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100-746: Wroth was born in Clerkenwell , the eldest son of the Rev. Warwick Reed Wroth , vicar of St. Philip's Clerkenwell. He attended the King's School, Canterbury , where he received a classical training, and joined the staff of the British Museum as an assistant in the Department of Coins and Medals in July 1878. Wroth contributed to the series of British Museum Catalogues of Greek Coins, and wrote articles for

200-738: A demonstrative ( þis , þat ), after a possessive pronoun (e.g., hir , our ), or with a name or in a form of address. This derives from the Old English "weak" declension of adjectives. This inflexion continued to be used in writing even after final -e had ceased to be pronounced. In earlier texts, multisyllable adjectives also receive a final -e in these situations, but this occurs less regularly in later Middle English texts. Otherwise, adjectives have no ending and adjectives already ending in -e etymologically receive no ending as well. Earlier texts sometimes inflect adjectives for case as well. Layamon's Brut inflects adjectives for

300-502: A largely Anglo-Saxon vocabulary (with many Norse borrowings in the northern parts of the country) but a greatly simplified inflectional system. The grammatical relations that were expressed in Old English by the dative and instrumental cases were replaced in Early Middle English with prepositional constructions. The Old English genitive - es survives in the -'s of the modern English possessive , but most of

400-494: A lengthened – and later also modified – pronunciation of a preceding vowel. For example, in name , originally pronounced as two syllables, the /a/ in the first syllable (originally an open syllable) lengthened, the final weak vowel was later dropped, and the remaining long vowel was modified in the Great Vowel Shift (for these sound changes, see Phonology , above). The final ⟨e⟩ , now silent, thus became

500-495: A lesser extent), and, therefore, it cannot be attributed simply to the influence of French-speaking sections of the population: English did, after all, remain the vernacular . It is also argued that Norse immigrants to England had a great impact on the loss of inflectional endings in Middle English. One argument is that, although Norse and English speakers were somewhat comprehensible to each other due to similar morphology,

600-593: A process called apophony ), as in Modern English. With the discontinuation of the Late West Saxon standard used for the writing of Old English in the period prior to the Norman Conquest, Middle English came to be written in a wide variety of scribal forms, reflecting different regional dialects and orthographic conventions. Later in the Middle English period, however, and particularly with

700-580: A series of streets and terraces in neo-Classical, Greek revival style. The place names reference the New River company, including Amwell Street (after the New River's source in Hertfordshire) and River Street. The Lloyd Baker estate was laid out immediately to the west of the New River estate from 1820 to 1840. It takes its name from the family of Bishop William Lloyd who inherited the land from his godmother Flower Backhouse, Countess of Clarendon ,

800-499: A shareholder in the New River company. The estate is characterised by neo-classical pedimented villas and garden squares. As it was a suburb beyond the confines of the London Wall , Clerkenwell was outside the jurisdiction of the somewhat puritanical City fathers. Consequently, "base tenements and houses of unlawful and disorderly resort" sprang up, with a "great number of dissolute, loose, and insolent people harboured in such and

900-564: A short walk from the Green. Their new offices are a short distance away in King's Cross . In 2011, an anti-cuts protest march departed from Clerkenwell and ended with a rally at Trafalgar Square demanding trade union rights, human rights and international solidarity. Clerkenwell St James was an ancient parish in the Finsbury division of the Ossulstone hundred of Middlesex . Part of

1000-966: A signed cycle route. To the south of Farringdon station, CS6 uses a segregated cycle track which runs parallel to Farringdon Road . South of Exmouth Market , signal-controlled junctions on Farringdon Road often give priority to cyclists, particularly where there is a cycle lane or track to separate cycles from other road traffic. In the north of Clerkenwell, CS6 runs on quieter "side-streets" towards Bloomsbury and King's Cross. Quietways 2 and 10 are also nearby, both passing through Finsbury . Quietway 2 links Russell Square to Angel , Dalston and Walthamstow via Finsbury, whilst Quietway 10 runs from Finsbury to Finsbury Park . Quietways use cycle paths and "side-streets" allowing cyclists to avoid busy roads. Quietways 2 and 10 are signed cycle routes. Bus and cycle lanes are also provided on Rosebery Avenue , Clerkenwell Road and Percival Street. Middle English#Nouns Middle English (abbreviated to ME )

1100-522: A variant of clerc , meaning literate person or clergyman). The first surviving reference to the name is from 1100. In the Middle Ages , the London Parish clerks performed annual mystery plays there, based on biblical themes. Part of the well remains visible, incorporated into a 1980s building called Well Court. It is visible through a window of that building on Farringdon Lane. Access to

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1200-524: A variant of the Northumbrian dialect (prevalent in northern England and spoken in southeast Scotland ). During the Middle English period, many Old English grammatical features either became simplified or disappeared altogether. Noun, adjective, and verb inflections were simplified by the reduction (and eventual elimination) of most grammatical case distinctions. Middle English also saw considerable adoption of Anglo-Norman vocabulary, especially in

1300-725: Is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English period. Scholarly opinion varies, but the University of Valencia states the period when Middle English was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500. This stage of the development of the English language roughly coincided with

1400-673: Is claimed that the area has the highest concentration of architects and building professionals in the world. Many of London's leading architectural practices have offices in the area. It is said that Vladimir Lenin and a young Joseph Stalin first met in the Crown and Anchor pub (now known as the Crown Tavern) on Clerkenwell Green, when the latter was visiting London in 1903. The Betsey Trotwood (named after Betsey Trotwood in David Copperfield by Charles Dickens) adopted

1500-609: Is home to City University and the Royal Mail's Mount Pleasant sorting office . It includes the neighbourhoods of Farringdon and Exmouth Market . Goswell Street formed the eastern boundary of the Clerkenwell parishes, with the River Fleet , now buried beneath Farringdon Road and other streets, forming the western boundary with Holborn and, in part, St Pancras . This western boundary with both neighbouring areas

1600-433: Is now rare and used only in oxen and as part of a double plural , in children and brethren . Some dialects still have forms such as eyen (for eyes ), shoon (for shoes ), hosen (for hose(s) ), kine (for cows ), and been (for bees ). Grammatical gender survived to a limited extent in early Middle English before being replaced by natural gender in the course of the Middle English period. Grammatical gender

1700-481: Is now used as part of the London Borough of Islington 's western boundary with the London Borough of Camden . Pentonville is a part of northern Clerkenwell, while the southern part is sometimes referred to as Farringdon, after the railway station of that name – which was named after Farringdon Road (an extension of Farringdon Street) and originally named Farringdon Street Station. Finsbury Town Hall and

1800-710: Is served by the London Underground Circle , Hammersmith and City and Metropolitan lines and the Elizabeth line . The next station west of Farringdon is King's Cross St Pancras , and all westbound trains call at Baker Street tube station . To the east, the next stations are Barbican , Moorgate and Liverpool Street in the City . The Hammersmith and City and Circle lines both terminate in West London at Hammersmith (via Paddington ). Eastbound,

1900-585: Is where Fagin and the Artful Dodger induct Oliver into pickpocketing amongst shoppers in the busy market once held there. In his words it is "an open square in Clerkenwell, which is yet called, by some perversion of terms the Green", despite lacking any "greenery". Indeed, Dickens knew the area well and was a customer of the Finsbury Savings Bank on Sekforde Street , which links Clerkenwell Green to St John Street. Hockley-in-the-Hole

2000-583: The Journal of Hellenic Studies , the Numismatic Chronicle , The Athenaeum and The Classical Review . He also wrote a series of biographies of numismatists, medallists, coin-engravers which were published in the Dictionary of National Biography . The following list is a selection of his publications: See also the bibliography of Wroth's work, by John Allan. Wroth was best known to

2100-524: The Augustinian canon Orrm wrote the Ormulum , one of the oldest surviving texts in Middle English. The influence of Old Norse aided the development of English from a synthetic language with relatively free word order to a more analytic language with a stricter word order. Both Old English and Old Norse were synthetic languages with complicated inflections. Communication between Vikings in

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2200-597: The Danelaw and their Anglo-Saxon neighbours resulted in the erosion of inflection in both languages. Old Norse may have had a more profound impact on Middle and Modern English development than any other language. The effect of Old Norse on Old English was substantive, pervasive, and of a democratic character. Like close cousins, Old Norse and Old English resembled each other, and with some words and grammatical structures in common, speakers of each language roughly understood each other, but according to historian Simeon Potler

2300-616: The Early Modern English and Modern English eras. Middle English generally did not have silent letters . For example, knight was pronounced [ˈkniçt] (with both the ⟨k⟩ and the ⟨gh⟩ pronounced, the latter sounding as the ⟨ch⟩ in German Knecht ). The major exception was the silent ⟨e⟩ – originally pronounced but lost in normal speech by Chaucer's time. This letter, however, came to indicate

2400-676: The Finsbury Estate lie in Clerkenwell, rather than Finsbury. They are named after the former Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury which included Clerkenwell, Finsbury and other areas. For a list of street name etymologies in the Clerkenwell area see Street names of Clerkenwell and Finsbury . Clerkenwell took its name from the Clerks' Well in Farringdon Lane ( clerken was the Middle English genitive plural of clerk ,

2500-476: The High and Late Middle Ages . Middle English saw significant changes to its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and orthography . Writing conventions during the Middle English period varied widely. Examples of writing from this period that have survived show extensive regional variation. The more standardized Old English literary variety broke down and writing in English became fragmented and localized and was, for

2600-585: The Norman Conquest , had normally been written in French. Like Chaucer's work, this new standard was based on the East Midlands-influenced speech of London. Clerks using this standard were usually familiar with French and Latin , influencing the forms they chose. The Chancery Standard, which was adopted slowly, was used in England by bureaucrats for most official purposes, excluding those of

2700-728: The Round Pond and an associated building, the Water House . From here water was fed into a network of wooden mains which conveyed water to the cisterns of London. Over the years the New River Head complex expanded with the addition of further reservoirs and pumping stations, driven by windmill , horse gin and, eventually, steam engine . In 1820, the New River Company , owners of the river, moved its offices into an enlarged Water House, beginning an association of

2800-645: The 12th century, incorporating a unique phonetic spelling system; and the Ancrene Wisse and the Katherine Group , religious texts written for anchoresses , apparently in the West Midlands in the early 13th century. The language found in the last two works is sometimes called the AB language . Additional literary sources of the 12th and 13th centuries include Layamon's Brut and The Owl and

2900-422: The 13th century and was replaced by thorn. Thorn mostly fell out of use during the 14th century and was replaced by ⟨th⟩ . Anachronistic usage of the scribal abbreviation [REDACTED] ( þe , "the") has led to the modern mispronunciation of thorn as ⟨ y ⟩ in this context; see ye olde . Wynn, which represented the phoneme /w/ , was replaced by ⟨ w ⟩ during

3000-409: The 13th century. Due to its similarity to the letter ⟨p⟩ , it is mostly represented by ⟨w⟩ in modern editions of Old and Middle English texts even when the manuscript has wynn. Under Norman influence, the continental Carolingian minuscule replaced the insular script that had been used for Old English. However, because of the significant difference in appearance between

3100-473: The 14th century, even after the loss of the majority of the continental possessions of the English monarchy . In the aftermath of the Black Death of the 14th century, there was significant migration into London , of people to the counties of the southeast of England and from the east and central Midlands of England, and a new prestige London dialect began to develop as a result of this clash of

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3200-604: The 1540s after the printing and wide distribution of the English Bible and Prayer Book , which made the new standard of English publicly recognizable and lasted until about 1650. The main changes between the Old English sound system and that of Middle English include: The combination of the last three processes listed above led to the spelling conventions associated with silent ⟨e⟩ and doubled consonants (see under Orthography , below). Middle English retains only two distinct noun-ending patterns from

3300-637: The 1920s and 1930s, 37a Clerkenwell Green was a venue for Communist Party meetings, and the Marx Memorial Library was founded on the same site in 1933. In 1942 the local borough council erected a controversial bust of Vladimir Lenin at the site of a new block of flats in Holford Square (the bust was removed in the 1950s). Clerkenwell's tradition of left-leaning publication continued until late 2008 with The Guardian and The Observer having their headquarters on Farringdon Road,

3400-437: The 1980s, and the area is now known for loft-living in some of the former industrial buildings. It also has young professionals , nightclubs and restaurants and is home to many professional offices as an overspill for the nearby City of London and West End . Amongst other sectors, there is a notable concentration of design professions around Clerkenwell, and supporting industries such as high-end designer furniture showrooms. It

3500-451: The A10 to Clerkenwell's east. Transport for London (TfL) and the London Borough of Islington both provide cycling infrastructure in Clerkenwell, and the area is well connected to London's cycle network . Cycle Superhighway 6 (CS6) runs north–south through Clerkenwell, which provides the area with direct links to King's Cross , Bloomsbury , Blackfriars and Elephant and Castle on

3600-512: The British Social Democratic Federation at 37a Clerkenwell Green, and issues 22 to 38 were indeed edited there. At that time Vladimir Lenin resided on Percy Circus, less than half a mile north of Clerkenwell Green. In 1903, the newspaper was moved to Geneva . It is said that Lenin and a young Joseph Stalin met in the Crown and Anchor pub (now The Crown Tavern) when the latter was visiting London in 1903. In

3700-572: The Church and legalities, which used Latin and Law French respectively. The Chancery Standard's influence on later forms of written English is disputed, but it did undoubtedly provide the core around which Early Modern English formed. Early Modern English emerged with the help of William Caxton 's printing press, developed during the 1470s. The press stabilized English through a push towards standardization, led by Chancery Standard enthusiast and writer Richard Pynson . Early Modern English began in

3800-722: The Hammersmith and City line continues towards Barking in East London , whilst the Circle line loops around the City of London with trains heading westwards towards Tower Hill , Embankment and Victoria . The Metropolitan line terminates at Aldgate to the east, and to the west, trains carry passengers to Wembley Park , Uxbridge , and stations in Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire . There are several tube stations near

3900-719: The M1 . Beyond London, the A1 passes through the East and North of England before terminating in Edinburgh , Scotland. Farringdon Street is numbered the A201 , which links Clerkenwell to King's Cross , Blackfriars , and Elephant & Castle . The A5201 ( Clerkenwell Road / Old Street ) also runs through Clerkenwell, linking Soho and Holborn in Central London with Shoreditch and

4000-591: The New River Company developed housing on the land surrounding New River Head. At the centre is Myddelton Square, named after Sir Hugh Myddelton , developer of the New River, with the Grade II listed St Mark's Church in the centre. The church was built in 1827 in Victorian Gothic style by William Chadwell Mylne , after whom the nearby Mylne Street and Chadwell Street are named. The estate is

4100-557: The Nightingale . Some scholars have defined "Early Middle English" as encompassing English texts up to 1350. This longer time frame would extend the corpus to include many Middle English Romances (especially those of the Auchinleck manuscript c.  1330 ). Gradually, the wealthy and the government Anglicised again, although Norman (and subsequently French ) remained the dominant language of literature and law until

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4200-591: The Norse speakers' inability to reproduce the ending sounds of English words influenced Middle English's loss of inflectional endings. Important texts for the reconstruction of the evolution of Middle English out of Old English are the Peterborough Chronicle , which continued to be compiled up to 1154; the Ormulum , a biblical commentary probably composed in Lincolnshire in the second half of

4300-544: The Old English -eþ , Midland dialects showing -en from about 1200, and Northern forms using -es in the third person singular as well as the plural. The past tense of weak verbs was formed by adding an -ed(e) , -d(e) , or -t(e) ending. The past-tense forms, without their personal endings, also served as past participles with past-participle prefixes derived from Old English: i- , y- , and sometimes bi- . Strong verbs , by contrast, formed their past tense by changing their stem vowel (e.g., binden became bound ,

4400-663: The Old Norse influence was strongest in the dialects under Danish control that composed the southern part of the Northern England (corresponding to the Scandinavian Kingdom of Jórvík ), the East Midlands and the East of England , words in the spoken language emerged in the 10th and 11th centuries near the transition from Old to Middle English. Influence on the written languages only appeared from

4500-710: The abundance of Modern English words for the mechanisms of government that are derived from Anglo-Norman, such as court , judge , jury , appeal , and parliament . There are also many Norman-derived terms relating to the chivalric cultures that arose in the 12th century, an era of feudalism , seigneurialism , and crusading . Words were often taken from Latin, usually through French transmission. This gave rise to various synonyms, including kingly (inherited from Old English), royal (from French, inherited from Vulgar Latin), and regal (from French, which borrowed it from Classical Latin). Later French appropriations were derived from standard, rather than Norman, French. Examples of

4600-635: The area directly to North London and Hertfordshire destinations. Clerkenwell is in the London Congestion Charge Zone, as well as the London Low Emission and Ultra Low Emission Zones. Most roads in Clerkenwell are residential, but several key routes cross Clerkenwell. Goswell Road carries the A1 between the City of London ( Barbican ) and Angel , with the road continuing northbound towards Highbury , Archway and

4700-435: The area was named was rediscovered in 1924. The Marquess of Northampton owned much of the land in Clerkenwell, reflected in placenames such as Northampton Square , Spencer Street and Compton Street. The watchmaking and watch repairing trades were once of great importance, particularly in the area around Northampton Square. In the 20th century, Clerkenwell became known as a centre for architecture and design. Clerkenwell

4800-471: The area. The community had mostly dispersed by the 1960s, but the area remains the 'spiritual home' of London's Italians, and is a focal point for more recent Italian immigrants, largely because of St Peter's Italian Church in nearby Saffron Hill . There are officially over 200,000 Italians in London, and possibly many more. The Italian Procession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Sagra takes place each July in

4900-494: The areas of politics, law, the arts, and religion, as well as poetic and emotive diction. Conventional English vocabulary remained primarily Germanic in its sources, with Old Norse influences becoming more apparent. Significant changes in pronunciation took place, particularly involving long vowels and diphthongs, which in the later Middle English period began to undergo the Great Vowel Shift . Little survives of early Middle English literature , due in part to Norman domination and

5000-583: The beginning of the 13th century, this delay in Scandinavian lexical influence in English has been attributed to the lack of written evidence from the areas of Danish control, as the majority of written sources from Old English were produced in the West Saxon dialect spoken in Wessex , the heart of Anglo-Saxon political power at the time. The Norman Conquest of England in 1066 saw the replacement of

5100-420: The chemicals required for their Bromide based papers and negatives. During World War II, they were relocated for security reasons because of the fear that Axis bombs would destroy the photographic equipment used for the war effort. Clerkenwell Green lies at the centre of the old village, by the church, and has a mixture of housing, offices and pubs, dominated by the imposing former Middlesex Sessions House . It

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5200-414: The clergy for written communication and record-keeping. A significant number of Norman words were borrowed into English and used alongside native Germanic words with similar meanings. Examples of Norman/Germanic pairs in Modern English include pig and pork , calf and veal , wood and forest , and freedom and liberty . The role of Anglo-Norman as the language of government and law can be seen in

5300-507: The comparative and superlative (e.g., greet , great; gretter , greater). Adjectives ending in -ly or -lich formed comparatives either with -lier , -liest or -loker , -lokest . A few adjectives also displayed Germanic umlaut in their comparatives and superlatives, such as long , lenger . Other irregular forms were mostly the same as in modern English. Middle English personal pronouns were mostly developed from those of Old English , with

5400-419: The development of the Chancery Standard in the 15th century, orthography became relatively standardised in a form based on the East Midlands-influenced speech of London. Spelling at the time was mostly quite regular . (There was a fairly consistent correspondence between letters and sounds.) The irregularity of present-day English orthography is largely due to pronunciation changes that have taken place over

5500-432: The different dialects, that was based chiefly on the speech of the East Midlands but also influenced by that of other regions. The writing of this period, however, continues to reflect a variety of regional forms of English. The Ayenbite of Inwyt , a translation of a French confessional prose work, completed in 1340, is written in a Kentish dialect . The best known writer of Middle English, Geoffrey Chaucer , wrote in

5600-531: The double consonant represented a sound that was (or had previously been) geminated (i.e., had genuinely been "doubled" and would thus have regularly blocked the lengthening of the preceding vowel). In other cases, by analogy, the consonant was written double merely to indicate the lack of lengthening. The basic Old English Latin alphabet consisted of 20 standard letters plus four additional letters: ash ⟨æ⟩ , eth ⟨ð⟩ , thorn ⟨þ⟩ , and wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ . There

5700-468: The end of the Middle English period only the strong -'s ending (variously spelled) was in use. Some formerly feminine nouns, as well as some weak nouns, continued to make their genitive forms with -e or no ending (e.g., fole hoves , horses' hooves), and nouns of relationship ending in -er frequently have no genitive ending (e.g., fader bone , "father's bane"). The strong -(e)s plural form has survived into Modern English. The weak -(e)n form

5800-513: The engineering, printing publishing and meat and food trades (the last mostly around Smithfield) fell empty. Several acclaimed council housing estates were commissioned by Finsbury Borough Council . Modernist architect and Russian émigré Berthold Lubetkin 's listed Spa Green Estate, constructed 1943–1950, has recently been restored. The Finsbury Estate , constructed in 1968 to the designs of Joseph Emberton includes flats, since altered and re-clad. A general revival and gentrification process began in

5900-418: The exception of the third person plural, a borrowing from Old Norse (the original Old English form clashed with the third person singular and was eventually dropped). Also, the nominative form of the feminine third person singular was replaced by a form of the demonstrative that developed into sche (modern she ), but the alternative heyr remained in some areas for a long time. As with nouns, there

6000-472: The feats he has done about Turnbull Street". Known now as Turnmill Street and adjoining Farringdon station , it had an infamous reputation for brothel-keeping and was described in Sugden's Topographical Dictionary as "the most disreputable street in London, a haunt of thieves and loose women". The Clerkenwell Bridewell , a prison and correctional institute for prostitutes and vagrants, was known for savage punishment and endemic sexual corruption. Clerkenwell

6100-442: The fringes of Clerkenwell: Farringdon is a National Rail station served on the Thameslink route, served by Thameslink trains run by Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR). This links Clerkenwell directly to Luton and Gatwick airports, and destinations including Bedford , Brighton , Cambridge , Luton , Peterborough , and destinations in South London and Kent . Moorgate is also nearby, with Great Northern services linking

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6200-433: The general public for his scholarly work on London Pleasure Gardens , published by Macmillan in 1896, in which he was helped by his brother, E. A. Wroth. Wroth had made this subject a speciality for many years, and had accumulated a considerable amount of curious and out-of-the-way material. Clerkenwell Clerkenwell ( / ˈ k l ɑːr k ən w ɛ l / ) is an area of central London , England. Clerkenwell

6300-450: The headquarters of the St John Ambulance Association. An Early English crypt remains beneath the chapel of the order, which was otherwise mostly rebuilt in the 1950s after wartime bombing. The notorious deception of the " Cock Lane Ghost ", in which Johnson took great interest, was perpetrated nearby. Adjoining the priory was St Mary's nunnery of the Benedictine order, now entirely disappeared, and St James's Church , rebuilt in 1792 on

6400-412: The indicator of the longer and changed pronunciation of ⟨a⟩ . In fact, vowels could have this lengthened and modified pronunciation in various positions, particularly before a single consonant letter and another vowel or before certain pairs of consonants. A related convention involved the doubling of consonant letters to show that the preceding vowel was not to be lengthened. In some cases,

6500-412: The lawlessness of the area. The locality was also known as a meeting place for gay men. The construction of the New River between 1604 and 1613 resulted in the creation of the New River Head in Clerkenwell, on what is now Rosebery Avenue . The New River was constructed to supply London with fresh drinking water from Hertfordshire , and the New River Head originally consisted of a circular reservoir,

6600-459: The like noisome and disorderly houses, as namely poor cottages, and habitations of beggars and people without trade, stables, inns, alehouses, taverns, garden-houses converted to dwellings, ordinaries, dicing houses, bowling alleys, and brothel houses". During the Elizabethan era Clerkenwell contained a notorious brothel quarter. In Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2 , Falstaff complains about Justice Shallow boasting of "the wildness of his youth, and

6700-506: The main difference lied on their inflectional endings, which led to much confusion within the mixed population that existed in the Danelaw, this endings tended gradually to become obscured and finally lost, "simplifying English grammar" in the process. In time, the inflections melted away and the analytic pattern emerged. Viking influence on Old English is most apparent in pronouns , modals, comparatives, pronominal adverbs (like hence and together ), conjunctions, and prepositions show

6800-417: The masculine accusative, genitive, and dative, the feminine dative, and the plural genitive. The Owl and the Nightingale adds a final -e to all adjectives not in the nominative, here only inflecting adjectives in the weak declension (as described above). Comparatives and superlatives were usually formed by adding -er and -est . Adjectives with long vowels sometimes shortened these vowels in

6900-427: The more complex system of inflection in Old English : Nouns of the weak declension are primarily inherited from Old English n -stem nouns but also from ō -stem, wō -stem, and u -stem nouns, which did not inflect in the same way as n -stem nouns in Old English, but joined the weak declension in Middle English. Nouns of the strong declension are inherited from the other Old English noun stem classes. Some nouns of

7000-430: The most marked Danish influence. The best evidence of Scandinavian influence appears in extensive word borrowings; however, texts from the period in Scandinavia and Northern England do not provide certain evidence of an influence on syntax. However, at least one scholarly study of this influence shows that Old English may have been replaced entirely by Norse, by virtue of the change from Old English to Norse syntax. While

7100-498: The most part, being improvised. By the end of the period (about 1470), and aided by the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439, a standard based on the London dialects (Chancery Standard) had become established. This largely formed the basis for Modern English spelling, although pronunciation has changed considerably since that time. Middle English was succeeded in England by Early Modern English , which lasted until about 1650. Scots developed concurrently from

7200-599: The name in 1983, having previously been the Butcher's Arms . In 2005 Mark Bittman of The New York Times wrote that Clerkenwell has "some of the best restaurants in London". Restaurants in Clerkenwell include St John and the Michelin-starred Club Gascon . In the 1850s the south-western part of Clerkenwell and Saffron Hill in the nearby borough of Holborn became known as London's " Little Italy " because around 2,000 Italians had settled in

7300-693: The old insular g and the Carolingian g (modern g ), the former continued in use as a separate letter, known as yogh , written ⟨ȝ⟩ . This was adopted for use to represent a variety of sounds: [ɣ], [j], [dʒ], [x], [ç] , while the Carolingian g was normally used for [g]. Instances of yogh were eventually replaced by ⟨j⟩ or ⟨y⟩ and by ⟨gh⟩ in words like night and laugh . In Middle Scots , yogh became indistinguishable from cursive z , and printers tended to use ⟨z⟩ when yogh

7400-423: The other case endings disappeared in the Early Middle English period, including most of the roughly one dozen forms of the definite article ("the"). The dual personal pronouns (denoting exactly two) also disappeared from English during this period. The loss of case endings was part of a general trend from inflections to fixed word order that also occurred in other Germanic languages (though more slowly and to

7500-551: The parish of St James was split off as the parish of St John in 1723. However, for civil matters they remained a single parish. The Clerkenwell Vestry became a nominating authority to the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1855. Under the Metropolis Management Act 1855 any parish that exceeded 2,000 ratepayers was to be divided into wards; as such the parish of St James & St John Clerkenwell

7600-403: The prestige that came with writing in French rather than English. During the 14th century, a new style of literature emerged with the works of writers including John Wycliffe and Geoffrey Chaucer , whose Canterbury Tales remains the most studied and read work of the period. The transition from Late Old English to Early Middle English had taken place by the 1150s to 1180s, the period when

7700-423: The printing industry. It gained an especial reputation for the making of clocks , marine chronometers and watches , which activity once employed many people from around the area. Flourishing craft workshops still carry on some of the traditional trades, such as jewellery-making. Clerkenwell was home to Witherbys, a printing company who have now split ownership, with the printers having relocated to north London and

7800-717: The publishers to Scotland (see also the Witherby Publishing Group ). It was during the Industrial Revolution that Clerkenwell became known as London's Italian district, although the total number of Italian residents probably numbered no more than 2,000 at any one time. The Kodak United Company opened a factory and storefront at 41–43 Clerkenwell and took advantage of the surplus of unemployed Jewelers and Watch makers to build their Stereoscopic and Folding Pocket Cameras that they produced and repaired. The location also allowed them easy access to

7900-692: The rebuilt form of the Priory Gate. Its gateway, erected in 1504 in St John's Square, served various purposes after the Dissolution of the Monasteries . For example, it was the birthplace of the Gentleman's Magazine in 1731, and the scene of Dr Johnson 's work in connection with that journal. In modern times the gatehouse again became associated with the order and was in the early 20th century

8000-569: The resulting doublet pairs include warden (from Norman) and guardian (from later French; both share a common ancestor loaned from Germanic). The end of Anglo-Saxon rule did not result in immediate changes to the language. The general population would have spoken the same dialects as they had before the Conquest. Once the writing of Old English came to an end, Middle English had no standard language, only dialects that evolved individually from Old English. Early Middle English (1150–1350) has

8100-573: The same time. Clerkenwell Town Hall, which had been built on Rosebery Avenue in 1895, became Finsbury Town Hall . Finsbury became part of the London Borough of Islington in 1965 and the old town hall lay empty and deteriorating for many years. It has since been sold to the Urdang Dance Academy. After the Second World War Clerkenwell suffered from industrial decline and many of the premises occupied by

8200-807: The second half of the 14th century in the emerging London dialect, although he also portrays some of his characters as speaking in northern dialects, as in " The Reeve's Tale ". In the English-speaking areas of lowland Scotland , an independent standard was developing, based on the Northumbrian dialect . This would develop into what came to be known as the Scots language . A large number of terms for abstract concepts were adopted directly from scholastic philosophical Latin (rather than via French). Examples are "absolute", "act", "demonstration", and "probable". The Chancery Standard of written English emerged c.  1430 in official documents that, since

8300-458: The second person singular in -(e)st (e.g., þou spekest , "thou speakest"), and the third person singular in -eþ (e.g., he comeþ , "he cometh/he comes"). ( þ (the letter "thorn") is pronounced like the unvoiced th in "think", but under certain circumstances, it may be like the voiced th in "that"). The following table illustrates a typical conjugation pattern: Plural forms vary strongly by dialect, with Southern dialects preserving

8400-457: The site is now a campus of Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry . Black Mary’s Hole was a locality and small rural settlement in a low-lying area on the eastern, Clerkenwell side of the valley of the River Fleet . The area included fields called Black Mary’s Hole , and Robin Hood’s Field , which together with the name of the former local pub, The Fox at Bay , seem to reflect

8500-499: The site of the original church which was partly of Norman provenance. The Charterhouse , near the boundary with the City of London , was originally a Carthusian monastery. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries the Charterhouse became a private mansion and one owner, Thomas Sutton, subsequently left it with an endowment as a school and almshouse . The almshouse remains but the school relocated to Surrey and its part of

8600-589: The site with the administration of London's water supply that was to last some 170 years. In 1920, the Metropolitan Water Board opened a new office building at New River Head, and this remained the headquarters for London's water supply up to the privatisation of the Thames Water Authority in 1989. The site is now largely in residential use, including both converted buildings and newly built apartment blocks. From 1810 to 1850,

8700-508: The streets surrounding the church. A small number of Italian businesses remain from the nineteenth century including organ builders Chiappa Ltd, and food outlets such as the deli Terroni of Clerkenwell and Gazzano's. Many other Italian firms survive from the period but have relocated elsewhere. Farringdon station is the only station in Clerkenwell itself. 12.618 million journeys began or ended at Farringdon in 2017–18. The station first opened in 1863 as Farringdon Street . Farringdon

8800-409: The strong type have an -e in the nominative/accusative singular, like the weak declension, but otherwise strong endings. Often, these are the same nouns that had an -e in the nominative/accusative singular of Old English (they, in turn, were inherited from Proto-Germanic ja -stem and i -stem nouns). The distinct dative case was lost in early Middle English, and although the genitive survived, by

8900-440: The top levels of the English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchies by Norman rulers who spoke a dialect of Old French , now known as Old Norman , which developed in England into Anglo-Norman . The use of Norman as the preferred language of literature and polite discourse fundamentally altered the role of Old English in education and administration, even though many Normans of this period were illiterate and depended on

9000-575: The well is managed by Islington Local History Centre and visits can be arranged by appointment. The Monastic Order of the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem had its English headquarters at the Priory of Clerkenwell . ( The Blessed Gerard founded the Order to provide medical assistance during the crusades .) St John's Gate (built by Sir Thomas Docwra in 1504) survives in

9100-677: Was also the location of three prisons: the Clerkenwell Bridewell , Coldbath Fields Prison (later Clerkenwell Gaol) and the New Prison , later the Clerkenwell House of Detention , notorious as the scene of the Clerkenwell Outrage in 1867, an attempted prison break by Fenians who killed many in the tenement houses on Corporation Row in trying to blow a hole in the prison wall. The House of Detention

9200-502: Was an ancient parish from the medieval period onwards, and now forms the south-western part of the London Borough of Islington . The church of St James in Clerkenwell Close and nearby Clerkenwell Green sit at the centre of Clerkenwell. Located on the edge of the City of London , it was the home of the Priory of St John and the site of a number of wells and spas, including Sadlers Wells and Spa Green. The well after which

9300-564: Was an area of Clerkenwell Green where bull-baiting , bear-baiting and similar activities occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries. Clerkenwell Green has historically been associated with radicalism, from the Lollards in the 16th century, the Chartists in the 19th century and communists in the early 20th century. In 1902, Vladimir Lenin moved the publication of the Iskra (Spark) to

9400-485: Was built in 1782, extended during the Victorian era , and by the early 21st century used as a Masonic hall. The name is something of a historical relic – Clerkenwell Green has had no grass for over 300 years. However, in conveying some impression of its history, it gives the appearance of one of the better-preserved village centres in what is now central London . In Charles Dickens 's Oliver Twist , Clerkenwell Green

9500-524: Was demolished in 1890 but the extensive vaults and cells beneath, now known as the Clerkenwell Catacombs, remained. They were reopened as air raid shelters during the Blitz, and for a few years were open as a minor tourist attraction. Various film scenes have been shot in the catacombs. The Industrial Revolution changed the area greatly. It became a centre for breweries , distilleries and

9600-610: Was divided into five wards (electing vestrymen ): No. 1 (12), No. 2 (15), No. 3 (12), No. 4 (18) and No. 5 (15). The area of the metropolitan board became the County of London in 1889. A reform of local government in 1900 abolished the Clerkenwell Vestry and the parish became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury . Alexandra Park , an exclave of the parish, was transferred to Hornsey , Middlesex at

9700-425: Was indicated by agreement of articles and pronouns (e.g., þo ule "the feminine owl") or using the pronoun he to refer to masculine nouns such as helm ("helmet"), or phrases such as scaft stærcne (strong shaft), with the masculine accusative adjective ending -ne . Single-syllable adjectives added -e when modifying a noun in the plural and when used after the definite article ( þe ), after

9800-520: Was not yet a distinct j , v , or w , and Old English scribes did not generally use k , q , or z . Ash was no longer required in Middle English, as the Old English vowel /æ/ that it represented had merged into /a/ . The symbol nonetheless came to be used as a ligature for the digraph ⟨ae⟩ in many words of Greek or Latin origin, as did ⟨œ⟩ for ⟨oe⟩ . Eth and thorn both represented /θ/ or its allophone / ð / in Old English. Eth fell out of use during

9900-417: Was ousted by it in most dialects by the 15th. The following table shows some of the various Middle English pronouns. Many other variations are noted in Middle English sources because of differences in spellings and pronunciations at different times and in different dialects. As a general rule, the indicative first person singular of verbs in the present tense ended in -e (e.g., ich here , "I hear"),

10000-475: Was some inflectional simplification (the distinct Old English dual forms were lost), but pronouns, unlike nouns, retained distinct nominative and accusative forms. Third person pronouns also retained a distinction between accusative and dative forms, but that was gradually lost: The masculine hine was replaced by him south of the River Thames by the early 14th century, and the neuter dative him

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