For many years the land round the old school chapel had served as a cemetery, and in it was buried in 1534 the poet Samuel Coleridge, who had lived for many years in Highgate, and when a year later the old school chapel was replaced by the present one, a beautiful Gothic building designed by Cockerell, it was wisely decided to erect the latter over the tomb, that is now enclosed in a crypt approached by a flight of steps from the western side of the building. The new schoolhouse, classrooms, etc., completed in 1869, that replace those that had been in use for some four centuries, and in which many men of note were educated, including Nicolas Rowe the dramatist, harmonise well with the chapel, and the institution bids fair long to maintain in the future the reputation it won in the past. [Illustration: A BIT OF OLD HIGHGATE] Highgate no doubt owed its early prosperity and rapid growth during the last hundred and fifty years to its situation at the junction of the two main roads {31} from London that meet in the High Street, not far from the old village green, in the midst of which there used to be a pond, now filled in and planted with trees, round about which the village lads and lasses were wont to dance, and the elder residents to gather to gossip of a summer evening. Before the Bishop of London consented in 1386 to allow a road to be made through his park, Highgate could only be reached by a narrow lane, by way of Crouch End, Muswell Hill, and Friern Barnet, but the new thoroughfare very quickly became the chief highway to the north, and is associated with many noteworthy events and royal progresses. It remained, indeed, without a rival until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when an Act of Parliament was passed sanctioning a licensed company to make a way from the foot of Highgate Hill to join the main road, a principal feature of which was the piercing of a tunnel seven hundred and sixty-five feet long by twenty-four wide and nineteen high, which, alas, was but poorly engineered, for it fell in with a great crash before it was opened to traffic. The tunnel was then replaced by the present fine archway, spanning the road, that was completed in 1813, and for the use of which a toll was levied until 1876, when it was finally remitted. Unfortunately the once beautiful village of Highgate has of late years been transformed into a somewhat prosaic suburb, but a few relics remain to bear witness to more picturesque days gone by. At the foot of the ascent, a little above the Archway Tavern, opposite the Dick Whittington public-house, {32} is a railed-in stone supposed to occupy the exact site of the one on which the penniless boy, the future Sir Richard Whittington, rested, weary and worn from his long tramp on foot, and heard the bells ring out: 'Turn again, Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London Town.'