Liberty Over London Bridge – Margaret Willes

These include not just the soaring Shard, which has been described as the cathedral’s other spire, but also Guy’s Hospital. Peel back at least ten centuries and there was a very different landscape, but one that included a hospital within the priory church of St Mary Overie. According to Peter des Roches, the Bishop of Winchester, writing in 1212, an ‘ancient spital, built of old to entertain the poor, has been entirely reduced to cinders and ashes’.1 If the legend of an Anglo-Saxon nunnery recorded by the Tudor chronicler John Stow is based on fact, the hospital could indeed have been ancient (p. 10).

Certainly, the Augustinian priory founded at the beginning of the twelfth century by Bishop Giffard of Winchester included a hospital to the south of the church. The Augustinian order was outward looking, anxious to serve God in His Church but to serve too the needs of those among whom its monks lived.

When Thomas Becket was canonised following his murder in Canterbury in 1170, the hospital was named in his honour. The two ancient London hospitals still going strong today are St Thomas’, now in Lambeth, and St Bartholomew’s, north of the City, also founded by the Augustinians. A plan of Christ Church in Canterbury dating from around 1165 shows the area around the church and priory, with orchards, flower gardens and a herbarium, or herb garden. This last would have been organised by the infirmarer, with lay brothers and gardeners to maintain long, narrow beds of herbs.

At St Mary Overie, which was not a large house, the infirmarer could even have been assisted by some of the canons. Some idea of the types of herbs that were grown here to be made up into medicines, simples or compounds, and ointments and plasters can be deduced from a list of plants in the physic garden at St Gall Monastery in Switzerland, drawn up three centuries earlier.

These record traditional medicinal herbs such as lovage, sage, rue, pennyroyal, mint and rosemary. Also included in the list are roses, grown on trellises, which might be distilled to make sweet waters, and flag irises, whose roots could be ground up to produce sweet powders. Mallows could provide poultices to be applied after blood-letting.

Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Oliver Baty Cunningham of the Class of 1917, Yale College. Copyright © 2024 Margaret Willes All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers.

All reasonable efforts have been made to provide accurate sources for all images that appear in this book. Any discrepancies or omissions will be rectified in future editions. For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact: U.S. Office: [email protected] yalebooks.com Europe Office: [email protected] yalebooks.co.uk Set in Adobe Caslon Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd Printed in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall Library of Congress Control Number: 2023947206 e-ISBN 978-0-300-27781-4 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 OceanofPDF.com CONTENTS List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Setting the Scene 2 London Bridge is Falling Down 3 Mansions of Southwark 4 On the Road to Canterbury 5 The Bishop’s Geese 6 Spreading the Word 7 A Mixed Community 8 Entertaining London 9 Brave New World 10 Medical Matters 11 Yards of Ale 12 A Centre of Commerce 13 Pathways in the Sky 14 A Tale of Two Boroughs 15 A New Diocese 16 Modern Times in Old Southwark Endnotes Select Bibliography Index OceanofPDF.com ILLUSTRATIONS Plates I.

Claude de Jongh, View of Old London Bridge from the West, 1650. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. II. The north bank of the Thames, viewed from Southwark, c.1630. Digital Image Library / Alamy. III. The high altar screen in Southwark Cathedral. © Angelo Hornak. IV. Nuns and a ferryman from a stained-glass window in Southwark Cathedral’s retrochoir. © Angelo Hornak. V. Tomb of John Gower. Photograph by Adrian Pingstone. VI.

Monument of the Humble family. © Angelo Hornak. VII. Tomb effigy of Lancelot Andrewes. © Angelo Hornak. VIII. A street performance of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, photograph by E. Bacon, 1928. E. Bacon / Hulton Archive via Getty Images. IX. William Hogarth, Southwark Fair, 1733. incamerastock / Alamy. X. The Lions part leading a parade through Borough Market. Photograph by Issy Croker for The Borough Market Cookbook. © Hodder & Stoughton 2018. XI.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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