LONDON’S FORGOTTEN CORNERS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20990, 1 April 1930, Page 18

LONDON’S FORGOTTEN CORNERS.

Of London’s fair city little now is left but names. These, like poor unhappy ghosts, bring us haunting memories of the grandeur and beaut;, of the p««t, but that is all. A street name will sometimes wake within us a faintly _ echoing chord—a stifling memory—inherited perhaps from our grandsires. It lingers for a too brief moment, and then the roar of mechanically driven vehicles overwhelms us, and the little thrill is gone. Cheapside is no longer a market with a maypole in the centre; Old Jewry is no longer the Ghetto of London, the ren of Israel now being situate in a'nd around Whitechapel; nightingales have long ceased to sing in Lincoln s Inn Fields. Strawberries do not grow in the bishop’s garden in Ely Place, for both garden and palace are ho more. St. Martin-in-the-Fiolds is flanked on thiccj sides by bricks ami mortar, while buses and taxi-cabs whizz and thunder past the door. Strand is no longer tlie riverbank dotted with noblcnlen’s palaces and gardens; Fleet Street no longer leads to the little stream from which it derives its name, for the River Fleet is now a sewer running underneath New Bridge street. The Hole Bourne for us exists only in the name Holborn; the clear little spark ling beck has gone for ever, as has also the Wall Brook: Vauxhall Gardens are now a vast railway goods yard. Smithflold Market offends all the senses in turn, and now bears no resemblance lo “ Smith’s Field ” or the “ smooth field ” (antiquaries cannot agree ns to the origin) of bygone days. But just at one corner of noisy Smith- , field is the oldest and most beautifu* Norman church in the city. Through an age-old gateway and a tiny churchyard is the quiet, peaceful little church of St. Bartholomew the Great, and inside the I building is the tomb of its founder j Rahcrc the Jester, who also founded St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, nearby. I may mention here that in this little churchyard a curious custom is perpetuated. Every Good Friday 21 sixpences are I thrown down, to bo picked up by old ! women of the parish. I In Bisliopsgate street, among huge I modern offices and shops, is the tiny little : church of St. Ethelburga. The poor little church is sandwiched between two huge blocks of buildings which threaten to crush it every minute. There it stands, tiny and alone, a mute symbol of spiritual hope, and “ modernism ” and “ efficiency ” cannot touch it. Gray’s Inn lane, which once led into the country, is now Gray’s Inn road; and Islington, once a pretty country village to which Londoners took holiday trips, is now a hideous mass of houses and mean streets. Who now can imagine the squire’s son saying good-bye to the bailiff's daughter and riding up to London Town fo a: an> ice ?—( C. Pickering, in Chambers’s Journal-