Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/593

 10 s. x. DEC. ID, 1908.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

491

LONDON STATUES AND MEMORIALS.

(lO S. ix. 1, 102, 282, 363, 481 ; x. 122, 211,

258, 290, 370.)

I PURPOSE in this series of remarks to keep for the most part in the City of London, although I shall have a few comments to make on some others. As the three- hundredth anniversary of the birth of Milton is just being celebrated, I feel that no one will resent my starting with two memorials of him. Milton was born in Bread Street on 9 Dec., 1608, and baptized in the church of All Hallows in that thorough- fare. This church is one of the many destroyed, but we find the memory of both church and poet kept alive by a tablet on the east side of the street, just south of Watling Street, on the spot where the church formerly stood. There a bust of Milton has been let into the wall, having beneath it this inscription :

Milton. Born in Bread Street,

1608. Baptized in Church of

All Hallows, Which stood here Ante

1878.

This parish was united with that of St. Mary-le-Bow, and upon the west wall of the latter church, facing Bow Churchyard, is a tablet thus inscribed :

Three poets in three distant ages born Greece, Italy, and England did adorn ; The first in loftiness of thought surpast, The next in majesty in both the last ; The force of Nature could no further go : To make a third she joined the former two.

John Milton

was born in Bread Street on Friday, the 9 th

day of December, 1608, and was Baptised

in the parish Church of All Hallows,

Bread Street, on Thursday, the 20 th

day of December, 1608.

This tablet was placed on the Church of All Hallows, Bread Street, | early in the 19 th century, as a memorial of the event | therein recorded, and was removed in the year 1876 when that | church was pulled down, and the parish united for ecclesiastical | purposes with the parish of St. Mary- le-Bow.

In the churchyard of St. Giles, Cripple- gate, has been placed a statue of the poet, already mentioned by MB. PAGE, No. 21 at the first reference quoted above. In the same churchyard a handsome fountain was put up by the Vestry in the year of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. It is composed of Kentish ragstone, the basin and pediment being of Aberdeen granite, while " above

the basin, in bronze, executed in bold relief, is displayed the Queen's head." On the two towers between which the basin is placed the following inscriptions have been engraved :

In

Commemoration of Queen Victoria's

Jubilee, June 21st, 1887.

Erected by The Vestry of St. Giles,

Cripplegate. Albert Barff, M.A., Vicar.

Mr. J. J. Baddeley, the donor of the Milton statue and the then churchwarden, is one of the Sheriffs of London this year.

In the pleasant churchyard of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, is a drinking fountain erected between the church rails, and upon it this inscription has been placed :

November, 1890.

The gift of Robert Rogers, Esq re ,

Deputy of the Ward, to the parish of

St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury.

A memorial, surmounted by a small cross,

which stands on the nor,th side of Cloak

Lane, near the east corner, serves to keep

citizens of London and others in mind

of the former existence of the church of

St. John the Baptist upon Walbrook.

It records as follows :

Sacred To the memory of the

dead

Interred in ohe ancient church and churchyard of St. John the Baptist

upon Walbrook

during four centuries.

The formation of the District Railway

having necessitated the destruction of

the greater part of the

churchyard,

All the human remains contained therein were carefully collected and reinterred in a

Vault Beneath this monument,

A.D. 1884.

The church of St. John the Baptist was not rebuilt after the Great Fire, the rectory being united with that of St. Antholin, which in its turn was demolished in 1874, and united with St. Mary, Aldermary, which thus serves four parishes, as St. Thomas the Apostle is also linked with it for parochial matters.

I do not think that exception will be taken to my treating the Royal Exchange as a public place and the statues there as public memorials. In the centre of the courtyard is a statue of Queen Victoria