1 86 iZAAK Walton's association with the river lea. 



I have now, in a very cursory manner, travelled with you up and 

 down the county, exploring the buildings the dates of the erection 

 of which are spread over a period of sixteen centuries. My object 

 has been to point out to you the main characteristics of each period 

 of architecture. The limit of an hour has scarcely been enough to 

 enable me to do more than to touch, in the lightest manner, the 

 peculiarities of each period, but if the few remarks I have been able 

 to put together will induce even one person present to study the 

 subject more closely I shall have been amply rewarded. 



TZAAK WALTON'S ASSOCIATION WITH THE 

 RIVER LEA. 



WITH SOME NOTES ON THE FORMER EXISTENCE OF 

 SALMON IN THAT RIVER. 



By J. E. HARTING, F.L.S., F.Z.S. 



{Read at Meeting on River Lea, Jiily 14th, iSg^.] 



IT is impossible to wander along the Lea from its source towards 

 the metropolis, and visit such places as Ware, Amwellbur}^, 

 Hoddesdon, Broxbourne, Theobalds, or Tottenham, without being 

 reminded at every turn of the genial author of " The Complete 

 Angler," who two hundred and fifty years ago, as he tells us, " in 

 such days and times as he could lay aside business," was in the 

 habit of visiting these and other places on the river for the purpose 

 of fishing. 



He must have been a good pedestrian, for (except when on a 

 visit to his friend Cotton in Dovedale) he makes no mention of a 

 journey on horseback, and in those days there were no railways or 

 steam barges (as on the present occasion) to help him on his way. 



Izaak Walton was not a Londoner bred and born, though he 

 spent a great part of his life there. He was born at Stafford in 

 1593, and at the age of twenty came to London where he was 

 apprenticed to a sempster (or haberdasher as he would now be called) 

 in Whitechapel. 



Sir John Hawkins (one of the earliest editors of " The Complete 

 Angler ") thought that Walton was first settled at the Royal Exchange, 

 but in the opinion of Sir Harris Nicholas (the editor of Pickering's 

 fine edition of this work) there is no evidence to support such 

 surmise. Walton removed from Whitechapel to Fleet Street — to a 



