Beyond Goldsmiths' Row was the old Change; the name and the street both still exist. Beyond old Change were seven shops; then St. Augustine's Gate, leading into St. Paul's Churchyard; and then came Paternoster Row. Between Paternoster Row and Newgate Street stood the Church of St. Michael-le-Querne, stretching out into the middle of Cheap, where the statue of Sir Robert Peel now stands. Stretching out from the east end of the church, still further into the street, was a water conduit, which supplied all the neighbourhood hereabout, called "The Little Conduit," not because it was little, but to distinguish it from the great conduit at the other end of Cheap.
We are concerned in this place not with the history of old St. Paul's, nor with the technique of its architecture, but with the great cathedral as a religious and social institution, the centre of Elizabethan London. Here the streams of life were gathered, and hence they radiated. It was the official place of worship of the Corporation; the merchants of the city followed. The monarch on special occasions attended the services; the nobility followed the royal example. The typical Elizabethan made the middle aisle his promenade, where he displayed the finery of his attire and the elegance of his deportment. The satirists found a grand opportunity in the humours of Paul's Walk; but the effect of the cathedral is not to be derived from such allusions in the literature of the time. All classes were attracted by the beautiful organ and the anthems so exquisitely sung by the choir. The impressive size and noble proportions of the building, the soaring height of the nave, the mystery of the open tower, where the ascending vision became lost in gathering obscurity, and where the chords from the organ died away; these spiritual associations, these appeals to the imagination, were uplifting influences so powerful that the vanities of Paul's Walk were negligible by comparison. As with the gargoyle on the outer walls, the prevailing effect was so sublime, that it was merely heightened by this element of the grotesque.[2]
The cathedral stood in the midst of a churchyard. In the mediæval period this was enclosed by a wall. In the reign of Elizabeth the wall still existed, but, as Stow observes, "Now on both sides, to wit, within and without, it be hidden with dwelling-houses." In 1561 the great steeple was struck by lightning and destroyed by fire, but the tower from which the spire arose remained. The tower was 260 feet high, and the height of the spire was the same, so that the pinnacle was 520 feet from the base.[3] Surmounting the pinnacle, in this earlier portion of Elizabeth's reign, was a weathercock, an object of curiosity to which Stow devotes a minute description. In the midst of the churchyard stood Paul's Cross--"a pulpit cross of timber, mounted upon steps of stone and covered with lead, in which are sermons preached every Sunday in the forenoon." Many of the monastic features of the establishment had disappeared; others were transformed and adapted to other uses. The great central fabric remained, and the school flourished--"Paul's School," in the east part of the churchyard, endowed by Dean Colet in 1512, and rebuilt in the later years of Elizabeth, where one hundred and fifty-three poor men's children were given a free education under a master, an usher, and a chaplain.