The Story of London. Henry B. Wheatley
with an outpost—the Watch-Tower or Barbican. The Rev. W. Denton has explained the name of Cripplegate as due to the covered way between the postern and the Barbican or Burgh-kenning (A.S., crepel, cryfle or crypele, a burrow or passage under ground). The name occurs also in the Domesday of Wiltshire, where we read: ‘To Wansdyke, thence forth by the dyke to Crypelgeat.’[19] If this etymology be accepted, we have here the use of the word gate as a way. In the north this distinction is kept up, and the road is the gate, while what we in the south call the gate is the bar. For instance, at York, Micklegate is the road, and the entrance to the wall is Micklegate bar.
It may be noted that St. Giles was the patron saint of Cripples, but the first church was not built until about 1090 by Alfune, the first Hospitaller of St. Bartholomew’s, so that the dedication may have been owing to a mistaken etymology at that early date. In the churchyard is an interesting piece of the old wall still in position. The course of the wall to the east is marked by the street named London Wall, from Cripplegate to Bishopsgate Street. Here it bore south to Camomile and Wormwood Streets, where stood till 1731 the gate.
The distance between Cripplegate and Bishopsgate is not great, and much of the space outside the walls was occupied by Moorditch. Still, in 1415, Thomas Falconer, then Mayor, opened a postern in the wall, where Moorgate Street now is, for the benefit of the hay and wood carts coming to the markets of London. He must also have made a road across the morass of Moorfields, for that place was not drained until more than a century afterwards. The site of Bishopsgate is marked by two tablets on the houses at the corners of Camomile and Wormwood Streets respectively (Nos. 1 and 64 Bishopsgate Street Without), inscribed with a mitre, and these words, ‘Adjoining to this spot Bishopsgate formerly stood.’[20]
Bishopsgate was named after Erkenwald, Bishop of London (d. 685), son of Offa, King of Mercia, by whom it was erected. At first the maintenance of the gate was considered to devolve upon the Bishop of London, but after an arrangement with the Hanse Merchants it was ruled that the bishop ‘is bound to make the hinges of Bysoppsgate; seeing that from every cart laden with wood he has one stick as it enters the said gate.’ The liability was limited to the hinges, for after some dispute it was (1305) ‘awarded and agreed that Almaines belonging to the House of the Merchants of Almaine shall be free from paying two shillings on going in or out of the gate of Bishopesgate with their goods, seeing that they are charged with the safe keeping and repair of the gate.’ The line of the wall bears southward to Aldgate, and is marked by the street named Houndsditch.
The earliest form of the name Aldgate appears to have been Alegate or Algate, and, therefore, has nothing to do with Old, the d being intrusive. Within the walls was the great house of Christ Church, founded by Queen Maud or Matilda, wife to Henry I., in the year 1108, and afterwards known as the Priory of the Holy Trinity within Aldgate. In 1115 the famous Cnichtengild, possessors of the ward of Portsoken (which was the soke without the port or gate called Aldgate), presented to the priory all their rights, offering upon the altars of the church the several charters of the guild. The King confirmed the gift, and the prior became ex officio an alderman of London. This continued to the dissolution of the religious houses, when the inhabitants of the ward obtained the privilege of electing their own alderman. Stow tells us that he remembered the prior riding forth with the Mayor as one of the aldermen. ‘These priors have sitten and ridden amongst the aldermen of London, in livery like unto them, saving that his habit was in shape of a spiritual person, as I myself have seen in my childhood.’
The old name of Christ Church is retained in St. Katherine Cree or Christ Church, on the north side of Leadenhall Street, which was built in the cemetery of the dissolved priory. This church was taken down in 1628, and the present building erected in 1630.
The wall led south by the line of the street now called the Minories to the Tower, thus dividing Great Tower Hill, which was within the wall, from Little Tower Hill, which was outside. The Abbey of Nuns of the Order of St. Clare, which was situated outside the city walls, gave its name of Minoresses to the street. When William the Conqueror built the Tower he encroached upon the city ground, a proceeding which was not popular with his subjects. Near Tower Hill, that is out of George Street,
Trinity Square, there is a fine fragment of the old London wall.
We must now turn westward and follow the course of the river from the Custom House to the Blackfriars, as this forms the southern boundary of the city.
A little to the west of the Tower gate was Galley Quay, where, according to Stow, ‘the gallies of Italie and other parts were used to unlade and land their merchandises and wares.’ These strangers, inhabitants of Genoa and other parts, lodged, says Stow, in Galley Row, near Mincing Lane. They ‘were commonly called galley-men, as men that came up in the galleys, brought up wines and other merchandises, which they landed in Thames Street, at a place called Galley Key; they had a certain coin of silver amongst themselves which were halfpence of Genoa, and were called galley halfpence; these halfpence were forbidden in the 13th of Henry IV., and again by Parliament in the 4th of Henry V. … Notwithstanding in my youth I have seen them pass current, but with some difficulty, for that the English halfpence were then, though not so broad, somewhat thicker and stronger.’ Next Galley Quay was Bear Quay, appropriated chiefly to the landing and shipment of corn.
The first Custom House of which we have any account was built by John Churchman, Sheriff of London in 1385, and stood on ‘Customer’s Key,’ to the east of the present building, and therefore much nearer Tower Wharf. Another and a larger building was erected in the reign of Elizabeth, and burnt in the Great Fire of 1666. Wren designed the third building, which was completed in 1671 and destroyed by fire in 1718. Ripley’s building, which succeeded this, was destroyed in the same way in 1814. The present is therefore the fifth building devoted to the customs of the country.
Billingsgate must be of great antiquity, but it has not always held its present undisputed position. In early times Queenhithe and Billingsgate were the chief city wharfs for the mooring of fishing vessels and landing their cargoes. The fish were sold in and about Thames Street, special stations being assigned to the several kinds of fish. Queenhithe was at first the more important wharf, but Billingsgate appears to have gradually overtaken it, and eventually to have left it quite in the rear, the troublesome passage of London Bridge leading the shipmasters to prefer the below-bridge wharf. Corn, malt and salt, as well as fish, were landed and sold at both wharfs, and very strict regulations were laid down by the city authorities as to the tolls to be levied on the several articles, and the conditions under which they were to be sold.[21]
In 1282 a message was sent from Edward I to the Serjeants of Billingsgate and Queenhithe commanding them ‘to see that all boats are moored on the city side at night’; and in 1297 the order was repeated, but it was now directed to the warden of the dock at Billingsgate, and the warden of Queenhithe, who were ‘to see that this order is strictly observed.’
Opposite to Billingsgate, on the north side of Lower Thames Street, the foundations of a Roman villa were discovered in 1847 when the present Coal Exchange was built. A spring of clear water which supplied the Roman baths was found running through the ruins at the time of the excavations. This was the spring which supplied the boss, fountain or jet by the corner of an opening, of old called Boss Alley, where a reservoir was erected by Sir Richard Whittington, or his executors, expressly for the use of the inhabitants and market people.
We now come to London Bridge, the great southern approach to London, and the most important strategical position, as when that was fortified the inhabitants were safe from attack on the south. Passing westward from the bridge we come to the Old Swan Stairs, the Steelyard, Coldharbour, Dowgate and the Vintry, and then we come to Queenhithe, said to have been named after Eleanor, widow of Henry II., to whom it belonged. It was previously known as Edred’s hithe. Passing Paul’s Wharf, we come to the vast building known as Baynard’s Castle, built by Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, in 1428. This mansion had an eventful