CHAPTER VII.

Old London Bridge.


London, at the period of this history, boasted only a single bridge. But
that bridge was more remarkable than any the metropolis now possesses.
Covered with houses, from one end to the other, this reverend and
picturesque structure presented the appearance of a street across the
Thames. It was as if Grace-church Street, with all its shops, its
magazines, and ceaseless throng of passengers, were stretched from the
Middlesex to the Surrey shore. The houses were older, the shops
gloomier, and the thoroughfare narrower, it is true; but the bustle, the
crowd, the street-like air was the same. Then the bridge had arched
gateways, bristling with spikes, and garnished (as all ancient gateways
ought to be) with the heads of traitors. In olden days it boasted a
chapel, dedicated to Saint Thomas; beneath which there was a crypt
curiously constructed amid the arches, where "was sepultured Peter the
Chaplain of Colechurch, who began the Stone Bridge at London:" and it
still boasted an edifice (though now in rather a tumbledown condition)
which had once vied with a palace,--we mean Nonesuch House. The other
buildings stood close together in rows; and so valuable was every inch
of room accounted, that, in many cases, cellars, and even habitable
apartments, were constructed in the solid masonry of the piers.

Old London Bridge (the grandsire of the present erection) was supported
on nineteen arches, each of which