The following brief account of a few of the things that have interested me in London is not intended for the use of the inveterate sightseer, for whom so many admirable and complete fingerposts to the study of old London have been written, by such experts as Mr. Bell, Mr. Wilfred Whitten, Mr. E. V. Lucas, Mr. Ordish and Mr. Hare. It is meant for the people who do not realise one-eighth of the stories packed into the streets of London, the city which, as Sir Walter Besant, that great London lover

If a hurried traveller had only time to roam about one of the London boroughs I think he should choose Chelsea, because in that small area of houses built along a mile and a half of the Thames riverside there is much that is typical of quite different phases of London life, from the sixteenth century to the present day. It lies between the Kings Road and the Embankment, beginning at Lower Sloane Street—Chelsea Bridge Road, and is reached by the district railway to Sloane Square Station or by the

Few people think of connecting the name of Knightsbridge with anything less modern than the big departmental shops, the Barracks or the cosy houses on the fringe of Mayfair and Belgravia. Yet there was a town of Knightsbrigg in the fourteenth century, in Edward the Third’s day, when the Black Prince and his knights must often have crossed the Westbourne stream by the bridge built just where the Albert Gate now stands. Mr. Davis in his History of Knightsbridge gives as the origin of the name the

One of the most enthralling and endearing things about London is the way the memory of the great people, whose names are so familiar that you feel you would know their bearers if you met them, pervades the city and crops up in such very unexpected places. If business ever took you through that evil-smelling fishy Lower Thames Street, you would discover that Chaucer lived there for six years when he was Comptroller of the Petty Customs in the Port of London. You stroll through the little Cloister

Having amused myself many times in Paris by hunting up the pieces of the old wall that Philippe Auguste built before he departed to the Holy Land on one of his Crusades, I set out one day to see how much remains of the wall the Romans built round London. I discovered some bits of it, but I discovered a great many other things in the process. There is very little left of the city that the old Romans called Augusta and the older Britons Llyn-Din—that some say means “the Lake Fort” and some “The Hi

Cheapside and Fleet Street have points of resemblance, for they are both narrow highways to the City, crowded and bustling and full of history, but Fleet Street, in spite of its literary associations, has not much attraction. Something of the mud of the old Fleet Ditch still seems to cling about it, some taint of disreputable Alsatia in Whitefriars, once the haven of roystering thieves and cut-throats, very different from the hive of grandiose newspaper offices that it is now. But in Cheapside i

Take that chilly-sounding gateway, the Marble Arch, as a point de départ for a walk some idle afternoon, and I will show you what I found the day I turned my back on it. It looks as bored by its inactivity as Théophile Gautier’s Obélisque; perhaps it regrets the days when it faced Buckingham Palace and feels it came down in the world when it was moved to its present position some seventy years ago. And that, too, is another indignity. Very many people ask why the Marble Arch is stranded all by i

The charming rustic-sounding name of Lincoln’s Inn Fields is known to everyone—did not Mr. Tulkinghorne live there?—but few people stray into the old square except those who are at odds with their neighbours and come to consult the men of law living there, as they did in Dickens’ day. The habitués come from Kingsway through Great Queen Street or Sardinia Street—the stranger takes the Piccadilly Tube to Holborn Station and, turning to the right along High Holborn, follows the first passage on the

In days of old, when London’s present meatmarket was the fashionable jousting-ground of the time, the knights and squires used to ride to Smithfield up a road still called Giltspur Street, either from the armourers who dwelt there, or from the jingling of the champions’ spurs as they clattered by. Any Holborn bus will take you to the corner of St. Sepulchre’s where the dismal bell tolled the passing to Newgate of the condemned criminals. On the right side of Giltspur Street is St. Bartholomew’s

Dr. Johnson once said, “Why, sir, Fleet Street has a very animated appearance, but I think the full tide of human existence is at Charing Cross.” Certainly Charing Cross is the best of all starting-points for exploring expeditions, and by Charing Cross I mean the south-east corner of Trafalgar Square. From there you may wander along the Strand, or north into Bloomsbury, or through Cockspur Street into the realms of Mayfair, or southward to the Thames, and in every direction there are unnoticed s

I am rather diffident about putting any name on this chapter, for no one would ever think of calling the British Museum an unnoticed place. It has what the newspapers call a world-wide reputation. Its very name smacks of solid worth with nothing unexpected about it. It is an institution looming large and august, its massive masonry dominating Bloomsbury as its reputation does the universe, and absorbing an unending queue of earnest-minded people intent on storing their minds with knowledge. And