Hatton Garden: Diamond Merchants

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EARLY ENGLISH PORCELAIN C & S; LONDON SHAPE, ORIENTAL THEME. CA. 1820-40 PERFECT
29 Jan 2012 at 12:33pm
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German Design 4" Black Antique Nautical Sextant -LONDON 1917 ROYAL NAVY SEXTANT
29 Jan 2012 at 11:38am
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W. J. Loftie, adding to the incomplete work of Sir Walter Besant, in The Fascination of London, published in 1903, continues his survey of Holborn with a mention of the diamond merchants in Hatton Garden:

From this quaint relic of past times, St Etheldreda's Church, rich with the indefinable attraction which nothing but a history of centuries can give, we pass out into Ely Place.

This is a quiet cul-de-sac composed almost wholly of the offices of business men, solicitors, etc. At the north end, beyond the chapel, the old houses are down, and new ones will be erected in their place. At the end a small watchman's lodge stands on the spot where stood the Bishops' Gateway, in which the parasite, Sir Christopher Hatton, first fastened on his host.

Hatton Garden is a wide thoroughfare with some modern offices and many older houses, with bracketed doorways and carved woodwork. It has long been associated with the diamond merchant's trade, and now diamond merchants occupy quite half of the offices. It is also the centre of the gold and silver trade. The City Orthopaedic Hospital is on the east side.

In Charles Street is the Bleeding Heart public-house, which derives its name from an old religious sign, the Pierced Heart of the Virgin. This is close to Bleeding Heart Yard, referred to in Little Dorrit, and easily recalled by any reader of Dickens.

In Cross Street there is an old charity school, with stuccoed figures of a charity boy and girl on the frontage. The Caledonian School was formerly in this street; it was removed to its present situation in 1828. Whiston, friend of Sir Isaac Newton, lived here, and here Edward Irving first displayed his powers of preaching.

Kirkby Street recalls what has already been said about the first Bishop of Ely, who purchased land whereon his successors should build a palace. It is a broad street, and in times past was a place of residence for well-to-do people.

The lower part of Saffron Hill was known at first as Field Lane, and is described by Strype as "narrow and mean, full of Butchers and Tripe Dressers, because the Ditch runs at the back of their Slaughter houses, and carries away the filth."

He also says that Saffron Hill is a place of small account, "both as to buildings and inhabitants, and pestered with small and ordinary alleys and courts taken up by the meaner sort of people, especially to the east side into the Town.

The Ditch separates the parish from St. John, Clerkenwell, and over this Ditch most of the alleys have a small boarded bridge."

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