'Below Bridge' covers Tooley Street and her lanes: Horselydown,
Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, Deptford, Greenwich, and Woolwich. The railway
has ruined one end of Tooley Street, which is a corruption of St.
Olave's Street. Perhaps it was ruined before the railway appeared at
all. Certainly no one would believe that this dark and narrow street was
once a place of Palaces. The Prior of Lewes had here, opposite St.
Olave's Church, his Inn or Town House: here the Abbot of St. Augustine
had his Inn: and here, we have seen, was the house of Sir John Fastolf.
Here was the Pilgrim's Way to Bermondsey Rood. Some came across the
bridge; some by boat, which was far more convenient, to Tooley Stairs;
some to Battlebridge Stairs; some to Pickle Herring Stairs. The way lay
along Tooley Street and by 'Barmsie' Lane through the fields and
gardens: a lovely rural lane. Beyond Tooley Street lies a quarter
bounded on the North by the River, and on the East by St. Saviour's
Dock: a quarter which is certainly the most industrious in the whole of
London. It is called Horselydown, the derivation of which seems obvious,
but derivations are not to be trusted, however obvious. We may take it
for granted, because we can prove the fact by looking at Roques' map of
1745, that there were meadows where horses grazed as soon as the
embankment was up, and the ground drained. There was some kind of common
here at one time: here suicides and persons deprived of Christian rites
were buried. There was also a Fair held at Horselydown. The industries
made their appearance in the eighteenth century, but they came
gradually. It is now a place of most remarkable variety as regards
occupations. All along the river and the bank of the Dock, formerly
Savoy Dock, there are wharves: inland are bonded warehouses, granaries,
leather warehouses, hide warehouses, hop warehouses, and wool
warehouses. There are tanneries, currieries, fur and skin dyeing works,
breweries, rice mills, mustard mills, pepper mills, dyeing works, dog's
food manufactories, vinegar works, bottle works, iron foundries, wooden
hoop manufactories, cooperages, roperies, smithies, biscuit
manufactories, oil and colour works, pin manufactories, varnish works,
and distilleries. All this in a district half a mile long and a quarter
of a mile broad. Between the factories and the warehouses are houses for
the workmen and the foremen. On the south side stands the Church, almost
the ugliest Church in London: next to the Church is, or was, a few years
ago, a street which has something of the look and feeling of a Close.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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