Eagle and Child Yard running northwards. From the former of these continued Church Lane, to which Maynard Lane ran parallel. Bainbridge, Buckridge, and Church Streets ran east and westward. Of these Bainbridge remains, a long, narrow alley bounded by the brewery wall. Mayhew says that here "were found some of the most intricate and dangerous places in this low locality."

The part of the parish lying to the north, including Bedford Square, must be for the present left (see p. 98), while we turn southwards.

New Compton Street is within the former precincts of the hospital. When first made it was called Stiddolph Street, after Sir Richard Stiddolph, and the later name was taken from that of Sir Frances Compton. Strype says, "All this part was very meanly built ... and greatly inhabited by French, and of the poorer sort," a character it retains to this day.

Shaftesbury Avenue, opened in 1885, has obliterated Monmouth Street, named after the Duke of Monmouth, whose house was in Soho Square (see The Strand, this series). Monmouth Street was notorious for its old-clothes shops, and is the subject of one of the "Sketches by Boz." Further back still it was called Le Lane, and is under that name mentioned among the hospital possessions.

The north end of Shaftesbury Avenue is in the adjoining parish of St. George's, Bloomsbury, but must for sequence' sake be described here. A French Protestant chapel, consecrated 1845, which is the lineal descendant of the French Church of the Savoy, stands on the west side. Near at hand is a French girls' school. Further north is a Baptist chapel, with two noticeable pointed towers and a central wheel window. Bedford Chapel formerly stood on the north side of this. In the lower half of the Avenue there are several buildings of interest. The first of these, on the east side, is for the medical and surgical relief of all foreigners who speak French. Below this is a chapel belonging to the Baptists, and further southward a working lads' home, established in 1843, for homeless lads at work in London. In connection with it are various homes in the country, both for boys and girls, and two training ships, the Arethusa and Chichester.

All the ground to the south of Shaftesbury Avenue was anciently, if not actually a pond, at all events very marshy ground, and was called Meershelands, or Marshlands. It was subsequently known as Cock and Pye Fields, from the Cock and Pye public-house, which is supposed to have been situated at the spot where Little St. Andrew Street, West Street, and Castle Street now meet. The date at which this name first appeared is uncertain; it is met with in the parish books after 1666. In the reign of William III. a Mr. Neale took the ground, and transformed the great ditch which crossed it into a sewer, preparatory to the building of Seven Dials. The name of this notorious place has been connected with degradation and misery, but at first it was considered rather an architectural wonder. Evelyn, in his diary, October 5, 1694, says: "I went to see the building beginning near St. Giles, where seven streets make a star from a Doric pillar placed in the middle of a circular area, said to be built by Mr. Neale." Gay also refers to the central column in his "Trivia." The column had really only six dial faces, two streets converging toward one. In the open space on which it stood was a pillory, and the culprits who stood here were often most brutally stoned. One John Waller, charged with perjury, was killed in this manner in 1732.

In 1773 the column was taken down in a search for imaginary treasure. It was set up again in 1822 on Weybridge Green as a memorial to the Duchess of York, who died 1820. The dial was not replaced, and was used as a stepping-stone at the Ship Inn at Weybridge; it still lies on one side of the Green. The streets of Seven Dials attained a very unenviable reputation, and were the haunt of all that was vicious and bad. Terrible accounts of the overcrowding and consequent immorality come down to us from the newspaper echoes of the earlier part of the nineteenth century. The opening up of the new thoroughfares of New Oxford Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, and Charing Cross Road, have done much, but the neighbourhood is still a slum. The seven streets remain in their starlike shape, by name Great and Little White Lion Street, Great and Little St. Andrew Street, Great and Little Earl Street, and Queen Street.

Short's Gardens was in 1623 really a garden, and a little later than that date was acquired by a man named Dudley Short.

Betterton Street was until comparatively recently called Brownlow, from Sir John Brownlow of Belton, who had a house here in Charles II.'s time. The street is now, to use a favourite expression of Stow's, "better built than inhabited," for the row of brick houses of no very squalid type are inhabited by the very poor.

Endell Street was built in 1844, at the time of the erection of the workhouse. In it are the National Schools, a Protestant Swiss chapel, and an entrance to the public baths and wash-houses, to the south of which rise the towers of the workhouse. Christ Church is hemmed in by the workhouse, having an outlet only on the street. The church was consecrated in 1845. In Short's Gardens is the Lying-in Hospital, the oldest institution of the kind in England. On the west side, between Castle Street and Short's Gardens, the remains of an ancient bath were discovered at what was once No. 3, Belton Street, now 23 and 25, Endell Street. Tradition wildly asserts that this was used by Queen Anne. Fragments of it still remain in the room used for iron lumber, for the premises are in the occupation of an iron merchant, but the water has long since ceased to flow.

Drury Lane has been in great part described in The Strand, which see, p. 97. The Coal Yard at the north-east end, where Nell Gwynne was born, is now Goldsmith Street. Pit Place, on the west of Great Wild Street, derives its name from the cockpit or theatre, the original of the Drury Lane Theatre, which stood here. The cockpit was built previous to 1617, for in that year an incensed mob destroyed it, and tore all the dresses. It was afterwards known as the Phœnix Theatre. At one time it seems to have been used as a school, though this may very well have been at the same time as it fulfilled its legitimate functions. Betterton and Kynaston both made their first public appearance here. The actual date of the theatre's demolition is not known. Parton judges it to have been at the time of the building of Wild, then Weld, Street. Its performances are described, 1642, as having degenerated into an inferior kind, and having been attended by inferior audiences.

At the north-east end of Drury Lane is the site of the ancient hostelry, the White Hart. Here also was a stone cross, known as Aldewych Cross, for the lane was anciently the Via de Aldewych, and is one of the oldest roads in the parish; Saxon Ald = old, and Wych = a village, a name to be preserved in the new Crescent. It is difficult to understand, looking down Drury Lane to-day from Holborn, that this most mean and unlovely street was once a place of aristocratic resort—of gardens, great houses, and orchards. Here was Craven House, here was Clare House; here lived the Earl of Stirling, the Marquis of Argyll, and the Earl of Anglesey. Here lived for a time Nell Gwynne. Pepys says:

"Saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodgings door in Drury Lane in her smock-sleeves and bodice, looking upon one. She seemed a mighty pretty creature."

The