The word _Charterhouse_ was the English name for a house of Carthusians, a very strict order of monks, whose first house was the Grande Chartreuse in France.
Not far from the Charterhouse is _Ely Place_, with the beautiful old church of St. Ethelreda. This was, in the Middle Ages, a chapel used by the Bishop of Ely when he came to London, and that is how Ely Place, still one of the quietest and quaintest spots in London, got its name.
People who go along Ludgate Hill to St. Paul's must have noticed many curious names. Perhaps the quaintest of all is _Paternoster Row_. This street, which takes its name from the Latin name of the "Our Father," or Lord's Prayer, got its name from the fact that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many sellers of prayer-books and texts collected at this spot, on account of it being near the great church of St. Paul's. Paternoster Row is still full of booksellers.
_Ave Maria Lane_ and _Amen Corner_, just near, got their names in imitation of Paternoster Row, the _Ave Maria_, or "Hail, Mary!" being the words used by the angel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin at the Annunciation, and _Amen_ being, of course, the ending to the _paternoster_, as to most prayers.
Not far from St. Paul's is the Church of _St. Mary-le-Bow_. It used to be said that the true Londoner had to be born within the sound of Bow-bells, and the old story tells us that it was these bells which Dick Whittington heard telling him to turn back when he had lost hope of making his fortune, and was leaving London for the country again. The present Church of St. Mary-le-Bow was built by Sir Christopher Wren, the great seventeenth-century architect, who built St. Paul's and several other of the most beautiful London churches after they had been destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666. But underneath the present Church of St. Mary-le-Bow is the crypt, which was not destroyed in the fire. This crypt was built, like the former church, in Norman times, and the church took its name of _bow_ from the arches upon which it was built in the Norman way, it being the first church in London to be built in this way. The church is generally called "Bow Church."
Another famous old London church, the _Temple Church_, which is now used as the chapel of the lawyers at the Inns of Court, got its name from the fact that it belonged to and was built by the Knights Templars in the twelfth century. These knights were one of those peculiar religious orders which joined the life of a soldier to that of a monk, and played a great part in the Crusades. King Edward III. brought the order to an end, and took their property; but the Temple Church, with its tombs and figures of armoured knights in brass, remains to keep their memory fresh.