The Express.
London, England, 1856-09-03 00:00:00

CLERKENWELL

No. 11.

Fur tho better understandicg of what we have fur-
ther to say concerning the Clerkenwell improve-
mente, some cocsideration of the peculiarities of the
record is nereesory. For this the clearance of the
space ou each std. of the sew line of street offers
facilities such as hare aot existed fora couple of
hundred years.
Obviously the Fleet was once not only, se its
name denote+, a lively and impetuous stream in the
spp•r part of its coarse, but became quits • dorsi-
*ening little river as it reached the lower ground.
F.d at is source by subterr•ncous waters of to this
day unknown capacity, and swollen by the tribute
from other streams ot lesa dimensions but @limiter
orrg•n. re can well imagine that its floods were
often of • formidable kind. Even in our own day,
after a sudden storm of rain, it overflows the close
indeed, but regular and very »plenm tunnel, to
which modern ingenuity has confined i•. Greet on
such occasions is the dismay of the housewives whose
premises it modes with ire now insalubrious waters.
The COON quenos of these Cads was the formation of
• wide chsnsel, as, emerging from the harder ground,
the Fleet cut its way through the alluvium that
skirted the Themes. In the days of Julius Clear
the estuary by ehich it debouched into the latter
river must have been broad and commanding, such
as would rot ill befit • river ten times its length.
Now that the houses are removed it can be plainly seen
that it extend. d arms three.quarters of a mile from
what is now Coppice-row to the Thames, aid
boasted a brood h ot from three to four or five hun-
dred feet. Tie upper portico of this inlet was pro-
bably the wid at, and ooinceled pretty nearly with
the specs now laid bars for new erections. Confining
themselves to the level ground, the commissions»
stopped eh)» ot their work of dioruction when they
ie•elted the acclivities on either side.

These Acclivities must always have been is steep, or
steeper than they are now. For they were no doubt
reduced as much or more by the filling op of the bed
of the Flee., than they have been raio d by the
debris scaumulated &wings thousand years of human
occupation. 7 hey are steeper on the west side than
on the east, and though not coropersble to Holborn-
bill in height and difficulty, all the descents leading
from Hatton-garden to what was the Fleet river,
and is to be Viotoria-etreet, are of • veey steep and
primitive kind. From Clerkenwell side the elope is
more gradual, though the total descent cannot be
much less than on the opposite side.
Midway be,ween these slopes, and parallel to
801 ton-bill on the one side and to Tornmill-street on
the other, rues the new hue of street. Had the
sole object of its formation been to open a new
thoroughfare from Farricgdoreetreet to Ewalt's-
wells, we should have nothing in particular tootect
to. The street is tolerably wide, has • slight curve in
its direction, which will rather add to its beauty
(when built on) than otherwise. It bee something,
though not enough, of a gradual rise to Copplosrow,
and, taken by itself, sense altogether a respectable
pieta of work.
Incredible though it may appear, it inverses= to
have entered the mind of any one of the persona sue-
esssively charged with the superintendence or with
the execution of this difficult and costly improvement
to look at it as having any other object than the one
just mentioned. Commissioners, yore, engineers,
contractors, have been busy about it for twenty years,
to say nothing of a portly succeeeioo of Lord Mayors
and aldermen, theoretically responsible for all such
matters, or of a government board very practically
and potentially invested with the control of them;
and, if we are to judge by the :milt, not a
gleam of misgiviog seems to have penetrated
the noddle of any Due of them. Entrusted
with the completion of one of the main
arteries of communicative in the metropolis, not of
Esglend only but of the world—of a channel
through which fur thouseede of untold years the flex
re flux of life in this " million-peopled city " will
be surging—they have shown themselves capable of
taking no higher or more comprehensive view then
if it were a bit of a lane bet Ann two country vil-
lages, or • neat avenue connecting a couple of our
suburbia roads. To shorten the way to King's- !
crow, and incidentally to co-operate with the police is
rooting • noted haunt of thieves and their female
ameeetes, that was the highest conception thereinto
snowed in looming of their deity and eueehon.
The bitter experience of late years has disposed as
Ism than ever to " look for grapes from thorns, or figs
from Meths." There I. essay a project of metropo-
litan improvement regarding which no amount of
stupidity or incompetence in high places could owe-
lion us a moment's surprise. lint this one, we did
think, had features so salient, purposes so urgent, re-
sults so inevitable, that no conceivable blindness or
obstinacy could miss comprehending and conforming
thereto.

If there bad not been Holborn-bill even under
their very nose—a perpetual warning of the cruse and
the satire of the difficulties which they had to con-
toad with, and of the obstacles which they were
sommierioried to remove--did it never occur
tethers that in running a street along the quondam
channel of the Fleet, they were nothing short of
ogling into existence a set of minor Holborn-hilt
hardly leas grievous to man and bout than the ori-
ginal? Could anything be plainer? A new line of
street to promote intercourse, taking the plane of •
eloweal river that hindered and repelled it, necessarily
revointiosised the nese and !sloe of all the streets
adjoining. Bach places as Charles-atrest (Hatton-
garden), and Vine street, and Cowcroesctreet, for-
merly led, so to speak, nowhere. They were the
nuns thing as vale de sae, only et for thieves to lie
Fade, or for distracted bollocks astray from Smith-
field to play at hide and seek In. Bat
now Charles-street and Coworosectrest uniting,
sad Clerkenwell-green and Vine-street uniting, and
others at what were hitherto bye streets pairing in
• similar fashion, bid fair to rise, by degree', and
according as further improvements are effected (sot
and west, to the dignity of important thoroughfares.
Fri. the tweet they can hardly fail to relieve Hol-
bormtull of a portion of its traffio—u, perhaps, it
would b more germane to the matter to otty, relieve
• portion of the trsffickers of the curse of Holborn-hill.
And when the viaduct shall be oustracted to Snow-

pill they will be a coneeuient substitute for the great
thoroughfare thus cut off from the lower leveL
. _ .

To those who are practiosily acquainted with the
difficulties of communication in this part of the City
this will appear no trig og boon. For oar part, we
are disposed I. regard at, in its ultimate resells,
as the greatest benefit likely to be effected by
the oaastructioa of the new street. The corm and
the misery of tiais grotesque and iotrieate Clerico-
patron labyrinth, which spreads Irom the Temple to
Festosville its smoke smeared congeries of Chinese
puzzles in brick and mortar, wee not so much that it
obeftweed intercourse between north and south—for
it was always comparatively easy to get to King'.-
moss or to irlington.green—bot that it absolutely
forbade, at d forbids to this day, all direct intercourse
between the reAiotis that lie due cut and those that
lie doe west of it. This is the cause which, more
than any other, has tamed the great current of in-
Wooers* southward, and choked up Cheapside and
liewgete•atrset. Lt.dtate-hill, Fleet-street, and the
Strand with four tames the traffic that they are ca-
pable of conveniently accommodetiog. The prelimi-
nary step to the effectual relief of the latter was the
overthrow of that useocouotable Clericopetean pep
yikge which meted the swim of all new thorough-
/um north of the Holborn line.

is, os which we
remises, els., that
' to Copenhagen•
stood its grosed
t asy kind is its
eats was could
Media( thoroughfares,
1 handsome streets, in a
- myriads of wistaria
a brutalised by cos-
practices wbiels
narrow limits egos►

that ilehhtlaid
derivable

One favourable circumstance there is, on which we
may appropriately congratulate oar modem, vie., that
the cattle market hes bees relegated to Copenhagen-
Salk Se loci as Smithfield-market stood its grouted
,
I ire all its enormi'y, improvement of say kind is its
asigtb.airhood was hopeless. What ease man could
eassasmand the formation of 1,64E14 thommghlaree,
eft the construction of saw sod handsome streets, in a
1 j lesality German twios a week by myriads of trichina
i ° animals, and among a popaistioa brutalised by ma-
.
Mast familtswy with the cruel practices 'Alma cow
liaise Poch a traffic within too narrow limits near
skated P
' Bat in roprtioes to the nuisance that Smithfield
•
1 i MO will be the beauty and convenience derivable
I , tres it, if only a commonly judicious us be ands of
the specs ?bus pissed at psblio disposal. Smithfield
sad the Fleet were. we may eay, the guardian dosages
title Clerkenwellies statue gra. Ones excesiaod by
the Gneiss of Impeomessat, the curse is uhsaged to
, . estemelag, mil they in crampolled tontine", the very
1 i
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