186
IZAAK WALTON'S ASSOCIATION WITH THE RIVER LEA.
I have now, in a very cursory manner, travelled with you up and
down the county, exploring the buildings the dates of the erection
of which are spread over a period of sixteen centuries. My object
has been to point out to you the main characteristics of each period
of architecture. The limit of an hour has scarcely been enough to
enable me to do more than to touch, in the lightest manner, the
peculiarities of each period, but if the few remarks I have been able
to put together will induce even one person present to study the
subject more closely I shall have been amply rewarded.
IZAAK WALTON'S ASSOCIATION WITH THE
RIVER LEA.
WITH SOME NOTES ON THE FORMER EXISTENCE OF
SALMON IN THAT RIVER.
By J. E. HARTING, F.L.S., F.Z.S.
[Read at Meeting on River Lea, July 14th, 1894.]
IT is impossible to wander along the Lea from its source towards
the metropolis, and visit such places as Ware, Amwellbury,
Hoddesdon, Broxbourne, Theobalds, or Tottenham, without being
reminded at every turn of the genial author of "The Complete
Angler," who two hundred and fifty years ago, as he tells us, "in
such days and times as he could lay aside business," was in the
habit of visiting these and other places on the river for the purpose
of fishing.
He must have been a good pedestrian, for (except when on a
visit to his friend Cotton in Dovedale) he makes no mention of a
journey on horseback, and in those days there were no railways or
steam barges (as on the present occasion) to help him on his way.
Izaak Walton was not a Londoner bred and born, though he
spent a great part of his life there. He was born at Stafford in
1593, and at the age of twenty came to London where he was
apprenticed to a sempster (or haberdasher as he would now be called)
in Whitechapel.
Sir John Hawkins (one of the earliest editors of "The Complete
Angler") thought that Walton was first settled at the Royal Exchange,
but in the opinion of Sir Harris Nicholas (the editor of Pickering's
fine edition of this work) there is no evidence to support such
surmise. Walton removed from Whitechapel to Fleet Street—to a