This is the 14th in a series of posts comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s and 80s with the same view today.
Use our Google map to see where they were taken.
It shows a section of Fleet St, on the north side, just between St Dunstan's Church to the left and Fetter Lane to the right.
The top picture is Dixon's. A zoomable version of this image is on our Online Gallery. Writing about the photograph in 1880, Alfred Marks commented: "Aubrey tells us that Michael Drayton, the poet, 'lived at the bay-window house, next to the East end of St. Dunstan's Ch. in Fleet-Street' (Lives II. 335). Tradition claims for the house shown in the middle of the photograph the honour of having been the residence of the author of Polyolbion. The Great Fire stopped, on the north side of Fleet Street, at Fetter Lane, sparing St. Dunstan's and the intervening block of houses. The house certainly dates from before the Fire, and it agrees with Aubrey's description."
Below it is the same view as it appeared in August 2009. Though there's a glancing similarity to the widths of the buildings, and the street numbers tally (the middle building is No. 185), they have all been rebuilt and bear little resemblance to their predecessors. Only a small visible part of St Dunstan's Church, in the top left, links the two images.
Henry Dixon must have taken his photograph from the first floor of No. 43, opposite. That is now occupied by the IT department of Hoare's Bank, which let us come up to take our picture from exactly the same spot, and bought us a cup of tea. Thanks to David and Pam for their assistance.
[RA]
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