‘Abraham Bartlett, who makes ye boulting mills and cloathes, dwells at the sign of the boulting mill at Thames Street, near Queenhith, London, 1678.’
It is surmounted by a grotesque head, and fixed on a thin piece of wood with a ring for hanging it up. The boulting-mill was used for sifting meal by shaking it backwards and forwards, boulting-cloth being a material of loose texture for the meal to pass through. Of doubtful origin is a classically designed figure of a boy in low relief, with foliated border, and the date 1633; the material of this is cast iron. Another curious relic is a wooden statuette of Time, with scythe and hour-glass, which formerly belonged to the clock in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate. The inscription tells us that it was presented by the churchwardens, who in my opinion ought never to have removed it from the church for which it had been carved, where it was far more appropriately placed than it can possibly be here; though of course one is glad that it is preserved.
Last, not least, a very interesting stone bas-relief of doubtful origin, which purports to represent Whittington and his cat, was bequeathed by the Rev. Canon Lysons. The figure in question is doubtless that of a boy carrying a little quadruped in his arms. The tablet to which it belongs seems to have been broken off on the side to the spectator’s left, and therefore probably formed part of a larger piece of sculpture. This relic, which at a first glance seems to resemble a sculptured house-sign, was exhibited some years ago at a meeting of the Archæological Institute. Mr. Lysons stated on that occasion that it was dug up in Westgate Street, Gloucester. From a rent-roll of 1460, he had learned that in the said year Richard ‘Whitynton,’ lord of the manor of Staunton, possessed a house or houses, called ‘Rotten Row, or Asschowellys-place’; and from a lease it appeared that the house, in the foundations of which the stone was found, stands exactly on the site of Asschowellys (in modern orthography Ashwell’s) Place. The Richard Whittington here alluded to was great-nephew of the renowned Lord Mayor of London, living contemporaneously with his famous namesake, the rent-roll above named having been made within thirty-seven years of Sir Richard’s death. This is certainly a very singular coincidence, and if it could be proved that the tablet in question represented Whittington and his cat, we might consider that the tradition about him, which has delighted the childhood of so many thousands, was really founded on fact. Mr. Lysons was strongly of that opinion; he stated, however, that the house in Westgate Street, under which the tablet was found, besides being on the site of Ashwell’s Place, is also on the site of a Roman temple--and perhaps most impartial observers will be inclined to think that the costume of the figure, and the general style of the tablet in question, point rather to indifferent Roman than to fifteenth-century work.