Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney | Page 5

name of Arthur Murphy, barrister and dramatic writer, died 1805. Above the south door is a monument of Sir Edward Nevill, Justice of the Common Pleas, died 1705. In the baptistery at the west end stands a beautiful font cut from a block of white veined marble. In the churchyard rows of the old tombstones, which were displaced when the new church was built, stand against the walls of the adjacent school. Adjoining the churchyard on the south there once stood Lucy House, for many generations the home of the Lucys, descendants of the justice who prosecuted Shakespeare for deer-stealing.
In the churchyard stand the schools, formerly the Latymer and Charity Schools, now merely St. Paul's National Schools. The school was originally built in 1756 at the joint expense of the feofees of Mr. Latymer and trustees of the Female Charity School, and was restored and added to in 1814. The Charity School was founded in 1712 by Thomas Gouge, who left ￡50 for the purpose, which has since been increased by other benefactions.
On the south side of the church are two picturesque old cottages, which would seem to be contemporary with the old church itself. Near the north end of the Fulham Palace Road, which here branches off from Queen Street, is the Roman Catholic Convent of the Good Shepherd. The walls enclose nine acres of ground, part of which forms a good-sized garden at the back. The nucleus of the nunnery was a private house called Beauchamp House. The convent is a refuge for penitents, of whom some 230 are received. These girls contribute to their own support by laundry and needle work.
Chancellor Road is so called through having been made through the grounds of an old house of that name. In St. James Street there is a small mission church, called St. Mark's, attended by the clergy of St. Paul's. In Queen Street, which runs from the church down to the river, there are one or two red-tiled houses, but toward the river end it is squalid and miserable. Bowack says that in his time (1705) two rows of buildings ran from the chapel riverwards, and another along the river westward to Chiswick. One of the first two is undoubtedly Queen Street. The last is the Lower Mall, in which there are several old houses, including the Vicarage, but there is no special history attached to any of them. In 1684 a celebrated engineer, Sir Samuel Morland, came to live in the Lower Mall. Evelyn records a visit to him as follows:
"25th October, 1695.
"The Abp and myselfe went to Hammersmith, to visite Sir Sam Morland, who was entirely blind, a very mortifying sight. He showed us his invention of writing, which was very ingenious; also his wooden Kalendar, which instructed him all by feeling, and other pretty and useful inventions of mills, pumps, etc."
Sir Samuel was the inventor of the speaking-trumpet, and also greatly improved the capstan and other instruments. He owed his baronetcy to King Charles II., and was one of the gentlemen of the Privy Chamber and Master of Mechanics. He died in 1696, and was buried at Hammersmith. There are here also large lead-mills. Behind the Lower Mall is a narrow passage, called Ashen Place; here is a row of neat brick cottages, erected in 1868. These were founded in 1865, and are known as William Smith's Almshouses. Besides the building, an endowment of ￡8,000 in Consols was left by the founder. There are ten inmates, who may be of either sex, and who receive 7s. a week each.
Waterloo Street was formerly Plough and Harrow Lane. Faulkner mentions a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel here, built in 1809, which probably gave its name to Chapel Street hard by.
Near the west end of the Lower Mall is the Friends' Meeting House, a small brick building which, though new, inherits an old tradition; for there is said to have been a meeting-house here from the beginning of the seventeenth century, and one of the meetings was disturbed and broken up by Cromwell's soldiers. At the back is a small burial-ground, in which the earliest stone bears date 1795.
The Lower is divided from the Upper Mall by a muddy creek. This creek can now be traced inland only so far as King Street, but old maps show it to have risen at West Acton. An old wooden bridge, erected by Bishop Sherlock in 1751, crosses it; this is made entirely of oak, and was repaired in 1837 by Bishop Blomfield. Near the creek the houses are poor and mean, inhabited by river-men, etc., and the place is called Little Wapping. There is a little passage between creek and river, and in it is a low door marked "The Seasons." It was here that Thompson wrote his great poem, in a