again. Internally the precinct was unequally divided by an irregular highway which ran north and south, from the great gate to the Blackfriars stairs. This started out of Gate Street as High Street, and lower down became Water Lane.[1] All the conventual buildings lay on the east of the highway. Here was the larger division of the precinct, measuring about 450 ft. from east to west. The western division, measuring about 150 ft., contained only a few houses and gardens. Across it ran from Bridewell Bridge to Water Lane a strip of unoccupied land, containing nothing but a ruined gallery, probably part of the provision made for the accommodation of Charles V in 1522. One of Cawarden's first acts, when he got his property, was to make a new road, with tenements and gardens to the south of it, along this strip. It became known as Bridewell Lane, and is represented by the present Union Street.[2] It must have joined Water Lane just south of a little place or parvis which lay in front of the west porch of the church and the adjoining entrance to the cloister. The parvis contained one or two houses and shops, and formed part of the continuous thoroughfare from north to south, communicating by gateways with High Street and Water Lane.[3] The conventual church itself divided the eastern portion of the precinct from west to east, extending not quite so far east as the present Friar Street. It was 220 ft. long and 66 ft. wide, and had two aisles and a chancel, which, as usual in conventual churches, was as long as the nave. There was a square porch tower over the west end. Over the junction of nave and chancel stood a belfry, visible in Wyngaerde's drawing of c. 1543-50, and to the north of the chancel a chapel, probably the quasi-*parochial chapel of St. Anne, and a vestry.[4] Beyond these was the churchyard.[5] This was 300 ft. long by 90 ft. deep,
- ↑ M. S. C. ii. 115. For the 'turngate' cf. M. S. C. ii. 114; Strype (1720), i. 3. 184. This, with the great gate, and the gates at the Thames and Fleet bridges, made up the four gates of conventual times. The gate, over which Shakespeare had a house, where Ireland Yard debouches into St. Andrew's Hill, was probably of later date.
- ↑ M. S. C. ii. 6, 11, 109.
- ↑ The upper gate is described in a lease as 'a gate of the Citie of London' (Loseley MS. 1396, f. 44). It may have been a relic of the pre-1276 wall. Its site is shown on the Ordnance map. The lower gate is visible in the maps of Braun and Agas. It seems to have carried Charles V's gallery over the roadway to the guest-house.
- ↑ M. S. C. ii. 9, 107, 110; Clapham, 64.
- ↑ The details for the rest of this paragraph are mainly taken from Crown surveys of 1548 and 1550 (M. S. C. ii. 6, 8), and from a memorandum by Cawarden on the grants anterior to his own (M. S. C. ii. 1, 103), and Professor Feuillerat's notes of the original patents which illustrate this.
