LONDON.
THE SOUTHERN SUBURBS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.—SOUTHWARK.
Frontispiece
"Superat pars altera curæ."—Virgil.
Introductory Remarks—Geological Observations—Earliest Mention
of Southwark in History—Its Etymology—Southwark as a
Roman Settlement—Old London Bridge—Knut's Trench—Reception of William the Conqueror by the Natives of Southwark—The Civic Government of Southwark—Its Annexation to
the City—An Icelander's Account of Old London Bridge—The
Story of Olaf's Destruction of the Bridge—Hyma sung on the
Festival of St. Olave.
Having now completed our survey of the
West End and of the northern suburbs of
London, it will be necessary for us again to
take in hand our pilgrim staff, and to make a
fresh start, with a view of reconnoitring that
large and interesting district which, though it
lies on the southern bank of the Thames,
forms, and has formed for centuries, an integral
part of this great metropolis. We will therefore do so without further delay, and only ask
our readers to accompany us mentally to
London Bridge, from the south end of which it is
our purpose to commence our peregrinations, which
in this, the concluding volume of the work, will be
mainly confined to the metropolitan and strictly
suburban districts in the county of Surrey; for we
have not forgotten the promise with which we set
out on our wanderings, to confine ourselves to
those regions, be they greater or smaller in extent,
from which can be seen "the glimmer of the
gilded cross of St. Paul's."
The district which we are about to traverse,
though not equal in its reminiscences to the City
of Westminster, will be found on examination to
be full of antiquarian interest. In St. Saviour's
Priory Church, in Bermondsey Abbey, in the old
"Tabard" Inn, in the Globe and other theatres on
Bankside, in the archiepiscopal palace at Lambeth,
in the once royal palace at Kennington, in the
Mint and the old Marshalsea, we shall find a
rich mine of archæological wealth, and one which
it will take a long time to exhaust. At Deptford
we shall again meet with our old friends, Samuel
Pepys and John Evelyn; at Greenwich we shall
see our Tudor kings and queens in the midst of a
splendid court; on Blackheath we shall meet Wat
Tyler and his rebel bands; at Newington Butts
we shall witness the cavalcade of the Canterbury
Pilgrims, as they wend their way along the old
road into Kent; at Kennington we shall find the
Black Prince "at home," and perhaps witness the
execution of some of the Scottish rebels; at
Dulwich and Camberwell we shall drop in and
make the acquaintance of Edmund Alleyn, the
"player" and friend of a certain "Will Shakespeare;" while a little nearer home, at Stockwell,
we shall find a veritable "Ghost," scarcely inferior to its rival of Cock Lane; at Clapham we
shall find Mr. Wilberforce and the Evangelicals
busy in founding the Bible Society; in St. George's
Fields we shall spend a day with the inmates of
New Bedlam, and try to cheer them with our
presence; and then mentally transport ourselves to
the same spot in the days of Lord George Gordon
and his riots, to witness their bonfires. We shall
"assist" at the founding and opening of the Surrey
and Victoria Theatres, and take our stand by the
side of Mr. Astley when, supported by Ducrow, he
first encloses his riding-school. We shall peep in
and hear a sermon from Rowland Hill, in his
well-known chapel in the Surrey Road; spend an
evening in the Surrey Zoological Gardens; and
then look in at Lambeth Palace, to witness the
records of the "Lollard" prisoners, and make
acquaintance with Archbishops Chicheley, and
Cranmer, and Parker, and Laud. Thence, having
glanced in at the Museum of the Tradescants, we
shall make our way to Faux or Vaux Hall, and
take a view of the old place before it was turned
into "Gardens." Thence we shall walk on to
Battersea, and shake hands with Lord Bolingbroke
before he goes forth into exile, and reconnoitre
sundry clusters of old houses, both in that village
and in Wandsworth and Putney. There we shall
try and arrange our visit so as to come in for the
annual contest between Oxford and Cambridge
for the blue riband of the London waters; then,
crossing the river, we shall make a halt at Fulham
in order to investigate at leisure the mansion which
for so many centuries has been the residence of
successive Bishops of London. Turning then back,
in a north-westerly direction, it is our intention to
make a perambulation of Hammersmith, so rich in
literary and religious associations, and we shall
conclude our wanderings with a brief visit to the
grave of Hogarth, the painter and moralist, in
Chiswick churchyard.
It is just possible, indeed, that we may be led to
go even a little further afield in search of subjects of
interest, past and present; but if such should prove
to be the case, we shall not forget that it is London
and London life with which we have to deal, and
that where London has extended its social life into
the suburbs we must follow it up. At all events,
we shall take good care not to leave any street or
any house unexplored which can have an interest
for the readers of "Old and New London."
With these few words of preface, we will commence our journey at the point where London
Bridge abuts on the east end of the "Ladye"
Chapel of St. Saviour's. And here we cannot do
better than repeat the words which we employed
on first starting from Temple Bar: (fn. 1) —"Southwark, a Roman station and cemetery, is by no
means without a history. It was burnt by William
the Conqueror, and had been the scene of a battle
against the Danes. It possessed palaces, monasteries, a mint, and fortifications. The Bishops of
Winchester and Rochester once lived here in
splendour, and the locality boasted its four Elizabethan theatres. The 'Globe' was Shakespeare's
summer theatre, and here it was that his greatest
triumphs were attained. What was acted there is
best told by making Shakespeare's share in the
management distinctly understood; nor can we
leave Southwark without visiting the 'Tabard' inn,
from whence Chaucer's nine-and-twenty jovial
pilgrims set out for Canterbury—
'The holye blissful martyr for to seek.'"
Hitherto, as our readers are aware, we have been
concerned with those portions of our great metropolis which lie to the north of the Thames, and
within the boundaries of the county of Middlesex;
but the moment that we cross London Bridge we
find ourselves in another county—that of Surrey—so called from South-rey—i.e., the south side of
the river.
If we were to travel far into the interior of this
county we should come upon scenes very unlike
what we have seen in Middlesex; but the limits of
our present pilgrimage will scarcely carry us so far
afield as to the borders of the chalk formation
which fringes the basin of clay and gravel which
underlies the whole of London south, as well as
London north, of the Thames.
There was a time, some two thousand years ago,
when the whole of the district now covered by
Southwark and Lambeth, and most of the adjacent district, as far south as the rising grounds of
Brixton, Streatham, and Clapham, was little more
than a dull and dreary swamp, inhabited by the
bittern and the frog, and when painted savages
roamed and prowled about the places which are
now not only busy thoroughfares, but the marts of
foreign commerce. But this change was the work
of very many ages.
In the early Saxon times there is no notice of
any large town being situated here; but a tradition
of Bartholomew Linsted, or Fowle, the last prior of
St. Mary Overie, as preserved to us by Stow in his
"History of London," tells us that the profits of
the ferry—for before a bridge spanned the Thames
a ferry had existed here—were devoted by the
owner, "a maiden named Mary," to the foundation
and endowment of a convent or house of sisters,
which was afterwards converted into a college of
priests; and that these priests built a bridge of
timber, which in the course of time was converted
into a bridge of stone.
Maitland, in his "History of London," refuses
to believe this tradition, which, if it be true, would
carry back the date of the foundation of St. Mary
Overie's to a period far anterior to any historic
notice of Southwark; but whether we accept it in
its entirety or not, at all events the legend must be
regarded as fair evidence of the early establishment
of a religious house at this spot, and of the bestowal
of the proceeds of the ferry for its support.
The earliest mention of Southwark by name in
history is in A.D. 1023, when the Saxon chronicle
tells us that Knut, and Egelnoth, Archbishop of
Canterbury, with some other distinguished persons,
carried by ship the body of Alphege, saint and
martyr, across the Thames to "Suthgeweorke," on
its way to its resting-place at Canterbury. In
"Domesday Book" the name appears under the
form of "Sudwerche."
It is generally said that Southwark was never
fortified till quite a recent period. How, then, did
its name, "wark" or "werke," arise? Is it the same
word as in bulwark? A fortress built by the Earl
of Mar, in Scotland, is called "Mar's wark or
werke;" and possibly the same word is embodied
in the word "Southwark."
Mr. Worsaae, in his "Account of the Danes and
Norwegians in England," refers to the possession
by those peoples of Southwark, the very name of
which, he adds, is unmistakably of Danish or Norwegian origin. "The Sagas relate that, in the time
of King Svend Tveskjæg, the Danes fortified this
trading place, which, evidently, on account of its
situation to the south of the Thames and London,
was called Sydvirke (Sudvirke), or the southern
fortification. From Sudvirke, which in AngloSaxon was called Sud-geweorc, but which in the
Middle Ages obtained the name of Suthwerk or
Swerk, arose the present form—Southwark. The
Northmen had a church in Sudvirke, dedicated to
the Norwegian king, Olaf the Saint." It is stated
that the name of Southwark has been spelled in
no fewer than twenty-seven different ways in old
writings.
We shall not attempt to invade too far the
domain of learned antiquaries, and waste our
readers' time and patience by a long disquisition
on the question whether the natives of Southwark,
twelve hundred years ago—as a portion of the
inhabitants of the county of Surrey—were descendants of the Regni or the Cantii, the Atrebates or
the Bibroci. It is enough for us to know that
the men of Surrey were among the tribes conquered by the legions of Julius Cæsar, and that
having belonged at one time to the kingdom of
Mercia, and at another to Kent, Surrey became
after the Conquest part and parcel of the territory
of the son-in-law of William, the powerful Earl of
Warrenne, and that, lying so near to the chief city
of the kingdom, in spite of the fluvius dissociabilis,
the Thames, it was gradually absorbed into the
great metropolis, of which it became a suburb in
the strictest sense, even before it was formally
"annexed" to London.
As already indicated, the low flat tongue of land
bounded on three sides by the Thames in the
bend which it makes between Greenwich and
Vauxhall, was doubtless originally overflowed by
the tide, and formed a large marsh extending to
the foot of the slight eminences which bound its
fourth side upon the south. It is almost certain
that this space was banked in artificially by the
Romans, so as to secure it against being overflowed; and Roman remains, which have been dug
up in St. George's Fields and elsewhere about Southwark and its neighbourhood, are sufficient proofs
that the Romans formed there a settlement of some
kind or other. Indeed, as Ptolemy tells us that
London was in the territory of the Cantii, it has
been inferred—though somewhat too hastily—that
the original London stood on the south of the
river; but this theory is generally rejected as being
contrary to evidences of various kinds. It is far
more probable that Ptolemy wrote with an imperfect knowledge of the geography of so distant
and unimportant a place, and confounded the two
sides of a distant river. No doubt, however, from
very early times there was on the south side a
suburb consisting of dwelling-houses connected with
the city by a ferry, where the great Roman road of
the Watling crossed the Thames.
The history of Southwark up to the period of
the Norman Conquest is obscure and uncertain;
but there is no doubt that the place was inhabited
by the Romans, for Charles Knight tells us that
"clear vestiges of Roman dwelling-houses have
been found, not only in Southwark, but here and
there along the bank of the river as far east as
Deptford."
It has been asserted that there was no bridge
between London and Southwark as early as the
tenth century, because we are told that in A.D. 993
Anlaf, the King of Norway, sailed up the river as
far as Stane (Staines); but this inference is by no
means to be accepted as certain, for we learn from
William of Malmesbury, and from the "Saxon
Chronicle," that in the very next year there was a
bridge here which obstructed the flight of Sweyn's
forces, when he attacked London and was repulsed
by its brave citizens. Again, little more than
twenty years later, when Knut attacked London,
there certainly was a bridge of one kind or another,
which formed an obstacle to the advance of his
ships up the river; and in order to avoid this
obstacle (according to the Saxon Chronicle), he
dug on the south side a trench, through which he
conveyed his vessels to a point "above bridge."
It is curious that in the accounts of these transactions which have come down to us there is no
actual mention of Southwark by name; and yet
there must have been some "werke" or defence,
at all events, at the entrance of the bridge. Again,
in 1052, Godwin, then in rebellion against Edward
the Confessor, came with his fleet to Southwark,
and passing the bridge without any opposition,
proceeded to attack the king's vessels which lay off
Westminster, though further hostilities were averted
by an offer of peace.
Perhaps it was the error of Sweyn in getting his
fleet foul of London Bridge which made his son
Knut go so laboriously to work with the waters of
the Thames on his invasion in 1016, the story of
which shall be briefly related in the words of the
"Saxon Chronicle:"—"Then came the ships to
Greenwiche, and, within a short interval, to London,
where they sank a deep ditch on the south side,
and so dragged their ships to the west side of the
bridge. Afterwards they trenched the city without,
so that no man could go in or out, and often
fought against it; but the citizens bravely withstood them."
There have been several persons who have raised
sceptical doubts about this history; but the honest
historian, Maitland—who loved to get to the bottom
of all such statements, and who set himself to
discover proofs of Knut's trench—tells us that this
artificial water-course began at the great wet-dock
below Rotherhithe, and passing across the Kent
Road, continued in a crescent form as far as Vauxhall, and fell again into the Thames at the lower
end of Chelsea Reach. As proofs of the historic
truth of this hypothesis, he brought forward the
great quantities of hazels, willows, and brushwood,
pointing northwards, and fastened down by rows of
stakes, which were found at the digging and clearing
out of Rotherhithe Dock in 1694, as well as numbers of large oaken planks and piles, found also in
other parts on the Surrey side of the river.
Southwark, very naturally, figures in the chapter
of English history which immediately follows on
the Battle of Hastings. As soon as he had won
the battle, we read that William marched upon
London, where the citizens had declared Edgar
Atheling king of England. On reaching Southwark, which then was an inconsiderable suburb—though not wholly unfortified, as may be gathered
from its name—the Conqueror was so roughly
handled by the sturdy citizens of London, that
though he repulsed them by the aid of some five
hundred horse, and laid the suburb in ashes, he
found it necessary, or at all events prudent, to retire,
and accordingly marched off in a westerly direction.
Southwark is mentioned in history as far back as
A.D. 1053, and was a distinct corporation governed
by its own bailiff until 1327, when Edward III.
made a grant of it to the City of London, whose
mayor was thenceforth to be its bailiff, and to
govern it by his deputy. "Great inconvenience
having been found to arise from its affording a
refuge to offenders of various kinds," the City was
ordered to pay to the royal exchequer the sum of
£10 annually as a fee-farm rent. In this charter
Southwark is called a "villa," which may mean
anything from a town down to a village; but if we
take the term in the latter sense, it must have been
a tolerably large "village," for it had no less than
four churches: viz., St. Mary's (a chapel of the
great conventual church of St. Mary over the
Rie); St. Margaret's (where the Town Hall lately
stood); St. Olave's; and, lastly, St. George's; to say
nothing of the hospital of St. Thomas, two prisons
(namely, those of the King's Bench and the Marshalsea), and also the houses of several prelates,
abbots, and nobles.
Some time after this, however, the inhabitants
recovered their former privileges; but in the reign
of Edward VI. the Crown granted the district to
the City of London for a money grant of a little less
than £650; in consideration of a further sum of
500 marks, it was "annexed" to the said City, and
by virtue of the same grant it continues subject to
its Lord Mayor, who has under him a steward and
a bailiff; and it is governed (or rather represented
in the councils of the City) by one of its aldermen,
whose ward is styled by the name of "Bridgewithout." The property granted to the City on
the above occasion is regarded as specially liable
to the repairs and maintenance of London Bridge.
By this incorporation, however, Southwark did not
cease to be part and parcel of the county of
Surrey. From this arrangement certain lands were
exempted, such as Southwark Mansion and Park,
which belonged to the king.
According to the "Penny Cyclopædia" (1842),
this ward appears never to have been represented
in the Common Council, nor do the inhabitants
now elect their aldermen. The senior alderman of
London is always alderman of this ward, and on
his death the next in seniority succeeds him. He
has no ward duties to perform, so that his office is
little else than a sinecure. The City of London
appoints a high bailiff and steward for Southwark;
but the county magistrates of Surrey exercise jurisdiction in several matters.
"It is curious to observe," says Mr. Robertson,
in his "Lecture on Southwark," "that London
was first indebted to Southwark for its bridge;
that the first bridge was built by the priests of the
monastery in Southwark; that the Bridge-house
was in Southwark, and not in London; that the
revenues for the maintenance of the bridge were
not derived from London, but from the southern
side of the Thames; and although land could not
have been difficult to obtain close to the bridge, the
expensive experiment was resorted to of building
houses on the bridge—literally, on the Thames."
The earliest description of London Bridge, singularly enough, is given by an Icelander, who lived
in the middle of the thirteenth century, and may
be found quoted by the Rev. James Johnstone, in
his "Antiquitates Celto-Scandicæ" (Copenhagen,
1786, 4to), in connection with the Battle of Southwark, which was fought in 1008, in the luckless
reign of Ethelred II., surnamed the "Unready."
It runs as follows:—
"They (i.e., the Danish forces) first came to
shore at London, where their ships were to remain,
and the city was taken by the Danes. Upon the
other side of the river is situate a great market
called Southwark—Sudurvirke in the original—which the Danes fortified with many defences;
framing, for instance, a high and broad ditch,
having a pile or rampart within it, formed of wood,
stone, and turf, with a large garrison placed there
to strengthen it. This the king, Ethelred, . . . .
attacked and forcibly fought against; but by the
resistance of the Danes it proved but a vain
endeavour. There was at that time a bridge
erected over the river between the City and Southwark, so wide that if two carriages met they could
pass each other." This structure King Olave and
his Norsemen destroyed by rowing their ships up
close to the bridge, and making them fast to it by
ropes and cables. With these they strained the
piles so vigorously, aided by the strong flow of the
tide, that the piles gave way, and the whole bridge
fell. "And now it was determined to attack
Southwark," continues the Icelander; "but the
citizens seeing their river occupied by the enemy's
navy so as to cut off all intercourse that way with
the interior provinces, were seized with fear, and
having surrendered the city, received Ethelred as
king." In remembrance of this expedition, thus
sang Ottar Suarti, in a sort of rhythmic prose,
which reminds one of Macpherson's "Ossian:"—
"And thou hast overthrown their bridges, oh! thou storm
of the sons of Odin! skilful and foremost in the battle. For
thee it was happily reserved to possess the land of London's
winding city. Many were the shields which were grasped,
sword in hand, to the mighty increase of the conflict; but
by thee were the iron-banded coats of mail broken and
destroyed.
"Thou, then, hast come, defender of the land, and hast
restored to his kingdom the exiled Ethelred. By thine aid
is he advantaged, and made strong by thy valour and
prowess; bitterest was that battle in which thou didst engage.
Now, in the presence of thy kindred, the adjacent lands are at
rest, where Edmund, the relative of the country and of the
people, formerly governed.
"That was truly the sixth fight which the mighty king
fought with the men of England, wherein King Olaf, the
chief himself, a son of Odin, valiantly attacked the bridge at
London. Bravely did the swords of the Volsces defend it;
but through the trench which the sea-kings, the men of
Vikesland, guarded, they were enabled to come, and the
plain of Southwark was full of his tents."
The story of the destruction of London Bridge
by Olaf is thus told in Southey's "Naval History
of England," with all the details of historical
narrative:—"Among them (i.e. Ethelred and his
forces) came a certain king Olaf (perhaps the
same who had been baptized in this country): he
brought with him a strong fleet; and, with the aid
of these Scandinavian ships, the King of England
resolved upon attempting to re-take London from
the Danes. The fleet was of little use unless it
could pass the bridge. But this, which was of
wood, wide enough for the commodious passage of
two carriages, and supported upon trestles, had
been strongly fortified with towers, and a parapet
breast high; and at its south end it was defended
by a military work, placed on what the Icelandic
historian calls the great emporium of Southwark.
This fortress was of great strength, built of wood
and stone, with a deep and wide ditch and ramparts of earth. A first attack upon the bridge
failed; for the Danes had manned it well, and defended it bravely. Grieved at his repulse, Ethelred
held a council of war, to deliberate in what manner
they might hope to destroy the bridge; and Olaf
undertook to make the attempt with some of his
ships, if the other leaders would join in the assault.
Causing, therefore, some deserted houses to be
pulled down, he employed the beams and planks
in constructing projections from the sides of the
ships, under cover of which, when they were laid
alongside the bridge, the assault might be made:
a contrivance intended to serve the same purpose
as those machines which, under the names of
'cats' and 'sows,' were used in sieges. He
expected that the roofing would be strong enough
to resist the weight of any stones which might
be thrown upon it; but in this expectation he
had calculated too much upon the solidity of his
materials, and too little upon the exertions and
activity of the defenders; and when, with the
advantage of the flowing tide, the ships had taken
their station, stones of such magnitude were let fall
upon them, that the cover was beaten in; shields
and helmets afforded no protection; the ships
themselves were shaken and greatly injured, and
many of them sheered off. Olaf, however, persisted in his enterprise. Under cover of such a
bulwark, he succeeded in fastening some strong
cables or chains to the trestles which supported the
bridge: and, when the tide had turned, his rowers,
aided by the returning stream, tore away the middle
of it, many of the enemy being precipitated into
the river. The others fled into the city, or into
Southwark; and the Thames was thus opened to
the fleet. The south work was then attacked and
carried; and the Danes were no longer able to
prevent the Londoners from opening their gates
and joyfully receiving their king."
SOUTH END OF OLD LONDON BRIDGE, WITH SHOT TOWER AND ST. OLAVE'S CHURCH, IN 1820.
THE BRIDGE-FOOT, SOUTHWARK, IN 1810
Such, according to ancient story, were the martial
feats of King Olaf, or Olave, upon the water; but
for his more pious and peaceful actions on land,
which caused the men of Southwark to venerate
his memory, it is needful only to turn to the church
which bears his name, at the south-eastern corner
of the bridge, and of which we shall speak presently.
It was, in reality, one of the two southern landmarks and boundaries of the old bridge, the Church
of St. Saviour's, at the south-western corner of the
bridge, being the other.
The author of "Chronicles of London Bridge"
gives the following version of part of a Latin hymn
from the Swedish Missal, sung on St. Olave's
festival in his honour:—
"Martyred king! in triumph shining!
Guardian saint! whose bliss is shrining!
To thy spirit's sons inclining
From a sinful world confining,
By thy might O set them free!
Carnal bonds around them twining,
Fiendish arts are undermining,
All with deadly plagues are pining;
But, thy power and prayers combining,
Safely shall we rise to thee. Amen."