This Street Over The Bridge Is As Much Thronged, And
Has As Brisk A Trade As Any Street In The City; And The Perpetual
Passage Of Coaches And Carriages Makes It Troublesome Walking On It,
There Being No Posts To Keep Off Carriages As In Other Streets.
The
middle vacancy was left for a drawbridge, which used formerly to be
drawn up when shipping passed that way; but no vessels come above
the bridge at this day but such as can strike their masts, and pass
under the arches.
Four of the arches on the north side of the
bridge are now taken up with mills and engines, that raise the water
to a great height, for the supply of the city; this brings in a
large revenue which, with the rents of the houses on the bridge, and
other houses and lands that belong to it, are applied as far as is
necessary to the repair of it by the officers appointed for that
service, who are, a comptroller and two bridge-masters, with their
subordinate officers; and in some years, it is said, not less than
three thousand pounds are laid out in repairing and supporting this
mighty fabric, though it be never suffered to run much to decay.
I come next to describe that circuit of ground which lies without
the walls, but within the freedom and jurisdiction of the City of
London. And this is bounded by a line which begins at Temple Bar,
and extends itself by many turnings and windings through part of
Shear Lane, Bell Yard, Chancery Lane, by the Rolls Liberty, &c.,
into Holborn, almost against Gray's-Inn Lane, where there is a bar
(consisting of posts, rails, and a chain) usually called Holborn
Bars; from whence it passes with many turnings and windings by the
south end of Brook Street, Furnival's Inn, Leather Lane, the south
end of Hatton Garden, Ely House, Field Lane, and Chick Lane, to the
common sewer; then to Cow Cross, and so to Smithfield Bars; from
whence it runs with several windings between Long Lane and
Charterhouse Lane to Goswell Street, and so up that street northward
to the Bars.
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