The most time-honoured structure in City of London is the Tower Bridge that seems designed as a gigantic gateway and portcullis for the port of London. When a once formidable fortress was built here to overawe the City, the East-end could have been at no disadvantage in the way of fashion. For a time, William the Conqueror took his quarters at Barking, now the eastern terminus of the District Railway, then an independent fishing town upon its navigable creek.
Edward the Confessor, whose Buckingham Palace was Westminster, had a Windsor in Essex at Havering-atte-Bower, which long continued to be a home for dowager queens. Mr. Loftie gives the style of the East Minister to the Abbey of St. Mary of Graces on Tower Hill, which seems not to have flourished long, and was turned into an Ordinance Office.
