INTRODUCTORY 
9 
memory ever lives under their popular name of the Black 
Friars. Minute accounts of the expenses of this garden 
are preserved in the Manor Roll, and a very fairly 
accurate picture of what it was can be pieced together. 
The chief flowers in it were roses, and the choicest to 
be found at that date, the sweet-scented double red 
“ rosa gallica,” would be in profusion. It might be that, 
in the shady corners of the garden, periwinkle trailed 
upon the ground, and violets perfumed the air. White 
Madonna lilies reared their stately heads among the 
clove pinks, lavender, and thyme. Peonies, colum¬ 
bines, hollyhocks, honeysuckle, corncockles, and iris, 
white, purple, and yellow, made no mean show. The 
orchard could boast of many kinds of pears and apples, 
cherries and nuts. A piece of water described as “ the 
greater ditch ” 1 formed the fish stew where pike were 
kept and artificially fed. Besides all this, there was a 
considerable vineyard. It was thought a favourable spot 
for vines, and the Bishop of Ely’s vineyard, the site of 
which is still remembered by Vine Street, was hard by. 
A good deal of imagination is now required to conjure 
up a picture of a vintage in Holborn. Amid the crowd 
of cabs, carts, carriages, and omnibuses rolling all 
day over the Viaduct from Oxford Street to the heart of 
the City, it needs as fertile a brain as that of the poet 
who pictured the vision of poor Susan as she listens 
to the song of the bird in Wood Street to call up such 
a scene. The gardens sloping down to the “bourne” 
were carefully enclosed—the Earl of Lincoln’s by strong 
wooden palings, that of Ely Place by a thorn hedge 
with wooden gates fitted with keys and locks. 2 The 
1 MSS. Manor Roll in the Record Office. 
2 MSS. Manor Roll, Archives of Ely Cathedral. 
