Fields was, after much debate and opposition among the inhabitants, filled up this summer, and that an alteration was made in the plantations within Queen Square this spring.

[1841, Part II., p. 418.]

REGENT'S PARK.

The whole unappropriated area of the Regent's Park is now thrown open to the public. The first object appears to have been to make the whole of its disposable area available as early as possible in the season. In addition to the five entrances already made, a sixth will be formed, to afford admission into the park from what is termed the Inner Circle. The ornamental water will be crossed by a suspension bridge of nearly 150 feet span, and the line of the path of which it is to form the connection will extend, with scarcely any deviation, from the entrance of York Gate to the summit of Primrose Hill. To secure the privacy of the villas, the Commissioners of Woods and Forests have granted the Marquess of Hertford four additional acres to be inclosed in his plantations, two to Mr. Goldsmid (now Sir Isaac Lyon), and three to Mr. Holford, fronting North Lodge Gate. Plans for connecting the property recently acquired near Primrose Hill with the Regent's Park, from which it is now divided by a public road, are under consideration.

[1848, Part II., p. 640.]

REGENT STREET.

One of the most elegant architectural features of the Metropolis has given way to the utilitarian ideas of the owners, and to the indifferent reputation of some of the occupiers. It has been decided that it would be removing "a nuisance" to destroy the quadrant colonnade. On November 7 the finishing stroke to this favourite work of Nash was given by the disposal of the columns. They were divided into lots of four, six, and two each, for the convenience of purchasers, and on the first lot being put up, consisting of six columns, the auctioneer stated that each column weighed 35 hundredweight, and cost the sum of £35 in putting up. The first offer for each column was £1 10s. Eventually the six columns in this lot sold for £7 10s. each, exclusive of the granite plinths, which were sold separately. The other columns, forming the twenty-nine lots, fetched sums averaging from £6 5s. to £7 10s. each. The number of columns sold was 144, out of the 270 forming the colonnade, and the sum they realized was upwards of £1,000. The granite plinths upon which the columns stand were next sold. They were lotted in a similar manner to the columns, and fetched from 1 25. to £1 45. each. It was understood that the principal portion was purchased for the Eastern Counties Railway Company.

[1851, Part I., p. 637.]

ST. CLEMENT DANES.

The churchwardens of St. Clement Danes, having ascertained that a seat in the pew numbered 18, in the north gallery of that church, was regularly occupied for many years by the great moralist, Dr. Johnson, have caused a neat brass tablet recording the fact to be affixed in a conspicuous position to the pillar against which the doctor must often have reclined. The inscription is from the pen of Dr. Croly, and is as follows:

"In this pew, and beside this pillar, for many years attended divine service the celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson, the philosopher, the poet, the great lexicographer, the profound moralist, and chief writer of his time. Born 1709; died 1784. In the remembrance and honour of noble faculties, nobly employed, some inhabitants of the parish of St. Clement Danes have placed this slight memorial, A.D. 1851.”

ST. GILES'S-IN-THE-FIELDS.

[1826, Part I., pp. 595-598.]

The ancient and modern states of this large parish present a greater contrast than that of any other in the Metropolis or suburbs. In an excellent account of it recently published,* and which is deduced from records of St. Giles's Hospital and other authentic sources, it is calculated that about the reign of Henry IV. the whole number of householders could not have amounted to 200. In the first year of Edward VI. the number of what are termed "houseling folk" (supposed to mean communicants at the parish church) was returned at 305. This number, judging from the small increase of buildings, as represented in old plans and views of London, was probably not much augmented until the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. The increase of inhabitants in the next two reigns, and during the interregnum, was only moderate, owing to the absurd restrictions against building in the out-parishes, which were only taken off towards the close of the latter period. It was afterwards astonishing, being stated in an account received by vestry from the churchwardens in 1711 (and which was taken pursuant to the Act of Parliament for building churches) at 2,999 housekeepers, whereof there were 269 gentlemen, 1,923 tradesmen, and 807 poor housekeepers, making, upon an average of about 7 persons to each house, 21,000 inhabitants.

At the end of the reign of James I. the number of houses mentioned in the rate-book was only 897. At the latter end of the reign of Charles II. it had increased to more than 2,000. In the reign of Anne the number of houses amounted to upwards of 3,000, although the Seven Dials and its neighbourhood was then unfinished. In 1801 the number, including Bloomsbury, was 3,681; in 1811 it * By John Parton, Esq., formerly vestry clerk.

amounted to 4,828; and in 1821, to . . . The total yearly rent of the houses in St. Giles's and Bloomsbury, as charged to the poor's rate for the year, amounted in 1730 to £58,267; for 1760, to £61,057; for 1791, to £107,939; for 1801, to £128,068; and for 1811, to 213,260.

The number and expenses of the poor in different years is only to be estimated from circumstances except in occasional instances. In the year 1642 the whole disbursement for the poor amounted only to £53 135. 3d.; the total of money received on account of the church and parish was £82 2s. 8d.; the disbursement for church and parish the same year was £41 6s. 3d., making the whole amount of money received for church, parish, and poor, £123 16s. 7d. The total disbursements for the same were £96 19s. 6d. So that there remained in the accountant's hands a surplus of £26 17s. 1d. In 1649 there was laid out for the poor £173 3s. 4d. In 1676 there was distributed on the same account by the churchwardens £446 12s. 7d., and by the overseers £1,320, making a total of £1,766 12s. 7d. And the following year the whole money expended in supporting the poor was £2,103 3s. 10d. Its amount for the like purpose in 1817 was no less than the enormous sum of £39,116 9s.

The details respecting the very early state of the parish are extremely curious.

In the flourishing periods of St. Giles's Hospital, nearly the whole of the parishioners were the tenants of that establishment, which then owned most of the land in the parish, together with the manor of St. Giles. They are stated to have been of various descriptions, and to have held greater or lesser quantities of ground, according to their conditions and circumstances. Few of them, however, possessed more than two acres in one situation, and more generally but one or half an acre. These portions of land were for the most part laid out in curtilages or gardens, and had dwellings attached. The uncultivated parts consisted of pasture and marsh land.

The whole parish was divided, as at present, into north and south, by the great thoroughfare of High Street and Holborn. The former was called by different names, as St. Giles's Street, the King's highway leading from London to Tyburn, etc. It had a common spring or conduit in the middle of it, and at the end, opposite Drury Lane, a stone cross. Beyond ran Holborn, and terminated with the parish itself, near the bars of the Old Temple, which stood on the east side of Chancery Lane. This parish, from lying on the outside of these, was hence denominated St. Giles-without-the-Bars, etc., and which addition preceded that of "in-the-Fields," by which name it was afterwards distinguished. The other great streets were Crown Street, at the west end of the church, which was then called "Old Street," (Eldestrate), and which led entirely through fields to Westminster (uniting at its termination with St. Martin's Lane); "Le Lane,"

now Monmouth Street, and the Viâ de Aldewych, or present Drury Lane. The minor ways or paths, of which there were several intersecting other parts of the parish, have no distinguishing names in the old grants.

The principal roadsides were not only bordered by ditches, but the lesser ways. The chief of them was "Blemund's Dyke," called in after-times "Bloomsbury Ditch," and "Southampton Sewer," which divided the two manors of St. Giles's and Bloomsbury. The next was the " Marshland Ditch," afterwards "Cock and Pye Ditch," and enclosed the whole of the present Seven Dials. "Spencer's Ditch,' the other principal one, ran behind the houses on the south side of Holborn, and was so called from its contiguity to land of a great family of the name of Spencer or Dispenser, formerly parishioners. Each of these ditches, besides others of minor consequence which separated the grounds of the different inhabitants, are to be traced in the present common sewers.

The houses, though confined to particular spots, stood principally on the north side of St. Giles's Street and the south side of Holborn. They are stated in the leases granted of them by the hospital to have been, for the most part, shops; and the nature of the trades carried on in several of them may be guessed at by the description of persons who occur as parties or witnesses. Among them are: Reginald le Teulleur, William le Chandeller, Gervase le Lyngedrap, Robert Cordivac, William le Mason, and others. The next best inhabited part seems to have been on the east side of Drury Lane, or site of the present Lewkenor's Lane, Parker's Street, The principal residences were the mansion of William Blemund or Blemonte, from whom the manor of "Blemundesbury," or Bloomsbury, took its name, and three or four inns or houses of entertainment. Among the latter were the Broche Hose, the Swan on the Hop, and the Rose.

etc.

Like several of the other parishes in the suburbs, the greater part of the soil at the early period spoken of was marshy. This is not only indicated by the ditches which it was intercepted with, but by the various places in its vicinity which terminate their names with the addition of "bourne," or "brook," as Ty-bourne, West-bourne, Mary-le-bourne, Old-bourne, etc., and by the mention of "ponds' in different parts of the parish, at which various accidents are stated to have happened, and some of which existed almost within memory. Such were Marlyn's Pond, Capper's Pond, Smith's Pond, etc.; all of which stood in what are now the most populous parts.

To the foundation of St. Giles's Hospital, by Matilda, Queen of Henry I., in the year 1101 is probably to be attributed the first draining of the land, and the formation for that purpose of the various ditches mentioned. Before this period a small chapel or oratory

only stood on the site of the present parish church, of which one John, bona memoriæ, is said in the Charter of Henry II. to have been chaplain. With that establishment the district was erected into an independent parish, of which the former had the advowson, and of course new residents were attracted. Accordingly, FitzStephens notices this portion of the suburbs as abounding in his time with gardens and residences of the citizens of London, and enlivened with corn-fields, water-mills, and other rural appendages. These residences and gardens, as appears from the hospital grants, kept on increasing till the whole, about the reign of John, and for ages afterwards, presented the appearance of a considerable and populous hamlet.

Such is stated to have been the very early state of St. Giles's parish its lands, for the most part pasture, or covered with gardens and cottages, divided by ditches, and crossed by roads and ways of a character completely rural. Heightening these features of rusticity lay its High Street, bordered with country shops, and venerable from its ancient stone cross and hospital-accompaniments which must have given to the whole a considerable share of picturesque effect, and have rendered the denomination of Villa Sancti Egidii, by which it is generally recognised in old writings, strictly appropriate. Of its modern state, from the dissolution of the hospital downwards, there are numerous interesting details.

The first alteration in the appearance and population of the parish seems to have taken place some time previously to the dissolution of the hospital, and was occasioned principally by the extinction of the small landholders, whose estates had become vested in that foundation, and been let out in large plots of ground to particular tenants. A large inn which stood at the corner of Drury Lane, called the White Hart, for instance, enjoyed near that time most of the once-inhabited site of Lewkenor's Lane, Parker's Street, etc., beforementioned, which had changed its name from Aldewych Close to White Hart Close; and other large portions of ground were occupied by a few individuals. So that, in the grant made of the hospital possessions here by Henry VIII., the greater part is described as pasture and marsh land.

This paucity of dwellings and inhabitants continued till late in the reign of Elizabeth, as may be seen by the plans of London of Ralph Aggar, and Hogenberg, both taken near the middle of that reign. In these, the entire sites of Great Queen Street, and thence northwards to the back of Holborn, Lincoln's-inn-Fields, Longacre, Seven Dials, and nearly the whole of Bloomsbury, is represented as fields. On the site of the hospital alone there appears a new cluster of buildings, partly encompassed by remains of the hospital wall.

From this period Holborn began to be connected with St. Giles's by building; Drury Lane, described to have been miry and nearly