The old buildings continued until the close of the seventeenth century, when they were taken down and the Hospital was erected in their place. This House remained until it became necessary to destroy it, in order to make way for the railway station and extension on its site. The demolition of old St. Thomas’s is one of the few acts of destruction which one can regard with satisfaction. For the removal of the Hospital to the crowded streets of Lambeth, leaving Guy’s for the eastern part of South London, was unquestionably a great gain to the former, and no loss to the latter, which is fully served by Guy’s. CHAPTER XV ST. GILES-IN-THE-FIELDS The Hospital known as _St. Giles-in-the-Fields_ was founded by Maud, Queen of Henry the First, about the year 1117. It was a large foundation, designed for forty lepers, the Master, Chaplains, Matrons, and servants. The original endowment was only £3 a year, which, even in the twelfth century, would not go far towards the support of forty lepers. It appears, however, as if the custom of lepers going about begging with a bowl and a clapper was considered the right thing, because it is said that the Proctor of the House went begging for the lepers. Probably those who could crawl were allowed at the outset to beg for themselves. But other benefactions fell in. The lepers obtained rents and lands at Isleworth, St. Clement Danes, and round their own house; they also obtained the manor of Feltham in Middlesex; Henry the Second gave them lands at Heston; people left them houses in London; the House became wealthy. There were many dissensions and disputes as to the rule and management of this House. They were finally terminated by Edward the Third, who placed it under the authority of the House of Burton Lazars, the central Leper Hospital of England. The area covered by the ground of the Hospital consisted of eight acres, which was afterwards largely increased. The Hospital buildings were situated near to the present church on the west of it; they were surrounded by a triangular wall running along Crown Street (formerly Hog Lane), High Street, and Monmouth Street. At the lower end of what is now the Tottenham Court Road on the west side of it was the Pound: when the gallows was removed from the Elms at Smithfield, it was set up at the north end of the Hospital enclosure opposite to the Pound. On the same spot Sir John Oldcastle had been slowly roasted to death some years earlier. Criminals in later times, on their way to Tyburn, stopped at St. Giles, there to take their last draught of ale at a tavern named The Bowl.