CLOTH FAIR, WEST SMITHFIELD,

LOOKING WEST, 1904

The name of this street may be thus accounted for. From the time of Henry II., the prior and canon of the priory of St. Bartholomew, West Smithfield, had the right of holding an annual fair at Bartholomewtide, to which resorted clothiers and drapers from all parts of England and the Continent, who exposed their goods in the priory churchyard. After the Dissolution the site of the churchyard was built upon, and in course of time part of it assumed this name. The present disused burial-ground west of St. Bartholomew's Church occupies the site of the old

nave.

side of the altar of the grand old priory church, now known as St. Bartholomew the Great. An ancient recumbent effigy of him under a Perpendicular canopy is still to be seen in its original position.

At the dissolution of religious houses the choir was reserved as a parish church, the nave which had been used for that purpose being pulled down, and its site turned into a churchyard. All the rest of the ground and buildings, together with the rights pertaining to the priory, were sold by the King to Sir Richard Rich, then Speaker of the House of Commons. Afterwards, as Lord Rich, he converted the prior's lodging into his townhouse, and lived there when Lord Chancellor. Henry II. had granted to the prior and canons the privilege of holding an annual fair at Bartholomewtide, but it seems to have been in existence previously. To this fair resorted clothiers and drapers not only from all parts of England but from foreign countries, who here exposed their goods for sale, stalls being set up within the priory churchyard, the gates of which were locked at night. The site is called Cloth Fair to this day. By the reign of Queen Elizabeth it had ceased to be commercially important, but became a great pleasure fair, the three days being extended to fourteen, and the

place of assemblage being gradually transferred or extended to Smithfield. The fair used to be opened by the Lord Mayor, and on these occasions it was customary for him, while passing Newgate on horseback, to refresh himself with "a cool tankard of wine, nutmeg, and sugar," handed to him by the keeper of Newgate, a practice which in 1688 proved fatal to Sir John Shorter, whose horse took fright while he was in the act of drinking, and gave him a fall from which he died soon afterwards. In 1708 the period of the fair was again limited to three days. By slow degrees it dwindled away, but was not finally abolished until 1855. Morley, in his Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair, says, "The sole existing vestige of it is the old fee of three and sixpence still paid by the City to the rector of St. Bartholomew the Great for a proclamation in his parish." The streets within the old precinct of the religious house still retain an old-fashioned air; some of the picturesque houses evidently date from the earlier part of the seventeenth century, if not before, but they are fast disappearing. On No. 22 Cloth Fair is a relic which carries us back to the time of the Dissolution. This is the armorial shield of Richard Rich, raised to the peerage in 1547, or perhaps of