No. 4 was On the north side, No. 72, was a curious old inn, The Cock [see the Cock Tavern], but it was cleared away in 1873, with all the other houses on that side, to make way for the Royal Aquarium. a later Cock Tavern, and is now the Aquarium Tavern. modern house with an old stone, dated 1671, let into the front. old house Thomas Southerne, the poet (1660-1746) Tom sent down to raise The price of prologues and of plays— In the lived for many years at Mr. Whyte's, an oilman in Tothill Street, against Dartmouth Street.1 He died there, May 26, 1746. The house, was still an oilman's shop in 1850. It has been pulled down some years. The destruction on the south side has not been so sweeping; but several houses at the east end were taken down for the formation of Victoria Street and the Westminster Palace Hotel. In all there are only eighteen houses left in Tothill Street. In Tottenham Court Road, a market road, or street, leading from Oxford Street to the prebendal manor of Tothill, Totenhall, or Totenham Court, described in Domesday, and originally appertaining to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's. In 1560 the manor was demised to Queen Elizabeth for ninety-nine years, in the name of Sir Robert Dudley. In 1639, twenty years before the expiration of Queen Elizabeth's term, a lease was granted to Charles I., in the name of Sir Henry Vane. 1649, being seized as Crown land, the manor was sold to Ralph Harrison, Esq., of London, for the sum of £3318:3:11. At the Restoration it reverted to the Crown; and in 1661 was granted by Charles II., for the term of forty-one years, in payment of a debt, to Sir Henry Wood. The lease was next possessed by Isabella, Countess of Arlington, in the reign of Charles II., from whom it descended to her daughter, the Duchess of Grafton; and in this way was inherited by the family of the Fitzroys, Dukes of Grafton, descended from Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, the notorious mistress of Charles II. The fee-simple of the manor, subject to the payment of £300 per annum to the prebendary of Tottenham, was subsequently vested in the Hon. Charles Fitzroy, first Lord Southampton, and his heirs, by an Act passed in 1768, and Grafton Street, Fitzroy Square, etc., not long after erected on the grounds belonging to the manor. The Manor House stood at the north-west extremity of the present road, and was subsequently transformed into a public house, known as the Adam and Eve, now in the Hampstead Road. There is a view of it in Wilkinson, with a plan exhibiting the exact locality of the house. Here, in Tottenham Court Road, and in front of the Adam and Eve tea gardens, Hogarth has laid the scene of his March to Finchley. Here "the famous pugilistic skill of Broughton and Slack was publickly exhibited, upon an uncovered stage, in a yard open to the North Road;"2 and here, in the tea-gardens, 1 Letter to Dr. Richard Rawlinson (Malone's Life of Dryden, p. 176.) (May 16, 1785), Lunardi effected his second descent from his balloon. The grounds attached to the Adam and Eve were spacious and convenient, and the company at one time respectable. As the new buildings increased it became a place of a more promiscuous resort— so much so, indeed, that the music-room was abolished, the skittlegrounds destroyed, and the gardens dug up for the foundation of the present "Eden Street, Hampstead Road," the first turning on the left hand from Tottenham Court Road. The first notice of Tottenham Court, as a place of public entertainment, contained in the books of the parish of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, occurs under the year 1645, when Mrs. Stacye's maid, and two others, were fined a shilling a-piece “for drinking at Tottenhall Court on the Sabbath daie," 1 but Ben Jonson seems to refer to this road when he makes Quarlous say to Win-wife in Bartholomew Fair, 1614, "Because she is in possibility to be your daughter-in-law, and may ask your blessing hereafter when she courts it to Totnam to eat cream." » 2 Tottenham Fields were until a comparatively recent date a favourite place of resort. 1773. When the sweet-breathing spring unfolds the buds, Then Tottenham fields with roving beauty swarm. Gay, Epistle to Pulteney. Notwithstanding Tottenham Court Road was so infested by the lowest order, who kept what they called a Gooseberry Fair, it was famous at certain times of the year, particularly in summer, for its booths of regular theatrical performers, who deserted the empty benches of Drury Lane Theatre, under the mismanagement of Mr. Fleetwood, and condescended to admit the audience at sixpence each. Mr. Yates, and several other eminent performers had their names painted on their booths.-J. T. Smith, Book for a Rainy Day, p. 27. Tottenham Court Road does not boast an illustrious roll of inhabitants. Pinkerton writes to Lord Buchan, January 29, 1793, "My address is 120 Tottenham Court Road;" and Chateaubriand said that about the same time he lodged in a garret in Tottenham Court Road for six shillings a week. December 5, 1818.-On passing through Tottenham Court Road we saw an unusual congregation of blackguards at the entrance of a passage called Cock Court. Asked what was the matter? "Randall lives here, Sir." It was the Conqueror's levée.-Thomas Moore's Diary. Moore had been at a fight between this Randall and another the day before, and was now on his way to visit his daughter's grave at Hornsey. Moore's "congregation of blackguards" were not the worst of that colour who have been met with here. Brothers the Prophet declared that he "had seen the Devil walking leisurely up Tottenham Court Road." 3 Observe.-Meux's brewhouse at the south-east corner, famous for its porter vats and artesian well. Opposite to it : A large circular boundary stone, let into the pavement in the middle of the highway, exactly where Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road meet in a right angle. 1 Parton's History of St. Giles's, p. 239. 2 Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, Act i. Sc. 1. 3 Southey's Espriella's Letters, vol. ii. p. 231. When the charity boys of St. Giles's parish walk the boundaries, those who have deserved flogging are whipped at this ¡stone,1 in order that as they grow up they may remember the place, and be competent to give evidence should any dispute arise with the adjoining parishes. Near this stone stood St. Giles's Pound.-J. T. Smith, p. 22. On the west side of Tottenham Court Road was Whitefield's Tabernacle, built by subscription under the auspices of the Rev. George Whitefield, the founder of the Calvinistic Methodists. The first stone was laid May 10, 1756, and the chapel opened November 7 following -Whitefield preaching on the occasion to a very crowded audience. Mrs. Whitefield (d. 1768) is buried here; and here, on a monument to her memory, is an inscription to her husband, who, dying in New England in 1770, was buried at Newbury Port, near Boston. John Bacon, R.A., the celebrated sculptor, died August 7, 1799, is buried under the north gallery; here too lies the once popular preacher and writer, the Rev. A. M. Toplady, who died August 11, 1788. The chapel was pulled down in April 1890. "2 Tottenham Street, TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD, west side, near Whitefield's Tabernacle. Richard Wilson, the landscape painter's "last abode in London was at a mean house in Tottenham Street, Tottenham Court Road, in which he occupied the first and second floors, almost without furniture." The Prince of Wales Theatre (which see) was formerly Francis Pasquale's concert-room. It was afterwards purchased and enlarged by the directors of the Concerts of Antient Music, and subsequently converted into a theatre, under the names of the Tottenham Street, Regency, Royal West London, Queen's, and finally the Prince of Wales Theatre. Muse are the Tottenham Street subscribers poor? Will Drury keep some pence from Tottenham's pocket? O'er the proud walls of Tottenham's royal room? Peter Pindar, Ode upon Ode. Tower (The) of London, the most celebrated fortress in Great Britain, stands immediately without the City walls, on the left or Middlesex bank of the Thames, about mile below London Bridge. This Tower is a citadel to defend or command the city; a royal palace for assemblies or treaties; a prison of state for the most dangerous offenders; the only place of coinage for all England at this time; the armoury for warlike provisions; the treasury of the ornaments and jewels of the crown; and general conserver of the most records of the King's courts of justice at Westminster.-Stow, p. 23. Tradition has carried its erection many centuries earlier than our records :: This way the king will come, this is the way Shakespeare, King Richard II., Act v. Sc. 1. 1 This refers to the last quarter of the 18th century. The boys do not now receive their whippings here. 2 Wright's Life of Wilson, p. 5. If I may counsel you, some day or two Shakespeare, King Richard III., Act iii. Sc. I. Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame, Gray, The Bard. There is no authority, however, to confirm tradition in the remote antiquity assigned to the Tower. No part of the existing structure is of a date anterior to the keep, or the great square tower in the centre called the White Tower, and this, it is well known, was built by William the Conqueror, circ. 1078. During excavations made for building purposes in 1772 and 1777 some ruins of an old stone wall 9 feet in thickness, and of which the cement was exceedingly hard, were found near the White Tower, and these were either the remains of an earlier edifice, or a portion of the bulwarks of the old wall. Some old Roman coins were also found at the same time. I find in a fair register book, containing the acts of the Bishops of Rochester, set down by Edmond de Hadenham, that William I., surnamed Conqueror, built the Tower of London, to wit, the great white and square tower there, about the year of Christ 1078, appointing Gundulph, then Bishop of Rochester, to be principal surveyor and overseer of that work.-Stow, p. 17. Rochester Castle has been commonly ascribed to Gundulph, Bishop of Rochester (the William of Wykeham of his age), but it is now known to be of later date. The keep (now a shell) of the castle at Malling is the only known example left of his military architecture. The Tower is surrounded by a dry ditch, capable of being flooded at high water, running all round the outer wall. The western, northern and eastern sides are protected by casemated ramparts rising from the ditch, with bastions at the angles, and surmounted with short heavy guns. The defence along the southern or river front consists of a low rampart, guarded by a chain of small forts. The "Ballium wall," of great thickness and solidity, and varying from 30 to 40 feet in height, is probably of about the same date as the White Tower. It formerly formed a continuous inner bulwark, but when Cromwell obtained possession of the Tower he caused the Royal Palace, which occupied the south-eastern portion of the space enclosed by this wall, to be pulled down, and with this went a great part of the Ballium wall on the eastern and southern sides. The wall has lately been rebuilt on the eastern side. The only vestige of the Palace left is the buttress of an old archway adjoining the Salt Tower. This inner wall was flanked with thirteen protecting towers, of which twelve still remain in a more or less "restored " form. The Lanthorn Tower, which stood between the Salt and Wakefield Towers, was removed on the erection of the Ordnance Office. In 1882 these warehouses were removed, and the Lanthorn Tower rebuilt, the general effect of the buildings from the river being thus greatly improved. The principal entrance to the Tower is from Great Tower Hill, at the south-east angle of the outer wall, through the Middle and Byward Towers. The Lion Tower formerly stood just without the Middle Tower, and it was here the Menagerie was kept. On the south or river front are two entrances, the Queen's Stairs by the Byward Tower, and Traitors' Gate, under St. Thomas Tower (used only for the reception of prisoners of rank). On through that gate misnamed, through which before Roger's Human Life. At the south-east angle is the Irongate, "a great and strong gate, but not usually opened," facing Little Tower Hill. The White Tower was restored by Sir Christopher Wren, who faced the windows with stone in the Italian style and otherwise modernised the exterior, but the interior has been but little altered. This Tower is 116 feet from north to south by 96 from east to west, and is three storeys high. The exterior walls are 15 feet in thickness, and the interior is divided by a wall 7 feet thick, running north and south; another running east and west subdivides the eastern of these divisions into unequal parts. These partition walls, extending through all three storeys, form one large and two smaller rooms on each floor. The smallest division of the ground floor, known as Queen Elizabeth's armoury, is a vaulted room, and in reality forms the crypt of St. John's Chapel. On the north side of this room is a cell 10 feet long and 8 wide in the thickness of the wall, and receiving light only through the doorway. These rooms are said to have been Sir Walter Raleigh's prison, where he wrote the History of the World. Over this room, on the first floor, and extending through both first and second floors, is St. John's Chapel, one of the finest specimens of Norman ecclesiastical architecture which we possess. The massive columns and general simplicity of character of this chapel give it a very solemn and impressive appearance. A triforium, extending over the aisles and semicircular east end, probably served to allow the queen and her ladies to attend the celebration of mass unseen by the congregation below. The chapel is 55 feet in length, 31 feet wide, and 32 feet high to the crown of the vault. The nave between the pillars is 14 feet 6 inches wide; the aisles are about half the width, and 13 feet 6 inches high. The triforium is II feet 9 inches high. It was dismantled in 1558. At the foot of the winding stairs leading up to St. John's Chapel and situate in the centre of the south side of the White Tower, two skeletons were found in July 1674, supposed to be the remains of the two |