within the memory of
man huge, shapeless masses, with trees growing upon them, opposite what
is now Finsbury Circus. In 1852 a piece of Roman wall on Tower Hill was
rescued from the improvers, and built into some stables and outhouses;
but not before a careful sketch had been effected by the late Mr.
Fairholt, one of the best of our antiquarian draughtsmen. The later
Roman London was in general outline the same in shape and size as the
London of the Saxons and Normans. The newer walls Pennant calculates at
3 miles 165 feet in circumference, they were 22 feet high, and guarded
with forty lofty towers. At the end of the last century large portions
of the old Roman wall were traceable in many places, but time has
devoured almost the last morsels of that great _piece de resistance_. In
1763 Mr. Gough made a drawing of a square Roman tower (one of three)
then standing in Houndsditch. It was built in alternate layers of
massive square stones and red tiles. The old loophole for the sentinel
had been enlarged into a square latticed window. In 1857, while digging
foundations for houses on the north-east side of Aldermanbury Postern,
the workmen came on a portion of the Roman wall strengthened by blind
arches. All that now substantially remains of the old fortification is a
bastion in St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate; a fragment in St. Martin's
Court, off Ludgate Hill; another portion exists in the Old Bailey,
concealed behind houses; and a fourth, near George Street, Tower Hill.
Portions of the wall have, however, been also broached in Falcon Square
(one of which we have engraved), Bush Lane, Scott's Yard, and Cornhill,
and others built in cellars and warehouses from opposite the Tower and
Cripplegate.

The line of the Roman walls ran from the Tower straight to Aldgate;
there making an angle, it continued to Bishopsgate. From there it turned
eastward to St. Giles's Churchyard, where it veered south to Falcon
Square. At this point it continued west to Aldersgate, running under
Christ's Hospital, and onward to Giltspur Street. There forming an
angle, it proceeded directly to Ludgate towards the Thames, passing to
the south of St. Andrew's Church. The wall then crossed Addle Street,
and took a course along Upper and Lower Thames Street towards the Tower.
In Thames Street the wall has been found built on oaken piles; on these
was laid a stratum of chalk and stones, and over this a course of large,
hewn sandstones, cemented with quic