Old and New London, Volume I: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its PlacesThornbury, Walter
History
Old and New London, Volume I: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places
Thornbury, Walter
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
"What Cato did and Addison approved of cannot be wrong."
Pleasanter is it to remember the anecdote of the brave apprentice, who
leaped into the Thames from the window of a house on the bridge to save
his master's infant daughter, whom a careless nurse had dropped into the
river. When the girl grew up, many noble suitors came, but the generous
father was obdurate. "No," said the honest citizen; "Osborne saved her,
and Osborne shall have her." And so he had; and Osborne's great grandson
throve and became the first Duke of Leeds. The frequent loss of lives in
shooting the arches of the old bridge, where the fall was at times five
feet, led at last to a cry for a new bridge, and one was commenced in
1824. Rennie designed it, and in 1831 William IV. and Queen Adelaide
opened it. One hundred and twenty thousand tons of stone went to its
formation. The old bridge was not entirely removed till 1832, when the
bones of the builder, Pious Peter of Colechurch, were found in the crypt
of the central chapel, where tradition had declared they lay. The iron
of the piles of the old bridge was bought by a cutler in the Strand, and
produced steel of the highest quality. Part of the old stone was
purchased by Alderman Harmer, to build his house, Ingress Abbey, near
Greenhithe.
Southwark, a Roman station and cemetery, is by no means without a
history. It was burned by William the Conqueror, and had been the scene
of battle against the Danes. It possessed palaces, monasteries, a mint,
and fortifications. The Bishops of Winchester and Rochester once lived
here in splendour; and the locality boasted its four Elizabethan
theatres. The Globe was Shakespeare's summer theatre, and here it was
that his greatest triumphs were attained. What was acted there is best
told by making Shakespeare's share in the management distinctly
understood; nor can we leave Southwark without visiting the "Tabard
Inn," from whence Chaucer's nine-and-twenty jovial pilgrims set out for
Canterbury.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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