Every one knows the story of the building of this Priory, and has followed its extraordinary vicissitudes, the destruction of its nave at the dissolution of monasteries, the establishment of a fringe factory in the Lady Chapel, and the splendid and continuous work of restoration which has been going on during the last forty years.  We are thankful that this choir of St. Bartholomew’s Church should have been preserved for future generations as an example of the earliest and most important ecclesiastical buildings in London.  But we are concerned now with this gateway, the beauty of which is partially concealed by the neighbouring shops and dwellings that surround it, as a poor and vulgar frame may disfigure some matchless gem of artistic painting.  Its old stones know more about fairs than do most things.  It shall tell its own history.  You can still admire the work of the Early English builders, the receding orders with exquisite mouldings and dog-tooth ornament—­the hall-mark of the early Gothic artists.  It looks upon the Smithfield market, and how many strange scenes of London history has this gateway witnessed!  Under its arch possibly stood London’s first chronicler, Fitzstephen, the monk, when he saw the famous horse fairs that took place in Smithfield every Friday, which he described so graphically.  Thither flocked earls, barons, knights, and citizens to look on or buy.  The monk admired the nags with their sleek and shining coats, smoothly ambling along, the young blood colts not yet accustomed to the bridle, the horses for burden, strong and stout-limbed, and the valuable chargers of elegant shape and noble height, with nimbly moving ears, erect necks, and plump haunches.  He waxes eloquent over the races, the expert jockeys, the eager horses, the shouting crowds.  “The riders, inspired with the love of praise and the hope of victory, clap spurs to their flying horses, lashing them with their whips, and inciting them by their shouts”; so wrote the worthy monk Fitzstephen.  He evidently loved a horse-race, but he need not have given us the startling information, “their chief aim is to prevent a competitor getting before them.”  That surely would be obvious even to a monk.  He also examined the goods of the peasants, the implements of husbandry, swine with their long sides, cows with distended udders, Corpora magna boum, lanigerumque pecus, mares fitted for the plough or cart, some with frolicsome colts running by their sides.  A very animated scene, which must have delighted the young eyes of the stone arch in the days of its youth, as it did the heart of the monk.