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Article EARLY HAUNTS OF FREEMASONRY. Page 1 of 5 →
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Early Haunts Of Freemasonry.
EARLY HAUNTS OF FREEMASONRY .
FLEET STREET . ( Continued from page 245 . )
T ¥ 7 " E have said that there are few thoroughfares in London that * * retain so fair a proportion of the quaint nooks and corners in their immediate vicinity as Fleet-street . Of these we shall have occasion to speak presently . The street itself , with the removal of
Temple Bar and the rebuilding of so many of its houses , is rapidly assuming' an appearance more in keeping with our present ideas of street architecture and arrangement . A middle-aged man who should revisit London after an expatriation of twenty or twenty-five years in the United States , or one of our Australian colonies , would wonder at
the many changes that have taken place in the interval . An older man , after a still long'er absence , would be still more puzzled to recognize the familiar locality of his youthful days . What then , would Johnson and his contempoz'aries say if they could revisit the thoroughfare that was so dear to them—now so cleanly and well-ordered , but , in their time , in spite of all its bravery , so ill-paved and even on occasions
so dangerous ? Still more , what would Londoners of the beginning of last century , men who lived in the days of Strype , think of Fleetstreet , which was then , we are told , connected with Ludgate-hill " by a handsome large stone bridge , the breadth of the street" which allowed of " a passage over the new canal , where Fleet Ditch was ;
which since the fire of London was made so deep and wide , cut from Holbourne Bridge to the mouth of the River Thames , that it receiveth the tides and bringeth up barges and lighters to Holbourne Bridge . " It seems difficult to picture to ourselves Farringdon-street as having been a canal with a constant traffic of barges and lighters between
Thames and " Holbourne Bridge ; " yet that is the description of it as handed down to us by Strype at the time some of our earlier lodges were meeting in the immediate neighbourhood . That Fleet-street , however , both then and now , should have been " a great thoroughfare for coaches , carts , horse and foot passengers , " that it should have been " very spacious , graced with good buildings , of the first rate , and "well inhabited by shopkeepers of the best trades , " and that these said
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Early Haunts Of Freemasonry.
EARLY HAUNTS OF FREEMASONRY .
FLEET STREET . ( Continued from page 245 . )
T ¥ 7 " E have said that there are few thoroughfares in London that * * retain so fair a proportion of the quaint nooks and corners in their immediate vicinity as Fleet-street . Of these we shall have occasion to speak presently . The street itself , with the removal of
Temple Bar and the rebuilding of so many of its houses , is rapidly assuming' an appearance more in keeping with our present ideas of street architecture and arrangement . A middle-aged man who should revisit London after an expatriation of twenty or twenty-five years in the United States , or one of our Australian colonies , would wonder at
the many changes that have taken place in the interval . An older man , after a still long'er absence , would be still more puzzled to recognize the familiar locality of his youthful days . What then , would Johnson and his contempoz'aries say if they could revisit the thoroughfare that was so dear to them—now so cleanly and well-ordered , but , in their time , in spite of all its bravery , so ill-paved and even on occasions
so dangerous ? Still more , what would Londoners of the beginning of last century , men who lived in the days of Strype , think of Fleetstreet , which was then , we are told , connected with Ludgate-hill " by a handsome large stone bridge , the breadth of the street" which allowed of " a passage over the new canal , where Fleet Ditch was ;
which since the fire of London was made so deep and wide , cut from Holbourne Bridge to the mouth of the River Thames , that it receiveth the tides and bringeth up barges and lighters to Holbourne Bridge . " It seems difficult to picture to ourselves Farringdon-street as having been a canal with a constant traffic of barges and lighters between
Thames and " Holbourne Bridge ; " yet that is the description of it as handed down to us by Strype at the time some of our earlier lodges were meeting in the immediate neighbourhood . That Fleet-street , however , both then and now , should have been " a great thoroughfare for coaches , carts , horse and foot passengers , " that it should have been " very spacious , graced with good buildings , of the first rate , and "well inhabited by shopkeepers of the best trades , " and that these said