The Town: Its Memorable Characters and EventsHunt, Leigh
History
The Town: Its Memorable Characters and Events
Hunt, Leigh
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
The streets about St. Martin's-in-the-fields and St.
Giles's-in-the-fields, those of Clerkenwell, the neighbourhood of Old
Street and Shoreditch, Marlborough Street, Soho, &c., successively
arose in the time of Queen Anne, as well as a good portion of Holborn,
beginning from Brook Street and including the neighbourhood of Bedford
Street and Red Lion Square. St. Paul's, too, was completed as it now
stands. This, and the succeeding times of the Hanover succession, were
the times of Whig and Tory, of the principal wit-poets, of writers
upon domestic manners, and of what may be called an ambition of good
sense and reason,--"sense" being the favourite term in books, as "wit"
had been in the age of Charles. Clubs were multiplied _ad infinitum_
by the more harmless civil wars between Whig and Tory; and ale and
beer brought the middle classes together, as wine did the rich.
_Mug-house_ clubs abounded in Long Acre, Cheapside, &c.; "where
gentlemen, lawyers, and tradesmen used to meet in a great room, seldom
under a hundred," if we are to believe the _Journey through England_,
in the year 1724.
At the commencement of the last century the village of St.
Mary-le-bone was almost a mile distant from any part of London; the
nearest street being Old Bond Street, which scarcely extended to the
present Clifford Street. Soon after the accession of George the First,
New Bond Street arose, with others in the immediate neighbourhood, and
the houses in Berkeley Square and its vicinity. Hanover Square and
Cavendish Square were open fields in the year 1716. They were built
about the beginning of the reign of George the Second, at which time
the houses arose on the north side of Oxford Street, which then first
took the name. The neighbourhood of Cavendish Square, and Oxford
Market, Holles Street, Margaret Street, Vere Street, &c., are of the
same date; and the grounds for Harley, Wigmore, and Mortimer Streets
were laid out; the village and church of Mary-le-bone being still
separated from them all by fields. At the same period the legislature
ordered the erection of the three parishes of St. George's Bloomsbury,
St. Anne's Limehouse, and St. Paul's Deptford, London having, at that
time, extended further in the last quarter than any other, by reason
of the trade on the river.
So late, nevertheless, as this period, Fleet Ditch was a sluggish,
foul stream, open as far as Holborn Bridge, and admitting small
vessels for trade, coal barges, &c. It had become such a nuisance,
that it was now arched over, and the late Fleet Market soon appeared
on the covering. About the year 1737, the west end of the town was
improved by the addition of Grosvenor Square and its neighbourhood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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