of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, during his first and only visit to London, in the winter of 1831-1832. No. 13 was the west-end establishment of Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, the publishers of the London Magazine, in which the Essays of Elia and the Confessions of an English Opium Eater first appeared. It was then that [circ. 1823] the contributors met once a month over an excellent dinner given by the firm; and consulted and talked on literary matters together. Charles Lamb came to most of these dinners, always dressed in black (his snuffcoloured suit having been dismissed for years), always kind and genial. Until the middle of the year 1890 Messrs. Rivington's business was carried on at No. 3. Waterloo Place now boasts among other publishers' firms W. H. Allen and Co., No. 13; and Smith, Elder and Co., No. 15. Other noteworthy houses of somewhat earlier date are commemorated in Hood's verses : Thy first great trial in this mighty town That gentle hill which goeth Down from the "County" to the Palace1 gate. And, like a river, thanks to thee, now floweth Past the old Horticultural Society, The Chemist Cobb's, the house of Howell and James, Where ladies play high shawl and satin games, A little Hell of lace! And past the Athenæum, made of late, Severs a sweet variety Of milliners and booksellers who grace Waterloo Place, Making division, the Muse fears and guesses, Thomas Hood, Ode to Mr. MacAdam. The lower end of Waterloo Place is a favoured place for statues and memorials. At the junction with Pall Mall is the Guards' Memorial, by John Bell, erected in honour of the officers and men of the three regiments of Foot Guards who fell in the Crimea; three bronze statues of guardsmen on a pedestal of granite surmounted by a Victory of marble; the Russian cannon taken at Sebastopol. South of Pall Mall, statues of Lord Clyde, by Marochetti; Sir John Franklin, by Noble; Field-Marshal Sir John Burgoyne, by Sir Edgar Boehm, and opposite to it at the south-east corner Lord Lawrence, by the same sculptor. At the end of the place, on the steps leading into St. James's Park, is the Duke of York's column and statue [which see]. Watermen's Hall, No. 18 ST. MARY AT HILL, LOWER THAMES STREET, is a neat unpretentious building of brick and stone, erected in 1786. The old hall of the Company was in Cold Harbour, Upper Thames Street, and faced the river. Taylor, the Water Poet, tells us that in his time "the number of watermen, and those that lived and were maintained by them, and by the only labour of the oar and scull, betwixt the bridge of Windsor and Gravesend, could not be fewer than 40,000." This was in 1 Carlton House-long removed. the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and in the reign of Anne the number was said to be the same. "There be," says Strype, " 40,000 watermen upon the rolls of the Company, as I have been told by one of the Company; and that upon occasion they can furnish 20,000 men for the fleet; and that there were 8000 then in the service." In 6 Henry VIII. (1514) an Act was passed for regulating the fares, charges, etc., of watermen, wherrymen, bargemen, etc., in the City of London and on the river Thames, but the watermen of London were first made a Company by virtue of an Act of Parliament passed in the 2d and 3d of Philip and Mary (1515). The watermen rank ninety-first of the City Companies. The Company has no livery. The licensing and registration of boats and barges, the licensing and control of the watermen, and the direction of the pilotage, navigation of barges and lighters, are vested in the Watermen's Company. When Blackfriars Bridge was built the Company accepted the sum of £13,650 in the Three Per Cents in compensation for the loss of the Sunday ferry, maintained by the Company for charitable purposes. The introduction of steam-boats has changed the whole character of the passenger traffic on the Thames, and watermen proper are greatly reduced. But the watermen and river pilots licensed by the Watermen's Company number nearly 12,000. Watling Street, from BUDGE Row, Cannon STREET, to ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. Then for Watheling Street, which Leland called Atheling, or Noble Street; but since he showeth no reason why, I rather take it to be so named of that great highway of the same calling. True it is that at the present the inhabitants thereof are wealthy drapers, retaillers of woollen cloths, both broad and narrow, of all sorts, more than in any one street of this city.-Stow, p. 129. In Maxwell Lyte's Report on the MSS. of St. Paul's, Hist. MSS. Comm. (Appendix to Ninth Report), of the end of the 13th century and middle of the 14th century, are registers in which we find the form Athelyng Street. He fills his belly, and never asks what's to pay : wears broad cloth and yet dares walk Watling Street without any fear of his draper.-Green's Tu Quoque (Old Plays, vol. xi. p. 207). Watling Street was two centuries ago notorious, as it still is, for its inconvenient and almost dangerous narrowness. Thus Moxon, speaking of the Milky Way in his Treatise of Astronomy, 1670, says, "Some in a sportive manner call it Watling Street, but why they call it so I cannot tell, except it be in regard of the narrowness it seemeth to have." Who would of Watling Street the dangers share, When the broad pavement of Cheapside is near?-Gay, Trivia. In this street were the following churches, walking eastward into Budge Row: St. Augustine's, Watling Street (near St. Paul's); Allhallows, Bread Street; St. Mary's, Aldermary; St. Anthony's, or St. Antholin's. But within the last few years Allhallows, Bread Street, and St. Antholin's have been pulled down. [See those places.] Nos. 63, 64, are the headquarters of the London Salvage Corps, and at Nos. 64-69 was the chief station of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, now removed to Southwark Bridge Road. Dr. Nathaniel Hodges, so honourably distinguished for his conduct during the plague of 1665, dates his account of it from his house in Watling Street, May 8, 1666. Wax Chandlers' Hall, GRESHAM Street West, was built in 1852 from the designs of Charles Fowler. The Wax Chandlers were recognised as a fraternity and their bylaws allowed by the Court of Aldermen in 1372, but the Company, the twenty-ninth in precedence among the City Companies, was first incorporated in 1 Richard III., 1684. The mercurial Duke of Wharton, when anxious, like Shaftesbury and Buckingham before him, to foment a spirit of opposition in the City, became a member of this Company. A previous hall in Gutter Lane was new built in 1657. Weavers' Company, the forty-second in order, and the most ancient of the Livery Companies of London-a Company possessing the exclusive privilege of admitting to the freedom and livery of the Company persons not free of the City of London. The first Charter of Incorporation was granted by Henry II. in 1184 to the cloth and tapestry weavers of London, and has affixed to it the seal of Thomas à Becket. The guild consists of two Bailiffs (an upper and under), two Wardens, a court of eighteen assistants, livery and freemen. The old hall of the Company was destroyed in the Great Fire, rebuilt on the same site, and taken down in 1856, when a block of merchants' offices were built on the site, No. 22 Basinghall Street (east side) and named Weavers' Hall. In the 17th century the hall, like the halls of some of the other Companies, seems to have been used as a Presbyterian meeting-house. That Paul's shall to the Consistory call A Dean and Chapter out of Weavers' Hall? Cleaveland's Hue and Cry after Sir John Presbyter, p. 75. Weighhouse Yard, LITTLE EASTCHEAP, so called from the King's Weighhouse. In this Lane [Love Lane] on the north-west corner entering into Little Eastcheap, is the Weighhouse, built on the ground where the church of St. Andrew Hubbard stood before the Fire of 1666. Which said Weighhouse was before in Cornhill. In this House are weighed merchandizes brought from beyond seas to the King's Beam, to which doth belong a Master, and under him four Master Porters, with labouring Porters under them. They have Carts and Horses to fetch the goods from the Merchants' Warehouses to the Beam, and to carry them back. The house belongeth to the Company of Grocers, in whose gifts the several Porters', etc., places. are. But of late years little is done in this office, as wanting a compulsive power to constrain the merchants to have their goods weighed; they alleging it to be an unnecessary trouble and charge.-Strype, B. ii. p. 173. See also Stow, p. 73; and Strype, B. V. p. 421, etc. It is accorded, that the King shall have his weights in a certain place, or in two places, or in three or four if necessary, within the City; and that all merchandize sold by weight that exceeds five-and-twenty pounds, shall be weighed with the King's weights in weighing for the custom that pertains thereunto, according as shall thereon し L be ordained. And unto such weights of the King as well buyers as sellers are to resort, after the form above stated. And if any person shall be found weighing merchandize, that is weighable, above the weight of five-and-twenty pounds, otherwise than by the King's weights, and be convicted of the same, let the merchandize of such person be forfeited to the King, in whatever hands the same shall be found; and let the other party be heavily amerced unto the King. And let the weighers be sworn unto the King lawfully to weigh for vendor and for seller.-Ordinance, 13 Edward I., 1285 (Liber Albus, p. 248). In the early part of the 18th century a congregation of Independents had their "commodious meeting-house" in a "large room over the Weigh-house;" hence the title of a later meeting-house, the King's Weigh-house Chapel, Fish Street Hill, not far from the old Weighhouse, which became famous during the ministry of the Rev. Thomas Binney. This was taken by the Metropolitan and District Railway Companies for the completion of the Inner Circle Railway. The compensation was £37,000. In April 1888 the Duke of Westminster offered a site in Duke Street, Grosvenor Square, at a peppercorn rent for 99 years' lease, the freehold of which was valued at £25,000. The new chapel is now in course of erection. Welbeck Street, CAVENDISH SQUARE, from Great Marylebone Street to Henrietta Street, was so called after Welbeck in Nottinghamshire, the ancient seat of the noble family of Cavendish, now the residence of the Duke of Portland. Eminent Inhabitants.-The mother of Martha and Theresa Blount. Item, I give and devise to Mrs. Martha Blount, younger daughter of Mrs. Martha Blount, late of Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square, the sum of one thousand pounds. -Pope's Will. Edmund Hoyle, who wrote on Whist; he died here in August 1769, aged ninety-seyen, and was buried in the cemetery in Paddington Street. Lord George Gordon, the hero of the riots of 1780. Tyrwhitt, editor of the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, died here, August 15, 1786. Mrs. Thrale came to reside at No. 33 on her marriage with Piozzi, and from here she wrote her last note to Fanny Burney, August 13, 1784. Miss Thrale (Queeny) was living at No. 12 in 1792. Maclean, the highwayman who robbed Horace Walpole, and carried off the Earl of Eglinton's blunderbuss, had been a grocer in Welbeck Street. His father was an Irish dean. Dr. Thomas Young lived here in 1815. At No. 32 is the Chapel of the Russian Embassy; No. 71 is a Chapel of the Plymouth Brethren. No. 73, the West End Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic. Weld House. [See Wild House.] Well Street, JEwin Street, CriPPLEGATE. [See Crowders' Well Alley.] Well Street, WellCLOSE SQUARE, runs from Cable Street to East Smithfield. Here, on the west side, stood the unfortunate Royalty Theatre [see that heading]. On the site stands that very useful L institution, the Sailors' Home, where provision is made for lodging and boarding 500 seamen, and providing them with home, club and social comfort, and recreation adapted to the maritime taste. Upwards of 9000 seamen avail themselves annually of the Home, which is now self-supporting. Close to it, and conducted under the same auspices, the Destitute Sailors Asylum, which, during 1880, gave shelter to 599 shipwrecked seamen, and in which, since its opening in 1827, above 60,000 seamen of all, nations, "utterly destitute, have been sheltered, fed and clothed, and sent forth again in a condition to battle with the peculiar hardships of their calling." Wellclose Square, ST. GEORGE STREET, WHITECHAPEL. "It has also been called Marine Square, from the number of sea officers residing there."1 The old Danish Church which from 1696 stood in the centre of this square-and during part of his latter days was the Seamen's Church with "Bo'son" Smith as its minister-was pulled down in 1869, and the Seamen's Children Day Schools (in connection with the church of St. Paul, Dock Street, Whitechapel) erected on the site. These schools, which have room for 700 children, and cost £5000, were opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales on June 30, 1870. [See Danish Church.] The first Magdalen Chapel was in this square, with Dr. Dodd for its chaplain. The Sessions House for the Liberty of the Tower is at No. 33 in this square. Thomas Day, the author of what was once the delight of all schoolboys, Sandford and Merton, was born at No. 36 in 1748. Mr. W. B. Ward, the inventor of the Wardian Case, was a medical practitioner in Wellclose Square. Wellings Farm, the name given in old maps to the site of the present Inner Circle of the Regent's Park, and the gardens of the Royal Botanic Society. Wells Street, OXFORD STREET. Dr. Beattie, author of The Minstrel, lodged at No. 64 in the year 1771. Here are St. Andrew's Church, famous for its musical services, built 1845-1847 (Messrs. Dankes and Hamilton, architects); St. Andrew's Choir and Middle Class School, and St. Andrew's National Schools. Weltzie's Club. [See St. James's Street.] Wenlock's Barn appears in the old maps three-quarters of a mile direct north of the present Finsbury Square, near the footbridge in Shepherd and Shepherdess Walk. It was the manor-house of the ancient prebendal manor of Wenlock's Barn belonging to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, and has bequeathed its name to Wenlock Basin, Road, and Street, City Road. Wesley's (John) Chapel. [See City Road.] 1 Harrison, circ. 1777 |
