Note 424 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY (continued 4)

“Curtis’s Halfpenny Hatch was a passage across St. George’s Fields from Narrow Wall, opposite Somerset House. It was a halfpenny toll-way through extensive nursery grounds” (Wine and Walnuts). It is now commemorated in the name Hatch Row, Roupell Street, Lambeth, and I have found that Palmer Street is still called, locally, “up the Hatch,” though, of course, nothing in the shape of a Hatch has existed within living memory. “Hatches,” or gates, at which halfpennies were levied, were common on the outskirts of London. Nollekens told Smith that he remembered one in Charlotte Street, kept by a miller, and another between the Oxford Road (Oxford Street) and Grosvenor Square.