Collins' Illustrated Guide to London and Neighbourhood Part 1

Collins' Ill.u.s.trated Guide to London and Neighbourhood.

by Anonymous.

PREFACE.

IN this work an attempt is made to furnish Strangers with a handy and useful Guide to the chief objects of interest in the Metropolis and its Environs: comprising also much that will be interesting to permanent Residents. After a few pages of General Description, the various Buildings and other places of attraction are treated in convenient groups or sections, according to their nature. Short Excursions from the Metropolis are then noticed. Tables, lists, and serviceable information concerning railways, tramways, omnibuses, cabs, telegraphs, postal rules, and other special matters, follow these sections. An ALPHABETICAL INDEX at the end furnishes the means of easy reference.

The information is brought down to the latest date, either in the Text or in the Appendix at the end. And the Clue-map has, in like manner, been filled in with the recently opened lines of Railway, &c., as well as with indications of the Railways sanctioned, but not yet completed.

HOTEL CHARGES.

THERE is only one cla.s.s of hotels in and near London of which the charges can be stated with any degree of precision. The _old_ hotels, both at the West-End and in the City, keep no printed tariff; they are not accustomed even to be asked beforehand what are their charges. Most of the visitors are more or less _recommended_ by guests who have already sojourned at these establishments, and who can give information as to what _they_ have paid. Some of the hotels decline to receive guests except by previous written application, or by direct introduction, and would rather be without those who would regard the bill with economical scrutiny. The _dining_ hotels, such as the _London_ and the _Freemasons'

Tavern_, in London, the _Artichoke_ and various whitebait taverns at Blackwall, the _Trafalgar_ and _Crown and Sceptre_ taverns at Greenwich, and the _Castle_ and _Star and Garter_ taverns at Richmond, are costly taverns for dining, rather than hotels at which visitors sojourn; and the charges vary with every different degree of luxury in the viands served, and the mode of serving. The hotels which can be more easily tested, in reference to their charges, are the _joint-stock_ undertakings. These are of two kinds: one, the hotels connected with the great railway termini, such as the _Victoria_, the _Euston_, the _Great Northern_, the _Great Western_, the _Grosvenor_, the _Charing Cross_, the _Midland_ and _Cannon Street_; while the other group are unconnected with railways, such as the _Westminster Palace_, the _Langham_, the _Salisbury_, the _Inns of Court_, _Alexandra_, _&c._

COLLINS'

ILl.u.s.tRATED GUIDE TO LONDON.

Whether we consider London as the metropolis of a great and mighty empire, upon the dominions of whose sovereign the sun never sets, or as the home of more than three millions of people, and the richest city in the world to boot, it must ever be a place which strangers wish to visit.

In these days of railways and steamers, the toil and cost of reaching it are, comparatively speaking, small; and, such being the case, the supply of visitors has very naturally been adjusted to the everyday increasing opportunities of gratifying so very sensible a desire. To such persons, on their arrival at this vast City of the Islands, we here, if they will accept us as their guides, beg to offer, ere going into more minute details, a

GENERAL DESCRIPTION.

Without c.u.mbering our narrative with the fables of dim legendary lore, with regard to the origin of London-or _Llyn-Din_, "the town on the lake,"-we may mention, that the Romans, after conquering its ancient British inhabitants, about A.D. 61, finally rebuilt and walled it in about A.D. 301; from which time it became, in such excellent hands, a place of not a little importance. Roman remains, such as fine tesselated pavements, bronzes, weapons, pottery, and coins, are not seldom turned up by the spade of our st.u.r.dy excavators while digging below the foundations of houses; and a few scanty fragments of the old Roman Wall, which was rather more than three miles round, are still to be seen. London, in the Anglo-Norman times, though confined originally by the said wall, grew up a dense ma.s.s of brick and wooden houses, ill arranged, unclean, close, and for the most part terribly insalubrious. Pestilence was the natural consequence. Up to the great plague of 16645, which destroyed 68,596, some say 100,000 persons-there were, dating from the pestilence of 1348, no fewer than some nine visitations of widely-spreading epidemics in Old London. When, in 1666, the great fire, which burnt 13,200 houses, spread its ruins over 436 acres, and laid waste 400 streets, came to force the c.o.c.kneys to mend their ways somewhat, and open out their over-cramped habitations, some good was effected. But, unfortunately, during the rebuilding of the City, Sir Christopher Wren's plans for laying its streets out on a more regular plan, were poorly attended to: hence the still incongruous condition of older London when compared, in many instances, with the results of modern architecture, with reference to air, light, and sanitary arrangements. On account of the rubbish left by the fire and other casualties, the City stands from twelve to sixteen feet higher than it did in the early part of its history-the roadways of Roman London, for example, being found on, or even below, the level of the cellars of the present houses.

From being a city hemmed within a wall, London expanded in all directions, and thus gradually formed a connection with various cl.u.s.ters of dwellings in the neighbourhood. It has, in fact, absorbed towns and villages to a considerable distance around: the chief of these once detached seats of population being the city of Westminster. By means of bridges, it has also absorbed Southwark and Bermondsey, Lambeth and Vauxhall, on the south side of the Thames, besides many hamlets and villages beyond the river.

By these extensions London proper, by which we mean the _City_, has gradually a.s.sumed, if we may so speak, the conditions of an existence like that of a kernel in a thickly surrounding and ever-growing ma.s.s. By the census of 1861, the population of the _City_ was only 112,247; while including that with the entire metropolis, the number was 2,803,034-or _twenty-five times_ as great as the former! It may here be remarked, that the population of the _City_ is becoming smaller every year, on account of the subst.i.tution of public buildings, railway stations and viaducts, and large warehouses, in place of ordinary dwelling-houses.

Fewer and fewer people _live_ in the City. In 1851, the number was 127,869; it lessened by more than 15,000 between that year and 1861; while the population of the _whole_ metropolis increased by as many as 440,000 in the same s.p.a.ce of time.

If we follow the Registrar-General, London, as defined by him, extends north and south between Norwood and Hampstead, and east and west between Hammersmith and Woolwich. Its area is stated as 122 square miles. From the census returns of 1861, we find that its population then was 2,803,921 souls. It was, in 1871, 3,251,804. The real _city_ population was 74,732.

The growth of London to its present enormous size may readily be accounted for, when we reflect that for ages it has been the capital of England, and the seat of her court and legislature; that since the union with Scotland and Ireland, it has become a centre for those two countries; and that, being the resort of the n.o.bility, landed gentry, and other families of opulence, it has drawn a vast increase of population to minister to the tastes and wants of those cla.s.ses; while its fine natural position, lying as it does on the banks of a great navigable river, some sixty miles from the sea, and its generally salubrious site and soil-the greater part of London is built on gravel, or on a species of clay resting on sand-alike plead in its favour.

At one time London, like ancient Babylon, might fairly have been called a brick-built city. It is so, of course, still, in some sense. But we are greatly improving: within the last few years a large number of stucco-fronted houses, of ornamental character, have been erected; and quite recently, many wholly of stone, apart altogether from the more important public buildings, which of course are of stone. Of distinct houses, there are now the prodigious number of 500,000, having, on an average, about 7.8 dwellers to a house. For our own part we are somewhat sceptical as to this average. But we quote it as given by a professedly good authority.

The Post-Office officials ascertained that there was built in one year alone, as long ago as 1864, no fewer than 9,000 new houses. Though, by comparison with the houses of Edinburgh and some other parts of the kingdom, many of these are small structures, with but two rooms, often communicating, on a floor, a visitor to London will find no difficulty in seeing acres of substantial residences around him as he strolls along through the wide, quiet squares of Bloomsbury, the stuccoed and more aristocratic quarters of Belgravia and South Kensington, or by the old family mansions of the n.o.bility and gentry in, say, Cavendish, Grosvenor, or Portman Squares, and the large and more modern houses of many of our wealthy citizens in Tyburnia and Westburnia, farther westward of the Marble Arch. But of this more anon.

We have often heard foreigners laughingly remark of sundry London houses-apropos of the deep, open, sunk areas, bordered by iron railings, of many of them-that they ill.u.s.trate, in some sense, our English reserve, and love of carrying out our island proverb-viz., that "every Englishman's house is his castle,"-in its entirety, by each man barricading himself off from his neighbours advances by a fortified _fosse_!

Without particular reference to munic.i.p.al distinctions, London may (to convey a general idea to strangers) be divided into four princ.i.p.al portions-the _City_, which is the centre of corporate influence, and where the greatest part of the business is conducted; the _East End_, in which are the docks, and various commercial arrangements for s.h.i.+pping; the _West End_, in which are the palaces of the Queen and Royal family, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and the residences of most of the n.o.bility and gentry; and the _Southwark and Lambeth_ division, lying on the south side of the Thames, containing many manufacturing establishments, but few public buildings of interest. Besides these, the northern suburbs, which include the once detached villages of Hampstead, Highgate, Stoke Newington, Islington, Kingsland, Hackney, Hornsey, Holloway, &c., and consist chiefly of private dwellings for the mercantile and middle cla.s.ses, may be considered a peculiar and distinct division. It is, however, nowhere possible to say (except when separated by the river) exactly where any one division begins or ends; throughout the vast compa.s.s of the city and suburbs, there is a blending of one division with that contiguous to it. The outskirts, on all sides, comprise long rows or groups of villas, some detached or semi-detached, with small lawns or gardens.

The poet Cowper, in his _Task_, more than a hundred years ago, appreciatively spoke of

"The villas with which London stands begirt, Like a swarth Indian with his belt of beads."

We wonder what he would think now of the many houses of this kind which extend, in some directions, so far out of town, that there seems to be no getting beyond them into the country.

From the Surrey division there extends southward and westward a great number of those ranges of neat private dwellings, as, for instance, towards Camberwell, Kennington, Clapham, Brixton, Dulwich, Norwood, Sydenham, &c.; and in these directions lie some of the most pleasant spots in the environs of the metropolis.

The flowing of the Thames from west to east through the metropolis has given a general direction to the lines of street; the princ.i.p.al thoroughfares being, in some measure, parallel to the river, with the inferior, or at least shorter, streets branching from them. Intersecting the town lengthwise, or from east to west, are three great leading thoroughfares at a short distance from each other, but gradually diverging at their western extremity. One of these routes begins in the eastern environs, near Blackwall, and extends along Whitechapel, Leadenhall Street, Cornhill, the Poultry, Cheapside, Newgate Street, Holborn, and Oxford Street. The other may be considered as starting at London Bridge, and pa.s.sing up King William Street into Cheapside, at the western end of which it makes a bend round St. Paul's Churchyard; thence proceeds down Ludgate Hill, along Fleet Street and the Strand to Charing Cross, where it sends a branch off to the left to Whitehall, and another diagonally to the right, up c.o.c.kspur Street; this leads forward into Pall Mall, and sends an offshoot up Waterloo Place into Piccadilly, which proceeds westward to Hyde Park Corner. These two are the main lines in the metropolis, and are among the first traversed by strangers. It will be observed that they unite in Cheapside, which therefore becomes an excessively crowded thoroughfare, particularly at the busy hours of the day. More than 1000 vehicles _per hour_ pa.s.s through this street in the business period of an average day, besides foot-pa.s.sengers! To ease the traffic in Cheapside, a s.p.a.cious new thoroughfare, New Cannon Street, has been opened, from near London Bridge westward to St. Paul's Churchyard.

The third main line of route is not so much thronged, nor so interesting to strangers. It may be considered as beginning at the Bank, and pa.s.sing through the City Road and the New Road to Paddington and Westbourne. The New Road here mentioned has been re-named in three sections-Pentonville Road, from Islington to King's Cross; Euston Road, from King's Cross to Regent's Park; and Marylebone Road, from Regent's Park to Paddington.

The main cross branches in the metropolis are-Farringdon Street, leading from Blackfriars Bridge to Holborn, and thence by Victoria Street to the King's Cross Station; the Haymarket, leading from c.o.c.kspur Street; and Regent Street, already mentioned. There are several important streets leading northward from the Holborn and Oxford Street line-such as Portland Place, Tottenham Court Road, King Street, and Gray's Inn Lane.

The princ.i.p.al one in the east is St. Martin's-le-Grand and Aldersgate Street, which, by Goswell Street, lead to Islington; others are-Bishopsgate Street, leading to Sh.o.r.editch and Hackney; and Moorgate Street, leading northwards. A route stretching somewhat north-east-Whitechapel and Mile End Roads-connects the metropolis with Ess.e.x. It is a matter of general complaint that there are so few great channels of communication through London both lengthwise and crosswise; for the inferior streets, independently of their complex bearings, are much too narrow for regular traffic. But this grievance, let us hope, is in a fair way of abatement, thanks to sundry fine new streets, and to the Thames Embankment, which, proceeding along the northern sh.o.r.e of the river, now furnishes a splendid thoroughfare right away from Westminster Bridge to Blackfriars Bridge, by means of which the public are now enabled to arrive at the Mansion House by a wide street-called Queen Victoria Street, and, by the Metropolitan District Railway, to save time on this route from the west.

We shall have occasion again to allude to the Thames Embankment some pages on, and therefore, for the present, we will take

A FIRST GLANCE AT THE CITY.

London is too vast a place to be traversed in the limited time which strangers usually have at their disposal. Nevertheless, we may rapidly survey the main lines of route from east to west, with some of the branching offshoots. All the more important buildings, and places of public interest, will be found specially described under the headings to which they properly belong.

The most striking view in the interior of the city is at the open central s.p.a.ce whence Threadneedle Street, Cornhill, Lombard Street, King William Street, Walbrook, Cheapside, and Princes Street, radiate in seven different directions. (See ill.u.s.tration.) While the corner of the Bank of England abuts on this s.p.a.ce on the north, it is flanked on the south by the Mansion House, and on the east by the Royal Exchange. It would be a curious speculation to inquire how much money has been spent in constructions and reconstructions in and around this spot during half a century. The sum must be stupendous. Before new London Bridge was opened, the present King William Street did not exist; to construct it, houses by the score, perhaps by the hundred, had to be pulled down. Many years earlier, when the Bank of England was rebuilt, and a few years later, when the Royal Exchange was rebuilt, vast destructions of property took place, to make room for structures larger than those which had previously existed for the same purposes. For some distance up all the radii of which we have spoken, the arteries which lead from this heart of the commercial world, a similar process has been going on to a greater or less extent. Banking-houses, insurance-offices, and commercial buildings, have been built or rebuilt at an immense cost, the outlay depending rather on the rapidly increasing value of the ground than on the actual charge for building. If this particular portion of the city, this busy centre of wealth, should ever be invaded by such railway schemes as 1864, 1865, and 1866 produced, it is difficult to imagine what amounts would have to be paid for the purchase and removal of property.

Time was when a hundred thousand pounds per mile was a frightful sum for railways; but railway directors (in London at least) do not now look aghast at a million sterling per mile-as witness the South-Eastern and the Chatham and Dover Companies, concerning which we shall have to say more in a future page.

[Picture: Bank of England, Royal Exchange, Mansion House, &c. (Cornhill, Lombard, Threadneedle Streets.)] {16}

The seven radii of which we have spoken may be thus briefly described, as a preliminary guide to visitors: 1. Leaving this wonderfully-busy centre by the north, with the Poultry on one hand and the Bank of England on the other, we pa.s.s in front of many fine new commercial buildings in Princes and Moorgate Streets; indeed, there is not an old house here, for both are entirely modern streets, penetrating through what used to be a close ma.s.s of small streets and alleys. Other fine banking and commercial buildings may be seen stretching along either side in Lothbury and Gresham Streets. Farther towards the north, a visitor would reach the Finsbury Square region, beyond which the establishments are of less important character. 2. If, instead of leaving this centre by the north, he turns north-east, he will pa.s.s through Threadneedle Street between the Bank and the Royal Exchange; [Picture: King William Street, Gracechurch Street, &c. (Bank and Royal Exchange in the distance.)] next will be found the Stock Exchange, on the left hand; then the Sun Fire Office, and the Bank of London (formerly the Hall of Commerce); on the opposite side the City Bank, Merchant Taylor's School, and the building that was once the South Sea House; beyond these is the great centre for foreign merchants in Broad Street, Winchester Street, Austin Friars, and the vicinity. 3. If, again, the route be selected due east, there will come into view the famous Cornhill, with its Royal Exchange, its well-stored shops, and its alleys on either side crowded with merchants, brokers, bankers, coffee-houses, and chop-houses; beyond this, Bishopsgate Street branches out on the left, and Gracechurch Street on the right, both full of memorials of commercial London; and farther east still, Leadenhall Street, with new buildings on the site of the late East India House, leads to the Jews' Quarter around Aldgate and Houndsditch-a strange region, which few visitors to London think of exploring. "Petticoat Lane," perhaps one of the most extraordinary marts for old clothes, &c., is on the left of Aldgate High Street. It is well worth a visit by connoisseurs of queer life and character, who are able to take care of themselves, and remember to leave their valuables at home. 4. The fourth route from the great city centre leads through Lombard Street and Fenchurch Street-the one the head-quarters of the great banking firms of London; the other exhibiting many commercial buildings of late erection: while Mincing Lane and Mark Lane are the head-quarters for many branches of the foreign, colonial, and corn trades. 5. The fifth route takes the visitor through King William Street to the Monument, Fish Street Hill, Billingsgate, the Corn Exchange, the Custom House, the Thames Subway, the Tower, the Docks, the Thames Tunnel, London Bridge, and a host of interesting places, the proper examination of which would require something more than merely a brief visit to London. Opposite this quarter, on the Surrey side of the river, are numerous s.h.i.+pping wharfs, warehouses, porter breweries, and granaries. The fire that occurred at Cotton's wharf and depot and other wharfs near Tooley Street, in June, 1861, ill.u.s.trated the vast scale on which merchandise is collected in the warehouses and wharfs hereabout. {18} Of the dense ma.s.s of streets lying away from the river, and eastward of the city proper, comprising Spitalfields, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Stepney, &c., little need be said here; the population is immense, but, excepting the Bethnal Green Museum and Victoria Park, there are few objects interesting; nevertheless the observers of social life in its humbler phases would find much to learn here. 6. The southern route from the great city centre takes the visitor, by the side of the Mansion House, through the new thoroughfare, Queen Victoria Street-referred to at a previous page-to the river-side.

It will therefore be useful for a stranger to bear in mind, that the best centre of observation in the city is the open spot between the Bank, the Mansion House, and the Royal Exchange; where more omnibuses a.s.semble than at any other spot in the world; and whence he can ramble in any one of seven different directions, sure of meeting with something ill.u.s.trative of city life. The 7th route, not yet noticed, we will now follow, as it proceeds towards the West End.

The great central thoroughfare of Cheapside, which is closely lined with the shops of silversmiths and other wealthy tradesmen, is one of the oldest and most famous streets in the city-intimately a.s.sociated with the munic.i.p.al glories of London for centuries past. Many of the houses in Cheapside and Cornhill have lately been rebuilt on a scale of much grandeur. Some small plots of ground in this vicinity have been sold at the rate of nearly _one million sterling_ per acre! On each side of Cheapside, narrow streets diverge into the dense ma.s.s behind-Ironmonger Lane, King Street, Milk Street, and Wood Street, on the north; and among others, Queen Street, Bread Street, where Milton was born, and where stood the famous Mermaid Tavern, where Shakespeare and Raleigh, Ben Jonson and his young friends, Beaumont and Fletcher, those twin-dramatists, loved to meet, to enjoy "the feast of reason and the flow of soul," to say nothing of a few flagons of good Canary wine, Bow Lane, and Old 'Change, on the south. The greater part of these back streets, with the lanes adjoining, are occupied by the offices or warehouses of wholesale dealers in cloth, silk, hosiery, lace, &c., and are resorted to by London and country shopkeepers for supplies. Across the north end of King Street stands the Guildhall; and a little west, the City of London School and Goldsmiths' Hall. At the western end of Cheapside is a statue of the late Sir Robert Peel, by Behnes. Northward of this point, in St. Martin's-le-Grand, are the buildings of the Post and Telegraph Offices; beyond this the curious old Charter House; and then a line of business streets leading towards Islington. Westward are two streets, parallel with each other, and both too narrow for the trade to be accommodated in them-Newgate Street, celebrated for its Blue Coat Boys and, till the recent removal of the market to Smithfield, for its carca.s.s butchers; and Paternoster Row, still more celebrated for its publishers and booksellers. In Panyer Alley, leading out of Newgate Street, is an old stone bearing the inscription:

When ye have sovght the citty rovnd, Yet stil this is the highst grovnd.

Avgvst the 27, 1688. {20}

[Picture: Old stone]

At the west end of Newgate Street a turning to the right gives access to the once celebrated Smithfield and St. John's Gate. South-west of Cheapside stands St. Paul's Cathedral, that first and greatest of all the landmarks of London. In the immediate vicinity of St. Paul's, the names of many streets and lanes (Paternoster Row, Amen Corner, Ave Maria Lane, Creed Lane, G.o.dliman Street, &c.) give token of their former connection with the religious structure and its clerical attendants. The enclosed churchyard is surrounded by a street closely hemmed in with houses, now chiefly dedicated to trade: those on the south side being mostly wholesale, those on the north retail. An open arched pa.s.sage on the south side of the churchyard leads to Doctors' Commons, once the headquarters of the ecclesiastical lawyers.

[Picture: St. Paul's, West End of Cheapside, Paternoster Row, &c.