Εικόνες σελίδας
PDF
Ηλεκτρ. έκδοση

.

pray for him. The King thanked him, but said he had chosen Dr. Juxon, whom he knew. Vicars wrote an attack on Goodwin, called the "Coleman Street Conclave Visited," in which he speaks of that grand impostor, Mr. John Goodwin, "whose big-braggadocchio, wave-like, swelling and swaggering writings, full fraught with six-footed terms and fleshlie rhetorical phrases," have misled the "credulous soul-murdered proselytes of Coleman Street." Justice Clement, in Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, lived in Coleman Street; and the house of Oliver Cob, the water-bearer,-" at the sign of the Water Tankard hard by the Green Lattice,"-stood by the Wall [i.e. London Wall] at the bottom of Coleman Street. Cowley wrote a play, called Cutter of

Coleman Street: and Dryden refers to its inhabitants :—

Some have expected from our Bills to-day

To find a Satire in our Poet's play.

The zealous rout from Coleman Street did run,

To see the story of the Friar and Nun;

Or tales yet more ridiculous to hear

Vouched by their vicar of ten pounds a year.

Dryden's Epilogue to the Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery, 1672.

Bloomfield, author of the Farmer's Boy, lived in Great Bell Alley, Coleman Street. [See Bell Alley.]

The carriers of Cambridge doe lodge at the Bell in Coleman Street; they come every Thursday.-Taylor's Carriers' Cosmographie, 4to, 1637.

Coleman Street is now the principal centre for the wool-merchants and wool-brokers of the City; and on the west side is the Wool Exchange, a large and handsome building erected in 1874. On the same side is the church of St. Stephen; and on the east side, at the corner of London Wall, the Armourers' and Braziers' Hall. [See those headings.]

Coleman Street Buildings, east side of Coleman Street, leading to Moorgate Street. At No. 6 lived (1786-1794) the Rev. John Newton, the hymn-writer and commentator, and the friend of Cowper and Wilberforce.

Coleman Street (Ward of). One of the twenty-six wards of London, and so called from the street of that name. It extends from Tokenhouse Yard to Basinghall Street, and from Princes Street and Lothbury to Finsbury Circus. Coleman Street, Lothbury, Moorgate Street, and Finsbury Circus, originally formed the "Lower Walks of Moorfields." Stow enumerates three churches in this ward:-St. Olave Upwell, in Old Jewry; St. Margaret, Lothbury; and St. Stephen, Coleman Street. These three churches were rebuilt after the Great Fire.

College Hill, UPPER THAMES STREET AND CANNON STREET, so called after a College of St. Spirit and St. Mary, founded by Richard Whittington, mercer, and thrice Mayor of London. His last mayoralty was in 1419. The church is named St. Michael's, College Hill. Here

is Mercers' School, occupying the site of "God's House or Hospital," an almshouse founded by Whittington, and removed to Highgate in 1808. [See Mercers' School.] The second and last Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, lived in a large house on the west of College Hill, towards the top. [See Buckingham House.]

From borrowing our own house to feast scholars ill,
And then be un-chancellored against our will,

Nought left of a College, but College Hill,

Libera nos Domine.-Duke of Buckingham's Litany.

Here was the freehold estate of Robert Knight, Cashier of the South Sea Company, which was seized and sold under the Bill of Pains and Penalties.

College Street, WESTMINSTER (now GREAT COLLEGE STREET). Edmund Gibbon's aunt, "Mrs. Catherine Porten, the true mother of my mind as well as of my health," on the wreck of her father's fortune resolved to keep a boarding-house for Westminster scholars, and after the Christmas holidays, in January 1749, the future historian accompanied her to her new house in College Street.

At first I was alone: but my aunt's resolution was praised; her character was esteemed; her friends were numerous and active; in the course of some years she became the mother of forty or fifty boys, for the most part of family and fortune; and as her primitive habitation was too narrow, she built and occupied a spacious mansion in Dean's Yard.-Gibbon's Autobiography.

On his first return from Lausanne in 1758 he tells us :

The only person in England I was impatient to see was my aunt Porten, the affectionate guardian of my tender years. I hastened to her house in College Street, Westminster, and the evening was spent in the effusions of joy and confidence.— Ibid.

College of Arms. [See Heralds' College].

College of Physicians. [See Physicians, Royal College of.]

College of Surgeons. [See Surgeons, Royal College of.]

Colonial (Royal) Institute, NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE. This Society was founded in 1868 with the object of providing a place of meeting for all gentlemen connected with the Colonies and British India, and others taking an interest in Colonial and Indian affairs; and was incorporated in 1882.

Colonial Office (The), WHITEHALL, a Government Office for conducting the business between Great Britain and her colonies, occupies the side of the New Government Offices next Parliament Street. The old Colonial Office was in Downing Street, and was demolished in the spring of 1876. In a small waiting-room in the old Colonial Office the Duke of Wellington, then Sir Arthur Wellesley, and Lord Nelson, both waiting to see the Secretary of State, met for the only time in their lives.

Colosseum (The), in the REGENT'S PARK, a circular building, erected 1824-1826 (Decimus Burton, architect) for Mr. Hornor, a land-surveyor, who made sketches for a panorama of London from the top of St. Paul's, afterwards finished by Mr. E. T. Parris and his assistants on 46,000 square feet of canvas. The name was suggested by the colossal size of the building, which resembled in form the Pantheon at Rome, and not the Colosseum. The building was a rotunda 126 feet in diameter covered by a dome. On the west side was a hexastyle Doric portico with columns of the same size as those of the Parthenon. Besides the panorama of London, there was added in 1848 one of Paris, and in the portion of the building adjoining Albany Street was exhibited the cyclorama of the earthquake of Lisbon. The building contained the Hall of Mirrors, the Gothic Aviary, and the Stalactite Caverns. The grounds adjoining the building were filled with artificial ruins and scenery of Mont Blanc which was seen with good effect from the windows of the Swiss chalet. The building was sold in 1831 to Messrs. Braham and Yates for £40,000, and again in 1843 to Mr. D. Montague for 23,000 guineas. After remaining closed for several years the exhibition was undertaken by Dr. Bachhoffner in 1857, and the whole of the entertainments, including lectures on elementary science, dissolving views, etc., were opened to the public at a charge of one shilling. Dr. Bachhoffner continued the direction until February 1863, when he was succeeded by Mr. George Buckland. The building was finally closed at the end of 1863. After being empty for several years the building was demolished in 1875, and a terrace of first-class houses built on the site. Rogers was a great admirer of the building, pronouncing it to be "finer than anything among the remains of architectural art in Italy !" 1

On a

Columbia Market and Buildings, BETHNAL GREEN. desolate tract, a short distance east of Shoreditch Church and the Hackney Road, only in part covered with wretched dwellings, and in the midst of a poverty-stricken population, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts erected a group of four lofty blocks of artisans' dwellings and a splendid market-house, besides giving largely in building a neighbouring church and improving the ways and approaches. Columbia Market, established under a private Act obtained by Miss Burdett-Coutts in 1866, and completed in 1869, was designed, like all those buildings, by Mr. H. A. Darbishire. It comprises a quadrangle for open-air business, 285 by 255; a clock-tower above 100 feet high and a market-hall 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 50 high; a Gothic hall divided into seven bays by clustered granite shafts (twice the height of those of Salisbury Cathedral) with bronze bands and capitals, from which spring the ribs of a groined wooden roof-altogether a hall rich enough to be the nave of a moderate cathedral. The market is said to have cost the Baroness £200,000, but for some reason the people of the neighbourhood have not taken to it, and as a market it has not been successful. 1 Dyce's Rogers, P. 190.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

It was closed from 1878 to 1884, when it was reopened, and it is now more successful than formerly. Columbia Buildings, the vast group of model lodgings, have been built block by block, and each in turn tenanted as soon as built. They are admirably constructed and fitted, and form with the market and church a very striking architectural group.

Comedy Theatre, PANTON STREET, was opened on October 15, 1881. It is a small building, chiefly suitable for comic opera.

Commercial Docks, ROTHERHITHE (now known as the SURREY COMMERCIAL DOCKS), about three miles from London Bridge, with four entrances from the Thames at different points, extending over a length of 1 mile of the river. These docks originated in the Howland Great Wet Dock of about 10 acres, which existed as early as 1660, and was the property of a family of that name settled at Streatham. The dock, with the other estates, passed to the Russell family by the marriage in 1695 of Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of John Howland, with Wriothesley, Marquis of Tavistock. In 1763 the dock was sold to Messrs. John and William Wells, and was afterwards named the Greenland Dock, and appropriated to the reception of vessels engaged in the whale-fishery. That trade declining, the dock changed hands, and was adapted to the timber trade. In 1807 the Commercial Dock Company was formed for the purpose of purchasing Greenland Dock and Norway Dock, with the land adjacent to Plough Bridge Road, then called "Rogues Lane." In 1809 the estate of Baltic Dock Company was transferred to the Commercial Dock Company, who the following year obtained an Act of Parliament empowering them to maintain and improve the old docks and construct new docks in the parish of Rotherhithe, with a view to facilitate the discharge of ships and vessels laden with timber, wood, etc. The Company have since obtained various consolidation and extension Acts, have from time to time purchased additional land, excavated new basins and timber ponds, erected extensive granaries, warehouses, wharves, etc., and incorporated the East Country Dock, which lay immediately to the south. In 1864 the Grand Surrey Dock Company was amalgamated with the Commercial Dock Company under the title of the Surrey Commercial Dock Company. The property of the Surrey Commercial Docks now comprises 10 docks and 7 timber ponds, with an aggregate water area of 176 acres, and land or wharfage area of 193 acres, making in all 369 acres, and a canal extending from the docks at Rotherhithe to Camberwell and Peckham with an area of 66 acres. Permission to visit the docks may be obtained at the Office of the Company, No. 106 Fenchurch Street.

Commercial Road runs from Whitechapel to Limehouse, and was made in 1803, chiefly at the expense of the East India Company, as a means of communication between the East India Docks at Blackwall and the Company's warehouses in the City. The extension

from Limehouse to the East India Docks is called the East India Dock Road.

The old road was known as White Horse Lane, and is so marked in Horwood's Map. In Strype's Map, 1720, it is merely marked out and ends abruptly at Hangman's Acre, now Albert Square. In 18291830 the East India Company laid a tramway along the road to their docks, formed of blocks of granite 18 inches wide and 12 inches thick, by means of which their huge vans could be drawn with ease. In 1870 the Metropolitan Board of Works continued the Commercial Road eastward, from Back Church Lane to Whitechapel, High Street, and from the High Street, opposite, made a new street called Commercial Street to Shoreditch, opposite the then terminus (now Goods Station) of the Great Eastern Railway.

Compter (The), ST. MARGARET'S HILL, SOUTHWARK, a prison for the Borough of the City of London, wherein debtors and others for misdemeanours were imprisoned. It was so called from Computare, "because," says Minsheu, "whosoever slippeth in there must be sure to account, and pay well too, ere he get out again." It was built on the site of old St. Margaret's Church, opposite the Tabard, and was destroyed in the great Southwark fire of 1676. Counter Street, Counter Row, and Counter Alley, in the locality of St. Margaret's Hill, preserve a street recollection of a place once sufficiently well known. In Letter Book, Z. Guildhall, circa 1584, is this, "Thomas Bates, bridgemaster, to treat with Sir John Cary for the purchase of the court-house in the borough of Southwark for the use of the said city."

A part of this parish church of St. Margaret is now [1596] a Court, wherein the assizes and sessions be kept, and the Court of Admiralty is also there kept. One other part of the same church is now a prison called the Compter in Southwarke.— Stow, p. 153.

In the early part of the last century the City Compter was rebuilt in Mill Lane, Tooley Street. The materials were sold and removed in 1853. After the fire, 1676, the City would not surrender lease of Compter (it had been farmed or leased out), they would not rebuild the prison, but would grant reasonable terms for other buildings. The keeper might surrender his holding if he would surrender his office too.1

The Counter was formerly kept at St. Margaret's Hill next to the Session-house : But is lately removed by order of the City to a place in St. Olave's parish, near Battle Bridge, called, I think, Eglin's Gate.-Strype, Second Appendix, p. 12. Felons were in 1548 ordered to be committed to this prison instead of to Newgate.

Five jayles or prisons are in Southwarke placed,
The Counter once St. Margaret's Church defaced,
The Marshalsea, the King's Bench and White Lyon;
Then there's the Clinke, where handsome lodgings be,
And much good may it do them all for me.

Taylor, the Water Poet, 1630.

[See Giltspur Street, Poultry, and Wood Street.]

1 Fire Decrees, 1677, Guildhall.

« ΠροηγούμενηΣυνέχεια »