2086.—Plan of St. Giles in the Fields.details

1. The first St. Giles’s Church.

2. Remains of the Walls anciently enclosing the Hospital precincts.

3. Site of the Gallows, and afterwards of the Pound.

4. Way to Uxbridge, now Oxford Street.

5. Elde Strate, since called Hog Lane.

6. Le Lane, now Monmouth Street.

7. Site of the Seven Dials, formerly called Cock and Pye Fields.

8. Elm Close, since called Long Acre.

9. Drury Lane.

In giving a few notices of the London of the seventeenth century, we may begin with a part now undergoing greater changes than ever—St. Giles, or, as it was called in its days of long grass and buttercups, and stiles dividing meadow from meadow, St. Giles-in-the-Fields (Fig. 2086). This, in the time of James I., formed a separate hamlet adjoining Westminster; but it was speedily to lose its rural character, and become a part of the rapacious ever-growing monster city, by the erection of a range of continuous houses between the two.

There was one feature of St. Giles that made it but too well known throughout England. At a certain public-house criminals about to be hung used to stop on their way to Tyburn. and receive their last draught of ale from “St. Giles’s Bowl.” (p. 222)