appear.
The Rag Fair would migrate to what became known as Petticoat Lane, where by the Victorian period there were ‘ between two and three miles of old clothes … it is a vista of dinginess, but many-coloured dinginess, as regards female attire’.
Nearby, in Goodman’s Fields, house numbers were introduced to London in 1708. However, London continued to work on a system of large and elaborate signboards and descriptions, such as ‘At the Naked Boy and Three Crowns Against the New Church in The Strand’. To the north and west, the Huguenot refugees invaded the earlier textile-making settlement, sticking close to the charity of their mother church in Threadneedle Street and their soup kitchen, ‘La Soupe’. WhereBroadgate passes Liverpool Street Station and becomes Norton Folgate, the City’s jurisdiction ended; the area had been a place to find cheap lodgings since Christopher Marlowe took a room there. At the beginning of the period it was a scraggy patchwork settlement but by the end was occupied by more commercial buildings. It is still a discordantly odd area now, pummelled by heavy traffic, dotted with gritty nightclubs and cornershops where all the biscuits are out of date. To the west of Norton Folgate were the huge open spaces of Moorfields, perhaps the most symbolic of all of east London’s open spaces.
Through Aldgate and Bishopsgate passed the roads to Whitechapel and Shoreditch, taking rural traffic at the beginning of the period and suburban commuters at the end. Between them ran Houndsditch, just outside the City walls where ‘ dead dogges were there laid or cast’ for centuries. Further west was Bethlem Hospital, crouched upon the southern edge of Moorfields. Commonly known as Bedlam, it was where the insane poor were housed. Moorfields itself played host to the City’s leisure time as well as her protests, and acted as a refuge during times of terror. On its western edge was Grub Street, where poor scribblers huddled in frozen garrets and broadsheets fluttered on washing lines, drying in the wind. ‘ On lines stretched from tree to tree, slips of ballads fluttered in the breeze.’
At Cripplegate there were noisy coaching inns, such as the Catherine Wheel and the Bell, which catered for all classes of customers in their warren-like interiors. Clerkenwell played host to the artisan as goldsmiths, horologists and cabinetmakers set up workshops around the Green. Many were poorly paid pieceworkers, exempt from the apprenticeships enforced within the City. Holborn was where the richest merchants had moved a century earlier to build large houses strung out along the road. Behind them were courts and fields, mixed with large gardens that were getting ever smaller as the weight of population encroached. Most of the houses were by now subdivided into cheap tenements. Behind lay Chick Lane, a street of brothels and shops selling second-hand goods and clothes.
To the south-west Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Temple acted as London’s universities, full of bright and affluent young men away from home. In the late seventeenth century, it became a small town ofregular squares and passages with gardens opening on to the river, gulls wheeling overhead. Solidly middle class in both occupation and occupant, it was not immediately apparent that the Inns were busy haunts of prostitution and, sometimes, violence. Between Temple and the City was Alsatia, also known as the Liberty of Whitefriars, named after the white clothing of the Carmelites who had once inhabited the area. It was a ‘ dull, narrow, uninviting lane sloping from Fleet Street to the river … a debtors’ sanctuary and thieves’ paradise, and for half a century its bullies and swindlers waged a ceaseless war with their proud and rackety neighbours of the Temple’. Close by was the Bridewell Prison. Originally a palace for Henry VIII, it had been given over to the correction of ‘disorderly women’, and soon Bridewell became London’s
The Rag Fair would migrate to what became known as Petticoat Lane, where by the Victorian period there were ‘ between two and three miles of old clothes … it is a vista of dinginess, but many-coloured dinginess, as regards female attire’.
Nearby, in Goodman’s Fields, house numbers were introduced to London in 1708. However, London continued to work on a system of large and elaborate signboards and descriptions, such as ‘At the Naked Boy and Three Crowns Against the New Church in The Strand’. To the north and west, the Huguenot refugees invaded the earlier textile-making settlement, sticking close to the charity of their mother church in Threadneedle Street and their soup kitchen, ‘La Soupe’. WhereBroadgate passes Liverpool Street Station and becomes Norton Folgate, the City’s jurisdiction ended; the area had been a place to find cheap lodgings since Christopher Marlowe took a room there. At the beginning of the period it was a scraggy patchwork settlement but by the end was occupied by more commercial buildings. It is still a discordantly odd area now, pummelled by heavy traffic, dotted with gritty nightclubs and cornershops where all the biscuits are out of date. To the west of Norton Folgate were the huge open spaces of Moorfields, perhaps the most symbolic of all of east London’s open spaces.
Through Aldgate and Bishopsgate passed the roads to Whitechapel and Shoreditch, taking rural traffic at the beginning of the period and suburban commuters at the end. Between them ran Houndsditch, just outside the City walls where ‘ dead dogges were there laid or cast’ for centuries. Further west was Bethlem Hospital, crouched upon the southern edge of Moorfields. Commonly known as Bedlam, it was where the insane poor were housed. Moorfields itself played host to the City’s leisure time as well as her protests, and acted as a refuge during times of terror. On its western edge was Grub Street, where poor scribblers huddled in frozen garrets and broadsheets fluttered on washing lines, drying in the wind. ‘ On lines stretched from tree to tree, slips of ballads fluttered in the breeze.’
At Cripplegate there were noisy coaching inns, such as the Catherine Wheel and the Bell, which catered for all classes of customers in their warren-like interiors. Clerkenwell played host to the artisan as goldsmiths, horologists and cabinetmakers set up workshops around the Green. Many were poorly paid pieceworkers, exempt from the apprenticeships enforced within the City. Holborn was where the richest merchants had moved a century earlier to build large houses strung out along the road. Behind them were courts and fields, mixed with large gardens that were getting ever smaller as the weight of population encroached. Most of the houses were by now subdivided into cheap tenements. Behind lay Chick Lane, a street of brothels and shops selling second-hand goods and clothes.
To the south-west Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Temple acted as London’s universities, full of bright and affluent young men away from home. In the late seventeenth century, it became a small town ofregular squares and passages with gardens opening on to the river, gulls wheeling overhead. Solidly middle class in both occupation and occupant, it was not immediately apparent that the Inns were busy haunts of prostitution and, sometimes, violence. Between Temple and the City was Alsatia, also known as the Liberty of Whitefriars, named after the white clothing of the Carmelites who had once inhabited the area. It was a ‘ dull, narrow, uninviting lane sloping from Fleet Street to the river … a debtors’ sanctuary and thieves’ paradise, and for half a century its bullies and swindlers waged a ceaseless war with their proud and rackety neighbours of the Temple’. Close by was the Bridewell Prison. Originally a palace for Henry VIII, it had been given over to the correction of ‘disorderly women’, and soon Bridewell became London’s
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