There is little of this past now actually left in busy Cheapside, except No. 37, of which I shall speak presently, two tiny houses at the corner of Wood Street, the handsome seventeenth-century façade (restored, of course) of the Mercers’ Chapel at the corner of Ironmonger Lane at the Lower Bank end, and No. 73 opposite, that was built by Wren for Sir William Turner who was Lord Mayor in 1668. It is still known as the Old Mansion House. Probably it was his own house and he went on living in it till his death. Where, then, did the lord mayors stay officially during their term of office from that time till the present Mansion House was built in 1739? I am indebted to Mr. Leopold Wagner for supplying the answer by showing me the way to one of the most fascinating spots in the City. This third old Mansion House still exists, but in a corner so obscure, so tucked away, that I have passed within a stone’s throw of it a dozen times and never had the least suspicion of its existence. It is at No. 5, Bow Lane, hard by Bow Church, in a narrow passage, with a sign directing you, if you are fortunate enough to see it, to Williamson’s Hotel. Follow the passage and you will find yourself remote from the world, with the quaintest old creeper-clad Restoration house imaginable surrounding three sides of the courtyard. Yet this quiet spot was once the hub of civic life,--there is a stone let into the charming little octagonal-shaped parlour (now called the reading room) that is supposed to mark the very centre of the City. Here for a few years the lord mayors after Sir William Turner dwelt in state, and here came William III. and Mary to dine, and give, as a memento of their visit, the handsome iron gates, now much corroded and covered with thick green paint, through which you seek the entrance. Later on, in the early seventeen hundreds, the original Williamson started his hotel. It would have been described as “high-class residential,” had they known those terms, for in those days, when country squires and their families came up to town, they found the City as convenient a centre as anywhere. The forty bedrooms, the long salon, now a bar, where you may see, still hanging on the wall where it has been for centuries, an ancient map of London Bridge,--the pleasant rambling up-and-down passages, with their deep embrasures and window-seats, the low-ceilinged coffee-room with its only bell-pull marked “Boots,” and elegant little parlour where now no ladies ever sit,--all speak of a past of consequence.