Limehouse

Limehouse was anciently a village, about two miles distant from London, but is now joined to it by a continued series of buildings along the line of the Commercial-road. Its original name was Limehurst, which, according to Stow, is a Saxon word, signifying a grove of lime trees, and that it was anciently given to this village on account of the number of those trees which formerly grew in that neighbourhood. [Ed. note: see Wheatley, below.]

Limehouse, a parish on the Middlesex bank of the Thames, between Wapping and Poplar, originally a hamlet of Stepney, and first made a distinct parish in 1730. The parish has an area of 243 acres, and a population of 32,004 in 1881, an increase of 2085 since 1871.

"Lime-hurst, or Lime-hostes," writes Stow (p. 157), "corruptly called Lime-house;" and following the suggestion, the name has been said to be from the hurst or wood of lime trees growing there. But there is no evidence that lime trees were ever abundant here, or that there was a hurst of any kind. On the other hand, lime-burning was largely practised here from time immemorial. An inquest was held, August 17, 1417, "near to the water or banks of the water of Thames, before the Lymehostes," or lime-houses, respecting the death by drowning of "the steersman or lodysman" of a certain ship;¹ and there can be little doubt that the Lymehostes gave their name to the place. Norden, at the end of Elizabeth's reign, speaks of the kiln here as in continual use—and it so continued down to our own day. In Tarleton's Jests, 1611, it is said that "at low fall, the watermen get afraid of the cross-cables by the Lime-house" and fifty years later (October 9, 1661) Pepys visits a house "close by the lime-house, which gives name to the place." A part of the main river-side road by the limekiln was called Limekiln Hill until a few years ago, when it was made to form the south end of Three Colt Street; and the dock by the kiln has always been called Limekiln Dock.

Limehouse lies along the bend of the Thames called Limehouse Reach, between the Regent's and the West India Docks, and has a large shipping trade. There are several ship, barge and boat-building yards and docks; and rope, sail and block-making are extensively carried on. Limehouse Cut, a canal navigable by barges from the river Lea, here locks into the Thames. Limehouse Church, dedicated to St. Anne, one of the fifty new churches erected in the reign of Queen Anne, was designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, a pupil of Wren's, and consecrated September 12, 1730. The turrets in the steeple resemble those which the same architect has introduced in the quadrangle of All Souls' College, Oxford. It was seriously damaged by fire, and the interior with its fine old oak fittings, clock and bells, entirely destroyed, on Good Friday, 1850. Its restoration cost over £13,000. Charles Lamb greatly admired the church.² Dickens makes Limehouse Hole (at the far end of Limehouse) the dwelling-place of Rogue Riderhood and his daughter Pleasant of Our Mutual Friend. At Limehouse is that excellent institution, the "Strangers' Home for Asiatics, Africans, and South Sea Islanders," which annually gives shelter to, and finds employment for, from 500 to 600 natives of the East, all seafaring men, and many of them shipwrecked or otherwise destitute and friendless.

Porter, These are the youths that thunder at a playhouse, and fight for bitten apples; that no audience but the Tribulation of Tower Hill, or the limbs of Limehouse, their dear brothers, are able to endure.—Shakespeare, Henry VIII., Act v. Sc. 3.

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¹ City Letter Book, fol. cc; Riley, p. 655.
² Alsop's Coleridge, vol. i. p. 207.