If you head East along Leadenhall or Fenchurch street you'll eventually come to a junction where those two thoroughfares meet. It's where there used to be a gate into the old City of London that guarded the old Roman road to Colchester. "Alde" is old English for "Old", giving Aldgate or "Old-Gate", one of the 7 ancient gates in the original Roman wall that surrounded London which can still be seen in some places. At the junction stands an old water pump which used to sit on top of an ancient well called "St Michael's Well" it's been mentioned as early as the reign of King John (1200s) The well is famous for two reasons, firstly it signifies the start of the official "East End" (the dark-side of London) and secondly for an infamous epidemic.
The well used to be served by several underground streams and the water was praised for being "bright and sparkling", what people didn't realise was that the "sparkle" came from the leaching of Calcium from the bones of dead people and decaying organic matter. In the 1860s hundreds of people died in what became known as the "Aldgate Pump Epidemic" as the water became more and more polluted from the corpses of the overcrowded London graveyards all the way up to Hampstead. Eventually, in 1876, the pump was connected to the mains supply and the problem was resolved.
One other interesting fact is that on the front of the pump is a bronze figure of a Wolf's head, the story goes that the original pump was located near the spot where the last Wolf in London was shot, hard to prove but evocative never the less!
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