to be seen at the north-east corner, it appears that the street was constructed, partly at least, in the year 1656, during the government of Cromwell. Strype says that here was "a great messuage called the Spanish Ambassador's House, of late inhabited by Sir James Houblon, Knight and Alderman, and other fair houses." Even down to our time it was a remarkably picturesque specimen of an old London street. Now nothing but the name is left

to mark its connection with antiquity.

Some little distance to the west of the district we have just been exploring, at No. 4 Coleman Street, near its junction with London Wall, a house was standing not many years ago which, like houses innumerable, was reputed to have been a residence of Oliver Cromwell. At first sight it had the appearance of dating from the earlier part of the eighteenth century. There was in it a good eighteenth-century staircase with a skylight above, and one of the rooms had a handsome mantelpiece, also apparently Georgian. Another room on the first floor was of more interest and importance. Its panelling was of cedar, and the carved chimneypiece was distinctly Jacobean in character. The house, therefore, was much older than its general character would have led one to suppose, or else

it had been rebuilt early in the eighteenth century, the chimney-piece and panelling being insertions from an older building. It should be added that the north end of Coleman Street is known to have escaped the Great Fire. In 1891-92 "the cedar room" was used as an office by Mr. H. S. Foster, then Sheriff of London. In 1896 the house was pulled down by Messrs. Colls and Son, whose offices adjoined, and in clearing away the foundations the workmen came upon three ancient wells-two of them went down twenty feet below the pavement level. The following is quoted from an illustrated article in the City Press for June 6, 1896 :-"The construction of these wells or elongated water-butts was simplicity itself. Tubs or casks bound with wooden hoops were sunk into the ground and banked up with puddled clay to keep them watertight. The clay remains to this day, as also do the wooden hoops (or did till very recently), but the latter are as soft as touchwood." The description of these casks reminds one of casks somewhat similar which have been found in Roman wells at Silchester, and were exhibited in the rooms of the Society of Antiquaries at Burlington House, but examples more analogous, because of a similar date, were brought to light not long ago in the course