this low locality."

The part of the parish lying to the north, including Bedford Square,
must be for the present left (see p. 98), while we turn southwards.

New Compton Street is within the former precincts of the hospital. When
first made it was called Stiddolph Street, after Sir Richard Stiddolph,
and the later name was taken from that of Sir Frances Compton. Strype
says, "All this part was very meanly built ... and greatly inhabited by
French, and of the poorer sort," a character it retains to this day.

Shaftesbury Avenue, opened in 1885, has obliterated Monmouth Street,
named after the Duke of Monmouth, whose house was in Soho Square (see
_The Strand_, this series). Monmouth Street was notorious for its
old-clothes shops, and is the subject of one of the "Sketches by Boz."
Further back still it was called Le Lane, and is under that name
mentioned among the hospital possessions.

The north end of Shaftesbury Avenue is in the adjoining parish of St.
George's, Bloomsbury, but must for sequence' sake be described here. A
French Protestant chapel, consecrated 1845, which is the lineal
descendant of the French Church of the Savoy, stands on the west side.
Near at hand is a French girls' school. Further north is a Baptist
chapel, with two noticeable pointed towers and a central wheel window.
Bedford Chapel formerly stood on the north side of this. In the lower
half of the Avenue there are several buildings of interest. The first of
these, on the east side, is for the medical and surgical relief of all
foreigners who speak French. Below this is a chapel belonging to the
Baptists, and further southward a working lads' home, established in
1843, for homeless lads at work in London. In connection with it are
various homes in the country, both for boys and girls, and two training
ships, the _Arethusa_ and _Chichester_.

All the ground to the south of Shaftesbury Avenue was anciently, if not
actually a pond, at all events very marshy ground, and was called
Meershelands, or Marshlands. It was subsequently known as Cock and Pye
Fields, from the Cock and Pye public-house, which is supposed to have
been situated at the spot where Little St. Andrew Street, West Street,
and Castle Street now meet. The date at which this name first appeared
is uncertain; it is met with in the parish books after 1666. In the
reign of William III. a Mr. Neale took the ground, and transformed the
great ditch which crossed it into a sewer, preparat