As recently as the year 1867 this portion of the Inner Ward was covered with storehouses, engine-rooms and the lodgings of the warders, and most of these buildings, according to Lord de Ros, were in a state of total dilapidation, “the result of many years of neglect on the part of the former Board of Ordnance.” Since that time a great improvement has been made here, as well as in other parts of the fortress: of these improvements a list is given in the Appendix. [Illustration: _Yeoman Porter of the Tower._] Bounded by the Bloody and St Thomas’s Towers ran a narrow street called Mint Street, from the adjoining building occupied by the offices of the Mint, which consisted of a row of mean houses that hid and defaced the fine old Ballium wall of the fortress. Regarding this Ballium wall, Lord de Ros, in his account of the Tower, explains the word “Ballium” as “a military term,” but wishing for some further knowledge as to the meaning of the word, I referred to my learned friend Mr W. Peregrine Propert of St David’s, who informed me that it was probably derived from the French term “bailler,” meaning “to deliver possession, to lease, to hold, keep, contain.” The Latin form Ballium would accordingly mean something that is held, contained, or enclosed. Castles in ancient times were usually enclosed by several circuits of walls, fences, or ramparts. Sometimes there was a ditch or moat built outside these defences, as was the case in the Tower of London. The space between these walls was called the “Ballium.” On the site of the prison of Newgate stood a Roman fortress which was no doubt surrounded by ramparts, and the space so defended has retained its old appellation Ballium in the present term Old Bailey. “It is quite natural,” adds Mr Propert, “to suppose that if one wall disappeared the remaining wall would be called the ballium popularly: in the same manner a wall in the Tower of London might be called a Ballium, though not correctly according to its etymology.” The Ballium wall at its highest is some forty feet high, and dates probably as far back as the Conquest; it is, therefore, one of the most ancient parts of the Tower, and coeval with the White Tower. It commences at the Main Gate of the outer rampart at the Bell Tower, and forms the angle of the Queen’s or Governor’s House, whence it runs for some fifty yards to the north-west until it joins the Beauchamp Tower: this tower forms a bastion near the centre of the Ballium wall. To the right the restored Tower of St Thomas overlaps the Traitor’s Gate. This tower dates back to the reign of Henry VIII., and was entirely rebuilt in 1866 by Salvin, only a portion of the interior retaining the walls of the original building. Among a crowd of dingy wine-shops, offices, storehouses, and buildings which, according to good authority, were mostly “in a condition of ruin and dilapidation,” stood the old Mint, of which some account must here be given: