is for a part of the way lined with houses; on the east as far as the Sessions House, it is bordered by the Metropolitan Railway. Altogether it is the dreariest and most unpicturesque of all the approaches to the City, the Blackfriars Road not excepted. [See Clerkenwell.] Farringdon Street extends from Bridge Street, Blackfriars, to Farringdon Road, at the crossing of the Holborn Viaduct. The centre of it was formerly occupied by Fleet Market, and on the east side stood the Fleet Prison (pulled down 1846). Fleet Ditch-once a river, and now a sewer-runs beneath the centre of this street. Farringdon's Inn, CHANCERY LANE, was a former name of old Serjeant's Inn; the latter name was not given to the place until about 1484. Farthing Pie House, MARYLEBONE, now "The Green Man" (No. 383 Euston Road, opposite the Portland Road Station of the Metropolitan Railway), was a noted place of entertainment kept by Price, a famous player on the salt-box. Of this Price there is a mezzotinto print. Defoe mentions Farthing Pie House Fields in Colonel Jack; and Pope, in his "Instructions to a Porter how to find Mr. Curll's Authors," refers to one "at the Farthing Pie House in Totting Fields, the young man who is writing my new Pastorals." The name was not uncommon in the environs of London in the reign of George II. Fashion Street, SPITALFIELDS, leads from Brick Lane to White's Row-a very unfashionable locality. The name was originally Fasson Street, but it was known as Fashion Street as early as 1708. Fastolf Place, STONEY STREET, SOUTHWARK, a house so called after Sir John Fastolf of Caistor Castle, Norfolk, who fought at Agincourt, and died in 1460. The old knight's house, "Fastolf's Place, in Southwark," was grand enough to receive distinguished nobles. It was a place of such pretension as to be called a palace, and was coveted, in the after scramble for the knight's property by the Duke of Exeter in 1459. Here the mother of the Duke of York, afterwards Edward the Fourth, and her family were lodged once on occasion.-Rendle's Old Southwark, p. 60. In the reign of Edward VI. it belonged to Sir Thomas Cockaine of Ashborne, in Derbyshire, who granted a lease of it, with the gardens, wharf, and appurtenances, dated January 24, 4 Edward VI. (1551), to Richard Maryatt, citizen and clothworker, of London, for forty years.1 So late as 1620, in a Sewars' Presentment, the officials Saie that the sewar or pissen from ffostal place all along the west side of Stonie Lane to the head thereof ought to be cast and clensed, and the wharfes repaired; every one making defaulte to forft for euerie pole vs-Quoted by Rendle. Featherstone Buildings, HIGH HOLBORN, were so called from Cuthbert Featherstone, Gentleman - Usher and Crier of the King's Bench, who died in 1615, and was buried at St. Dunstan's-in-the-West. 1 G. R. Corner, F.S.A., History of Horselydown, p. 5. VOL. II D Nos. 16 to 21 are built on the site of the famous old Three Cups Inn. Most of the houses are distinguished by an oldfashioned wooden canopy over the door. We went with orders, which my godfather Field had sent us. He kept the oilshop at the corner of Featherstone Buildings, in Holborn. F. was a tall grave person, lofty in speech, and had pretensions above his rank. He associated in those days with John Palmer, the comedian, whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy. He was also known to and visited by Sheridan. It was to his house in Holborn that young Brinsley brought his first wife, on her elopement with him from a boarding-school at Bath-the beautiful Eliza Linley. My parents were present (over a quadrille table) when he arrived in the evening with his harmonious charge. -Elia, "My First Play." Featherstone Street, CITY ROAD, leading to Bunhill Row. Lackington the bookseller opened his first little shop in "this obscure street. . . on Midsummer-day, 1774," continuing, however, to work as a shoemaker at the same time. Under the portrait which he gives as a frontispiece to his Memoirs (1794) is inscribed, "J. Lackington. Who a few years since began Business with five pounds, and now sells one Hundred Thousand Volumes Annually." Fellowship Porters' Hall, 22 BEER LANE, removed from 17 St. Mary-at-Hill, the Company of Fellowship Porters, is the ninetieth of the City Companies. The tackle-porters and ticket-porters of London were united and constituted a fraternity in 1603; recognised as such by the Court of Common Council in 1646, and regulated by an Act of that body in 1868. The management is in a governor (the Alderman of the Ward of Billingsgate) and a court of rulers. There is no livery. By ancient custom a sermon is preached to the fraternity on the Sunday after Midsummer-day at the church of St. Mary-at-Hill. The members assemble in the morning at their hall, and each carrying a nosegay, go in procession to the church. Whilst the psalms are being read, the governor, rulers, and members proceed in order up the middle aisle and deposit their offerings in two basins provided for the purpose. The money thus collected is distributed among the aged and necessitous brethren. Feltmakers' Company, the sixty-fourth of the City Guilds. The feltmakers were originally united with the haberdashers; but on their petition were separated, and constituted a company by letters patent of 2 James I., 1604. and twenty assistants. company in 1733, and company has no hall. The court consists of a master, four wardens, A livery of sixty members was granted to the the number has since been increased. The Female Orphan Asylum, WESTMINSTER BRIDGE ROAD, instituted 1758, and erected immediately after. In the map of 1767 there is not a building of any kind between it and the newly-erected King's Bench Prison; and only a solitary public-house, the Dog and Duck, between it and Newington Butts. The asylum was removed in 1866 to Beddington House, Surrey. The site in the Westminster Bridge Road is now occupied by Christ Church Congregational Chapel. Fenchurch Street, CITY, runs from GRACECHU ALDGATE. STREET to It is first mentioned in the City Books as Fancherche, 1276. Fenchurch Street took that name of a fenny or moorish ground, so made by means of this borne [Langbourn] which passed through it, and therefore, until this day, in the Guildhall of this city, that ward is called by the name of Langbourne or Fennieabout; yet others be of opinion that it took that name of Fænum, that is, hay sold here, as Grass Street [Gracechurch Street] took the name of grass or herbs there sold.-Stow, p. 76. William Wallace, the Scottish patriot, was lodged as a prisoner, on his first arrival in London, in the house of William de Leyre, a citizen in the parish of Allhallows Staining, at the end of Fenchurch Street. According to tradition Queen Elizabeth, on her release from the tower, dined off pork and peas at the King's Head Tavern, No. 53 Fenchurch Street, after attending service at Allhallows Staining Church. A metal dish and cover used by the Queen are still shown.1 The King's Head has been recently rebuilt as a substantial Elizabethan tavern; and is a good City dinner house, now called the London Tavern. In June 1616 Andrew Ramsay, Viscount Haddington's brother, was killed in Fenchurch Street "by the watch whom he resisted when they stayed him." 2 June 10, 1665.—To my great trouble, hear that the Plague is come into the city (though it hath these three or four weeks since its beginning been wholly out of the city); but where should it begin but in my good friend and neighbour's, Dr. Burnett, in Fanchurch Street; which, in both points, troubles me mightily.—Pepys. On the 11th he sees "poor Dr. Burnett's door shut." Next year the plague returned in greater strength, and Fenchurch Street was stricken rather severely. On August 6 Pepys met Mr. Battersby in Fenchurch, who asked him, "Do you see Dan Rawlinson's door shut up?" He had seen it and wondered. "Why," says he, ". one of his men is now dead of the plague, and his wife and one of his maids sick, and himself sick;" which, adds Pepys, "trouble me mightily and so home." On the 9th he hears that Mrs. Rawlinson is dead, and on the 10th he writes: "Homeward, and hear in Fenchurch Street that now the maid is also dead at Mr. Rawlinson's: so that there are three dead in all." From the burial register of St. Dionis Backchurch, we learn that the mistress and her maid were buried together on the 9th; the man-servant had been buried on the 6th.3 Dan Rawlinson, of whom Pepys speaks so familiarly, kept the Mitre Tavern in Fenchurch Street. He was a staunch royalist, and when the King was executed, "hung his sign in mourning." This, says Hearne, made him much suspected in the rump time; but "endeared him so much to the churchmen that he throve amain and got a good estate." The Mitre was burned in the Great Fire, but rebuilt and somewhat sumptuously adorned, the walls being painted by Isaac Fuller, who left so many specimens of his pencil in the Oxford colleges. 1 The tradition is difficult to reconcile with the following record (quoted by Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. p. 8, from Cott. MSS., Vitell F. 5): "The xx day of Maye, my Lady Elizabeth, the Quene's Sister, came out of the Tower, and toke hir barge at the Tower Wharffe, 2 Cal. State Pap., 1611-1618, p. 425. : He [Fuller] was much employed to paint the great taverns in London, particularly the Mitre in Fenchurch Street, where he adorned all the sides of a great room in panels, as was then the fashion. The figures were as large as life: a Venus, Satyr, and sleeping Cupid; a boy riding a goat and another fallen down, over the chimney this was the best part of the performance, says Vertue: Saturn devouring a Child, Mercury, Minerva, Diana, Apollo; and Bacchus, Venus, and Ceres embracing; a young Silenus fallen down, and holding a goblet, into which a boy was pouring wine; the Seasons, between the windows, and on the ceiling two angels supporting a mitre, in a large circle.-Walpole's Anecdotes, 4to, 1798, vol. iv. p. 284. The Mitre is gone, as also another tavern, the Elephant-formerly the Elephant and Castle-on the north side not far from where the Mitre stood, and, like it, though a smaller house, having the walls adorned with paintings which have acquired some celebrity. One of these was a view of Fenchurch Street in the last century, as it appeared in its busiest hours; another, a sort of parish club scene, in which certain unpopular officials were somewhat coarsely caricatured. A view of the humours of Harlow Bush Fair and some figures were in another room. These paintings were traditionally accounted for by a statement that Hogarth in his early years lodged at the Elephant, and falling behind in his payments painted these pictures at different times in discharge of his score. When the Elephant was about to be taken down in 1826, great numbers of people went to see these "paintings by Hogarth which were about to be demolished. They were, however, purchased by a picture dealer, successfully removed from the walls, and exhibited in a gallery in Pall Mall, without, we believe, convincing the experts that they were works from Hogarth's pencil. Fenchurch Street has been much altered of late years. The churches of St. Dionis Backchurch, on the north side, and St. Benet's, Gracechurch, at the southwest corner have been removed, many new shops and several large blocks of offices erected, and the outlets at either end widened. The latest improvements at the north-east corner comprise a new and well-finished building for the London and South Western Bank, extending into Gracechurch Street, from the designs of the late J. S. Edmeston, architect, completed by E. Gabriel, and opened June 1888. On the north side of Fenchurch Street is Ironmongers' Hall; on the south side are the great tea warehouses of the East India Company, now the warehouses for general merchandise of the East and West India Dock Company; the Church of St. Katharine Coleman, and just out of the street, the London terminus of the Blackwall and Tilbury and Southend Railways. Fetter Lane, extending from FLEET STREET to HOLBORN. Then is Fewter Lane, which stretcheth south into Fleet Street, by the east end of St. Dunstan's church, and is so called of fewters (or idle people) lying there, as in a way leading to gardens; but the same is now of latter years on both sides built through with many fair houses.-Stow, p. 145. The etymology receives support from a document of the 37th Edward III. (1363), headed "De Pecuniis consuetis colligendis pro emendatione Faytour Lane et Chanceller Lane," faitour or faytour being the more common way of spelling the word which Stow spells fewter. In 28 Henry VI. (1450) mention is made of "I Cotag' et 38 gardin' inter Shoe Lane et Fraiter Lane;"1 these were, no doubt, some of the gardens Stow refers to. Fungoso. Let me see these four angels, and then forty shillings more I can borrow upon my gown in Fetter Lane.-Ben Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour. Hobbes of Malmesbury, and Praise-God Barebones lived in this lane, and Sir Thomas Wentworth (Strafford) writes from it on March 26, 1621. Dryden is said, but on insufficient grounds, to have lived at No. 16, by Flower-de-Luce Court, a house pulled down in 1887. John Bagford, the antiquary, was born here, 1675. Tom Payne (Rights of Man) lived at No. 77. At No. 17 lived Mrs. Brownrigg, who Whipped two female 'prentices to death, And hid them in the coal-hole. The immortal and veracious Captain Gulliver, after the last of his unadventurous voyages, " removed from Old Jewry to Fetter Lane," but after a time left it for Wapping, "hoping to get business among the sailors." But he did not even then quit his connection with Fetter Lane; for before starting on his famous second voyage, taking stock of his property, he records that he had "a long lease of the Black Bull in Fetter Lane," which yielded him £30 a year. Richard Baxter, the great Nonconformist divine, held (1672) a “Friday Lecture in Fetter Lane." Fetter Lane Chapel, No. 94, is still a congregational place of worship. No. 32, the Moravian Chapel (the only chapel of the United Brethren in London), also holds an honoured place in the history of the community to which it belongs. "The London Philosophical Society, Fetter Lane," before which Coleridge lectured, is no longer known in the locality. On the west side, near the Fleet Street end, is the New Record Office (which see); near the Holborn end, the old White Horse, formerly the starting-place for Oxford and west country stagecoaches and waggons, now a cheap lodging-house. After I got to town (1766) my brother, now Lord Stowell, met me at the White Horse, in Fetter Lane, Holborn, then the great Oxford house as I was told. He took me to see the play at Drury Lane. . When we came out of the house it rained hard. There were then few hackney coaches, and we got both into one sedan-chair. Turning out of Fleet Street into Fetter Lane there was a sort of contest between our chairmen and some persons who were coming up Fleet Street whether they should first pass Fleet Street, or we in our chair first get out of Fleet Street into Fetter Lane. In the struggle the sedan-chair was overset with us in it. Life of Lord Eldon, vol. i. p. 49. For more than two centuries Fetter Lane end in Fleet Street and Fetter Lane end in Holborn were used as places of public execution. At Fetter Lane end in Holborn, Nathaniel Tomkins was executed July 5, 1643, for his share in Waller's plot to surprise the City. He was buried the next day in St. Andrew's, Holborn. [See Flower-de-Luce Court.] 1 Cal. Ing., P. Mortem, vol. iv. p. 241. |