37
Read 11 December, 1856, and 17 December, 1857.
8 Dec. 1856.
Although the borough of Southwark abounds with subjects of historical and antiquarian interest, it has hitherto been greatly neglected by our metropolitan topographers and local historians; and we now know little more of that considerable portion of the metropolis than was recorded by John Stow, in his Survey of London, two hundred and fifty years ago.
It is true that the pages of the Archæologia contain some accounts, by the late Mr. John Alfred Kempe, F.S.A., and others, of the discovery of Roman antiquities in Southwark, evidencing that the site was occupied during the period of the Roman dominion in this country, and that various notices of some of the antiquities of the borough are scattered through the Gentleman's Magazine and other works. The Archæologia contains also some interesting papers relating to later periods of the history of Southwark; among which I desire to recall to the notice of the Society a very able account by the late Mr. Gage Rokewood, formerly Director of the Society, of the remains of an early Norman building, laid open during the formation of the approaches to the new London Bridge in 1831, which will be found in the Archæologia, Vol. XXIII., p. 299, accompanied by a ground-plan and several perspective views, with sections, of a crypt or (then) underground vaulted structure of early Norman work, situate in Churchyard Alley, opposite to St. Olave's Church, and beneath the Old Vestry Hall and Free School of St. Olave's, and supposed to have been part of the house of the Priors of Lewes, in Southwark; and also a paper by Mr. Charles Edwin Gwilt in the Archæologia, Vol. XXV. p. 604, describing the remains of another early Norman building, in Walnut Tree Court,
