London City

Pictorial Agency.
INTERIOR OF ROYAL EXCHANGE.—(Page 128)

LONDON
 
CITY

BY

SIR WALTER BESANT

LONDON

ADAM & CHARLES BLACK

1910

With this volume we begin what may be called the second part of the Survey.All that has preceded it has dealt with the history of London as a whole; now weturn to London in its topographical aspect and treat it street by street, with all thehistorical associations interwoven in a continuous narrative with a running commentaryof the aspect of the streets as they were at the end of the nineteenthcentury, for the book is strictly a Survey of London up to the end of the nineteenthcentury. Sir Walter Besant himself wrote the greater part of the volume nowissued, calling it “The Antiquities of the City,” and it is exclusively confined to theCity. For the topographical side of the great work, however, he employed assistantsto collect material for him and to help him; for though, as he said, he had been“walking about London for the last thirty years and found something fresh in itevery day,” he could not himself collect the mass of detail requisite for a fairpresentation of the subject. In the present volume, therefore, embedded in hisrunning commentary, will be found detailed accounts of the City Companies, theCity churches and other buildings, which are not by his hand. A word as to theplan on which the volume is made may be helpful. In cases where the City hallsare standing, accounts of the Companies they belong to are inserted there in thecourse of the perambulation; but where the Companies possess no halls, the matterconcerning them is relegated to an Appendix. The churches, however, beingpeculiarly associated with the sites on which they are standing, or stood, are consideredto be an integral part of the City associations, and churches, whethervanished or standing, are noted in course of perambulation. A distinction whichshows at a glance whether any particular church is still existing or has been demolishedis made by the type; for in the case of an existing church the name isviset in large black type, as a centre heading, whereas with a vanished church it isgiven in smaller black type set in line.

The plan of the book is simplicity itself; it follows the lines of groups of streets,taken as dictated by common sense and not by the somewhat arbitrary boundaries ofwards. The outlines of these groups are clearly indicated on the large map whichwill be found at the end of the volume.