Axe, sometimes called St. Helen’s Lane. If, as is possible, the house dates from before the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when it first saw the light there must have been few buildings near the even then venerable Church of St. Helen and the adjoining priory. Crosby Place, indeed, stood hard by, on land leased from the nuns for a term of ninety-nine years, but much open space yet remained. Even as late as the end of last century there was a considerable field or garden immediately to the east of the church, as shown in a view by Malcolm dated 1799.