The boundary at the end of this garden was formed by another interesting house, No. 23, Great Winchester Street, which has also lately been improved out of existence. It occupied a good deal of ground, being approached through a paved yard with a lodge on each side of the entrance. Externally its chief characteristics were a somewhat high-pitched roof and wings projecting forward. Inside the chief reception-room was finely proportioned, with capital mouldings and cornices, and there was an old kitchen range of portentous size. Close to this house, and also adjoining Drapers’ Garden, was formerly the garden attached to the Carpenters’ Hall, so that a few years ago this neighbourhood was a paradise of open spaces. At the dissolution the house and gardens of the Augustine Friars had been bestowed by Henry VIII. on William Paulet, first Marquis of Winchester, who there built his town residence, traces of which existed as late as the year 1844: after this mansion Winchester Street was named. From a date carved on a grotesque bracket formerly to be seen at the north-east corner, it appears that the street was constructed, partly at least, in the year 1656, during Cromwell’s government. Strype says that here was ‘a great messuage called the Spanish Ambassador’s House, of late inhabited by Sir James Houblon, Knight and Alderman, and other fair houses.’ Even down to our time it was a remarkably picturesque specimen of a London street. Now nothing but the name is left, to mark its connection with antiquity. It may here be noted that even till comparatively recent times almost every house in the City had a garden, or at any rate some open space, belonging to it, as may be proved by reference to old maps and views. Horwood’s map, published in 1799, shows how much garden ground still remained at the end of last century. Besides this, before the days of lifts, high pressure of water, and gas or electric light laid on, the inconvenience of very high houses prevented their being built to any great extent. The comparative sparseness of the population should undoubtedly have given our ancestors a great advantage over us with regard to health, but it was more than counterbalanced by drawbacks resulting from ignorance--for example, the use of impure water, and the inability to grapple with diseases which are now comparatively innocuous.