Horsleydown

Horslydown, betn Tooley str. Wd, and Rope yard Ed, it is in Southwork. L. 220 Yds, and from T L. S. 670 Yds. This str. (as I was told by a sober Councellor at Law, who said he had it from an old Record) was so called, for that the Water, formerly overflowing it, was so effectually drawn off, that the Place became a plain Green Field, where Horses and other Cattel used to Pasture and Lye down, before the str. was built.

Horselydown, Tooley street. All the tract called Horselydown, including the streets, square and lane of the same name, was originally a grazing ground, whence it was denominated Horse Down, which by corruption was changed to Horselydown. Stow, last edit.

Horselydown, Southwark. There is no particular pile of buildings distinguished by this name, but the neighbourhood from the E. end of Tooley-st. to Dock-head is called Horselydown.

Horselydown, Southwark, is a district that extends from the eastern end of Tooley-street to Dockhead, and from the Thames to the Tenter-ground, Bermondsey. Popular legends derive its name from a belief that the horse of King John laid down with that monarch upon his back, and hence horse-lye-down; but as the entire tract so called was, according to Stowe, a grazing ground, called Horse-down, it is more probably a corruption of that title.

Horselydown, Southwark, is a district that extends from the eastern end of Tooley Street to Dockhead, and from the Thames to the Tenter-ground, Bermondsey. It was formerly an exercise and grazing-ground for horses—hence the name. The horse pastures have been long built over. The name appears as a Horseway in an obit of the reign of Edward III., and as a Horshighdown in the Paston Letters, 1456. The letter implies that it was written from the house of Sir John Fastolfe, which was there. In the reign of Edward VI. the parish butts were at Horseydown for the exercise of archery in the parish of St. Olave. In 1626 it was the exercising ground, named "the Martial Ground." 1678 "Beasts are kept at Horsedown." In "waste ground at Horseydown people denied Christian burial were interred, as, for instance, Brownists and suicides." One "witness deposes of a woman who had hanged herself, that he buried her and drove a stake through her according to the custom," Dep. temp. James II. A plan of Horseyedown dated 1544 is in possession of the Governors of St. Olave's School, in it is shown a large piece of ground with the name Horseye Downe surrounded by tenements. The Free Grammar School of St. Olave's, first removed from Tooley Street, near to London Bridge, its original site, to Bermondsey Street, is now here. There was a once popular fair held at Horslydown, represented in a curious painting at Hatfield House, by Hofnagle, dating from the last years of Queen Elizabeth. Fair Street, in which Thomas Guy, the founder of Guy's Hospital, was born, commemorates the site. Horslydown was separated from St. Olave's and constituted a distinct parish by Act of 6th George II. 1733. The church (St. John's), a large substantial brick and stone building, is chiefly remarkable for the ungainly Ionic column which does duty for a spire. In 1415 John Claydon, a carrier, one of the earliest Lollard martyrs, was burned at Smithfield, principally for having in his possession a volume of heretical sermons. He was not able to read, but he said he had "great affection for the book, for a sermon preached at Horsleydown that was written in the said book."—Foxe, vol. iii. p. 532.