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two banks of the river. The erection of Westminster Bridge was
commenced in 1738. There was but one horse-ferry at or
near London, and that was between Millbank and Lambeth ;
the tolls belonged to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and are
said to have produced a considerable yearly revenue.
That extremely simple mode of identifying a house in a
street by giving it a number had not yet occurred to the
residents in London. Houses of business were usually known
by a sign, and the mansions of the gentry received the names
of their occupiers, if they had any distinctive appellation at all.
The houses of the wealthier of the middle class, then rapidly
increasing in number and importance, were simply described,
when description was necessary, as being situate on the
north, east, west, or south side of the street, square, or place,
as the case might be, or by its contiguity' to better known
premises. The earlier rate books of St. James's illustrate in
a curious manner the comparative difficulty with which this
class of property could be then readily identified: thus an
entry at the end of Jermyn Street runs, "Turne the corner;"
another entry runs "Over the way," and following an
unnamed street there appear the words, "Sohoe, west side
agen."
It may be interesting to residents in St. James's to know
that the first street in the Metropolis the houses in which
were numbered was New Burlington Street, the date of this
innovation being 1764. The houses in Lincoln's Inn Fields
were numbered immediately afterwards, and so rapidly did
the practice spread, its simplicity and other obvious advantages
no doubt commending it to the business men of the
town, that two years later house signs were generally taken
down. The inconvenience still arising from the frequent
repetition of a name in the list of streets in the Metropolis,
although the number of repeated names has been much
reduced since the regulation of street nomenclature has been
e 2