Old London. Charterhouse to Holborn - Walter Thornbury

This volume of "Old London" has legal overtones. Starting at Charterhouse - the site of an old Carthusian monastery, which was built on land that had been used as an enormous burial ground during the plague of 1248, called Pardon Churchyard - it progresses to the infamous Fleet Prison and historic Newgate, also used as a prison and on to the Old Bailey, with accounts of many famous trials that have taken place there. The Fleet River, now safely channeled underground, is traced from its source in Hampstead.;Holborn has always been a thriving business area and the growth of its many markets are described, but it is with the various Inns of Court that most people associate it. Cheek by jowl with the lawyers were the haunts of criminals; Saffron Hill, Old Crick Lane and Field Lane. Holborn has had a host of noteworthy and notorious inhabitants and Walter Thornbury retells hundreds of anecdotes relating to them. It is an area of great historical interest which may come as a surprise to the thousands who travel there to work each day.