250 LONDON PARKS © GARDENS 
Of all the churchyards, that of St. Paul’s is best 
known, and least like the ordinary idea of one. But 
this was not always so. It was for centuries an actual 
burying-place. When the foundations of the present 
cathedral were dug, after the Great Fire, a series of early 
burials were disclosed. There were Saxon coffins, and 
below them British graves, where wooden and ivory pins 
were found, which fastened the woollen shrouds of those 
who rested there, and below that again, between twenty 
and thirty feet deep, were Roman remains, with frag¬ 
ments of pottery, rings, beads, and such-like. 
The original churchyard was very much larger, as the 
present houses in “ St. Paul’s Churchyard ” are actually 
on part of the ground included in it. It extended from 
Old Change in Cheapside to Paternoster Row, and on 
the south to Carter Lane, and the whole was surrounded 
by a wall built in 1109, with the principal gateway open¬ 
ing into “ Ludgate Street.” This wall seems to have 
been unfinished, or else part of it became ruinous in 
course of time, and the churchyard became the resort 
of thieves and ruffians. To remedy this state of things, 
the wall was completed and fortified early in the four¬ 
teenth century. It had six gates, and remained like this 
until the Great Fire, although long before that date 
houses had been built against the wall both within and 
without. Round here were collected the shops of the 
most famous booksellers, such as John Day, who came 
here in 1575. 
On the north side was a plot of ground known as 
Pardon’s Churchyard, and here was built a cloister in 
Henry V.’s time, decorated with paintings to illus¬ 
trate Lidgate’s translation of “ The Dance of Death.” 
Here, too, was a chapel and charnel-house, and the 
