The windows being placed so high show that it was a crypt to which they belonged, the vaulting in all basement structures being made to rise in a sloping direction to the crown of the window arch, which it would otherwise conceal.

The cellar which contained the remains was groined in stone, the vaulting being sustained on square piers; and it will occur to the historian of St. Martin-le-Grand, who doubtless recollects the cellar, that it closely resembled the vaults discovered on the site of the New Post Office. These cellars, however, did not form any part of the crypt, but were not earlier than the Reformation, or, perhaps, the Fire of London. I always considered the vaults of St. Martin's to have no older date than the destruction of the monastery; and I felt this opinion to be corroborated by the cellar in Crooked Lane.

I think it will now be admitted that the remains in question cannot form part of a college built by Sir William Walworth late in the fourteenth century; and so far A. J. K. will acknowledge the correction. Might not these arches have formed part of the mansion called the Leaden Porch? A similar crypt, and nearly coeval with it, belonged to Gisor's Hall. There are some very considerable remains eastward of the site of the destroyed church, the origin of which, I am happy to see, is likely to be elucidated by a gentleman who has bestowed so much attention upon the early history and antiquities of the Metropolis as your correspondent, and I anticipate much research and information from his ensuing communications.

I would, in conclusion, observe that the old church is said to have had its site where the parsonage house was subsequently built; if so, we must be led to seek for the foundations of the earlier structure among the remains of the ancient and massy walls, which were disclosed near the south-east angle of the modern church, but which do not indicate that the original was a "small mean building," as it is said to have been.

ST. MICHAEL'S CHAPEL, ALDGATE.

[1789, Part I., p. 293.]

E. I. C.

This vestige of Gothic architecture is beneath the house of Mr. Relph, the south-east corner of Leadenhall Street, and serves to show to what a prodigious height that part of the city has been raised since the foundation of this structure, the floor of which was evidently on a level with the common way. The chapel consists of pillars and arches in beautiful preservation, and is supposed to have been built by Norman, the Prior of St. Catharine of the Holy Trinity, next Aldgate, about the year 1108. It has two aisles, and the keys of the arches are sculptured with well-executed masks, etc. At the extremity are still to be seen the iron hinges on which the casements turned.

The gentleman who possesses this venerable remain informed me the aisles have been filled near 6 feet within his time, and the earth now reaches within 2 feet of the capitals of the pillars, which are judged to be buried at least 16 feet, as may be seen from the annexed engraving (see Plate I.).

The length of the chapel from north to south (contrary to our mode of building sacred edifices) is 48 feet, and from east to west 16 feet; the walls are of square pieces of chalk, in the manner of Rochester Castle, and the arches of stone, exhibiting as skilful masonry as anything in this age of refinement.

If we allow 10 feet for the present internal altitude, and 16 for the parts of the shafts buried, we may with truth conclude the street pavement to be at least 26 feet higher in that situation than it could have been at the foundation of this beautiful chapel.

[1789, Part I., pp. 495-496.]

INVESTIGATOR.

The account and view of St. Michael's Chapel, near Aldgate, in your Miscellany for April last, p. 293, led me to look into honest John Stow's description. The result of my inquiry was that the house now occupied by Mr. Relph, slop-seller (and, if I mistake not, about twenty years ago by a chemist, whose name I have forgot, and who then showed me the identical remnant of antiquity we are treating of), was, about 200 years ago, in the occupation of John Stow the antiquary, tailor; and that "upon the pavement of his dore where he then kept house "* was hanged the balliff of Romford in Essex for telling the curate of Aldgate that there was an insurrection in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, for which the priest could never after show his head. The execution was performed at the "well within Ealdgate," where yet remains a pump.

It may seem extraordinary that St. Michael's Chapel, in his own neighbourhood, and, it may be, under his own house, should have escaped this diligent investigator; especially as he relates (p. 144), that "in setting up, 1590, a frame of three houses betwixt Belzetters (Billiter) Lane and Lime Street in place where before was a large garden-plot, inclosed from the High Street with a brick wall, which wall being taken down, and the ground digged deep for cellarage, there was found, right under the said brick wall, another wall of stone, with a gate arched of stone, and gates of timber, to be closed in the midst, toward the street. The timber of the gate was consumed, but the hinges of iron still remained on their staples on both the sides. Moreover, in that wall were square windows, with barres of iron, on either side the gate. This wall was under ground above two fathomes deepe, as I then esteemed it; and seemeth to

be the ruines of some house burned in the reigne of King Stephen, when the fire began in the house of one Aleward, neere London Stone, and consumed east to Ealdgate, whereby it appeareth how greatly the ground of this city hath been in that place raised."

Admitting the ground to have been raised 12 feet between the reign of Stephen and James I., a space of 600 years, and 6 feet more in a course of twenty or twenty-five years, the soil of London has had a more rapid rise than that of Modena, where, Keysler tells us, large stones, the remains of streets and buildings, are found at the depth of 14 feet; below which is hard earth, or virgin mould, undisturbed, fit for building. "In making the great sewer in Walbrook, 1774, the labourers brought up wood ashes, mixed with soft earth and mud, 22 feet below the present surface, which is much deeper than the present level of London, and therefore must have been the effect of some fire long before that of 1666, and before the ground could be raised by the rubbish of various structures, or much built on, this depth being probably the natural soil of the city, and a hard gravel. It is to be ascribed to the destruction by Boadicea, this spot being near the centre of their city." (See the new edition of Camden's "Britannia," ii., 15.) The greatest depth at which Roman pavements were found in Lombard Street, 1786, was 12 feet (see "Archæologia," viii., 117).

What was the hall of business of a Lord Mayor of London 500 years ago is now a cellar under an inn, descended into by eighteen, sixteen, and twelve steps, each about 7 inches deep (see your vol. liv., p. 733). [Gerard's Hall, see ante, London, part i., p. 270.]

The crypts of a church at the corner of Leadenhall and Bishopsgate Streets, under a house then occupied by Mr. Hardy, hardwareman, now, I believe, by a linen-draper, laid open by a dreadful fire, which destroyed the four corners of those and the adjoining streets, in November, 1765, were engraved in your vol. for February, 1766 [see post, St. Peter's Church, pp. 82-84], and supposed to have belonged to St. Mary's Church, Gracechurch Street, mentioned only by Maitland (see "British Topography," i., 721).

The chapel of St. Michael, of which we are now treating, seems to be the same which, in an old perambulation of the soke of Aldgate, in a book called "Dunthorne," is called the church of St. Michael (Strype's "London," i., bk. ii., p. 55). The chapel of St. Michael is mentioned in a Bull of Pope Gregory IX., 1240, 24 Henry III., granting it, with that of St. Catherine, to the priory of the Holy Trinity within Aldgate (Rymer, i., 390). In a Bull of Pope Martin IV., dated 10 Edward I., 1282-not, as Bishop Tanner ("Not. Mon.," 303), 1285-this is spoken of as a parish church, whose parishioners refused to pay their dues to the convent in whose patronage the church was. It is called St. Michael-within-Aldgate ; and the other the church of St. Catherine within the precinct of the

monastery ("in atrio ipsius monasterii ")-London churches, appropriated to the uses of the prior and convent (Rymer, ii., 202).

"The priory was built on a piece of ground in the parish of St. Catherine towards Aldgate, lying in length betwixt the king's street (or highway) by the which men go to Aldgate, near to the chapel of St. Michael, towards the north" (Stow, 145); i.e., the priory was north of St. Michael's Church, the ruin in question.

"Norman," says Mr. Stow, "took on him to be prior of Christ's church, 1108, in the parishes of St. Mary Magdalen, St. Michael, and St. Katherine, and the Blessed Trinity, which now was made but one parish of the Holy Trinity." Here, then, were four parish churches consolidated into one (see also Newcourt, i., 555).

This was in the beginning of the twelfth century, in the reign of Henry I.; but query if the parish churches of St. Michael and St. Catherine did not subsist distinct later, even down to 1282, when Pope Martin mentions its parishioners, though one of his predecessors, forty years before, styles it only a chapel. Query, also, whether this church, whose ruins you have engraved, be not the original church of the twelfth century, destroyed in the fire of London in the reign of Stephen, and perhaps never rebuilt. What authority your correspondent has for ascribing it to Norman, the first prior, does not appear. The fine register of this priory, formerly in the hands of Mr. Austin, at whose sale it was purchased by Mr. Astle, and by him presented to Dr. Hunter's library, in a passage published by Hearne, in his "Notes to William of Newborough," p. 703, says the priory church was burnt 1132 by a fire which destroyed the greatest part of the city. PALEOPHILUS LONDINENSIS.

[1790, Part I., p. 413.]

In a MS. of the late Dr. Ducarel's, I find a drawing which will illustrate in some degree the view which you have given of St. Michael's Chapel (see Plate I., Fig. 6). It is said to have been taken "from an underground stone building under the shop of Mr. Gilpin, a chemist, at the end of Fenchurch-street and Leadenhall-street, 1754." ANTIQUARIUS.

ST. NICHOLAS AD MACELLUM.

[1823, Part I., p. 34.]

Newcourt, in his "Repertorium," quoting from Stow, expresses, under the head of "Christ Church Vicarage," as follows: "This Church, then [at the Dissolution], was by K. Hen. VIII. in the 38th of his reign bestowed on the Mayor, Commonalty, and Citizens of the City of London, to make a parish church thereof, in the place of the two churches of St. Ewen in Newgate Market, near the North

corner of Eldeness [now Warwick] Lane, and St. Nicholas in the Shambles, situate on the North side of Newgate Street, where there is now a Court; which were thereupon both demolished, and the respective parishes thereto belonging, with so much of Sepulchre's parish as then lay within Newgate, laid to this new erected parish church, which was then ordered to be called by the name of Christ Church, founded by King Henry VIII." I have reason to believe that the said parish of St. Nicholas ad Macellum (or the Shambles) was at one period an appendage to the parish of St. Olave in Hart Street; but this connection must have been at a remote period, and Newcourt, whose work was published in 1708, does not notice the circumstance. The characters MAC, with or without a flourish over them, will readily be admitted as an abbreviation of "Macellum "; and as the said flourish frequently supplies the place of the letter N, this explanation will perhaps account for the expression "St. Nicholas ad Manc," made use of in your Magazine for November last, p. 386, by "An old Correspondent," who makes inquiry on this subject.

An intelligent friend of mine, more conversant than, perhaps, any other person with the affairs of the parish of St. Olave in Hart Street, has directed his attention to the said inquiry; and if successful in discovering any new matter, he will, I doubt not, communicate the result through the medium of your pages.

ST. OLAVE, HART STREET.

[1823, Part I., pp. 206-208.]

J. B. G.

The parish church of St. Olave in Hart Street is one of those which were not consumed in the Great Fire of London, and with the exception of the upper parts of the tower (with its turret) and the vestry-room, which are brick-built, productions of late years, most of the other principal parts of this edifice are interesting to the antiquary.

Like churches in general, it consists of a nave with side aisles; the arches and corresponding columns between which are bold and handsome, and would be much more so if the columns were more lofty. At the east end of the south front is the vestry-room. The nave is longer than the aisles, as the western part of the former is bounded northward by a portion of the rectory-house and southward by the tower. The latter has two handsome arches of communication with the nave and south aisle; and to the south-west angle is attached a smaller tower, within which is a stone staircase leading to the belfry.

Mention is made of this church early in the fourteenth century; for Newcourt, in his "Repertorium," records William de Samford to have been rector of it in 1319, and from the gracefully Pointed arches of four of the window apertures, and of the lower arches of the