LITMIR.BIZ

      It was an eventful day in the annals of the Corporation of the City of London, when Queen Victoria, on November 6, 1869, declared Blackfriars Bridge—about which more hereafter—and Holborn Valley Viaduct formally open. The Holborn Valley improvements, it should be remembered, were nothing short of the actual demolition and reconstruction of a whole district, formerly either squalid, over-blocked, and dilapidated in some parts, or over-steep and dangerous to traffic in others. But a short time ago that same Holborn Valley was one of the most heart-breaking impediments to horse-traffic in London. Imagine Holborn Hill sloping at a gradient of 1 in 18, while the opposite rising ground of Skinner Street—now happily done away—rose at about 1 in 20. Figure to yourself the fact, that everything on wheels, and every foot passenger entering the City by the Holborn route, had to descend 26 feet to the Valley of the Fleet, and then ascend a like number to Newgate, and you will at once see the grand utility of levelling up so objectionable a hollow. To attempt to give a stranger to London even a faint idea of what has been accomplished by Mr. Haywood’s engineering skill, by a necessarily brief description here, is an invidious task. Nevertheless, we must essay it; premising, by-the-by, that if our readers while in London do not go to see the Viaduct for themselves, our trouble will be three parte thrown away. The whole structure is cellular, to begin with. To strip the subject of crabbed technicalities, imagine for a moment a long succession of—let us call them—railway-like arches supporting the carriage-way: these large vaults being available for other purposes. Outside this carriage-way, and under the edge of the foot-paths on either side, is a subway, some 7 feet wide and 11 feet or so high. Against the walls of this sub-way are fixed, readily connectable, gas mains and water mains and telegraph tubes. This was the first time all these important pipes had been so cleverly arranged in one easily accessible place. They are ventilated and partially lighted through the pavement, and by gas. Under each sub-way goes a sewer, with a path beside it for the sewer men when at work. Outside the sub-way are ordinary house vaults of two or three storeys high, according to the height of the Viaduct. These are divided by transverse walls; and, when houses are built against it, the Holborn Valley Viaduct will be shut out from sight, except in the case of the simple iron girder bridge over Shoe Lane, and the London, Chatham, and Dover bridge, with its sub-ways for gas and water pipes, and the fine bridge over Farringdon Street. You will, we trust, now see how marvellously every yard of space has been utilized by the engineer, from the roadway down to the very foundations. A few words must now be said about the splendid bridge over Farringdon Street. This has public staircases running up inside handsome stone buildings—the upper parts of which have been let for business purposes. It is a handsome skew bridge of iron, toned to a deep bronze green by enamel paint, and richly ornamented; its plinths above ground, its moulded bases, and its shafts, are respectively of grey, black, and exquisitely polished red granite. Its capitals are of grey granite, also polished, and set off by bronze foliage. Bronze lions, and four statues of Fine Art, Science, Commerce, and Agriculture, stand on the parapet-line on handsome plinths. These, and the projecting balconies and dormer window of the stone buildings just named, with their four statues of bygone civic worthies—Fitz Aylwin, Sir William Walworth, Sir Thomas Gresham, and Sir Hugh Myddleton—enhance the effect of the whole.

      Poor Chatterton, “the marvellous boy, the sleepless soul that perished in his pride,” after poisoning himself, in 1770, ere he was eighteen years of age, in Brooke Street, on the north side of Holborn, was laid in a pauper’s grave, in what was then the burying-ground of Shoe Lane Workhouse, and is now converted to very different purposes.

      Let us now come to Fleet Street. This thoroughfare—the main artery from St. Paul’s to the west—for many years has been emphatically one of literary associations, full as it is of newspaper and printing-offices. The late Angus B. Reach used humorously to call it, “The march of intellect.” Wynkyn de Worde, the early printer, lived here, and two of his books were “fynysshed and emprynted in Flete Streete, in ye syne of ye Sonne.” The Devil tavern, which stood near Temple Bar, on the south side, was a favourite hostelrie of Ben Jonson. At the Mitre, near Mitre Court, Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, and Boswell, held frequent rendezvous. The Cock was one of the oldest and least altered taverns in Fleet Street. The present poet-laureate, in one of his early poems, “A Monologue of Will Waterproof,” has immortalized it, in the lines beginning—

      “Thou plump head waiter at the Cock, To which I most resort, How goes the time? Is ’t nine o’clock? Then fetch a pint of port!”