According to Hatton, the parish included 1,300 houses within the City and a further 1,000 outside.

ANGEL INN (Ward 1) p. 62. On the east side of Aldersgate Street and a resting place for travellers from the north.

BEARBINDER LANE (Ward 26) p. 6. Connecting St Swithin’s Lane to the Stocks Market, in 1735 chosen as the site for the Lord Mayor’s Mansion House.

BEAR-KEY (Ward 24) p. 187. Bear Key Stairs were located just west of the Tower, south from Thames Street.

BEDNAL GREEN p. 87. A hamlet of Stepney in 1665, home to silk weavers by 1722 and to the legendary Blind Beggar of Bednall Green cited by Pepys (Diary, 26 June 1663).

BELL ALLEY (Ward 12) pp. 47, 70, 77. Leading east from Coleman Street, a strongly puritan area commemorated in Abraham Cowley’s 1663 play, Cutter of Coleman Street.

BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL (Ward 12) p. 80. Otherwise known as Bedlam and founded as a hospital in Bishopsgate in 1247. After re-establishment as an asylum in 1547 it was moved in 1676 to a new £17,000 building in Moorfields designed by Robert Hooke; Defoe was justified in citing it here as an instance of the City’s wealth. In his Tour he described it as ‘the most beautiful structure for such a Use … in the World’ (i.-372).

BISHOPSGATE (Ward 5) pp. 14, 18, 21, 22, 33, 80, 87, 98, 111, 160, 161, 198, 208. Named after one of the Roman gates. Home to great city merchants and ravaged by plague although virtually untouched by the Great Fire.

BLACK DITCH p. 198. Defoe says ‘it was then call’d Black Ditch, at the end of Holloway Lane’, but no contemporary map shows it; Schonhorn concludes that it was a temporary name. Strype shows Holloway Lane going west out of Shoreditch with, it appears, an extension going towards Vinegar Yard and Upper Moorfields. The burial ground Defoe mentions was probably Holywell Mount, named after the neighbouring convent, although Bunhill Fields was close by.

BLACKWALL pp. 92, 108, 152, 189. In 1665, part of the parish of Stepney and a significant harbour and shipbuilding centre.

BLACKWELL HALL (Ward 3) pp. 80, 189. Better known as Bakewell Hall (after an owner, Thomas Bakewell), lying on the east side of Guildhall, and a major cloth market. Demolished and rebuilt in 1588, it was destroyed in the Great Fire and rebuilt again in the 1670s.

BLOWBLADDER STREET (Ward 18) p. 207. Between Cheapside and Newgate Street. Where Defoe thought its name the reflection of sharp practice, Stow recorded prosaically that bladders were sold there.

BOW pp.