ST JOHN THE EVANGELIST, Broadway. 1834 by Blore. E.E. with lancets; yellow brick. Tall and ornate SW spire. Thin many-moulded piers with depressed arches. Clerestory and thin tiebeams with tracery. MARTYRS’ MEMORIAL in the churchyard, 1879 by J. T. Newman. Polygonal with angle-shafts and top-heavy spire.
WEST HAM. This big and densely peopled part of Greater London has great docks and great industries, and a population of nearly a third of a million. It includes Forest Gate and Silvertown, and is divided from London by the River Lea, crossed by the wide successor of the famous Bow Bridge. This is said to have been the first arched stone bridge in Essex, and was kept in repair by the monks of Langthorne Abbey, of which some 13th century window stones are built into a wall near the Adam and Eve inn.
Chaucer would gaze on the abbey from his rooms on the City gate, and did not his tender-hearted prioress pronounce her French after the school of Stratford-atte-Bow? The borough boasts a poet of its own, whose name was Thomas Lodge. He gave up law for letters, and his sonnets and elegies, lyrics and plays, brought forth the praise of Edmund Spenser and Robert Greene (the forgotten man who was jealous of Shakespeare).
Thomas Lodge’s father was the Lord Mayor of London whose ships from Africa are said to have begun our trade in slaves, at that unhappy time when Stratford was burning men and women at the stake. The site of their martyrdom is at the busy cross-roads, and here in a churchyard is a lofty spire capped by a martyr’s crown. On one of the six sides is a relief of the burnings from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, and the other sides give the names and dates of all the local victims who are known. Behind rises the tall pinnacled spire of plain looking St John’s church, one century old, and opposite is the high tower of the town hall, its dome 100 feet above the street, brooding over a balustraded roof with many statues.
Another statue stands outside the public library, for Stratford must have its Shakespeare, be he ever so small. For years the little figure stood in the vestibule of Drury Lane Theatre, and was saved when the building was burnt in 1809. The poet is stroking his beard in meditation, and bids us “Come and take choice of all my library.” The rest of the block is used as a college and museum, and there are symbolical figures carved in relief on its many gables. Along the front stands a row of pillars on a frieze decorated with cherubs.
The museum owes much to the Essex Field Club and John Passmore Edwards, the philanthropist whose bust faces us as we enter. The collections illustrate the natural history and antiquities of Essex, and there are many models for teaching children. This was possibly the first museum to stage a living exhibit of wild flowers and grasses, and these have been renewed without a lapse since the beginning of our century. The survey of the animal kingdom starts with the tusks and teeth of mammoths and the skulls and horns of bison, all from Essex, and with fossils from all over the world. One fine exhibit is a wonderful panorama of Epping Forest, complete with stuffed animals and birds and models of toadstools.
The works of man start with cumbersome flint implements dropped at Leyton thousands of years ago, and next we see how he learned to put handles on his tools. There are relics from his dwellings, and his implements of bone and bronze. One exhibit deals with the mysterious low mounds, about a foot high, which are found along the high water mark of the Essex coast. We see their contents, red earth and rough red pottery, supporting the theory that at these mounds earthenware was made for evaporating salt. Soon afterwards came the Romans, and we are shown various types of the pottery they introduced. Finally there are prints and photographs of old Essex abbeys and priories.
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