SMALL (THE POST OFFICE) STREET, BRISTOL. ITS ANCIENT HISTORY, INFLUENTIAL RESIDENTS, HISTORIC HOUSES; THE CANNS; THE EARLY HOME OF THE ELTON FAMILY. From time immemorial Small Street, in the city and county of Bristol, two-thirds of the west side of which the Post Office occupies, has been an important street. One of the nine old town gates was at the bottom of it, and was known as St. Giles's Gate, having obtained this name from a church dedicated to St. Giles, the patron saint of cripples and beggars, which in the fifteenth century stood at the end of "Seynt-Lauren's-Laane." Here, history says, was the "hygest walle of Bristow," which has "grete vowtes under it, and the old chyrch of Seynt Gylys was byldyd ovyr the vowtes." The cutting of the trench, from the old Stone Bridge to near Prince Street Bridge, for the new channel of the Froom, was completed in 1247. Before this date ships could only lie in the Avon, where the bottom was "very stony and rough"; but the bed of the new course of the Froom having turned out to be soft and muddy, it became the harbour for the great ships, and Small Street from this time became a principal thoroughfare. Then to this quarter of the town came Bristol's greatest merchants. From the centre of the town to the old Custom House, at the lower end of Pylle Street (now St. Stephen Street) there was no nearer way than down Small Street and through St. Giles's Gate. The existence of gardens in the 15th and 16th centuries at the backs of the Houses in Small Street is evidenced by the wills of old Bristolians. In that of William Hoton, merchant, of St. Werburgh's parish, who died in 1475, is mentioned "the garden of Sir Henry Hungerford, Knight," near the cemetery of St. Leonard's Church, and John Easterfield, merchant, of St. Werburgh's parish, who died in 1504, bequeathed to his wife his dwelling-house in Small-Strete, and also "the garden in St. Leonard's Lane, as long as she dwelleth in the said house." [Illustration: ELTON MANSION, SMALL STREET, BRISTOL.]