Bust of William Shakespeare. It commemorates John Heminge and Henry Condell - fellow actors and personal friends of Shakespeare - who lived in this parish for many years. It was they who collected together all Shakespeare’s known works and subsequently arranged for the publication of the first folio of his plays in 1623. As the inscription on the monument here states: “They thus merited the gratitude of mankind.”
Behind the bust you will find the remains of the church of St. Mary, Aldermanbury, which was built in London in the 1670s after the Great Fire of 1666. The church was gutted by fire in the Blitzkrieg bombing in 1940, and in the 1960’s was moved piece by piece to Fulton, Missouri, where it now stands in the grounds of Westminster College, where Winston Churchill gave his famous "Iron Curtain" speech in 1946.
The Remains of the Roman Fort. Built around AD120, the fort originally covered twelve acres and accommodated the guards of the Roman Governor of Britain. At least 1,000 men were once housed in the barracks here. These surviving walls were part of the curved southwest corner watchtower.
