Bygone London Author:Frederick Ross Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Bisbopsgate Street TOtbin ant Witbout. SOME fourteen or fifteen centuries ago what is now Bishopsgate Street Within was a fashionable suburb of the Roman Lond... more »inium, the Belgravia or South Kensington of the period, where the aristocracy and wealth of the City located itself and built magnificent mansions after the fashion of Rome, with columns, frescoes, and tesselated pavements, such as we see in the disinterred city of Pompeii. In the streets might then be seen charioteers driving rapidly along to contend in the chariot race ; fair ladies going to witness the gladiatorial displays in the amphitheatre; bronzed soldiers from many a distant province of the empire; slaves groaning beneath heavy burdens or employed in laborious occupations—all mixed up with the ordinary traffic of a considerable city. Northward, stretching eastward and westward, ran the City wall, a portion of which may still be seen in the street call London Wall, adorned with stately towers and bastions, one of the latter havingbeen exposed to public view by the opening of a pathway through St. Giles's Churchyard. There was, however, no gateway in this part of the wall, as beyond lay an untraversable morass, and beyond that a forest extending to and up the heights of Highgate, Muswell Hill, etc., those who wished to go northward from the city having to go eastward to Aldgate or westward to Aldersgate. This probably was the reason why the rich selected this portion of the environs of the City for their residence, as being more retired and quiet than in the vicinity of a thoroughfare leading to a City outlet. Of these mansions of the patricians of Londinium several vestiges have been found. On the site of St. Helen's, the foundations of large edifices have been laid bare. In 1707, at the corner of Camomile Stree...« less