LOMBARD STREET 



for the plantations in North America. Here J. 

 Palmer, of Bath (^Yherever he may have concocted 

 the historical Bristol, Bath and London essay of 

 1784), framed his schemes of mail-coach extension, 

 taking not even his nominal masters, the Postmasters- 

 General, into his confidence, and leaving no paper 

 trace that I am aware of in the shape of contracts or 

 calculations of his successful, but highly independent, 

 labours. 



Here, too, in Yiner's mansion, sat, as Secretary for 

 thirty years, Palmer's lieutenant and Todd's successor, 

 the famous Freeling. So, in Post-Office Court, the 

 postal servant of to-day treads classic ground and 

 rubs shoulders, in imagination at least, with the 

 mighty men who, before the days of Piowland Hill, 

 helped to make the Post-Oifice what it has since 

 become. 



Some part of the original building yet remains. 

 When, to anticipate, the General Post-Office was 

 removed in 1829 to St. Martin's-le-Grand, the new 

 street known as King William Street, leading to 

 London Bridge, was cut from St. Mary Woolnoth 

 obliquely across the old site — taking large slices out 

 of Sherborne and Abchurch Lanes, but leaving intact 

 that long, narrow slip extending from Lombard Street 

 by Post-Office Court to the new rectory house of St. 

 Mary's Church, now, like the old one, occupied by 

 the department at a rental of nine hundred pounds a 

 year. That is all that is left of the old Post-Office, 

 which was famous in its day. 



