This wall was called the Effroc Wall, or Effroc Stone.  York, in Saxon times, was called Effroc.  The legend related that a Duke of Effroc had been drowned at the foot of the wall.  Certainly the water there was deep enough to drown a duke.  At low water it was six good fathoms.  The excellence of this little anchorage attracted sea vessels, and the old Dutch tub, called the Vograat, came to anchor at the Effroc Stone.  The Vograat made the crossing from London to Rotterdam, and from Rotterdam to London, punctually once a week.  Other barges started twice a day, either for Deptford, Greenwich, or Gravesend, going down with one tide and returning with the next.  The voyage to Gravesend, though twenty miles, was performed in six hours.

The Vograat was of a model now no longer to be seen, except in naval museums.  It was almost a junk.  At that time, while France copied Greece, Holland copied China.  The Vograat, a heavy hull with two masts, was partitioned perpendicularly, so as to be water-tight, having a narrow hold in the middle, and two decks, one fore and the other aft.  The decks were flush as in the iron turret-vessels of the present day, the advantage of which is that in foul weather, the force of the wave is diminished, and the inconvenience of which is that the crew is exposed to the action of the sea, owing to there being no bulwarks.  There was nothing to save any one on board from falling over.  Hence the frequent falls overboard and the losses of men, which have caused the model to fall into disuse.  The Vograat went to Holland direct, and did not even call at Gravesend.

An old ridge of stones, rock as much as masonry, ran along the bottom of the Effroc Stone, and being passable at all tides, was used as a passage on board the ships moored to the wall.  This wall was, at intervals, furnished with steps.  It marked the southern point of Southwark.  An embankment at the top allowed the passers-by to rest their elbows on the Effroc Stone, as on the parapet of a quay.  Thence they could look down on the Thames; on the other side of the water London dwindled away into fields.

Up the river from the Effroc Stone, at the bend of the Thames which is nearly opposite St. James’s Palace, behind Lambeth House, not far from the walk then called Foxhall (Vauxhall, probably), there was, between a pottery in which they made porcelain, and a glass-blower’s, where they made ornamental bottles, one of those large unenclosed spaces covered with grass, called formerly in France cultures and mails, and in England bowling-greens.  Of bowling-green, a green on which to roll a ball, the French have made boulingrin.  Folks have this green inside their houses nowadays, only it is put on the table, is a cloth instead of turf, and is called billiards.

It is difficult to see why, having boulevard (boule-vert), which is the same word as bowling-green, the French should have adopted boulingrin.  It is surprising that a person so grave as the Dictionary should indulge in useless luxuries.