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eccentric but excellent Rowland Hill, and opened June 8, 1783. congregation removed in 1876 to a new building, called Christ Church, Westminster Road; but Surrey Chapel was continued as a place of worship till March 23, 1881, when it was finally closed. The Rev. Rowland Hill died at his house in the Blackfriars Road, April 11, 1833, in the eighty-ninth year of his age, and was buried in a vault "underneath the pulpit" in which he had preached for nearly fifty years. Here his corpse remained for nearly another half century, until on the closing of the chapel it was removed, April 14, 1881, and reinterred "under the Lincoln Tower" of Christ Church, Westminster Road. Over the door at the opposite corner of Charlotte Street, is the figure of a dog with his head in a pot. The Dog's Head in the Pot is mentioned as an old London sign in a curious old tract printed by Wynkyn de Worde, called "Cocke Lorelles Bote." Obelisk at the south end of the road, erected in 1771 in honour of Brass Crosby, Lord Mayor, who was imprisoned in the Tower by the House of Commons for committing a messenger of the House into custody. ✔Blackfriars Theatre was founded by James Burbage in 15961597, and not in 1576 as is usually stated on the authority of Mr. Payne Collier. Sir William More of Loseley conveyed to Burbage a large portion of a house in the precinct of the Blackfriars, formerly belonging to Sir Thomas Cawarden, Master of the Revels, and this Burbage. converted into a theatre. The deed of feoffment from Sir William More of Loseley, county Surrey, to James Burbage, dated February 4, 1596, was discovered by Mr. Halliwell Phillipps at the Lord Chamberlain's office, and is printed in his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed. vol. i. p. 299. The deed specifies very fully what the property really was, for instance :

Seaven greate upper romes as they are nowe devided, beinge all uppon one flower, and sometyme beinge one greate and entire rome, with the roufe over the same covered with lead. Also all that greate payre of wyndinge stayres, with the stayre-case thereunto belongeinge which leadeth upp unto the same seaven greate upper romes out of the greate yarde there, which doth lye nexte unto the Pype-office.

The information contained in this deed is corroborated by "a Petition to the Privy Council from the inhabitants of the Blackfriars, November 1596, against the theatre which was then about to be established by Burbage," in which it is directly stated

that there hath not at any tyme heretofore been used any comon play house within the same precinct; but that now all players being banished by the Lord Mayor from playing within the Cittie by reason of the great inconveniences and ill rule that followeth them, they now thincke to plant themselves in liberties.1

From the Petition of Cuthbert Burbage and Winifrid, widow of his brother Richard Burbage (dated 1635), we learn that the Burbages leased the theatre to Henry Evans for the performances of the Children of the Chapel, and that the King's servants acted there after the departure of the children.

1 Petition printed in Halliwell Phillipps's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed. vol. i. p. 304.

Now for the Black friers that is our inheritance; our father purchased it at extreame rates, and made it into a playhouse with great charge and troble; which after was leased out to one Evans that first sett upp the boyes commonly called the Queenes Majesties Children of the Chappell. In processe of time, the boyes growing up to bee men, which were Underwood, Field, Ostler, and were taken to strengthen the King's service; and the more to strengthen the service, the boyes dayly wearing out, it was considered that the house would be as fitt for ourselves, and soe purchased the lease remaining from Evans with our money, and placed men players, which were Hemings, Condall, Shakespeare, etc.—Halliwell Phillipps's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed., vol. i. p. 317.

In the year 1619 the Lord Mayor and the Council of London took upon themselves to order "the discontinuance of the playhouse at Blackfriars, on petition of the inhabitants representing the inconvenience and blocking up of the thoroughfares occasioned by the great resort of people." The order is printed in Halliwell Phillipps's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed., vol. i. p. 311. In spite, however, of the order, the players were able to keep the theatre open on the plea that it was a private house. In 1629 a mixed French company of men and women played there, and "were hissed, hooted, and pippin-pelted from the stage." It is to them that Prynne refers in his Histriomastix (1633) when he writes of "some French women, or monsters rather [who] attempted to act a French play. . . an impudent, shameful, unwomanly and graceless attempt." Garrard writes to the Lord-Deputy Wentworth, January 9, 1634

Here hath been an order of the Lords of the Council hung up in table near Paul's and the Blackfriars to command all that resort to the Playhouse there to send away their coaches, and to disperse abroad in Paul's Churchyard, Carter's Lane, the Conduit in Fleet Street, and other places, and not to return to fetch their company, but they must trot afoot to find their coaches; 'twas kept very strictly for two or three weeks, but now I think it is disordered again.—Strafford's Letters, vol. i. p. 175.

Here is a cloak cost fifty pounds, wife,

Which I can sell for thirty, when I have seen
All London in't, and London has seen me.
To-day I go to the Blackfriars Playhouse,
Sit in the view, salute all my acquaintance;
Rise up between the acts; let fall my clock;
Publish a handsome man, and a rich suit.

Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass.

March 23, 1637.-Upon a little abatement of the plague, even in the first week of Lent, the players set up their bills, and began to play in the Blackfryars and other houses. But my Lord of Canterbury quickly reduced them to a better order; for at the next meeting of Council his Grace complained of it to the King, declared the solemnity of Lent, the unfitness of that liberty to be given, both in respect to the time and the sickness, which was not extinguished in the City, concluding that if His Majesty did not command him to the contrary he would lay them by the heels if they played again. My Lord Chamberlain [Pembroke and Montgomery] stood up and said that my Lord's Grace and he served one God and one King; that he hoped his Grace would not meddle in his place no more than he did in his; that players were under his command. My Lord's Grace replied that what he had spoken in no way touched upon his place, etc., still concluding as he had done before, which he did with some solemnity reiterate once or twice. So the King put an end to the

1 Cal. State Papers, 1619-1623, p. 7.

business by commanding my Lord Chamberlain that they shall play no more.— Garrard to Wentworth (Strafford Letters, vol. ii. p. 56).

Troublous times were at hand and the players felt them. By an Ordinance of the Lords and Commons of September 2, 1642, "public stage-plays" were suppressed, and the players' vocation was for a time at an end.

Queen-Hythe, Paul's Wharf, and the Fryers also,
Where now the Players have little to do,
Let him pass without any tokens of woe

Which nobody can deny.

Ballad on Admiral Dean's Funeral, June, 1653.

Two years later, August 5, 1655, the Blackfriars Theatre was pulled down and tenements built in the room.1

Part of the ground on which
There was a void piece of

it stood is still called Playhouse Yard.
ground before the Theatre "to turne coaches in." 2

Blacklands, Chelsea. The former name of a district which still survives in the name of a house. When Henry Holland, architect, in 1777 was about to lay out the new portion of Chelsea to be called Hans Town, he took a lease from Lord Cadogan of 100 acres of Blacklands. The site extended from the west of Lowndes Square to Marlborough Road, and from Knightsbridge Road to the Five Fields. The buildings then erected included Sloane Street, Sloane Square, Cadogan Place, and Hans Place. Blacklands House, in Blacklands Terrace, on the north side of Marlborough Road, is supposed to have been the residence of Charles Cheyne, afterwards Lord Cheyne, and Viscount Newhaven, about 1655, before he purchased Chelsea Place. The house, according to Bowack, was occupied as a French boarding school in 1705. It has been enlarged and is now a lunatic asylum.

Blackman Street, SOUTHWARK, extends southward from Borough High Street to Stones End. Blackman Street is mentiond by name in a Terrier of St. Thomas's Hospital, 1536-1537, and in the Charter of 4 Edward VI. (1550), by which he granted the Great Liberty Manor of Southwark to the Corporation of London.3

Farewel to the Bankside,

Farewel to Blackman's Street,
Where with my bouncing lasses

I oftentimes did meet.

The Merry Man's Resolution, Roxburgh Ballads, p. 319.

Under the Long Parliament there was constructed "a large fort with four bulwarks near the end of Blackman Street." The Southwark Police Court is in Blackman Street; the Queen's Bench Prison was at its south-western extremity; St. George's church is at its north-east end.

I Notes on London Churches and Buildings, A.D. 1631-1658. Harrison's England, vol. ii. (New Shakspere Society).

2 Collier's New Facts, p. 28.

3 Brayley's Surrey, vol. v. p. 329; Norton, p.

386.

Blacksmiths' Hall, was in LAMBETH HILL, DOCTORS' COMMONS. The business of the Company (the fortieth on the list) is conducted at Guildhall. The Company was in existence as early as 1325; was united with the Spurriers Company and incorporated by Act of 13 Eliz., 1571; and reincorporated in 1639. The motto of the Company is significant "By Hammer and Hand all Arts do stand."

Blackwall.

To Poplar adjoineth Blackwall, a notable harbour for ships, so called, because it is a wall of the Thames, and distinguished by the additional term Black, from the black shrubs which grew on it, as on Blackheath, which is opposite to it on the other side of the river [or perhaps from the bleakness of the place and situation].—Dr. Woodward and Strype, in Strype's Appendix, vol. ii. p. 102.

The place taketh name of the blackness or darkness of the water bankes, or wall, at that place.-Norden's Speculum Britanniæ (Middlesex).

From an early date Blackwall was a great place for ships, shipbuilding, and docks. It is often mentioned in Sir Walter Raleigh's Letters to Cecil, and is spelt indifferently Blakwale, Blakewale, and Bralkwale. Thus on May 3, 1596, he writes, "From Blakewale, reddy to go down agayne this tyde;" in the body of the letter he spells it Bralkewale. He was then toiling to organise the expedition against Cadiz, and on the following day he writes from Northfleet, "if this strong wind last I will steale to Blakewale to speak with you and to kiss your hands."

January 17, 1661.-So after a cupp of burnt wine at the taverne there [Woolwich] we took barge and went to Blackwall, and viewed the dock and the new West Dock, which is newly made there, and a brave new merchantman which is to be launched shortly, and they say to be called the Royal Oake.—Pepys.

September 22, 1665.-At Blackwall. Here is observable what Johnson tells us, that in digging the late Docke, they did, 12 feet under ground, find perfect trees overcovered with earth. Nut-trees, with the branches and the very nuts upon them; some of whose nuts he showed us. Their shells black with age; and their kernell, upon opening, decayed, but their shell perfectly hard as ever. And a yew-tree, upon which the very ivy was taken up whole about it, which, upon cutting with an addes [adze], we found it to be rather harder than the living tree usually is. The armes,

they say, were taken up at first whole about the body, which is very strange.Pepys.

Here is a well-known wet dock, called Blackwall Dock, belonging to Sir Henry Johnson, very convenient for building and receiving of ships.-Strype's Stow, 1720, B. iv. p. 42.

In the last century Perry's ship-building yard, which afterwards passed into the hands of Sir Robert Wigram, and later of Wigram and Green, was, as long as ships were built of wood, the most important ship-building yard on the Thames, the larger proportion of the EastIndia Company's magnificent fleet and many men-of-war being built there. In process of time there was a division, and the firms of Money, Wigram and Green had distinct yards each, launching ships of the largest size, and building them of iron as well as wood. The yard of Money, Wigram and Co. was sold in 1872 to the Midland Railway Company to form a great depôt, comprising a shipping basin, wharfs and warehouses. At Blackwall (but not wholly within its boundaries)

are the East and West India Docks, and Millwall Dock; the river-side depôts of the Midland, Great Northern and Great Eastern Railways, and large iron-works and engineering and other establishments. Brunswick Steam Wharf is at the terminus of the Blackwall Railway, and in communication with the Great Eastern and North London lines. The view of the Reach of the river from the Wharf is very fine. Here was Lovegrove's Tavern (the Brunswick), famous for its fish and especially its white-bait dinners;1 but the tavern was closed some few years ago, and converted into an Emigrant Depôt for (assisted) steerage passengers to New Zealand. The emigrants are lodged and fed here till the sailing of their ship from the adjacent East India Dock. On an average nearly a thousand a month are provided for in the depôt. East India Docks are the Trinity Wharf and Stores.

Beyond the

Blackwall Railway, FENCHURCH STREET to Brunswick Wharf. Five miles 17 chains in length; built upon arches, and worked originally by two pairs of stationary engines-one at the Minories station, and one at Blackwall. The original rope was of hemp, but as this was frequently breaking, a wire rope was introduced about two years after the line had been opened. The rope extended along the whole length of the railway, guided by grooved pulleys, and coiled alternately at each extremity on drums. The expense of working the engines and ropes. was about fourteenpence per train per mile. The carriages (attached to the ropes by "grips ") travelled alternately along either line, and the signals for starting and the general working of the line were given by the electric telegraph. But this was found an expensive process. The stationary engines were therefore discontinued early in 1849, and the usual railway engines introduced in their stead. The portion of the line from Fenchurch Street to the Minories, a distance of only 450 yards, cost £250,000.

Blackwell Hall. [See Bakewell Hall.]

Bladder Street, NEWGATE STREET. [See Blowbladder Street.]

Blanch Appleton, in ALDGATE WARD, was on the east side of Mark Lane near Fenchurch Street. Strype,2 1720, describes it as "a large open square place, with a passage to it for carts, which is called Blanch Appleton Court, having pretty good timber houses, which are indifferently well inhabited. It hath a turning passage on the south side by an alley which encompasseth some of the houses." The name was derived from the manor of Blanch Appleton, which belonged in the reign of Richard II. to Sir Thomas Roos of Hamelake. It is enumerated (9th of Henry V.) in "The Partition of the Inheritance of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex," under the head of "London-Blaunchappulton."4 Hall, in his Chronicle (ed. 1548),

'The Artichoke Tavern, where white-bait was first eaten-'tis 60 years since-is still a noted white-bait house.

2 B. ii. p. 82.

3 Stow, p. 56.

Charters of Duchy of Lancaster, p. 175.

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