Here, in the reign of Henry IV, lived the turners of beads who were called Pater Noster Makers; the name of the court may well be explained by the nearness to Old St Paul’s. It was here that Richard Harris Barham lived between 1839 and 1845 whilst he was a minor canon of St Paul’s, and wrote the Ingoldsby Legends. At the far end of the court a piece of the old City wall on Roman foundations divides the gardens of the court from the Old Bailey, formerly the infamous Newgate Prison and immediately on the other side of the wall there was a narrow passage which was, in fact, the Newgate Prison graveyard, for here the criminals were buried in quicklime, after walking along the passage to attend and return from their trials. The whole area was covered with a massive iron grating in those days and was known officially as Birdcage Walk, but to the warders and to the prisoners it was Dead Man’s Walk. Many walked over ground that was to become their graves, and the wall, black with the dirt of ages, formed the perimeter of the prison graveyard.
