The Law's Lumber Room (Second Series)Watt, Francis
History
The Law's Lumber Room (Second Series)
Watt, Francis
Law -- Great Britain
To-day you cannot fix the exact spot where Tyburn Tree raised its
uncanny form. To the many it was the most noteworthy thing about Old
London, yet while thousands who had gazed thereon in fascinated horror
were still in life, a certain vagueness was evident in men’s thoughts,
and, albeit antiquaries have keenly debated the _locus_, all the mind
is clouded with a doubt, and your carefully worked out conclusion is
but guesswork. There is reason manifold for this. Of old time the
populous district known as Tyburnia was wild heath intersected by
the Tyburn Brook, which, rising near Hampstead, crossed what is now
Oxford Street, hard by the Marble Arch, and so on to Chelsea and the
Thames. Somewhere on its banks was the Middlesex gallows. It may be
that as the tide set westward the site was changed. Again, the wild
heath is now thick with houses; new streets and squares have confused
the ancient landmarks; those who dwelt therein preferred that there
should not be a too nice identification of localities. How startling
the reflection that in the very place of your dining-room, thousands
of fellow-creatures had dangled in their last agonies! How rest at
ease in such a chamber of horrors? The weight of evidence favours (or
disfavours) No. 49 Connaught Square. The Bishop of London is ground
landlord here; and it is said that in the lease of that house granted
by him the fact is recorded that there stood the “Deadly Never-Green.”
Such a record were purely gratuitous, but the draftsman may have
made it to fix the identity of the dwelling. But to-day the Square
runs but to No. 47. Some shuffling of numerals has, you fancy, taken
place to baffle indiscreet research. However, you may be informed (in
confidence) that you have but to stand at the south-east corner of the
Square to be “warm,” as children say in their games.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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