Old and New London, A Narrative of its History, its People and its Places. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings from the Most Authentic Sources. vol 3
Thornbury, Walter
1872-78
Chapter II: Butcher's Row.-Church of St. Clement Danes.
Chapter II: Butcher's Row.-Church of St. Clement Danes.
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If you and I, dear fellow traveller, could imagine ourselves our own great-grandfathers; could we, in fact, transport ourselves a century back, and, emerging together from the busy thoroughfare of , pass through the narrow, frowning gateway of , we might perchance meet the ungainly form of Dr. Johnson, rolling up the Strand, arm in arm with Boswell, to
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But should no such good luck befall us as an encounter with the great lexicographer, at least striking object would meet our eyes, as we looked straight before us, towards the Church of , namely, the stocks, a spectacle of wholesome awe to evil-doers in general, and to unruly City apprentices in particular. Beyond these, we should find the lower portion of suffering eclipse, from a range of dull and rather squalid-looking buildings known as [extra_illustrations.3.10.1] , from having formerly served as shambles. These houses, which were almost entirely built of wood, and were several storeys in height, interfered greatly with traffic, the passage on either side of them being scarcely wide enough in any part to allow vehicles to pass each other. The Row was removed early in the present century through the worthy Alderman Pickett, after whom was named. | |
Mr. John Timbs describes the houses in Butcher's Row as having been mostly built in Queen Elizabeth's time, and constructed of wood and plaster, with overhanging eaves. he writes,
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In of these uninviting edifices, however, as we learn from the date of some of his letters, [extra_illustrations.3.10.2] , the poet, resided, on the rare occasions of tearing himself away from his for a stay in London. In another was born, in , Dr. Andrew Reed, the benevolent founder of Reedham, the Asylum for Fatherless Children at Clapton, and the Idiot Asylum, at Earlswood. His father was a watchmaker in the Row. | |
Hereabouts, too, according to the confession of Thomas Winter, was concocted the Gunpowder Plot in . He says,
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In a view of London and , drawn by A. Van der Wyngarde (A.D. ), now in the Bodleian Library, at Oxford, the Bars at the junction of and the Strand are flanked on the north by a row of quaint old houses, which were | |
p.11 | probably erected for the benefit of such traders as were not qualified to carry on their business in the City, and may possibly have been of the reign of Henry VIII. |
says Mr. J. Wykeham Archer, in his
The old house with its bulk-shop, which adjoined , and which had remained a surviving vestige of the sweeping measures of Alderman Pickett in the beginning of the century, stood in its original condition down to , when it was modernised by the removal of the heavy pents which surmounted its ground-floor. The house bore on its front a notice to the effect that it was and was occupied by An engraving of it, in of its last stages, will be found in the above-mentioned work of Mr. Archer, who explains the term as a word of Flemish origin, signifying a stall before a shop, and also associated with the idea of strength or substance. Thus deprived of its pents, it became finally the bookshop of Messrs. Reeves and Turner. The house was a mere timber frame, filled up with lath and plaster, and the whole of it seemed to hang together by adhesion rather than by any stability of construction. | |
It will be remembered that Shakespeare speaks of misery making men acquainted with It is probable that in these words he is alluding to his experiences, where he must often have seen the heavy canopies of these parts projecting over the pathways, with their wood or leaden coverings turned up at the edge like some oldfashioned beaver, the ends being sunk a little so as to let the rain pass off. writes Mr. J. W. Archer,
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Close to Butcher's Row, at the date to which we refer, we should have come upon a stone cross, or rather its remains, for Strype, in his edition of in , speaks of it as a decapitation which it probably owed to an effort of Puritan zeal in the days of the Great Rebellion. It is probable that at the time of the demolition of Butcher's Row all vestiges of the mutilated cross were swept away. | |
In Malcolm's published early in the present century, he says,
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Passing on, we reach the churchyard of St. Clement Danes so called, as antiquaries affirm, story commonly told is to the effect that to avenge an insult to his own mother, Hardicanute ordered his half-brother's body to be torn out of its grave and thrown into the Thames, and that, being cast ashore, a fisherman took it up and gave it decent burial in this place, which was consecrated to receive it. Another account states that in the reign of Ethelred, the Danes having pillaged the fair abbey of Chertsey, were here met on their return, and slain by the Londoners. And there is yet a version, which is told by Lord Burleigh (who lived in this parish), on the authority of Fleetwood, the antiquary, to the effect that when the Danes were driven out of England, a few were left behind, being married to English women; and that these were ordered by the king to dwell between the Isle of Thorney, which is now called , and Caer Lud, now Ludgate, and that there they built a church. | |
In made in , we are told,
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The body of the old church was taken down in , and the present fabric was built in by | |
p.12 [extra_illustrations.3.12.1] |
Edward Pearce, under the direction of Sir C. Wren, who superintended the work gratuitously, as recorded on a marble slab in the north aisle. The present tower and steeple were added in , and underwent extensive repairs and restorations in . The tower contains a peal of bells, of a particularly musical sound, cast in . The clock strikes the hours twice; (Thomson's ) Besides the clock, there is a set of chimes which play the Psalm. The bells also chime the tunes of and the at , , and o'clock, daily; |
| indeed, the chimes of may still be heard as Falstaff describes having heard them with Justice Shallow. | |
The present Church of St. Clement Danes stands a little to the south of the ancient church or chapel of St. Clement, which had existed from the Conquest till long after the Reformation, occupying a part of what then was a rather large churchyard. It probably covers, as nearly as possible, the grave of Harold Harefoot, the mound over which was levelled by order of his vindictive and besotted brother. The church has always kept a marked position among those of the metropolis; and as it stands at once close to the City boundaries and on the high road to , all public processions, from the days of the Plantagenets to | |
p.13 [extra_illustrations.3.13.1] | those of Victoria, have passed the building. When the Princess Alexandra of Denmark passed by it, on the , the address presented to her by the parishioners on that occasion must have suggested to her mind a pleasing contrast to the traditionary feuds of years ago between the country she had left and that to which she had come. |
The present structure, like its predecessor, is dedicated to St. Clement, the patron saint of feltworkers, and also of sailors; and the symbolic anchor of St. Clement is still to be seen on nearly all the public buildings in the parish. The church is built of a white stone, both beautiful and durable; the architecture is of the Corinthian order. Front- | |
ing the Strand was formerly a spacious circular portico, supported by Ionic pillars. The interior of the edifice is commodious and handsome of its kind, and the roof inside is and highly ornamented. The pulpit and altar are richly carved in the Tuscan style, and the top of the communion-table is of ancient and valuable marble, supposed to have belonged to the old church. The organ is of Father Smith's. The lofty tower and steeple, feet high, which were added to the church in , exhibit in succession Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite tiers of architecture. | |
In the north gallery of this church there is a pew which is more revered and respected than the in many a country parish church. | |
p.14 | Men of all parties and creeds cordially agree in this feeling. The lover of old times and old principles reveres the spot, and the admirer of what is new respects it while criticising the man who has made it famous and historical. Nearly a century has passed away since the death of Dr. Samuel Johnson, but in spite of all the changes that have since passed over the world, there still stands here the simple memorial of his former presence as a worshipper within these walls. A plain plate of brass, fixed to the back of the pew, reminds us that here the great essayist and lexicographer used to kneel in worship. It has been remarked that And the remark is true. While listening to him on a Saturday night, at the or the we mark his rude and even fierce replies, his vehement prejudices, and domineering and despotic intellect, we should scarcely deem him a man of deep religious feelings. But when the bells of were heard next morning in the , the porter regularly opened the gates to let out the well-known scholastic, large-wigged Johnson. The man knew that, in spite of his wig, he was not a member of the Temple; but some notion of his rising fame had reached even the porters, and his rough generosity had won their respect. On by the posts of , touching each as he goes along, rolls rather than walks, He seems more solemn than usual, and the sound of the church bells deepens his passiveness into melancholy. How is this? who did not know the man might ask. Who was more merry than he last night at the how ready were his quotations! how apt his illustrations! how overpowering his arguments! He seems quite another man to-day. No, he is just the same man, but in another mood. He enters the church as though anxious to avoid notice, and shows that with him, at least, the service is a reality. He tells us that he strove, like many another brave and good man, honestly to solve the great problem, and that he did this in . That pew in the north gallery, as the brass plate tells us, was the actual scene and arena of this struggle. Here he sat after his good resolution to go to church every Sunday, and to read the Scriptures; and hither he repaired in the last year of his life, at the age of , to return thanks to God for his recovery from an illness of a hundredand- days. The following is the inscription to which reference is made above :
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The parish is so well endowed with charities that the paupers of other neighbourhoods used to flock into it at the commencement of winter, for the sake of all they could get, and the vestry were obliged to limit their gifts to those who had resided for the space of a year. | |
There were almshouses for poor women in the upper and lower churchyard, at the time of the parish survey in .
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The vaults beneath the church were crowded to excess. On the receipt of an Order in Council for closing them in , the coffins were all placed together in part of the vault and hermetically sealed, the whole being enclosed with a strong brick wall. Mr. Diprose tells us that towards the close of the last century,
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In the church lie buried some few individuals whose names the world would not wish to forget; among others, Thomas Rymer, who compiled the and the dramatic poets, Nathaniel Lee and Thomas Otway, and Bishop Berkeley, the philosopher, and friend of Pope, who attributed to him Sir John Roe, who died in Ben Jonson's arms, of the plague, ; Dr. Kitchener, and the Oxberrys, father and son, are also buried here. Among other monuments are those of Hippocrates de Otthen, who was physician to the Emperor of Germany, and was sent over to England at the request of Queen Elizabeth, in whose service, and in that of the Earl of Leicester, he was long employed, and of John Arundel, Bishop of Exeter, who died in . | |
In this church was solemnised, just centuries | |
ago, that marriage of Sir Thomas Grosvenor with Miss Davies, the wealthy heiress of Ebury Manor, which brought into the family of the Duke of their property in and Belgravia. | |
The registers of commence with the year , and are kept in far better order than in most parishes. They record the deaths of some hundreds of parishioners in , the year of the Great Plague, which made great havoc in the close streets near , and also in . | |
of the earliest entries of baptism is as follows:-- Some years afterwards, the subject of this entry earned for the gracious courtesy and politeness of his manners towards his inferiors. | |
The neighbourhood of St. Clement Danes Church appears to have borne anything but a good reputation so far back as centuries ago, by reason of who made so much disturbance in the streets by night that the inhabitants, we read, were fain to keep watches for the sake of mutual protection. Thus, says honest John Stow, adds Stow, We may draw an obvious inference from the story of Mr. Robert Cecil's conduct in this instance as to the usual habits of the fast young noblemen of Elizabeth's time. | |
Footnotes: [extra_illustrations.3.10.1] Butcher's Row [extra_illustrations.3.10.2] William Shenstone [extra_illustrations.3.12.1] Daily service in St. Clement's [extra_illustrations.3.13.1] Altar piece of St. Clement's |
