HISTORICAL

AND

TOPOGRAPHICAL ILLUSTRATIONS

OF

London and its Environs.

LONDON may well be considered as the metropolis of the world. It has been the liberal foster-parent of the elegant no less than the useful arts, and in point of wealth and commercial prosperity it exceeds every other city on record. When "Domesday-Book" was compiled in the reign of William the Conqueror, London consisted but of a few houses near Middle-Row, on the banks of the Old-bourne, a stream which flowed into the river Fleet; and it must have made most rapid strides towards maturity, as we find William of Malmsbury in the reign of king Stephen, speaking of the Metropolis as " a noble city renowned for the opulence of its inhabitants."

"But it is at the era of Elizabeth," says Mr. Britton, "that we are presented with the most curious picture of Londoh, in the first map of a Metropolis then thought too large, and, in consequence, positively forbidden to be further extended by that imperious sovereign. From this map it appears, that the greater part of the Metropolis was then contained within the walls, in which narrow limits there were many gardens, which have since been converted into lanes, courts, and alleys. The whole of the buildings were bounded on the east by the monastery of St. Catherine; East Smithfield was open to Tower Hill, and of the buildings now beyond there is no appearance. The Minories were built only on the east side, which fronted the city wall; cattle grazed in Goodman's Fields; and Whitechapel extended but a little beyond the bars, and had no houses to the north; for Spital Fields, now built upon, and extensive enough to compose a very large town, were then really separated from each other by hedges and rows of trees. Hounds

B

ditch consisted only of a row of houses fronting the city wall; and the little yards and gardens behind them also opened into the fields. Bishopsgate Street, Norton Falgate, and the street called Shoreditch, were then, however, built as far as the church; but there were only a few houses and gardens on each side, and no collateral streets or alleys. Moorfields lay entirely open to the village of Hoxton; and Finsbury Fields, in which there were several windmills, extended to the east side of Whitecross Street. Chiswell Street was not erected; St. John's Street extended, by the side of the priory of St. John of Jerusalem, only as far as the monastery of Clerkenwell; and Cowcross Street opened into the fields. On leaving the city walls, the buildings were even less extensive; for, though the village of Holborn joined London, the backs of its houses, particularly on the north side, opened into gardens and fields; a part of Gray's Inn Lane included the only houses that extended out of the main street; the greater part of High Holborn had no existence; St. Giles's was another village, contiguous to no part of London; the Strand had gardens on each side, and, to the north, fields behind these gardens, with the exception of a few houses where the lower end of Drury Lane now stands; and on the south side of the same street the gardens generally extended to the Thames, though some of the nobility and prelates had houses at the backs of their gardens, next to the water side. Covent Garden, literally such, and so called because it belonged to the Convent at Westminster, extended to St. Martin's Lane, and the fields behind it reached to St. Giles's. That lane had few edifices besides the church; for Covent Garden wall was on one side, and a wall which enclosed the King's mews on the other; and all the upper part was a lane between two hedges, which extended a little to the west of the village of St. Giles's. Hedge Lane, now Crown Street, was a lane between two hedges. The extensive street now called the Haymarket, was bounded by fields; neither Pall Mall, St. James's Street, Piccadilly, nor any of the streets or squares in that part of the town, were built; and Westminster was a small town on the south-west and south sides of St. James's Park.

London, in respect to its position on the globe, is in latitude 51 degrees 31 minutes north; and in longitude 18 degrees 36 minutes; or 5 minutes 37 seconds west from the Royal Observatory Greenwich. It is distant from Edinburgh 396 miles south, and from Dublin 338 miles south-east.

The immediate site of the city of London is about forty-five miles. from the sea, westward, in a pleasant and spacious valley, stretching along the banks of the Thames, which river, as it flows through the metropolis, forms a bold curve or crescent. On the northern side the ground rises with a quick ascent, and then more gradually, but une

qually, heightens to the north-west and west, which are the most elevated parts. On the south side of the river the ground is nearly level, and was anciently an entire morass of many miles in extent; this has been reclaimed through the artificial embankment of the river, probably commenced by the Romans, which must have been the work of ages. The average breadth of the river, in this part of its course, is from four to five hundred yards; its general depth at low water about twelve feet; but at spring tides it rises from ten to twelve feet above that level. The tides used to flow to the distance of fifteen miles above London bridge, but since the alteration at London bridge by the demolition of the old structure, it goes much higher.

Considered in the aggregate, London comprises the city and its liberties, with the city and liberties of Westminster, the borough of Southwark, and upwards of thirty of the contiguous villages of Middlesex and Surry.

The extent of this district is, from east to west, or from Poplar to Kensington, near eight miles; its breadth from north to south is very irregular, and may be said to vary from three to four miles. The circumference of this immense congregation of buildings may be estimated at about twenty miles. The principal streets range from west to east, and in that direction the metropolis is intersected by three great thoroughfares; the one which is most adjacent to the river commences at Hyde-park-corner, and traverses east, under the names of Piccadilly, Haymarket, Cockspur-street, Strand, Fleet-street, Ludgate-hill, St. Paul's Church-yard, Watling-street, Cannon-street, Eastcheap, Towerstreet, Tower-hill; this line pursues its route for three miles further by East Smithfield, Ratcliffe-highway, Upper and Lower Shadwell, to Poplar and the East and West India docks. The middle line of road commences at Tyburn-turnpike, and thence under the appellations of Oxford-street, High-street St. Giles's, Holborn, Skinner-street, Newgate-street, Cheapside, Cornhill, Leadenhall-street, Aldgate, and Whitechapel, leads by Mile-end and Stratford-le-Bow into Essex. The great northern thoroughfare commences at Paddington, and traverses east by the names of the New-road, Pentonville, City-road, Old-street and Hackney-road to Leyton, and the northern parts of Essex. The principal thoroughfare which intersects London from north to south commences at Kingsland, thence by Shoreditch, Norton-falgate, Bishopsgate-street, Gracechurch-street, Fish-street-hill, London-bridge, Highstreet Borough, Blackman-street, and Newington-causeway, to the Brighton and other roads. Besides this there are five other main avenues into Surry and Kent, over the bridges of Westminster, Waterloo, and Blackfriars, which meet at the obelisk in St. George's-fields, the

Southwark-bridge, which enters Newington-causeway near the Elephant and Castle, and Vauxhall-bridge.

The metropolis is computed to contain upwards of 60 squares, 12,000 streets, lanes, courts, &c.; and the whole formed by near 300,000 buildings of various descriptions, as public structures, churches, dwelling-houses, warehouses, shops, &c. The churches and other public edifices are generally built of stone; the dwelling-houses, with the exception of some of the mansions belonging to the nobility and gentry, are almost wholly of brick, though latterly the fronts of many of the more respectable ones are covered with compo, or mastic. But few wooden houses are now to be seen, and these are principally of a date anterior to the great fire of 1666. Many of the squares are very spacious, and elegantly laid out in parterres and shrubberies, for the recreation of the inhabitants of the surrounding houses.

All the streets are regularly paved, and divided into a carriage-way and a foot-path on each side. The carriage-way is generally paved with small blocks of Scotch granite. The foot-paths are usually laid with large thick flags, or slabs, either of Yorkshire free-stone, moorstone, or lime-stone, and are finished with a kirb raised a few inches above the carriage-way. The mud and soil which accumulate in the streets are taken away at stated intervals, by scavengers employed by the different parishes; and the waste water, &c. runs off through iron gratings fixed in the kennels at proper intervals, into arched sewers or drains constructed beneath the street (and communicating by smaller drains with the houses), and having various outlets, through larger sewers, into the Thames. Through these means, and from the ample supply of water which the inhabitants derive from numerous sources, the general cleanliness is very considerable, and materially tends to the present salubrity of the metropolis.

Notwithstanding the sudden and strongly-contrasted changes of the weather in London, compared with the state of the atmosphere in other climes, and although multitudes of its poorer classes live in poverty and wretchedness, the general healthiness of this capital may be deemed fully equal to that of any other in the world.

The temperature of the air of London and its vicinity, is sensibly affected by the influence of the coal fires, which warm and dry the atmosphere; and it is a remarkable fact that vegetation is earlier by ten days or a fortnight on the west and south-west sides of the metropolis than at the northern and eastern sides. This is attributable, says Mr. Howard, to the severity of the north and north-east winds being mitigated in their passage over London by the warmth of the coal fires. The excess of temperature is greatest in winter, and at that period

seems to belong entirely to the nights, which average three degrees and seven-tenths warmer than in the country; while the heat of the days, owing, without doubt, to the interception of a portion of the solar rays by the dense smoke inseparable to so great a metropolis, falls, on a mean of years, about a third of a degree short of that on open plains.

The more prevalent winds blow from the north-east and south-west; and these, with little variation, occupy about ten or eleven months in the year, "The westerly winds," says Fordyce, "are generally pregnant with rain, the greatest falls coming from a few points west of the south; the easterly winds are sharp and piercing, but almost always dry. The heat of the atmosphere is very variable, it seldom remaining equal for many days; and every year differing from the preceding one, as well in respect to heat and cold as to moisture and rains. Sometimes the winter is severely cold, with frosts from November till May, with little interruption: sometimes the water is not frozen for more than ten or twelve days. Most commonly there is a little frost in November and December; but otherwise these months (and particularly November) are very foggy [gloomy] and moist. The principal frost is generally in January; February is commonly a mild, open, moist month ; March is generally cold [windy] and dry. The summer months vary as much; sometimes there are three months very warm, sometimes not more than a week [in continuance]; the latter half of July [and beginning of August] is commonly the hottest. In August heavy rains often fall, especially in the last half of the month. The thermometer sometimes rises to above 80° of Fahrenheit's scale, very rarely to 84°; but the most common summer heat is from 65° to 75°. In winter it sometimes falls to 15°, but the most common winter heat, when it freezes, is between 20 and 30°; it has been known to fall below the point marked 0, but very rarely; the most frequent, when it does not freeze, is between 40° and 50°." On the 13th of July, 1808, the thermometer, in the open air, in the shade, and with a northern aspect, near St. James's-park, rose to 94°; and in various parts of London, in the shade also, it varied from that degree upwards, to 103°. On the same day in particular local situations, in the sun, the quicksilver rose to the extraordinary height of from 120 to 140°! The contrast between this day and that of the 24th of January, 1795, is most striking; on the latter the thermometer fell to six degrees below zero!

It appears from Mr. Kirwan's "Estimate of the Temperature of different Latitudes," 8vo. 1787, that taking the mean of the observations made at the house of the Royal Society, from the year 1772 to 1780, the annual temperature of London is 51° 9′, or in round numbers, 52o.

The situation of London is so very favourable, that springs which yield large quantities of water, are found on digging almost every