You now understand why I have called Thames Street the heart of the City.  It was the first part built and settled, the first cradle of the great trade of England.  More than this, it continued to be the thief centre of trade; its wharves received the imports and exports; its warehouses behind stored them; its streets which ran up the sloping ground grew with the growth of the trade; new streets continually sprang up until villas and gardens were gradually built over and the whole area was covered; but all sprang in the first place from Thames Street; everything grew out of the trade carried on along the river.  We are going to walk through all the five riverside wards belonging to this street.  There are one or two things to note in advance, if only to show how this quarter remained the most populous and the most busy part of London.  The City of London has eighty companies.  Forty of these have—­or had—­Halls of their own.  Out of the forty Halls no fewer than twenty-two belong to these five wards, while one company, the Fishmongers’, had at one time six Halls, or places of meeting, in and about Thames Street.  Again, the City of London formerly had about 150 churches.  Along the river, that is, in and about Thames Street alone, there were at least twenty-four, or one-sixth of the whole number.  Lastly, to show the estimation in which this part was held, out of the great houses formerly belonging to the King and nobles, those of Castle Baynard, Cold Harbour, the Erber, Tower Royal, and the King’s Wardrobe belong to Thames Street, while the names of Beaumont, Scrope, Derby, Worcester, Burleigh, Suffolk, and Arundell connect houses in the five wards of Thames Street with noble families, in the days when knights and nobles rode along the street, side by side with the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of the City.

In Thames Street are the ancient markets of Billingsgate and Queenhithe.  The former has been a market and a port for more than a thousand years.  Customs and tolls were paid here in the time of King Ethelred the Second, that is, in the year 979.  The exclusive sale of fish here is comparatively modern, that is, it is not three hundred years old.  As for Queenhithe it is still more ancient than Billingsgate.  Its earliest name was Edred Hithe, that is, Edred’s wharf.  It was given by King Stephen to the Convent of the Holy Trinity.  It returned, however, to the Crown, and was given by King Henry III. to the Queen Eleanor, whence it was called the Queen’s Bank or Queenhithe.  On the west side of Queenhithe lived Sir Richard Gresham, father of Sir Thomas Gresham, in a great house that had belonged to the Earls and Dukes of Norfolk.

The splendid building of the Custom House on the south side is the fifth Custom House that has been put up on the same spot.  The first was built by one John Churchman, Sheriff in the year 1385; the next in the reign of Queen Elizabeth—­it was furnished with high-pitched gables and a water gate, this was burned down in the Great Fire.  Wren built the third, which was burned down in 1718; one Ripley built the fourth, which was also burned down in 1814.  The present building was designed by David Laing and cost nearly half a million.