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I.—Recent Discoveries of Medieval Remains in London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2011

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Extract

In September 1910 I heard that houses had been pulled down on the north side of Merchant Taylors’ Hall, and that various interesting discoveries had been made. Mr. Reader and I went there together, and an elevation and plan drawn by him of Roman remains then found are given in Archaeologia, vol. lxiii. They record the position of a Roman floor near the hall resting on gravel about 17 ft. 6 in. below the present ground level.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1916

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References

page 1 note 1 I am indebted to Mr. Ernest Woolley, a past Master of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, for admirable photographs of various parts of the buildings, and the authorities of the Guild have furnished a most accurate drawing of the north side by their surveyor Mr. Mew (pl. I), also other photographs.

page 5 note 1 Hist. Lond., by Allen, T. (Wright's edition), vol. iii, p. 251Google Scholar. Allen shows the beginnings of two diagonal ribs, suggesting a fourth bay, which was perhaps a mistake of the draughtsman. No allusion is made to it in the text. He does not give the points of the compass, but in Clode's Memorials the plan is copied, this end being marked ‘north’. The existing bays are immediately east of the hall.

page 11 note 1 Stow's Survey, Kingsford's edition, vol. ii, p. 291. Stow elsewhere, translating from the Trinity Cartulary, says that ‘Norman tooke upon him to be prior of Christ's Church, in the year of Christ 1108, in the parishes of Saint Marie Magdalen, S. Michael, S. Katherine, and the blessed Trinitie’.

page 14 note 1 Westminster Abbey and the King's Craftsmen, by Lethaby, W. R., 1906, pp. 153-6.Google Scholar

page 15 note 1 Close Rolls, 34 and 37 Henry III.

page 15 note 2 This tower also contained the bell called ‘Edward of Westminster’ or ‘Great Tom’, which was presented by William III to St. Paul's Cathedral. The clock-tower was granted to St. Margaret's parish in 1698, and pulled down soon afterwards. Its position is shown on a plan of the precincts of Westminster Abbey in Sandford's Coronation of James II, 1687. It was rather less than 200 ft. north of Westminster Hall.

page 15 note 3 Strype's, Stow, Book VI, p. 46Google Scholar.

page 16 note 1 Ordnance datum, to which all heights are referred in the Ordnance Survey, is 125 ft. below Trinity high-water mark and 4½ ft. above Trinity low-water mark.

page 18 note 1 Cotton, MS. Vitellius F, xii.

page 18 note 2 The Grey Friars of London, by Kingsford, C. L., M.A., 1915Google Scholar.

page 19 note 1 Archaeologia, lvi, 251-66.Google Scholar

page 19 note 2 Archaeologia, lxi, 347-56.Google Scholar

page 21 note 1 The points of the compass are used approximately. In fact the building stood, not north and south, but north-west by south-east. In this paper south means towards Holborn, north means towards Highgate, and so on.

page 23 note 1 Archaeologia, lxi, pl. xlvi.Google Scholar

page 25 note 1 ‘Cespool’ has not the unpleasant meaning of our modern word cesspool. It is equivalent to cesperill or suspiral, which Sir William Hope, in his paper on the water system of the Charterhouse, explains as a vent to avoid the danger of a pipe bursting by pressure of air or water. It seems likely that they served other useful purposes.