Bow

Map

The overlays that highlight 17th century London features are approximate and derived from Wenceslaus Hollar’s maps:

Open location in Google Maps: 51.525362, -0.033038

3 Annotations

First Reading

Pauline  •  Link

from L&M Companion
A hamlet of Stepney, Middlesex, on the w. bank of the Lea, some 3 miles from the Standard in Cornhill, to which Pepys and his wife often went by coach to take the air. It was important as a source of market garden produce for the city. In 1664, with Old Ford, it had about 170 houses.

Second Reading

Bill  •  Link

Stratford Le Bow, (the Stratford atte Bowe of our old writers of the 14th and 15th centuries), now commonly called Bow, formerly a hamlet of Stepney, but made into a separate parish in 1720, lies a mile east of Mile End. The name Stratford or Straet-ford is derived from a ford through the Lea at the place where it was crossed by the old Roman Road to Colchester. About the beginning of the 12th century Queen Matilda built a bridge over the Lea near the "Old Ford," and from the shape of this bridge the name of the village took the addition of "atte Bow."

The old bridge, consisting of three narrow arches, had been so often repaired as to leave little of the original structure when taken down in 1835.

The French of Chaucer's "Prioress" was spoken in the Stratford manner:—

And Frensch sche spak ful faire and fetysly,
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,
For Frensch of Parys was to hire unknowe.
Prologue to Canterbury Tales, I. 124.

---London, Past and Present. H.B. Wheatley, 1891.

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References

Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.

1660

  • Nov

1662

1664

1665

1666

1667

1668

  • Jun

1669

  • Mar
  • Apr
  • May