Facing the eastern entrance to Bunhill Fields, in City Road, is the
chapel built in 1778 for John Wesley, the founder and preacher of the
Methodist Church; and behind the chapel is the tombstone showing where
Wesley was buried in 1791. He died in the house No. 47, next the chapel.
A commemorative window in the church of St. James in Curtain Road close
by Holywells Street, marks the location of the Curtain Theatre of
Shakespeare's time, which stood on the church site. Here, so the tale
goes, the première of "Hamlet" was given, and Shakespeare, standing at
the door, held the horses of those who attended the performances. But
that he did this is not at all certain. Like most of the theatres of
that time, this house was so arranged that the roof extended only over
the stage and galleries, leaving the central space, or pit, open to the
sky. A curtain of silk, running on an iron rod and opening both ways
from the middle, hid the stage before the performance began.
All the district about Finsbury Square was once the marshy ground of
Moorfields, a promenade of the 18th century. The name Finsbury happened
in an old ballad, which tells of a Knight who went to the crusades and
who forbade his two daughters to marry until his return. The Knight
never came back alive, but his head was sent to the daughters when they
had grown old and were still unmarried. This gruesome relic they buried
near by their home, and gave their father's name to his resting place,
as told in the ballad:
Old Sir John Fines he had the name
Being buried in that place,
Now, since then, called Finsbury,
To his renown and grace;
Which time to come shall not outwear
Nor yet the same deface.
Finsbury Pavement was the promenade of Moorfields, and was for a very
long time the one solid roadway in that marshy part of town.
The church of All Hallows-on-the-Wall was built in 1765 on a bastion of
the old Roman wall that enclosed old London. Close to the church door at
the back of the ancient burying ground, a bit of the wall is still to be
seen.
Bishopsgate is one of the few very old streets that escaped the Great
Fire. It is strangely narrow, and its hurrying throngs add to the
general picturesqueness of the high-roofed structures and the quaint
many-angled windows that line its sides.
Where Bishopsgate Within ends and Bishopsgate Without begins a gate was
cut through the wall of old London. One part was within the wall and one
part without the wall, hence the name of the street. At this gateway
were four churches. St. Botolph, Without Bishopsgate, dedicated to the
popular English saint, stands on the site of one of those early
churches. In this church John Keats, who afterwards wrote so delicately
of the Eve of St. Agnes and the Grecian Urn, was baptised.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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