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PAUL ROMIEU.
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At this angle of the Bow the original city-wall crossed the line of the street, and there was, accordingly, a gate at this spot,[35] of which the only existing memorial is one of the hooks for the suspension of the hinges, fixed in the front wall of a house, at the height of about five feet from the ground. It is from the arch forming this gateway that the street takes its name, bow being an old word for an arch. The house immediately without this ancient port, on the east side of the street, was occupied, about the beginning of the last century, and perhaps at an earlier period, by Paul Romieu, an eminent watchmaker, supposed to have been one of the French refugees driven over to this country in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This is the more likely, as he seems, from the workmanship of his watches, to have been a contemporary of Tompion, the famous London horologist of the reign of Charles II. In the front of the house, upon the third story, there is still to be seen the remains of a curious piece of mechanism—namely, a gilt ball representing the moon, which was made to revolve by means of a clock.[36]