place during the past half century that large numbers of other streets and terraces have sprung up in all directions, on land which hitherto had served as the gardens attached to the mansions of the nobility and City merchants, or as nursery grounds, market gardens, and even watercress-beds. The population of Hackney, too, which at the commencement of this century was about equal to that of a good-sized country village, had, according to the census returns of 1871, reached something like 300,000; and the place, since 1868, has enjoyed the privilege of Parliamentary representation. 513 The Priory, within the memory of the present generation, was a strange-looking brick building, divided into small tenements, and inhabited by chimneysweeps and others of kindred calling. A chapel of ease, dedicated to St. John, in this street, was consecrated in 1810 by Bishop Randolph, and endowed as a district parish church for South Hackney. In 1846 it was superseded by the new parish church, which we have already described. Mare Street, as we have already stated, commences at the eastern end of the Hackney Road, and forms the main thoroughfare through the centre of the town. Throughout its entire length it is well sprinkled with the remains of dwellings of the wealthy classes of society, who formerly inhabited this now unfashionable quarter of London. Here, too, the number of religious edifices, of all denominations, is somewhat remarkable, and in some cases the buildings are fine specimens of ecclesiastical architecture. From Grove Street, incidentally mentioned near the close of the preceding chapter, we pass into Well Street, which winds somewhat circuitously to the west, where it unites with Mare Street. Hackney College, which we notice on our left immediately on entering Well Street, was founded in 1803 with the object of preparing students for the Congregational ministry, and of granting votes in support of chapels. The average number of students in the college is about twenty, and the Hackney has altogether upwards of twenty places annual receipts about £1,500. At the close of of worship for Dissenters; it has, in fact, long been the last century there was a college for Dissenters renowned as a great centre of Nonconformity, and established at Lower Clapton, to which Dr. Rees, some eminent Dissenting divines have preached Dr. Priestley, and his scarcely less renowned there. Dr. Bates, the learned author of the "HarUnitarian coadjutor, Mr. Belsham, and Gilbert mony of the Divine Attributes," died there in 1679. Wakefield were attached; but it was broken up in Matthew Henry, the compiler of the well-known 1797, owing to the bad conduct of some of the "Commentary" on the Bible, preached at Hackney students. The well-known college at Homerton between 1710 and 1714. Robert Fleming, the was established about the latter part of the seven-author of "The Rise and Fall of the Papacy," died teenth century. Dr. Pye Smith, the great geologist, at Hackney on the 24th of May, 1716. His whose conclusions anticipated some of the views of Mr. Goodwin in his "Mosaic Cosmogony," was for many years the principal of the seminary; and many eminent ministers of the Nonconformist bodies there received their education. In Well Street are almshouses for six aged and poor men, founded by Henry Monger in 1669. Further on, on the right, a large old-fashioned mansion may be observed, although it is now cut up into tenements, and the lower part converted into shops. This was once the residence of the celebrated Dr. Frampton, whose memory is preserved in the locality in the name of Frampton Park Road. The residence of the Knights of St. John existed till a very recent period, under the name of the Priory, in Well Street. In 1352 the Prior of St. John disposed of the mansion, then called Beaulieu, to John Blaunch and Nicholas Shordych. In Stow's time it bore the name of Shoreditch Place,* since shortened into Shore Place and Shore Road. See Vol II., p. 194. prophecies were believed to have been fulfilled in 1794; and in 1848, when a second revolution occurred in Paris, Fleming's book was eagerly sought for, and reprinted, and read by thousands. The Presbyterian Dissenters' Chapel was established in this street early in the seventeenth century. Here Philip Nye and Adoniram Byfield, two eminent Puritan divines, preached in 1636. The old meeting-house has been taken down, and a new one built on the opposite side of the street, and occupied by Independents. On the east side of Mare Street, near King Edward Road, stands the Roman Catholic Church of St. John the Baptist, which was built about the year 1848, from the designs of Mr. Wardell. It is built in the decorated Gothic style, and comprises nave, chancel, aisles, and sacristy. The rood-screen and altar are elaborately carved, and some of the windows are filled with painted glass. In 1856 a brass plate was placed in the chancel, over the grave of the founder and first rector, the Rev. J. Leucona, who died in 1855. Mr. Leucona was a Spanish Catholic missionary, and the author of a few published works, among them a pamphlet in trious Parliamentarian, no other than John Milton; reply to some of the writings of Dr. Pusey. for there he wooed his second wife, the daughter of Captain Woodcock, who lived there. On the west side of this street, near the narrow lane leading into London Fields, stands a very old public-house, bearing the sign of the "Flying Horse." It is a large, rambling house, of two storeys, and consists of a centre and two wings. It is traditionally said to have been one of the old posting-houses of the time of "Queen Bess," on the old road to Cambridge and Newmarket. Further to the north, one of a row of old mansions with small gardens before them, has a large board displayed upon its front inscribed with the words "Elizabeth Fry's Refuge." This institution was founded in the year 1849, for the purpose of providing temporary homes for female criminals on their release from prison. Hackney has always been remarkable for the number of its charitable institutions: besides those which we have already mentioned, and others which we have still to notice, are some almshouses for widows near Mare Street, founded by Dr. Spurstowe, who died in the reign of Charles II. The Town Hall, which stands in The Grove, is a modern structure, having been erected only a few years ago to supersede an older and less commodious building further on, near the old parish church. The edifice, with its noble portico, and its ample supply of windows-for, like Hardwick Hall, it might almost be said to have "more windows than wall"-presents a striking contrast to many of the quaint old buildings which surround it. Notwithstanding the grand appearance of the building externally, and the thousands of pounds spent in its erection, the interior does not seem to have given that satisfaction to the parishioners which they were led to expect, and the accommodation, or rather, the want of accommodation in some of the rooms which the edifice affords, was such as to serve as a bone of contention among them for some considerable time after its erection. Running parallel with Mare Street, on the west side, and overlooking the London Fields, is the new line of the Great Eastern Railway, from which, at the Hackney Downs station, a line branches off on the left to Enfield. In the construction of this railway several old houses were swept away, among them an ancient mansion which had long been used as a private lunatic asylum, and another which, with its gardens, covered a large space of ground, and was formerly used as a hospital by the Honourable East India Company. To the Tower House, at the corner of London Lane, which connects Mare Street with London Fields and the railway station, often came an illus On the east side of Mare Street, and covering the ground now occupied by St. Thomas's Place, once stood an ancient edifice known as Barber's Barn, or Barbour Berns, which dated from about the end of the sixteenth century. It was in the Elizabethan style of architecture, with pediments, bay-windows, and an entrance porch, and contained numerous rooms. It is said to have been the residence of John Okey, the regicide. He is reported to have been originally a drayman and stoker in a brewery at Islington, but having entered the Parliamentary army, to have risen to become one of Cromwell's generals. He sat in judgment on Charles I., and was the sixth who signed the warrant for the king's execution. About the middle of the last century Barber's Barn, with its grounds and some adjoining land, passed into the possession of one John Busch, who formed a large nursery ground on the estate. Mr. Loudon, in his Gardeners' Magazine, says that Catharine II., Empress of Russia, "finding that she could have nothing done to her mind, determined to have a person from England to lay out her garden." Busch was the person engaged to go out to Russia for this purpose. In 1771 he disposed of his nursery at Hackney to Messrs. Loddige, who ranked with the most eminent florists and nurserymen of their time. Indeed, the name of the Loddige family has been known for nearly a century in the horticultural and botanical world; and few persons who take an interest in gardening and flowers can fail to recognise the names of Conrad Loddige and his sons, of Hackney, as the authors of the “Botanical Cabinet," published in twenty large quarto volumes during the Regency and the subsequent reign of George IV. They had here extensive greenhouses, and also hothouses which were heated by steam. The ancient house having become the property of Mr. Conrad Loddige, was taken down many years ago, and Loddige's Terrace, together with some residences called St. Thomas's Place, were built on its site. A few houses in Well Street occupy the other portion of the former gardens. In 1787 Mr. Loddige removed from what was called Busch's Nursery, and formed another nursery on some grounds which he purchased from the governors of St. Thomas's Hospital; these grounds had until then been open fields, and he enclosed them towards the north with a brick wall. The last vestiges of Loddige's gardens disappeared about the year 1860, when some of the plants were trans ferred to the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. Hackney, it may be added, was celebrated till a comparatively recent date for its market gardens, and even for its watercress beds. A large watercress garden was in existence until 1860, and perhaps even more recently, only a few yards to the south of the North London Railway Station. In Paradise Place, at the end of Paragon Road, stands the New Gravel-pit Meeting House, "Sacred to One God the Father." The chapel was built on what was formerly Paradise Fields. The old Gravel-pit Meeting House, where Dr. Price and Dr. Priestley were formerly ministers, and which dates its erection from the early part of the last century, stands at a short distance to the east. Dr. Priestley preached his farewell sermon in the old chapel in 1794, previous to his departure for America. At a short distance northward from the new Town Hall, Mare Street is spanned by the North London Railway. Near this spot, on the east side of the street, and close by the entrance to the churchyard, was standing, in Lysons' time or at the end of the last century, an ancient building, thus described in the chantry-roll at the Augmentation Office, which bears date the first year of the reign of Edward I.:-"A tenement buylded by the parishioners, called the Churche Howse, that they might mete together and comen of matters as well for the kyng's business as for the churche and parishe, worth 20s. per an." It appeared by an inscription, remaining on the front towards the street, that it was built in the year 1520, when Christopher Urswick was rector. The house was for many years, in the last century, used as a free school, but in its latter years it seems to have reverted again to its original purpose. The site was afterwards occupied by a more modern Town Hall, which is still standing, but which, as we have already seen, has since been superseded by the new building in Mare Street. If we may follow the statements of Stow and Strype, Hackney was, as far back as the close of the thirteenth century, a distinct parish, with a rector and also a vicar, and a church dedicated to St. Augustine; but the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem having obtained possession of a mill and other possessions in the parish formerly held by the Knights Templars, the appellation of the church came to be changed from St. Augustine to St. John. In the reign of Edward III. this church, in lieu of that of Bishop's Stortford, in Hertfordshire, was annexed to the precentorship of St. Paul's Cathedral. In confirmation of the assertion that the church was dedicated to St. Augustine, it may be added that a statue of that saint, erected in it as lately as the reign of Henry VIII., is men 515 tioned in the will of Christopher Urswick, rector, and also Dean of Windsor. This old church, then, of which the tower alone now remains, though dedicated to St. Augustine, has for many years been known as St. John's Church. Newport, in his "Repertorium," speaking of Hackney Church, says :-"The church has of late years gone by the name of St. John of Jerusalem at Hackney, as if dedicated to St. John, which I take to be a mistake; because I find that Arthur Wood, in December, 1509, instituted to the vicarage of St. Augustin at Hackney-to which saint, I rather believe, that church had been dedicated-no presentation having been made by the name of St. John of Jerusalem at Hackney till after the restoration of King Charles II. One Heron, Esq., is taken by some to be the founder of it, by his arms engraven upon every pillar, which is a chevron ermine between three herons; but I rather think that he was a very great benefactor to the new building or repairing of the church, for which reason his arms (are) upon every pillar; and in the north aisle thereof, in a tomb of white freestone, without any inscription, his body lies." - In the Cottonian Library there is a volume relating to the Knights Templars, in which mention is made of St. Augustine's at Hackney, and of the lands and rents there which belonged to that order, including a mill which was known as Temple Mill. It appears that these, after the suppression of the Templar order, passed into the hands of the Knights of St. John, whose influence in and upon the parish was so great, that the very dedication of the church to St. Augustine was forgotten. There is in the Tower records a patent or licence to one Henry Sharp, the "parson" of St. Augustine's at Hackney, to erect in his church a "Guild of the Holy Trinity and of the Glorious Virgin Mary;" in whose honour, therefore, doubtless a light was kept constantly burning before an altar in an aisle or side chapel. This guild, or "perpetual fraternity," was to consist of "two guardians or brethren, and sisters, of the same parish, and of others who, from their devotion, will be of the same fraternity." It is impossible to fix the date of erection of the first church of St. Augustine at Hackney. It appears to have been taken down and rebuilt in the early part of the sixteenth century; and "it is probable," says Dr. Robinson, in his "History of Hackney," "that Sir Thomas Heron, who was master of the jewel house to King Henry VIII., and Christopher Urswick (then rector) were the principal benefactors to its re-erection; for besides the arms above-mentioned, the same arms occurred were erecting the church: it is said to have had originally the sign of "The Herons." The ancient church of St. Augustine was taken down towards the close of the last century, except the old tower, which, as we have stated, still remains. It is of Gothic architecture, and contains a peal of eight bells. From an account of the old church printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1796, we learn that its exterior, in its latter days, was "an incomprehensible jumble of dissonant repairs, with out a trace of the original building remaining, except the windows of part of it." There were two side aisles, and the pillars, twelve in number, are described as being "remarkably strong, good, and well-proportioned, and the arches pointed." The galleries, of wh.ch there were several, seem to black and white, though very slight;" the subjects were, the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, Christ in the Storm at Sea, and Elijah fed by Ravens. A view of the old church, taken in 1806, shortly before its removal, will be found in a work on the suburbs of London, entitled, "Ecclesiastical Topography," published in 1811, anonymously. The writer describes it as having been a large irregular building, with few traces remaining of the original structure, except the windows; and, to do the writer justice, it must be owned that never was a fine medieval church more ruthlessly and tastelessly perverted into a chaos of confusion. "The nave and the tower," he adds, "may probably be referred to the middle of the fourteenth century. The sepulchral inscriptions were extremely numerous, milkwoman, who, having obtained great wealth by selling milk in the City, was a great benefactress to the church. The following was her epitaph:"For the Sowl of Alice Ryder, of your Charite, . 1517." Say a Pater-noster, and an Ave Besides the tower mentioned above, the Rowe Chapel, which was built in the reign of James I., and attached to the south side of the church, also remained after the demolition of the body of the fabric, and is still standing. This chapel or mausoleum was founded by Sir Henry Rowe, of Shacklewell, as a place of interment for his family. The Rowes possessed some property at Muswell Hill, in the parish of Hornsey, and the family became extinct in the male line in the person of Anthony Rowe, of Muswell Hill, who was buried |