Society for Photographing Relics of Old London.

ASHBURNHAM HOUSE, 1882.

MR. DIXON

IS authorised to offer to Subscribers the following Photographs, which show further details of the Building, but were not considered of sufficient importance to be included in the Series:—

1. DOOR TO ANTE ROOM By INIGO JONES.

2. DITTO DRAWING ROOM SIDE ditto

3. CEILING—DRAWING ROOM ditto

4. CEILING & DOME OF STAIRCASE ditto

The above are quite distinct from the Series of Photographs issued by the Society, but are of the same size and style, and also printed in Permanent Carbon. Price 2/6 each, or 7/6 the set of four.

Remittances to be made to

HENRY DIXON,

112, ALBANY STREET, LONDON, N.W.

May, 1882.

SOCIETY FOR PHOTOGRAPHING RELICS OF OLD LONDON.

Nos. 1 to 6. Issued 1875.

THE "OXFORD ARMS" INN, demolished in 1878, was an excellent example of the galleried Inns now becoming every year more scarce. As was said by a writer in the *Athenæum* of May 20th, 1876: "Despite the confusion, the dirt, and the decay, he who stands in the yard of this ancient Inn may get an excellent idea of what it was like in the days of its prosperity, when not only travellers in coach or saddle rode into or out of the yard, but poor players and mountebanks set up their stage for the entertainment of spectators, who hung over the galleries or looked on from their rooms—a name by which the boxes of a theatre were first known." The "Oxford Arms" was situate, as shown in No. 3, at the end of a short lane leading out of the west side of Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row. The buildings were disposed on four sides of a large courtyard, being bounded on the west by the old City Wall.

But little is known of the history of the "Oxford Arms." That it existed before the Great Fire is proved by an advertisement in the *London Gazette* for March, 1672-3, quoted in Cunningham's *Handbook of London*—"These are to give notice that Edward Bartlet, Oxford Carrier, hath removed his Inn in London from the Swan at Holborn Bridge to the Oxford Armes in Warwick Lane, where he did Inn before the Fire. His coaches and wagons going forth on their usual days, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Frydays. He hath also a Hearse, with all things convenient to carry a Corps to any part of England." The Inn was within the area of the Fire, in which it no doubt perished, being rebuilt, however, a few years later on the old plan. In Strype's *Stow* we read that the "Oxford Arms" was much frequented by persons attending the Market, i.e., Newgate Market, close by.

Up to the time of its close it still did a considerable carriers' business, carts daily leaving the Inn for Oxford and other places. An old servant of the Inn told the writer that, in the days before railroads, he had frequently seen wagons drawn by nine horses leave the Inn, a portion of the goods being packed after the Inn yard had been cleared. It must have needed careful handling to get such a team and such a load safely round the corner of the narrow street. Mr. Samuel Hill, who has kindly communicated most of the above, says that the sumptuous furniture of the Inn was sold in 1868, since which time its many rooms were let out in tenements. The site is now occupied by the new buildings and gardens of the Minor Canons of St. Paul's.

Warwick Lane still contains the vestiges of another old Inn, the "Bell," reduced now to a mere receiving office. Here, in 1684, died Archbishop Leighton, who thus obtained what he had often desired, frequently saying that if he were to choose a place to die in, it should be an Inn.

As to the name "Warwick Lane," two passages in Stow's *Survey* give pictures so curious to read in this nineteenth century, that it is impossible to resist the temptation to quote them. "Then is Eldenese Lane, which stretcheth north to the high street of Newgate Market; the same is now called Warwicke Lane, of an ancient house there built by an Earl of Warwicke, and was since called Warwicke Lane. It is in record called a messuage in Eldenese Lane, in the Parish of St. Sepulchre, the 28th of Henry VI." (p. 128.) Warwick Square now stands on the site of this house. This also: "Nearer to our time, I read, in the 36th of Henry VI., that the greater estates of the realm being called up to London, . . . . Richard Nevill, Earl of Warwick," came "with six hundred men, all in red jackets, embroidered with ragged staves before and behind, and was lodged in Warwicke Lane; in whose house there was oftentimes six oxen eaten at a breakfast, and every tavern was full of his meat; for he that had any acquaintance in that house might have there so much of sodden and roast meat as he could prick and carry upon a long dagger." (p. 33.)

Nos. 1 and 3 show the Entrance of the Inn; the first looking from Warwick Lane, the latter towards it.

Nos. 2 and 3 show the Inn Yard from different points of view. The reader will not fail to notice the picturesque staircases and galleries.

No. 4.—The Upper Gallery, on the east side, seen lengthwise.

No. 5.—One of the Staircases, on an enlarged scale.

No. 6 gives a general view of the Galleries, with St. Paul's in the background, taken, by kind permission of Mr. Alderman Ellis, then Sheriff, from the windows of the Old Bailey.

March, 1881.

A. M.

Nos. 13 to 18. Issued 1877.

LOTH FAIR, though it has undergone alterations in recent years, still preserves, far beyond any other portion of London, medieval characteristics. There are here narrow walled lanes, where two persons can pass one another with difficulty. In another lane the occupants of the houses could literally, and without danger or difficulty, shake hands from the windows on opposite sides of the way. The explorer may thread covered passages from which he can note details of domestic life passing within easy ken. That houses built so closely, and of such inflammable materials, should have survived to the present day seems little short of marvellous.

The object of the present series is not to give a record of the Church itself. The noble work of the interior, its massive Norman arches, grand proportions and magnificent tombs, could be far better rendered by the art of the etcher. Our aim—and we may in future numbers return to the subject, by no means exhausted in this set—has rather been to show the picturesque manner in which ecclesiastical and civil buildings are, as it were, dovetailed together in this quaintest nook of Old London.

Vast as the existing Church is, it is little more than one-third of the Priory founded in the twelfth century. At the dissolution of monasteries, so much of the Priory Church as had not been demolished was assigned as the Parish Church to the inhabitants of the great Close of St. Bartholomew.

Cloth Fair derives its name from the famous Bartholomew Fair, held within the precinct of the Priory. This was for several centuries the great cloth fair of England, "to the which," says Stow, "the clothiers of all England and drapers of London repaired, and had their booths and standings within the churchyard of this Priory, closed in with walls and gates, locked every night and watched, for safety of men's goods and wares. . . . But now, notwithstanding all proclamations of the Prince, and also the Act of Parliament, in place of booths within this churchyard (only let out in the fair time, and closed up all the year after), be many large houses built and the north wall towards Long Lane taken down, a number of tenements are there erected for such as will give great rents." (p. 141.) Till within the last fifty years Cloth Fair was still chiefly occupied by tailors, clothiers, &c. (Allen's *London*, iii., 658.) The importance of Bartholomew Fair as a cloth fair fell off from the time of Elizabeth, but it continued to flourish as a "pleasure" fair, traces of which existed up to quite recent years.

Nos. 13 and 14 show the Churchyard occupying the site of the nave of the ancient Church. A passage of Stow shows us this Churchyard in a light which seems singular indeed to us:—"I myself," he writes, "in my youth have yearly seen, on the eve of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, the scholars of divers grammar schools repair unto the Churchyard of St. Bartholomew, the Priory in Smithfield, where, upon a bank boarded about under a tree, some one scholar hath stepped up, and there hath opposed and answered" (about the principles of grammar) "till he were by some better scholar overcome and put down; and then the overcomer taking the place, did like as the first; and in the end the best opposers and answerers had rewards, which I observed not, but it made both good schoolmasters, and also good scholars, diligently against such times to prepare themselves for the obtaining of this garland." (p. 28.)

No. 15 gives a view of the "Green Churchyard," occupying the site of the old south transept. It is reached by a flight of stairs from the level of the interior of the Church.

No. 16 shows a Window at the east end of the Church and the Boys' School, built over the north aisle of the choir.

No. 17 shows the North Side of the Church and the "Poors' Churchyard."

No. 18.—The former view reversed.

Accounts of St. Bartholomew will be found in Wilkinson's *Londina Illustrata*; in a paper by Professor Lewis in *Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society*, vol. iii.; and of the Fair in Professor Morley's *Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair*.

*March, 1881.*

A. M.

Nos. 97 to 108. Issued 1885.

Of all the nooks and corners of old London, few are more picturesque and interesting than the Inns of Court, with their old buildings, quiet courts, and trim gardens. It is well to enjoy, while we may, what is yet left of them. It would almost seem as if the authorities were bent on carrying out, to the letter, the behest of Jack Cade: "Now go, some, and pull down the Savoy; and others to the Inns of Court! Down with them all!" Serjeant's Inn and Clement's Inn have been sold, and it is said that the Ancients of Staple Inn, Barnard's Inn, and even Clifford's Inn have followed suit. Rumours of the intended destruction of the Gatehouse of Lincoln's Inn, and of the sale to building speculators of Barnard's Inn, caused the issue, in earlier series, of views of these buildings. It is hoped that the present series will be deemed to complete the record of what is most interesting in the Inns of Court.

THE TEMPLE.

It is just 700 years ago, in this year of Grace, 1885, since Heraclitus, the Patrician of Jerusalem, consecrated the beautiful church of the New Temple on the banks of the Thames, to which the Knights Templars were removed from their first house in Holborn, near the site of Staple Inn. On the overgrowth of the Templars, Edward II., in 1313, gave the New Temple to Aymer de Valence. It subsequently passed to the Knights Hospitaliers of St. John of Jerusalem (whose chief house in England was in Clerkenwell), and was then passed to students of the law. At the dissolution of religious houses, these students became the tenants of the Crown, and, in the reign of James I., the whole of the buildings of the two Temples were granted to the Benchers for ever, for lodging, reception, and education of the professors and students of the law.

Nos. 97 to 99.—INNER TEMPLE.

The first view shows the Gatehouse, a building of the time of James I. The spoils of feathers in the panels between the first and second floors were intended as a compliment to Henry, Prince of Wales. The statement conveyed by the inscription surrounding the picture of a "hair-cutting saloon," that this was "formerly the Palace of Henry VIII., and Cardinal Wolsey"—not merely a Palace, but the Palace—must be taken as an example of unusually "bold advertising." The asset, "the symbol of the Church," can only be accounted for supposing that the author of the inscription confused this Gatehouse with that of the Middle Temple, with which, as will be seen further on, Wolsey's name is indeed connected.

The second view (No. 98) shows what was formerly known as Churchyard-court, a name which has disappeared since the rebuilding of the only Chambers reached from it, which have been re-named after Goldsmith. The court lies to the north of the Temple Church; the house against which the tombs are placed is that of the Master of the Temple. The tomb with the recurrent figure is that of John Hiccock; that with the bust, of Samuel Hiccock, both removed from the church (Allen's History of London, IV., 400). The tomb in the foreground is that of Oliver Goldsmith, placed here in 1860. The great writer was actually buried in this Churchyard, but the exact position of his grave is uncertain.

The third view (No. 99) shows the doorway of No. 5, King's Bench Walk. It is the best of four somewhat similar style, the others being plainer. Over the doorway of No. 4 is the following inscription, divided by triglyphs :—

Confraternity
Richard
Richard

An
677
Powell

Fabricum
Amiger
Tresadour*

An
1678
Powell

They are very good examples of the cut and rubbed brickwork recommended for ornament by the authorities after the Great Fire (Noorthouck's History of London, Appendix XLIX., p. 849). Lord Mansfield, when Mr. Murray, occupied chambers in this house, which is the number five of Pope's *Ode to Venus* :—

"To number five direct your doves,
There spread round your walls all your blooming loves."

Nos. 100 to 102.—MIDDLE TEMPLE.

The Gatehouse (No. 100), which is Wren's, bears the following inscription: "SYRVREXIT IMPENS SOC M TEMPLI MDCLXXXIV," which date is repeated under the figure of the lamb over the entrance. The gatehouse replaced by Wren's structure was erected by Sir Amias Paulet, who, before Wolsey came to be a great man, had put the future of Jerusalem (whose chief house in England was in Clerkenwell) over the Cardinal revenues of the King, and then, when the King was dead, the King's House, which was then a great building, was raised over it, and the gatehouse, a Quadrangle, wherein grow several lofty Trees, and without are Walks extending on every side of the Quadrangle, all paved with Purbeck, very pleasant and delightful (*New View of London, II., 786*). The stream must surely have shrunk since Hatton's day, and alterations in late years have not improved the surroundings of the gatehouse. Fountain Court is still, however, "very pleasant and delightful." Readers of this notes will not need to be reminded that this spot was a great favourite with Dickens. Here it was that Tom Pinch, coming out of the Temple, used to meet his sister Ruth. (*Martin Chazleworth, chap. xlv.*).

Middle Temple Hall (No. 102), one of the finest works of the Renaissance in England, was built between 1562 and 1572; the date 1570 appears in the window shown in the photograph. This date destroys the tradition that the screen was built from the spoils of the Spanish Armada, which put to sea only several years later. In addition to her beauty, the Hall has a great claim on our interest, in that the first record we have of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is contained in an entry in the diary of a student of the Middle Temple of a performance of the play in this Hall:—"Feb. 2, 1604 (1601-1602)." At our feast we had a play called 'Twelfth Night, or What you Will,' much like the 'Comedy of Errors'; or Menemchi in 'Plautus'; but more like and neere to that in Italian, called 'Inganni.' A good practice in it to make the steward believe his lady widowde was in love with him, by counterfaying a letter as from his lady, in general terms, telling him what she liked best in him, and pre- senting him with a smile, smiling, and then, if he would not take it, he would take it to be true. (Collier's *Shakespeare*, III., 317, quoted in Cunningham's *Handbook*.) In illustration of these "feasts" or revells held in the Inns of Court, Cunningham mentions that in taking up the floor of this Hall about 1764, nearly 100 pairs of small dice were found, that had fallen through the chinks in the floor. The barable might seen in the picture represents Plowden, who was Treasurer of the Inn when the present Hall was built.

Nos. 103 and 104.—GRAY'S INN.

Gray's Inn takes its name from Edmund, Lord Gray of Wilton, by whom, in 1505, the Manor of Portpote, otherwise called Gray's Inn, four messages, four gardens, the site of a windmill, eight acres of land, ten shillings of free rent, and the advection of the Chantrey of Portpote were sold to Hugh Denny. From him the manor passed to the Prior and Convent of East Sheen. They leased it to certain students of the law, who became tenants of the Crown when the property was seized on the suppression of religious houses. The great Lord Bacon had chambers here, from which he dates the dedication of his "Essays." The garden, which is partly shown in the view of Field Court, was first planted in 1600, and as Bacon was then Treasurer of the Society it is not too much to assume that the

author of the essay "Of Gardens" had a great deal to do with its planning. These gardens, which continued to have an uninterrupted view of Hampstead and Highgate (see notes on No. 21), were long a fashionable promenade.

Gray's Inn Hall (No. 104) was built in 1560. As will be seen, it resembles in character and arrangement the Halls of the Charterhouse (Nos. 41-44), and of the Middle Temple, (No. 102); all three are indeed of nearly the same age. There is a tradition that the tables partly shown in the photograph were presented by Queen Elizabeth, whose "glorious, pious, and immortal memory" is solemnly drunk here on grand days.

No. 105.—CLEMENT'S INN—GARDEN HOUSE.

Clement's Inn was so named, according to Stow, "because it standeth near to St. Clement's Church, but nearer to the fair fountain called Clement's Well" (page 166). According to Fitzstephen, Clement's Well (fons Sancti Clementis), Holy Well, and Clerks' Well were the most famous of the springs near the City, "frequented by scholars and youts of the City on summer evenings when they walk forth to take the air." Even in Stow's time the Well was "fair curbed square with hard stone, kept clean for common use, and always full" (p. 73); and Cunningham ("Handbook," ed. 1850) says that "the well supplies a pump." "I was once of Clement's Inn," says, in Shakespeare's "Henry IV.," Justice Supplement, "the most notable student of whom the Inn can boast."

The photograph shows the well-known Garden House, with the trim lawn before it and the sun-dial, sold in 1884 by the Ancients for twenty guineas. The background on the right shows a portion of New Inn, where the great Sir Thomas More studied. The Doric pilasters and the cornices of the ground and first floors of Garden House seem to show that it is generally of an earlier date than would be inferred from the windows and balconies. The second story is also a much later addition. The figure of the Moor supporting the sun-dial was presented to the Inn by Holles, Lord Clare, who brought it from Italy. Highlow speaks with enthusiasm of the residence of this family in the neighbourhood, which is now a very poor quarter :—"Then is there toward Drewry Lane, a new Market, called Clare Market; then is there a Street and Palace of the same name, built by the Earl of Clare, who lives there in a princely manner, having a House, a Street, and a Market, both for flesh and fish, all bearing his name." (*Londinopolis, p. 345*).

No. 106.—CLIFFORD'S INN.

Clifford's Inn is called after the family of that name, the widow of Robert de Clifford having let it to a society of law students about the year 1337. The arrangement of the small garden is, as the reader will observe, singularly like that of Gray's Inn.

No. 107.—STAPLE INN HALL.

"Then is Staple Inn," says Stow, "but whereof so named I am ignorant." A tradition would make this the Inn of the Merchants of the Staple. The Hall—"a fayre hall of brick"—was rebuilt, as we learn from Sir George Buc (quoted in Cunningham's *Handbook*), about 1630. The doorway, it is said, of "Strawberry Hill Gothic," bears the date 1753. A photograph in this series (No. 24) showed the Holborn front of Staple Inn.

No. 108.—SIX SMALL SUBJECTS.

The photograph at the top, on the left-hand, as from a figure at the corner of Warwick Lane, described by Pennant in a passage to which reference is made by an inscription on the stone, added when the figure was restored in 1817:—"A small, neat statue of Guy, Earl of Warwick, renowned in the days of King Athelstan for killing the Danish giant, Colbrand, and performing numbers of other exploits, the delight of my childish days. This statue is in miniature the same with that in the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, in Guy's-cliff, near Warwick."

The figure below it, of a boy on what may be a pannier, is in Panyer Alley, Newgate Street. The stone bears the following inscription :—

WHEN 'Y HAVE SOVGH*
THE CITY ROVND
YET STILL THIS IS
THE HIGHS' GROVND
AVGYSTS THE 27
1688.

As Stow says that the Alleyn was called Panyer Alley "of such a sign," it is not unlikely that the present stone was erected here in place of an earlier one of the same kind.

The figure of a Pelican is from the front of a house in Aldermansbury. Archer, who in his *Vestiges of Old London* has engraved this and the figure in Panyer Alley, says that the Pelican is the crest of two merchants who formerly occupied the house, Richard Chander, who died in 1691, and his brother John, who died in 1686. Their monument with the same crest is in the neighbouring Church of St. Mary, Aldermansbury.

The figure of Queen Elizabeth is a relief of Ludgate. In 1760 it was determined, as part of a large scheme for improving the City, to take down the Gates, "which under the alterations in the art of war could be of no present security to the inhabitants, and being heavy construction numbers standing across the street, which had been constructed the free current of air, which in great cities ought to be favoured by all possible methods" (Noorthouck's *History*, p. 399). The inscription records that the statue stood on the west side of Ludgate, and that it was given by the City to Sir Francis Gosling, Knight, Alderman, who caused it to be placed here—on the old Church, that is, of St. Dunstan's in the West, the existing Church, to which the statue was transferred, having been built in 1831-3.

Everyone will recognise the little figure of a naval officer taking an observation, as that of the Wooden Midshipman of *Domby & Son*, removing a cwm year ago from Leadenhall Street to the Minories. The figure and its associations are the subject of a very interesting paper by Mr. J. Ashby-Sterry, in *All the Year Round* for October 29, 1881.

The last of these small subjects is another relic, very little known, of the City gates, of which, so far as is known to me, this and the state of Queen Elizabeth are the only existing remains. The old Gate of London Bridge being greatly damaged by fire in 1725, was taken down and a new gate built. This new gate was demolished with the other City gates, in 1760, and the materials sold by auction. "At which sale the fine old sculpture of the Royal Arms was bought with some other articles by a Mr. Williams, a stonemason, of Tooley-street, who being soon after employed . . . to form the present King Street in the Borough, introduced several of the old Gate materials in erecting it. The ancient Royal Arms, too, are yet to be seen in the front of the bridge in a public-house on the right-hand side of the same street" (*Chronicles of London Bridge, by An Antiquary*, p. 488). The name of the street is now Newcomen Street. The arms are shown in a view of Bridge gate engraved for Noorthouck's *History of London* (p. 543), with the inscription "G R."

April, 1885.

A. M.