Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/89

 9 th S. II. JULY 30, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

81

LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY SO, 1898.

CONTENTS.-No. 31.

NOTES : From Holborn to the Strand, 81 Ancient Zodiacs, 82 Inverury Leigh, 84 Regent Square' Love's Labour 'a Lost' "Piggin,"85 Field-NamesGood Friday Custom Tobacco in England" Brazen-soft" Salad Oil, 86.

QUERIES : Farquhar's 'Beaux' Stratagem 'Scottish Body- guards Cowslip Gladstone and Anonymous Letters Capt. Gibbs Johnson's Two Books Bridget Cheynell The Book of Tropenell, 87 Grindleford Bridge "Tata" Allium 'Three Jovial Huntsmen' Mather: Clatt- worthy Dr. Stukeley's House Raphael Cooke Family- Rev. G. Huntley " The key of the street" Local Saying, 88 Soleby Labrusca Sir Thomas Munro John Hitch- cock Cann Office Chintz Gowns Marriage Customs, 89.

REPLIES : Houses without Staircases, 89 Mrs. Gibbs Historic Perspective Cheltenham, 90 Portrait of Queen Charlotte " Modestest," 91 Popular Fables Ennius " Hokeday "Bogie Domestic Implement, 92 Orders of Friars Scott on Grimm's 'Popular Stories ' "Dewsiers" Slavonic Names Episcopal Families, 93 Wart-curing Martin Luther Brummell " Horse-chestnut" Marginal References in the Bible, 94 Bally Pattens Latin Epitaph, 95 Ravensworth Sir N. Stukeley " Heron " African Names, 96 Muggerhanger Burns and Coleridge Wada De Burghs Cordwainer George Old, 97 Washington Family" There is a garden in ner face " Paejama Cope and Mitre Benjamin Thorpe, 98 Prime Minister" Anigosanthus " Lily of Wales, 99.

NOTES on BOOKS : O'Connor's ' Facts about Bookworms ' Cunningham's 'Essay on Western Civilization 'Lang's Scott's ' Bride of Lammermoor.'

Notices to Correspondents.

gtatau

FROM HOLBOEN TO THE STRAND. THE scheme which has been proposed by the London County Council for uniting Hol- born with the Strand by driving a new street through central London seems to have met with general approval, and it has at least the merit of interfering in the smallest possible degree with those associations of the past whrch give a charm to the metropolis in the eyes of the poet and the antiquary. No scene of historic interest will be swept away ; no monument of architecture will be absorbed into nineteenth-century commonplace. The

greater part of the route will intersect a istrict which less than three hundred years ago was a dependency of one of those fine old Jacobean mansions of which Holland House is perhaps the sole surviving example, but which in the days of the Civil War were common objects in London and the suburbs, while the Strand extremity will have the effect of transforming almost the last remain- ing vestiges of Elizabethan London into a magnificent crescent on which it is probable that the best resources of modern architecture will be employed. In a minor degree, there- fore, the locality is not without interest, and before the inevitable change arrives it may be well to recall the memories it invokes. Little Queen Street, of which the eastern

side will be destroyed, was the scene of the tragedy which cast a shadow over Charles Lamb's life. The house in which the lament- able incident occurred no longec, exists, I believe, and after the lapse of a century the memory of the deed may well be swept away. South of Great Queen Street the district in former times was generally co-extensive with the area of what was perhaps the oldest suburb of London, the village of Ealdwic or Aldwic, known later as Aldewych, and of which, so late as the days of the Stuarts, some vestiges remained in Oldwich Close, an open space which lay to the south of Lincoln's Inn 1 ields. This village in the tenth century was largely colonized by the Danes, after whom the neighbouring church of St. Clement was named. The high road of the village, which connected it with the Hospital of St. Giles, was known as the Via de Aldewych, and is represented by the modern Drury Lane, with the exception of the south-eastern extremity, which led to the Holy Well of St. Clement, and the name of which still survives in Wych Street.

At the beginning of the seventeenth cen- tury a large part of this district was in the possession of Sir John Holies, who, de- sirous of a peerage, is said to have paid what in those days was the enormous sum of 10,000/. to the favourite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and to have received in return the dignity of a barony, being created in 1616 Baron Houghton of Houghton, co. Notting- ham, and in 1624 Earl of Clare. The residence of this nobleman is said to have been at the extremity of Clare Court, an unsavoury passage which lies on the eastern side of Drury Lane, between Kemble and Blackmoor Streets. Whether any remains of this house are still in existence I am unable to say, as the character of the court and its inhabitants does not invite close investigation ; but as it, with other slums in its vicinity, is, I believe, marked out by the County Council for clearance as an " insanitary area," though off the direct route of the new street, it is pos- sible some discoveries may be made. The first Earl of Clare was the concessionnaire of Clare Market, which for many years was known as the New Market, and is so called in Fai thorn e's map of 1658, and was the probable builder of Houghton Street, Clare Street, and Stanhope Street, which received its name from his wife Anne Stanhope, who died in 1651 in "the corner house of the Middle Piazza in Coverit Garden." The Earl of Clare was succeeded in his dignities by his son John Holies, after whom Holies Street was named, it having been built, according to an inscribed stone which