Garraway's Coffee House in Change Alley was used chiefly by the Bubble
traders in 1720. At this house in 1651, tea was first sold in England,
the proprietor in his announcement recommending it as a cure for all
disorders. It certainly has been used extensively ever since. Next door
was Jonathan's Coffee House, another tavern of long existence. Both
places were burned in 1748, and a bank now marks where they once were.
Plough Court opens out of the south side of Lombard Street. The court is
notable as the birthplace of Alexander Pope, and his father here kept a
linen draper shop.
In the church of St. Edmund, which has stood for a century and a quarter
on the north side of Lombard Street, Joseph Addison was married in 1716,
just after the amazing success of his "Tragedy of Cato," to the Dowager
Countess of Warwick--a marriage which Thackeray referred to as "his
splendid but dismal union." Three years later Addison died.
Quaint and curious is the position of All Hallows, known as the
invisible church, literally buried by surrounding houses and approached
only through a narrow alley on the north side of Lombard Street. It was
in an open space when it was completed in 1694, but the buildings of the
City have gradually crowded about it, as though trying to crush it out
of existence.
St. Margaret Pattens, in Eastcheap at the Rood Lane corner, is a church
of 1678, designed by Wren, and taking its name from the district in
which, in the 17th century, pattens were generally sold. Dr. Thomas
Birch, author of the "Memoirs of the Reign of Elizabeth," was long its
rector. He died in 1766 and was buried beneath the chancel.
Mincing Lane borrowed its name from the Minchens or nuns of St. Helen,
and this order once owned all the ground hereabouts.
The Elephant, a tavern of great note, stood where is now the northwest
corner of Fenchurch Street at Ironmonger's Alley. It was a massive
building of stone, and one of the few in this neighbourhood sturdy
enough to resist the Great Fire. When the flames rushed by leaving a
desert of ruins on every side, the Elephant was a refuge for many who
were left homeless. It was taken down in 1826. At the Elephant lived the
great picture satirist, William Hogarth, in 1697, at a time when he was
very poor indeed.
At the northern end of Mark Lane, crowded about by business houses, may
be seen a fine old church tower. In the Great Fire of 1666, this tower
of All Hallows, Staining, escaped though the church itself was
destroyed. It is reached by narrow Star Alley, on the west side of Mark
Lane, and stands in a bit of the old churchyard which is now the court
of the Clothworkers' Hall. It was to All Hallows that Queen Elizabeth
came to offer up thanks after her deliverance from the Tower.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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