FADING ::2QS OKIY — \ ■h txt^ v/.» THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES Publishers' Notr. This Book, Issued at 3/6, and Raised to 7/6 ON Publication, is allowed Gratis to Subscribers towards the work of the Survey Committee. At the close of the Year the Price of the Remaining Copies will be further raised. There are Twelve Sets of Illustrations separately struck, which may be had at 10/6 THE SET. The Stones are Destroyed. Hi^iaitttiiift/U !}: THE TRINITY HOSPITAL IN • • MILE end: an object lesson IN NATIONAL HISTORY, BY • • C. R. ASHBEE, M.A., ARCHITECT. 'BEi:^(G THE Fn{ST Mo:^(p- G\APH OF THE COM- MIllEE FOR TH6 SURVEY OF THE MEMORIALS OF GREATER LONDON. "PUBLISHED Sr THE gUIL'B &> SCHOOL OF ha:ht>ic%aft, essex house, bow, lo:ht>on, e. 1896. THE COMMITTEE FOR THE SURVEY OF THE MEMORIALS OF GREATER LONDON. Ce'i 7 The Late LORD LEIGHTON was Presidenv of the Committee. HONORARY MEMBERS. W. .\D.\MS. Mrs. H. S. ASHBEE. B. T. B.\TSKORD. E, W. BROOKS. .\. G. BROWNING, F.S.A. R M. BURCH. The Right Hon. LORD CARLINGFORD. W. CARPENTER. G. CHAMBERS. WALTER CRANE. Miss S. DUCKWORTH. F. M. DXJTTON. The Rev. J P. FAUNTHORPE. GEORGE FRAMPTON, A.R.A. Dr. RICKMAN J. GODLEE. The Rev. W. GOODCHILD. 1. C. GOULD. Professor J. W. HALES. A. J. HOLLINGTON, L C C Mrs. HOPE. H. P. HOPGOOD. H. L. HOPKINSON. Mrs. E. HUBBARD. The Rev. J. E. KELSALL, MA. The Rev. J. KENNEDY, MA. H. LUXMORE. C. J. ^LAKSHALL, A R.LB.A. The Right Hon. THE E.\RL OF ME.ATH J.T.MICKLETHWAITE.F S A. Mrs. MITCHELL. F. D MOCATTA. THEO. MOORE, A.R.I.B.A. WILLIAM MORRIS. ERNEST W MOUNTFORD, F.R.I.B.A. A. J MUNBY. F. MURRAY. PHILIP NORM.AN. The Rev. J. P. NOYES, MA. GEO PITT. W G. R.AWLINSON. J. S. REDMAYNE. E. R. ROBSON, F.R.I B A. W. K SHIRLEY. TheHon.LYULPH ST.\NLEY. J. J. STEVENSON. Miss STONE R. G. TATTON. W. THOMPSON. T. THORNTON. HAMO THORNYCROFT, R.A. The Right Hon. LORD TREDEGAR. Mrs. THACKERAY TURNER. J. A. C. VINCENT. J. HUMPHREY WARD J. WELLS, MA ACTIVE MEMBERS. C. R. ASHBEE, M.A.. Chairman of the Committtt. JOS. ALDRIDGE. W. ASHFORD. The Rev. G. B. ATKINSON, M.A. F. BAINES. M.AX BALFOUR. Sir WALTER BES.\NT. CECIL BREWER SPEDDING CUKWEN,J.P. A. DUNBAR-SMITH. M.\TT. G.ARBUTT, A.R.I.B.A. H. LOWERISON. E. T. MARRIOTT, HA. F. E. MASEV. THKO. MOORE, A.R.I.B.A. A. E. NUTTER. W. E. SEDGWICK. F. R. TAYLOR. ALFRED P. WIRE. E. W M. WONNACOTT. ERNEST GODMAN, Sccrttary of the Committtt. THE Committee was formed in 1S94. Its object is to watch and register what still remains of beautiful or historic work in Greater London, and to bring such influence to bear from time to time as shall save it from destruclion or lead to its utilization for public purposes. THE Committee is at present engaged in compiling a Register in which every interesting memorial within the radius treated is recorded, together with a series of illustrated monographs on the more interesting buildings. Of this series the present volume is the first issue. ADDITIONS to the Committee are welcomed either as honorary (i.e., subscribing) members, or as active members, who are prepared to visit buildings and assist in the making of the Register. Subscribing or a(5tive membership entitles to possession of the publications. Those desirous of joining the Committee in either capacity, or of obtaining copies of the forthcoming Register, should send in their names to the Secretary, Mr. Ernest Godman, Essex House, Bow, E. /? r^'^.ity >'•.»?« r.o FOLATE -2 PLATE'S- • PREFATORY NOTE. WHILE these sheets are being completed in the press, the announce- ment appears that the Charity Commissioners have decided to dismiss the petition of the Corporation of Trinity House for the breaking up of the Hospital, and the consequent destruction of the Almshouses. The decision is conveyed in a letter carefully drawn up, and published in The Times of Wednesday, May 27th, iSg6, and the reasons given for not sanctioning the proposal are stated as two (i) That there has been no insufficiency of endowment ; (2) That there has been no failure of Trusts. It v.-ill not unreasonably be asked, would the decision of the Com- missioners have been the same had there not been so great a public outcry against the destruction of the Hospital. THE letter contains a v/ise and valuable judgment ; hut it avoids, and doubtless rightly from the immediate point of view- of the Commissioners, any direct reference to the greater questions of National History, public health and beauty, and the maintenance of the original intentions of the founders. These questions are usually dismissed as sentimental ; but may it not be pleaded from the public point of view, and v.ithout in any way impugning the grounds on which the Commissioners have based their judgment, that the maintenance or destrudlion of any national memorial should in future be treated on the broadest public grounds ? C. R. ASHBEE. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS BY MEM- BERS OF THE WATCH COMMITTEE AND OTHERS. PLATB I. Plan of the whole site. Mr. J. Allen Mr. Ernest Godman General view. Mr. Matt. Garbutt Mr. J. Allen Front Elevation Elevation of E. Wing Plan of front Wall Elevation of East Gable Stone Ship on Gable ends Mr. J. Allen 34 & 35 .. 4&5 .. 6 & 7 8 5. Detail of Mouldings. Mr. J. Allen 30 & 31 6. Elevation of Chapel with sections. Mr. Ernest Godman ... 14 & 15 7. Stained Glass in S.E. Window (coloured). Mr. Ernest Godman 22 & 23 8. Stained Glass in S.W. Window (coloured). Mr. Ernest Godman 24 & 25 g. Statue of Captain Maples. Mr. Max Balfour ... 10. Statue of Captain Sandes. Mr. Max Balfour ... 11. Reading Room (interior). Mr. Max Balfour 12. Two Old Captains playing Drafts Mr. Max Balfour ... 13. Sketch from the Governor's Room. Mr. Joseph Pennell (Kindly lent to the Committee by the Editor of the Daily CItnviicli.) 26 20 18 28 Frontispiece Sir Richard Browne's Arms. From a photo, by Mr. F. R. Taylor ... 17 j Pterr- Mcrc LiTMO sr-A«c;j( » C* ■ > t t ikST •I'KOmc rr TTt» ■.•■■t B c ElL.E:>2VnOJH ■ OF • E A^T • WlJVCi • n CHAPTER I. THE PURPOSE OF THE MONOGRAPH. THE endeavour of the following Monograph is to give a description of a famous London building, to trace its relation to certain periods of national life, and to show what it may be regarded as implying to us historically and aesthetically at the present day. MOST great architecture bears upon it the mark of what is best in the founda. national character that gives birth to it, and its purpose is always distinct trinity^"^ and appropriate. The Trinity Hospital, or College, built in the reign of »°s"'^'^^- William HI., in 1695, shares this appropriateness with other great English buildings, and up to the present day ser\-es the wise and beneficent purpose for which it was originally erected. What, however, gives the Hospital in i\Iile End its peculiar historic interest, is that it remains the only memorial left to us of the Trinity Corporation, or, as it would be more correct to call it, the Guild of the Trinity House, in the time when the Guild was actually the English Navy. From the day of Henry VHL to the day of James H., from the time of Sir Thomas Spert, the traditional founder, to the time of Mr. Secretary Pepys, the English Navy either actually is synonymous with the Trinity Guild, or is guided and watched over from the Trinity House of Deptford Strond. The little group of buildings on the Waste are the only remaining record of the work of the Guild at the time of its greatest influence and authority, and they combine in themselves the two vitally important traditions, that of the Navy Office Jf%i,^yf,i^ with its little official Board under the later Stuarts, out of which sprang ^^^d^,?1-o^?s^ the Admiralty, and the Guild tradition of the middle ages, which brought with it the element of charity and fellowship. It was in the conception of this later tradition that the hospital was built, by those who were working out the destinies of the earlier, and it will be seen that the architecture is expressive of both. IN its style and external characteristics, the building is classic, of the period of Sir Christopher Wren, in its planning and general disposition it is still mediaeval. The endowments and the bequests of the site are of the Stuart time, but the nature and manner of endowing are in spirit many centuries earlier, and the buildings are built on the model of an earlier set at Deptford, now destroyed, which, in their turn, very probably replaced a yet earlier foundation. The character of the middle ages is evidenced in the planning of the Collegium, the little open court walled off, with the chapel at the end for service, and the manner and purpose of the Charity, as we shall presently see, was in no wise Stuart, but entirely mediaeval. TO trace this dual relationship between the existing buildings and the two periods of English history to which they owe their origin, it will be necessary to briefly review such of the functions of the Trinity Corporation as may be considered to have given rise to the Hospital. 8 CHAPTER II. THE TRINITY COLLEGE AS A RECORD OF THE MIDDLE AGES. MR. BARRETT in his book on the Trinity House^ has already written the history of the Corporation so carefully, that little or nothing remains to be said, but he has not, I think, done justice to the Hospital, nor has he sufficiently brought out the historical importance of what is left of the Corporation's olcl world records in brick and stone. What I wish to do here is to trace the connection between the historical idea underlying the institution of the Hospital, and the mediaeval principles of the Mariners' Guild of Deptford, to which the Corporation owes its origin, and to discover in so doing what were the essentially mediaeval principles in the spirit of which the Hospital was founded. To do this more satisfactorily, we may first of all compare the constitution and functions of the Deptford Guild with those of other Maritime Guilds in mediaeval sea towns, notably those dedicated to the Trinity, and yet remaining to us under the name of Trinity Houses. We shall find that for the most part they possess certain features in common. THE IT is not here necessary to go into the question of the remoter origin of CHARTER OF . . ^ . HENRY viii. the Guilds, or to consider whether they were or were not of Teutonic growth. Suffice it that, in the middle ages, they represented what we may term the Teutonic principle of voluntary Association, and different trades and occupations formed themselves into societies bearing distindl characteristics. The Tradition held since the beginning of the 17th cen- tury and confirmed by the memorial in Stepne}^ Church as to the founding of the Deptford Guild by Sir Thomas Spertf appears to me to be quite compatible with the existence of an earlier Guild, and this the Charter of Henry VIII. J would seem to prove. "And further" says the adl of Henry VIII. "we have granted to our said liege people and subjects {i.e., the existing Guild), that they may have and enjoy all and singular the Liberties, Franchises, and Privileges, which their Predecessors, the Shipmen or Mariners of this our Realm of England, ever had, used or enjoyed. And also that they may have and hold to them, and their successors, all the lands and tenements which they now have in Deptford Strond aforesaid, of the gift or grant of whatsoever person or persons.'' poRATWN.'*" WHAT took place in the reign of Henry VIII., then, was merel}' a re-modelling or re-incorporation, one of those periodical re-incorporations by which the Guilds adapted themselves to changing social conditions, and while not accepting altogether Mr. Barrett's view that " the Guild was incorporated as a consequence of the wise naval policy of Henry VIII.," I think it may be safely stated that Sir Thomas Spert, who, according to • Barrett's History of the Trinity House of Deptford Strond, London, 1893. t Which memorial however was erefted in 1622, 81 years after his death. t The ad of Henry VHL exempUtied by George in S^e the Royal Charter granted to the Trinity House, 1763. 8vo. in the British Museum. PLATE -4 WmT-IMifr. hen « * a SCMX. H — h— H — I — I — I — 1:^-1—1 — I— I — T the inscription on the monument, was Controller of the Nav)', was Master of the Guild at the time of its re-incorporation, and that in accordance with the general policy of Henr}' VIII. the existing Guild that controlled the mouth of the Thames, as the Hull Guild controlled the mouth of the Humber, and the Newcastle Guild the mouth of the T3-ne, was re-modelled with slight variations in its mediaeval constitution in 1514. It is much to be regretted that the Charters that might have established these facts have been destroyed by fire, but we may safely assume the existence of the earlier mediaeval fraternity, and an inspection of the records left to us of the other Trinity Guilds devoted to naval purposes in other parts of the Kingdom, will give us a fairly complete picture of what the mediaeval Guild down to the Stuart time must have been like. WE find then that there were Associations of this nature, and of which JJiH^er^ we have records, in the principal sea-faring towns of mediaeval England, houses. in Newcastle, Boston, Hull, Lynn, Sleaford, Wisbeach and Wyngale, and their nature, purpose, and function is for the most part the same. They are voluntary associations of mariners, they fulfil the purpose of burial and benefit clubs, they are religious in character, and also social, they undertake in varying degrees the duties of the port, sea or fen water with which their members come in contact, and when need offers, they act as coast defence, in other words, they are Royal Marine and Navy. EWCASTLE TRINITY. TO take first the Trinity Guild of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, we find that J.^e it purchases its present House in 1492, and pays a red rose 3^early every mid-summer for ever as quit money, and throughout the Tudor period it exercises similar privileges to those allowed by Henry VIII. to the London Guild. In 1536 the King grants it a new Charter, gives it license to build and embattle two towers as lighthouses, and confirms its rights of pilotage and primage. In 1584, it becomes the Trinity House of Newcastle, and from successive Kings receives local privileges similar to those granted to the Trinity House in London. IN Boston we have another Trinity Guild who had their Hall and did IJ,'g ^011°^ duty towards " the better maintenance of the Bridge and Port of Boston. "• tkimties. In Hull was a very famous Trinity of whose founding we have a record in 1369. A group of some thirty worthy folk of Hull come together and form a fraternity, which, like those of Newcastle, and Boston, and Deptford, ultimately becomes the Corporation of Trinity House and legislates in matters of seamanship. There are brothers and sisters who form the benefit and burial club, they agree to meet regularly at the Church of the Holy Trinity, or submit to the wax fine, and they make regulations for the maintenance of any of their number in old age or infirmity, even to the tunic and the little cap at the feast of St. Martin. IN Lynn, the great mediaeval Merchants' City of the East, the Trinity thelv?*^ Guild occupied a most important position. In the reign of John one of its members was mayor of the town, and at the time of the Reformation,- - for we may estimate the wealth of Guilds by the number of Chaplains they • Walford, "Guilds." lO THE WYNGALE TRINITY. THE WISBEACH TRINITY. DEPTFORD TRINITY. supported and gave Henrj' VIII. the opportunity of suppressing — its wealth must have been very^ great, for it maintained thirteen. THE Guild of the Holy Trinit}- of Wyngale again gives us a record from 1387, and we find rules laid down for keeping up lights, and for the searching of the bodies of the drowned. THE most interesting of all the records of Guilds dedicated to the Trinity, is that of \\'isbeach, which appears to have been founded in the reign of Richard II. (1379), and which did many years of good work in keeping out the sea and saving the fen countr}' from inun- dations. This Guild has left us a minute account of its receipts and expenditure for the first few years of its existence. The Christmas feast, the cost of the image of the Trinity, and the pay to the plasterers for putting it up ; the removal of the Parclos ; the beer for the workmen, the woollen cloths for the hoods that came all the way from London for the brethren, and the expenses of a certain grand Guild feast, at which it would seem that apparel for ten dancers had to be purchased — all are recorded, not to mention the cost of the many delightful things with which the hall was ornamented. As might have been expected, the expenditure exceeded the income, and so a levy had to be raised, which, says the chronicler, " ought to be paid by the sixty-seven brethren, viz., each of them 5d. ; and thus there would remain is. ii^d. (no mean sum !), which the said brothers expended in wine before they departed, and so, from the account, nothing remains. Amen." THERE are also a variety of other entries from time to time, records of local government, the maintenance of the fen-dyke against inundations, judicial business, the institution of a school, matters of benefit, burial, and alms, and among them in 1477 " for the salvation of the soul of Thomas Blower" the entry of a bequest of "one new edifice called the Almshouse, built and situate in the New Market of Wisbeach."* FROM the character of these various Guilds, we may also judge the character of the Guild of Deptford, and in what exists of its customs and its duties at the present day the mediaeval conditions are quite evident. In the lights and pilotage we have the origin of powers similiar to those of Boston, Hull and Newcastle, in the Mile End Hospital is traceable the old principle of Mediaeval Charity, in the Chapel the religious intention, and in the suits of the old pensioners — the blue stuff and the brass buttons as we still see them — the " cloth for the hoods that came from London " for the brethren of Wisbeach, or the tunics and caps for the brethren of Hull. IT must be borne in mind, however, that these associations in the middle ages were not charities. The object was not to give doles or alms to the poor. They were voluntary associations, trade unions, in this instance trade unions of mariners, and clubs for mutual aid. They fulfilled divers and certain functions, and the character of corporate unity * Watson's " History of Wisbeach." II gave also a distinct character to the manner in which their benefits were bestowed. Even well into the lyth century there appears neither in the Deptford Guild, nor in such of the others as still continue, any change in the corporate conception ; it is understood that help is given to the poorer members of the Guild ; but it is not charity bestowed from outside or from above, it is internal — the real sort of charity, as one might call it — every brother of the fraternity has equal rights. One could wish that this mediaeval conception of the limits and functions of charity were a little more regarded by the Charity Commissioners in their schemes of reconstruction. IN his "Very Merry Wherry-Ferry Voyage," Taylor, the poet, writing ofTHE^HULL Hull, in 1662, says of the Trinity House in that City : — in mi. " Besides for every sea or marine cause They have a house of Trinity, whose lawes And orders doe confirm, or else reforme That which is right, or that which wrongs deform ; It is a comely built, well ordered place. But that which most of all the house doth grace Are rooms for widowes, who are old and poore, And have bin wives to Mariners before. They are for house roome, food or lodging, or For firing, Christianly provided for. And as some dye, some doth their places win, As one goes out another doth come in." JUST so it is in the Mile End Hospital to this day. From Taylor's Jhr^^^^^^ poem, too, it would appear that the ladies of the Guild not only lived in life. the house itself, but that Government and Communal life were conducted under the same roof. I press this point of the Communal life, upon which all these houses of Trinity were founded, because in our often insufficiently considered re-modelling of Chairties now-a-days, we lo-3e sight of the founders' intentions, even when they are quite realizable.' ^^^ status But there is a further point still to be noted, which applies to the Trinity ",ED"^fv;^L Houses and their Charities : — the status of the recipients of the aid. I brothers have said that these endowments were none of them in the nature of doles or alms to the poor, but insurance for house, home, life and limb to brothers and sisters of the Guild. How this was the case even in Evelyn's day is brought out ver}' pointedly in the unintentional rebuke which he enters against the Trinity Corporation! in the building of their Hospital at Deptford. The Seamen's widows he apparently thought were well enough off, and though the work was a good one, the money would have been better spent on the poor of the parish. The distinction between the seamen's widows and the poor is one that it is well to bear in mind, and it brings with it the reflection that the contemplated destruction of the mediaeval purpose, — the Communal life of the Mile End Hospital, must inevitably bring with it a lowering of status to the recipients of the Charity. Our Charity Commissioners have not yet abandoned the prevalent belief that the " out pension " is preferable to what is commonly • See letters of Sir Robert Hunter, Miss Octavia Hill and Sir Walter Besant in Chapter VI. of this Monograph t Evelyn's Diary, May 25th, 1671. 12 and contemptuously called the "alms house," but that is because they have as yet made no attempt to re-cast one of these old Charities in the fuller Communal spirit of the middle ages. A knowledge of the way in which "out-pensions" work, and of the trend of modern industrial life into groups and communities, will show that not only might a re-modelling on the medijEval method prove a wise one, but that it may be inevitable in the near future. It is to be hoped that the Commissioners will be sufficiently far sighted to see that such of these institutions of Communal Charity as still remain, have yet a great purpose to fulfil in the newer industrial life that is springing up around them. DEPTFORD THERE is yet something to add as to the militant functions shared by TRiN^Tv the Deptford Guild with the other Maritime and Trade Guilds of England. NAVY. Just as they were voluntary associations for life, limb and labour, so they were also associations for defence when called upon. The Guilds of Craft sent their levies to the City Watch, the Maritime Guilds served the purpose of coast defence or of sea power. The most important ot these was inevitabl}' the one that controlled the port of London. There was no naA')', as we understand it, in the middle ages, and when fighting had to be done it was done by marine levies. It is a traditional memory of ours that when the Spanish Armada came, the English ships were so little that the great Spaniards shot away over their heads, but those little ships were guided and diredled by the Guild of Mariners from Trinity House. We have records of the transference of rights that passed between the Lord High Admiral Howard of Effingham and the Trinity Brethren. In the THE ACT OF ^^^^cly preamble of the Aft of Elizabeth in 1566* " Touchinge Sea- ELizABETH, markcs and Maryners " the corporation of the Trinity House is described (note the significance of the words !) as being " charged with the con- du6lion of the Queen's Majesties Nayve Royall." History has shown that this little impromptu navy answered its purpose and did its work very well ; for us it only remains to observe that the memory of it in any practical form, and of the Guild of Mariners who manned it, is preserved only in the Mile End College. HERE then are some of the fafls which a study of such of the mediaeval Guilds as were distinctly maritime, and of the Deptford Guild in particular, brings home to us. From these fafts we can reconstruct the history, nature, purpose and functions of the Trinity Guild in London, and we note how its mediaeval traditions have found expression in the Hospital in Mile End, how, in short, it is an objeft lesson in mediaeval history. But if it preserves for us the Guild traditions of the Middle Ages, and of the days when the navy was the maritime levy, it presers'es for us in a still more vivid manner — as I shall show in the next chapter — a yet more sacred tradition, the birth of the British Navy itself, in the transition period between mediaeval and modern times. * Royal Charter, 1763 (quoted above). 13 CHAPTER III. THE TRINITY COLLEGE AS A RECORD OF THE STUART PERIOD AND THE GROWTH OF THE NAVY. WE owe our na\y in great measure to the Stuarts, and the Trinity Corporation is the agenc}- throu£(h which the work of construftion is accomphshed. It is in the reign of James II., just before the time when the Mile End Hospital is built, that the Deptford Guild receives its final, and, perhaps, its most important re-incorporation.* In the day of Elizabeth the Guild K'as the nav}-, in the Stuart time the fundions begin ?J"f^eren. to differentiate, and the stridlly naval as apart from the marine fadtor qf'^n^val forms outside, but is still inseparably conne6ted with the Guild. On July j^J^^ct'ions 20th, 1685, Evelj-n recorded in his diary, " The Trinit}- Compan}- met this day, which should have been on y* Monday after Trinity, but was put off by reason of the Royal Charter being so large that it could not be ready before. Some immunities were superadded. Mr. Pepys, Secretary to y^ Admiralty, was a second time chosen Master. There were present the Duke of Grafton, Lord Dartmouth, Master of y*' Ordnance, the Commissioners of y^ Navy, and brethren of y*^ Corporation. We went to church according to costome, and then took barge to the Trinity House, in London, where we had a great dinner, above 80 at one table." It is not till the time of Admiral Blake and of the later Stuarts that the modern na\'y takes definite shape as apart from the Trinity House, but the connection still remains, and inseparably bound up with these half- naval, half-civic duties are the names of Samuel Pepys, Sir Richard Browne, John Evelyn, Charles II., and James II. With all of them the Trinity House and its Hospital are direftly connefted. AS is to be expedled, a notable change comes over the mediaeval Guild in Growth the 17th century. It becomes official, and partakes more of its modern CffTcial form ; we note a growdng division into two distinct classes. The allusions "^^*^s- to it in the diaries of Evelyn and Pepys give us the key to this ; there is the Secretary to the Navy, Mr. Samuel Pepys, for whom a special clause is inserted in the Charter of Charles II., and there are the poorer brethren and the charities ; but so essential to the proper development of naval affairs is the Trinity Corporation, that the leading naval officials aft in its councils, and the Crown assumes rights in the appointment of its master. Instead of the simple guild life of the earlier time we come now into a different existence. The atmosphere is more courtly, less breezy, in lieu of the guildsman's tunic and hood, we have the periwig and the curls. WRITING in very evident satisfaction at the good fare he had received at the Trinity House, Evelyn enters in his diary, June igth, 1671, "To a splendid dinner at the greate roome in Deptford Trinity House, Sr. Tho. Allen chosen Master, and succeeding the Earl of Craven," and again on March 26th, 1673, — for a good diarist is usually a good dinner eater — " I • The Koyal Charter, 1763 (above quoted). 14 \vas sworn a younger brother of the Trinity House, with my most worthy and long acquainted noble friend Lord Ossorie (eldest son to the Duke of Ormond), Sir Rich'J- Browne my Father-in-law being now Master of that Society; after which there was a greate Collation." We are reminded of the great collations of the Cit}' Companies of the present day and of the membership of those august bodies, where it not unfre- quently happens that any connedlion with the craft or mystery of the Guild in its original intention is the exception rather than the rule. HOW far the notable "quality" that Evelyn and Pepys delight to honour in their postprandial refledlions had any working connection with Pilotage and Ballastage and Buoyage, or even with the defence of the Thames, it is now difficult to trace, but it is evident that the official class enter in and take possession, as it were, of the ancient Mariners' Guild of Deptford. Possibly the right of patrimony may, though to a lesser degree, have warped the Mariners' Guild as it did the other Guilds of England, but the political importance of the command of the Port of London necessarily caused a gravitation of the political official to the Board of the Trinity House. EVELYN. EVELYN himself was a man of independent means, a gentleman, a courtier and a scholar, who was trained for the law and had no direft connection with naval matters. He dabbled in science, architeClure, education and horticulture, and it was not till later on in life that he was made Lord Privy Seal by James H. and Treasurer of the Greenwich Hospital for Seamen. That he should have been appointed a Brother of the Trinit)' had reason enough, for his studies in navigation, and in timber for shipbuilding exercised a considerable influence on his contem- poraries. His famous Sylva, or " Discourse concerning Forest Trees," was the outcome of the appeal of the Navy Office to the Royal Society, — of which he was one of the original members, — on the question of timber for shipbuilding; and the significant words of Isaac Disraeli are enough to prove the importance attaching to this when he says " Inquire at the Admiralty how the fleets of Nelson have been constructed, and they can tell you that it was with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted." BifowNE.'^^° BUT Evelyn had yet another link with the Trinity House, which bears upon the aCtual Hospital about which this Monograph treats. His father- in-law. Sir Richard Browne, was an Elder Brother and a great benefaftor to the guild, indeed to one of his benefactions the Mile End Hospital may in part be traced, and the remnants of the Deptford endowment are at present in Mile End. " I dined," writes the diarist on May 25th, 167 1, " at a feast made for me and my wife by the Trinity Company for our passing a fine of the land which Sir R. Browne my Wife's father freely gave to found and build their Colledge or Almeshouses on at Deptford, it being my wife's after her father's decease. It was a good and charitable work and gift, but would have been better bestow'd on the poor of that parish, than on the seamen's widows, the Trinity Compy- being very rich and the rest of the poore of the parish exceedingly indigent." TURRET PLATE -6 WCED CORNICE ■ THE EXTERIOR OF CHAPEL IS COVERED WITH CEMENT AND LINED OVER TO KEPRESENT STONE- H -4- *C5)D CORNrCE- THE EXTERIOR or CHAPEL IS COVEREX) WITH cmENT AND Ll^7ED OVER TO REPRESENT STONE- PLATE G- 1 SECTION ■ ACROSS ■ MAIN ■ QUADRANGLE : LCDKING - NORTH ■ SCALE OF TEET- • 15 ON the wall opposite the North Side of the Chapel at Mile End may still be seen the coat of arms of Sir Richard Browne (see page 17). I am inclined to think with Mr. Barrett that this coat was originally at Sayes Court, and was subsequently put up at the Deptford Hospital, from whence it was removed here. The engraving which remains to us of the destroyed Hospital at Deptford,* though it only shows one side of the block, tends to prove that the Deptford foundation was the prototype of the existing one in Mile End, the latter therefore fitly commemorates the name of Sir Richard Browne, who was in a sense its author. THE aftual founder of the Mile End College was Captain Henr)- !\Iudd, g^^'j^^^T^LnpF of Ratcliff, as the inscriptiont on the building states (see pi. 4, p. 8), and this worthy is recorded in conjunftion with Samuel Pepys, as one of those whose names appear in the James H. Charter. | As the extrafts which relate to Pepys and Mudd are significant as proving the social change that had come over the Guild in the Stuart time, and the distindlion between the wealthier official class and the poorer or pensioned class, to which I have before referred, I give them at some length. " AND for the better execution and accomplishment of this our Will and dIVti'xc^^^ Grant in that behalf, We have assigned, nominated, constituted, and tio.v. made, and by these Presents, for Us, our Heirs, and Successors, do assign, nominate, constitute, and make our trusty and well beloved Samuel Pepys, esquire. Secretary of our Admiralty of England, to be the first and present Master of the said Guild, Fraternity, or Brotherhood, to continue in the said Office or Place by himself, or his sufficient Deputy from henceforth until the Morrow after Trinity Sunday, commonly called Trinity Monday, now next coming .... "AND also we have assigned, nominated, constituted, and made, and by these Presents, for Us, our Heirs, and Successors, do assign, nominate, constitute, and make Captain John Nichols, Captain Henry Mudd, Captain Nicholas Kcrrington, and Captain William Green to be the four first and present Wardens of the said Guild " AND that all and singular sum and sums of money, whatsoever, due or hereafter to be due, and received by the said Decrees, Orders, Agreements, Fines, Forfeitures, or otherwise, shall be to the use, Commodity, and Profit of the said Guild, Fraternity, or Brotherhood, unto and for the repairing of a certain House or Tenement, commonly called or known by the name of Trinity House ; and of other Tenements or Almshouses, situate and being in Deptford-Strond, aforesaid, and Upper Deptford, in the said County of Kent, belonging to the said Guild, Fraternity, or Brotherhood ; and for the finding of certain poor Persons, Brethren, and the Wives of Brethren, of the said Guild, Fraternity, or Brotherhood, which are fallen into Decay, Misery, Poverty and Need, or hereafter shall fortune to fall • Grace Colleftion, British Museum. f'THis Almeshovse wherein 28 decayed Masters & Comanders of Ships or ye widows of such are mamtain'd was built by y= Corpo. of Tbinty Hovse An. 1695 The Ground w.-is given by Cap" Heny. Mudd of Ratcliff an Elder Brother whose widow did also contribute." t The Royal Charter 1763 (above quoted). i6 into Decay, Misery, Poverty and Need ; and also for Relief of otlTer poor Mariners and Seafaring-Men, such as by them, and their successors, shall be thought meet and necessary therewith to be relieved ; and for other public uses of the said society." THE ELE m°e"'t° the old guild system remains, but class division tends to separate the ■^fJ^.sTJART functions. The hard and fast division between rich and poor, between TiMEs^^ Elder Brother and Pensioner, is, however, one that does not appear till the present day, and the final expression of it is in the plan already adopted in the case of the Deptford Hospital and which is now under consideration for IMile End, of sweeping the whole institution away and substituting a money dole in place of the old corporate life of the College with its ancient seamen, their wives and wadov/s. Such a course would not only destroy the construftive record of the Stuart time, it would also wipe out what is left of the spirit and fellowship of the Middle Ages, which, as I endeavoured to show in the previous chapter, the Mile End College still retains. -&^ IN the Stuart time then we find the centre of gravity of the Guild's government shifting to an important official class in close touch with the Crown ; but they, too, are affedled with the Guild spirit, and the govern- ment of the Trinity House at its headquarters is conducted in a very comfortable and cheery manner. KEcoKD. AS Evelyn recorded the dinners, so Pepys entered into the minutiae of the luncheons. One almost gets the impression from reading his allusions to the Trinity House in the immortal Diary, that it is a place where eating is always going on. You merely drop in and, as a rule, you find the right thing; sometimes you are " cloyed with pasties," and sometimes "My Lady Batten," the wife of one of the Masters — and she is Pepys' be!e noire — comes bothering at the Trinity House with her "crew of friends;" when the diarist records it very clearl}^ and solemnly that he cannot abide her. But my Lady Batten's intrusions are merely a survival of the "brethren and sisteren " spirit of community. The point in short that is to be noted is that these post-prandial and social allusions only prove the distinctively medieval character of the Guild's constitution. Institutions that dine never die. MLMoKiALs. HERE, then, we have a pidlure of what the Trinity Guild, or as it would now be more correct to call it, the Corporation of the Trinity House, was in the time of the later Stuarts, at the time, in fad, when the present buildings in Mile End were erected. Just as we see how the little Hospital preserves for us the traditions of the Maritime Guild of the middle ages— the King's Majesties Nay"^ Royall — so it preserves for us, in a still more living and concrete form, the record of the birth of the great British Nav}', the beginnings of the Admiralty Board, and the groups of statesmen and sailors, to whom we owe the first large outlines of our national seamanship. The whole architedural design and treatment of the detail is calculated to impress this; the first thing that strikes the visitor is the little stone ships (pi. 4, p. 8) at the ends of the gables, then he looks in through the gates and sees the two rows of cabin-like houses, the flagstaff in the I? p^arden and the statue of the sea captain in the centre; closer examination of the car\-ed detail in the pediments will show him all the maritime forms and conceits of which it is composed, and if he finds his way into the Chapel he will note all the glass panes dedicated to the different Elder Brethren, their coats, canting heraldry and merchants' marks, and if then he passes into the inner court there is the statue of Capt. Maples for him in the full costume and stupendous periwig of the period of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn. THE ARMS OF SIR RICHARD BROWNE. i8 CHAPTER IV. THE TRINITY COLLEGE AS IT IS. I PASS now to a brief description of the existing buildings, and shall hope to still further show how they remain for us an object lesson in national history. There is a peculiar, and, in many cases, a personal interest in the variety of objects that at present form this little living museum on the Waste. For we have here the Wren w-ork of the Hospital itself, the records of two later dates, the remains of the previous Deptford Hospital, the remains of the old Hall, the records from Sayes Court and the statues of two founders, besides other trophies. In short, associations with the names of Sir Christopher Wren, John Evelyn, Sir Richard Browne, Samuel Pepj-s, Captain Sandes, Captain Mudd, Captain Maples, with a number of earlier and later worthies of the Trinity House recorded in one way or another either in glass or inscription. Let me take the architecture first. MR. BARRETT speaks rather as an antiquary than as an architect when he says that " the Trinity Almshouses at Mile End are, from an antiquarian point of view, of considerable interest, though architecturally they cannot boast of any remarkable beaut3^" Allowing for all possible latitude in matters of taste, the statement is an unfortunate one and conveys an opinion that is not held by any pradtical architect and certainly not by those eminent artists who recently gave their judgment as to the aesthetic importance of the building. It is to be hoped that the verdict of the historian may not have biassed the Corporation tow'ards the destruction of their Ancient Trust. ALTERA- TIONS. GRIBELIN'S PRI.NT. THE plan (pi. i, p. 34) maybe consulted for the disposition of the buildings. The whole plan is of a T shape, but of this only the stem of the T is of the 17th century or Wren period, the back court being structurall}- later. There is something singularly bold in the general arrangement of the earlier and older portion. Whether or not the exigencies of site demanded it, the plan is so conceived as to give the greatest amount of vista to the Chapel, the two wings of the buildings being thus set askew, while in order to obviate any sense of a want of S3'mmetry intruding itself on the beholder from the south, the designer has screened off the Mile End front by a wall of singular grace and beauty. As Mr. Thackeray Turner pointed out in his evidence before the Charity Commissioners' enquiry, this wall could only have been the work of a great master. WITH the exception of the two houses subsequently removed, but once standing east and west of the Chapel, before the second court was constructed at the back, the plan is the same as originally laid out, but a reference to Gribelin's print of the earl)' i8th century* which should be compared with Mr. Garbutt's bird's-eye view (pi. 2, pp. 4, 5) of the grounds * This print may be seen in the Grace Collecfiion, Print Room, British Museum, or in the Governor's Room in the Trinity Grounds. < 19 as they appear at the present day, will show certain dissimilarities between the i8th and igth century drawings. Of these the most important is the existence of nineteen dormers in the roofs in Gribelin's print ; the " Palisadoes " round the grass mentioned in R. Seymour's Chronicle of London are removed, as are also the two houses above referred to as adjoining the Chapel ; the brickwork at the side of the steps is shown in the print as without cement, and the two little statues of youths holding nautical instruments and standing within the two niches towards Mile End Road are absent ; there is also a very high vane. AN early i8th century print, even of classic architecture, must, however, be taken with reser\-ation ; historical accuracy was not a quality that the engraver felt himself called upon to exercise. If the dormers looked nicer on paper, they were put in ; and if the niches looked bare without statues, their insertion in the drawing could not but redound to the credit of the Brethren, so they were put in also. I have not been able to find any structural evidence of a previously gabled roof, and I am inclined to think that the roofs are as they were originally designed. IT is possible that the Chapel may have been originally in brick in the same manner as the houses, but that, too, is doubtful. The floor level of the Chapel was lowered in recent years owing to an accident that happened to one of the old pensioners who it is stated fell down the steps on the ice. Though the steps remain, the actual entrance to the Chapel is now underneath them on the ground floor. THE section by Mr. E. Godman (Plate 6) which shows the Chapel, section shows also the interior treatment of the rooms, which are painted rooms, throughout and look much like ships' cabins ; for old folk, and especially old sea men, few methods could be better devised. The end house at the south-western side is given over to the Governor of the Hospital, and that on the south-eastern is occupied in part as a librar)\ It is a cheerful little room within, well stocked with books and papers, and the old men sit here, with the quiet garden for a look out on the one hand, and with the great moving panorama of the Waste seen through the windows to [nfRARv. the south. Preferably within sight of the Thames says one of the bequests for the founding and maintenance of the Trinity Almshouses, and when the buildings were originally erected, the masts and traffic of the river must have been easily seen across the fields of Stepney from this coign of vantage. Mr. M. Balfour's two drawings (pis. ii, 12, pp. 18, 28) give a very charming picture of what may be seen inside there any day by those anxious to have some illustration of what is meant by the collegiate life, and what it has been recently proposed to do away with. ARCHITECTURAL descriptions are unsatisfactory, and I cannot do the^,^^^^^.^ better than refer to Mr. Allen's three sets of drawings in elevation (pis. 3, 4, 5, pp. 6, 8, 30) with the larger drawn detail for those to under- stand who can read in the language of the archited. The drawhigs, as they are presented, are just such as might have been prepared originally for the builders to work from. The elevation of the S.E. gable, however, 20 THE GARDENS AND STATUES. CAPT. MAPLES. CAPT. SANDES. A MUSEUM OF iTth CENTURY ART. shows the windows of the library from the Mile End Waste, to the interior of which I just called attention. PASSING to the two little gardens within the enclosure, those precious open spaces of which we have so few left in East London, I would like particularly to call attention to the formal planning, the arrangement of the grass plats, the true naval flagstaff, and the position of the two statues. The statue to Capt. Sandes, or Sanders, as he appears in Pepys and Evelyn, stands in the front court (pi. lo, p. 20), that of Capt. Maples (pi. 9, p. 26) in the back, the inscriptions respectively record the reasons why. yEsthetically the two statues are of vital importance because of their costume."' In the day when everybody with the least pretension to "taste" insisted in masquerading, if immortalized by statuary^ in the classic toga, as Roman consul or Attic orator, these two honest seamen had the common sense to see that their own clothes suited them best. Contemporary statues that are not in the pedantic costume of Greece or Rome, but in the periwig and tails of Mr. Vanslipperken, might be numbered on the fingers of one hand ; in London, I believe, these two statues are unique. They are of interest, moreover, for the little biographical touches that they call forth. Both these old mariners were men of note as well as benefa6lors, and in a comprehensive history' of British seamanship would find an honourable place. Capt. Maples was one of the pioneers of English enterprise in India, in those early days just after Bombay had come to us by the dowry of Catherine of Braganza. He appears as Capt. Maples of Madrasspatam, and when his will was proved on August 28th, 1680, it was found he had been faithful to the old Trinity spirit of fellowship. There is a glimmer of romance and generosity about the record that he had left diamonds to the value of 1,500 pagodas to be sent over for the use of the Guild. CAPT. SANDES has an equally interesting record. Like most of the Trinity Brethren he was a staunch royalist, and he seemed to have been trusted with important letters by both the Duke of York (afterwards James II.) and the King. When poor Pepys was sent to the Tower in 1679, on a charge of popery, Capt. Sandes, with whom he was intimate, did him a good turn, and was committed with an open letter from the duke, at Brussels, to the King. We have the record of these various journeys of Capt. Sandes and his ship.f His principal work subsequently was that of naval organization, he appears with Pepys in the Guild's Charter of re-incorporation, and was associated with Evelyn and Sir Christopher Wren in 1695, i^^ ^^^ Greenwich survey. It was the reversion of his estate in Lincolnshire, that went to the maintenance of the Mile End buildings. JUST as the Hospital is the historical record book of so many worthy and famous English citizens, so is it the repository of some of the most interesting specimens of 17th century art remaining in London; interesting, primarily because of their setting, but, in addition to the actual buildings * See letter of Nauticus (page 27). t Pepys' diary. Braybrook's edition, vol. iv. PLATE 10. >x ^^v^^T^ t^-i^ $?'^^ .; • *-^-'/?^ <^ 21 and the statues, the specimens of stone can'ing, of lead work and of glass, have all of them a charm and an individuality of their own. Of the car^-ed work I give illustration in pis. 3, 4, 6, pp. 6, 8, 14. The stone ships on the ends of the gables, and the arms of Sir Richard Browne have been already referred to ; and the beautiful little mediaeval coat of the Trinity House, which is observ'able in various parts of the building, is worth examination. So are the lead cisterns in between the houses, which are exceedingly good of their kind. MR. BARRETT has made a special study of the glass, which represents the glass. a series of memorials to various Elder Brothers and Masters, but he hazards the rather rash conclusion that it ought to be removed from the chapel and carried off to the Trinity House on Tower Hill. Apart from the risk and impracticability of removing valuable glass, the obviously right thing to do with it is to leave it where it is. It is well placed, it is much more applicable with its little lattice panes to the 17th century character of the old College, than it could ever be to the rather frigid Adams' work of the great house on Tower Hill, and the records of these simple seamen of the 1 6th and 17th centuries, whom it commemorates, are more aptly preserA'ed in the Mile End College than in the Trinity House itself. The former, as we have seen, preserves for us the true mediaeval spirit of the old Guild, the latter rather suggests admirable organization and able officials, with an exalted board of royal and distinguished Elder Brethren who are too busy with the great things of the world to trouble them- selves with the records and the intentions of the old mariners' Guild, . or what becomes of them. AS I have not thought it necessary to go over the same ground as Mr. Barrett, I have contented myself with making good the onl}' defect in his admirable investigation of the glass in the Chapel, and have given a complete hand-coloured representation of the various lights in the two windows (pis. 7 & 8, pp. 22 & 24) ; from which the names and merchants' marks of the different Brethren may be more carefully studied. TO those whom a slight description does not satisfy, I recommend a visit of inspection. W'ith the few historical data which this monograph may supply, they will be able more fully to judge for themselves how far we are justified in calling the Trinity College in Mile End an object lesson in National History. 22 CHAPTER V. THE EVIDENCE OF SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN. IT remains now to discuss the authorship of the buildings : in doing this, I shall confine my remarks only to the earlier portion of the work — that of 1695, and which is noted on the plan as the stem of the T- EVIDENCE. TO the architect, the first evidence must necessarily be internal, and the many features which the Trinity Hospital has in common with the other works of Wren, leave little doubt as to its authenticity. It is only necessary to compare it with the work at Greenwich and Chelsea, or with the designs of Pembroke or Emmanuel at Cambridge, to show this. The long low pediment, which is a characteristic in the side wings of the Chelsea Hospital, is developed as will be seen (pi. 3, p. 6) in the Mile End Hospital, the treatment of the quoins and the modillions is another marked feature that both buildings have in common, and the argument of suitability to purpose is one that counts for much when the work of Wren is in question. Just as in the Chelsea Hospital, and this is a point that Fergusson in his entirely unsatisfactory critique of this building misses sight of,* the whole design is instinft with the element of soldier life, barracks, drill and regularity, so in the Trinity Hospital the designer has understood that he is working for seamen, there is an air about it of cabins and bunks. Perhaps the most noteworthy Wren feature, however, is the treatment of the Chapel in its relation to the rest of the building. Reference to Mr. Pennell's drawing {frontispiece), or to the bird's-eye view (pi. 2, pp. 4, 5) and still more to Gribelin's print, will show the severe and simple handling of the central mass in its relation to the surrounding brickwork. Not only in the Chelsea Hospital, but also in the designs for Emmanuel College,! and in other Wren buildings do we find this feature, and it is very marked in the work at Mile End. There is, further, the evidence of the mouldings (pi. 5, p. 30), upon which Mr. Penrose laid stress, in his remarks before the Charity Commissioners' enquiry, though I am inclined to attach less weight to this, not only for reasons which will direftly appear, but because it was customary at this period (1695), to leave such work, especially in London buildings, very much in the hands of the executant workmen, who, as we know in the case of the Strongs, adled a great deal on their own responsibility, receiving only general suggestions and the small scale drawings or sketches from the revising or superintending architect. LATERAL PASSING from the internal evidence, there is much to establish the EVIDENCE, traditional assertion, that the work is by Wren, J and it is always fair to accept tradition where internally confirmed, unless definitely proven false. We know that he surveyed the Stepney Green estates, which bordered on the hospital grounds, for the Wentworth family. We have proofs of a • History of Archite{flute. t See Willis & Clark's History of Cambridge X Didionary of Architefture, letter W, 1853-87, Fol. The buildings are given under the list of his works PLATH -Z- J^o.J7. ^ t») . 1829 SOUTH-EAST WINDOW OF CHAPEL ■ •PLATE -Z- O 23 very close intimacy with Evelyn through the Royal Society, and, what is still more important, a diredl communication between him and the Trinity House officials. "We went" writes Evelyn in his diarj' on May 21st, 1695, " to survey Greenwich, Sir Robert Clayton, Sir Christopher Wren, Mr. Travers (the King's sur\'eyor), Capt. Sanders, and myself." This passage is most noteworthy, for it is of the year when the Hospital was built, and it brings the great architect in immediate conjundion with the two men who must inevitably have had the greatest voice in the planning and building of the new foundation. Capt. Mudd, of Ratcliff, had, as we have seen, left the money to build the Hospital, but Evelyn, by virtue of his authority in architectural matters, his position in the corporation, together with his father-in-law's previous benefadlion ;* and Capt. Sanders, whose munificence and later bequest completed and enriched the work, these two men must have seen it through. When we search into what other possible authors the building may have had, we find that there were two men who were engaged in surveying for Evelyn at Deptford, and therefore probably for the Trinity House at various times, Joel Gascoine and John Grove. Of the former there are some interesting plans in the British Musuem of the Deptford docks,! but it would appear that Gascoine died in 1692, and I find no evidence that Grove worked for Evelyn before 1700. Sir Christopher Wren, it is to be observed, had also been specially employed at an earlier date (1668), in the erection of the old Customs House, which was destroyed by fire in 1719, and with the building of which the Trinity Corporation was no doubt associated. We may also further put in evidence the close connection between the Wentworth Estates which Wren surveyed, and the Corporation, for as early as 1617, in a quarrel between Lord Wentworth and his copyhold tenants, the Corporation had been made joint Trustees with the Goldsmiths' Company, of a deed of settlement between him and them. J ON the other hand it may be urged that there is no documentary evidence to prove that Wren built the Hospital, that if he had done so we should have heard of it, and that there is no reference to it either in the Parentalia or in Elmes' life of Wren. To the first of these objections I do not attach much weight, for all the documents that might have proved it, one way or the other, were destroyed by fire subsequently; and for the other objedlion I think I am able to account. MY own view then is that the existing Hospital was designed probably by JoIpital Evelyn himself, with the assistance, and under the immediate superinten- J^'f^^Jr'ioV dence of Wren, that indeed it was their joint creation. All who have ^^p^^'*'^'' studied the conditions under which building operations were carried evelyn. out in the later Stuart times, and the authority with regard to them which Wren as Surveyor General held, will know that in the first place, he was not in any \vay in the position of a modern architecfl towards a work, but a6led as a sort of County Council and regulator of taste • See above page 14. t Map Room British Museum. See also an interesting set of dock plans of 1698. J Robinson's History of Hackney, edition 1S42, page 372. 24 to all buildings, and that in the second, the workshop or body of masons or builders, who carried out work, were left much more autonomous, and free to exercise their own individualit}- in details. When we add to this the prominent part that the cultured amateur took in the inception of work; for architecture under Charles II., especially after the Fire, became the fashionable hobby, we know that it was quite possible for a fine building to be put up of which some man of taste was, to begin with, the designer. The omnipotent Surveyor General then set his imprimatur upon the work and made possible alterations and additions, and it was finally executed without what are nowadays called " Architedls' Drawings" by a body of highly trained workmen, doubtless the London Masons' Com- pany, of whom such men as the Strongs were members, and who wrought in a full understanding of their work and with still much of the mediaeval tradition. THERE is about the Trinity Hospital, a certain cultured amateurishness that gives it its peculiar charm, there is too that delight in garden archi- tecture, which we know was Evelyn's particular hobby Both these points rather reveal the true authorship, and when we add to this the strong Wren characteristics which I dwelt upon at the beginning of this chapter, the close intimacy between Wren and Evelyn, the fa ft that they had worked together before in London building,* Evelyn's own position in the Trinity Corporation, and the absence of all other evidence to the contrary, the conclusion upon which I have ventured would not seem unfounded. Furthermore Evelyn worked not for himself, but as a member of the Trinity Corporation ; he was also only an amateur architect, so he would neither lay claim to the authorship of the building himself, nor be claimed as the author by others ; while Wren, who as Surveyor General, would in any case have had to pass the work, would, as it was only partly from his hand, not claim it either ; this then accounts for it not being mentioned in the Parentalia or Elmes' life of Wren. It is a vulgar affectation now-a-days that unless a work of art can be labelled with a great name it does not pass muster, since vulgar people cannot appreciate it for its intrinsic beauty. I should be sorry to have laid myself open to the taunt of encouraging such vulgarity, but the historical importance that accrues to the Trinity Hospital as the joint creation of two such great Englishmen as Sir Christopher Wren and John Evelyn, justifies the risk. • See Evelyn's letter to Sir Samuel Tuke (1666) on the coincidence of his and Wren's plans for London re-building. (Wheatley's " Evelyn"). PLATE -8 A'o. LION REPEATS AL&O ON THIS SIDC- SONTH'WEST WINDOW OF CHAPEL • PLATE -B- LION REPEATS ALSO ON THIS SIDC- '3 •^ 25 CHAPTER VI. THE PROTEST AGAINST THE DESTRUCTION OF THE COLLEGE. I HAVE now sought by description and illustration to explain what I mean by the objeft lesson in National History, and so bring my task up to the present daj-. IT is, perhaps, a bitter reflection on this objeft lesson, that a Corporation ^^^[n^s^-?^ of such great memories as the Trinity Guild should have grown so callous SIItruc and regardless of its past history and its moral responsibilities both '^'°'''- towards pious founders and to the general public, as to propose such a scheme as was recently submitted to the Charity Commissioners. The manner in which it was received, and the voices of those who spoke in protest, in so far as they will also be regarded as having their share in this little episode in National History, justify, I hope, the insertion of the following letters. They are selefted from among a great volume of correspondence that appeared in the public press, and, as will be seen, not with any bias, since they represent both sides. I am indebted also to the Editors of The Times and The Daily Chronicle for their kind permission to reprint some of them. When the Corporation shall have accomplished their desire of sweeping away the last vestige of the old mediaeval collegium, and the sacred Stuart memories, and sold what can be sold towards swelling their list of out-pensions, these protests may remain on record. I give, at the close of the chapter, what is I think, a sufficiently complete reference to the various press notices, in them the full reports of the Charity Com- missioners' Inquiry may be consulted. THE following letters are only selections, but they are sufficient to show the storm of indignation that was aroused by the scheme for the destrucftion of the Hospital which was presented by the Trinity Corporation to the Charity Commissioners. The net refleftion on the whole inquiry was that the Corporation had as little knowledge of what they were doing as the public had of what they were about to lose. Sir, — The thanks of all who respecfl things that are lovely, precious and of good sir walter repute, are due to the writer of the paper on the Trinity Almshouses in The Daily Chronicle •^the'^daTly of Saturday last. He has said exaclly what ought to be said, and that with no uncertain chronicle." note. It only remains to be seen whether he has spoken in time. Meanwhile, it is well that your readers should know what else has been done. The committee of the Essex House Crafts Guild have drawn up a remonstrance, or memo- randum, which has been signed by Mr. Ashbee, the president, and by the committee, and has been presented to the London County Council and to the Charity Commissioners. It is hoped that this document will receive attention. Your writer spoke strongly on the cruelly of turning these old people into the street. He might have added that the oiiginal foundation of this house contemplated a college, or place of common residence, for the companionship and solace far more necessary in age than in youth. If, therefore, the present residents are separated and dispersed the act seems to become nothing short of a breach of trust. But we are told that the drains are defedlive ; that they have been condemned by the London County Council ; that there are no funds to set them right ; and that, in consequence, the place must be sold. This seems to make the destrucftion of the place a sad, but stern necessity. On further inquiry, however, it comes out that £^ for every house will cover all the repairs necessary — about ^150 in all. This being the case, I venture to ask you, Sir, if you will receive subscriptions from your readers in order to 26 obtain this sum. If 3,000 will send is. each, if 1,000 will send 3s. each, the thing is done, and the Trinity House would no longer have any excuse for desiring to destroy what ought to be their most precious possession. Your writer spoke also of the love with which the nation regards all sailors alike. It is a feeling which ought to be fostered and encouraged in every possible way. How better can it be encouraged than by the existence of this Haven of Rest in the very heart of an industrial population ? But consider for what class of sailors the house is founded. There is not among all our people any class more respected than the officers of the Mercantile Marine. Tliere is no man, anywhere, more loyal, more true to his trust, less self-seeking, more courageous than the British skipper. In every history of wreck we know what to expect — we read the thing without surprise — we accept it as a matter of fact, whether it be shipwreck by fire, or by tempest, or by rocks — the captain is always the last to leave the vessel ; the captain goes down with the hands which have not been able to escape. This college, the only place of the kind, is the one standing testimony to the respect and the affection with which the nation regards this class. It is more — it recalls to one generation after another, the work done by the men who made the country in the years gone by ; they were the merchant men who carried the f^ag to unknown shores and felt their way over seas of which there were then no charts. We cannot afford to forget the history of our merchant captains. In the inner court of the House may be seen the merchant captain as he walked the deck 200 years ago, as splendid in wig, ruffles, lace, and gold embroidery as a leaden effigy will allow. He was set up here at the beginning of our East India trade. F'or 200 years he has looked on while the captains have come and gone — the men who made the country rich — the men without whom the great Company of Merchant Adventurers would have been powerl-ss. It is, indeed, a ver}' sacred place. We cannot let it go. Few, indeed, at the East-end, or anywhere else, are the monuments which appeal t3 any sentiment of patriotism or duty, or self sacrifice. Once there was a venerable and beautiful place called St. Katherine's-by-the-Tower — which was ruthlessly and needlessly destroyed— that place might have been made to become for East London what the Abbey church of St. Peter is for West London. Yet even its abolition was not so mischievous, so destruift ive, as would be that of these almshouses. The virtues which it recognises, the achievements which it rewards, the history which it commemorates, the gratitude which it illustrates, the love of adventure which sent these men to sea ; these things do not grow on the kerb of the Whitechapel Road, nor are they cultivated in the streets which branch off to north and south. Take away the Trinity Almshouses and the memory of these things will perish. For the sake, then, of the young men who walk up and down that boulevard, as well as for the sake of the captains themselves, we must not let this college go.— I am. Sir, your obedient servant, SaviUe Club, November 23. WALTER BESANT. mor^is'to^ Sir, — Allow me to add my thanks also to you for your straightforward attack on the "THE DAiLY^ cant which assumes that a public body having the administration of charities has but CHRONICLE. Qjjg mandate, to wit, the increase of its money at the expense of every other consideration. As to the Trinity Almshouses, looking at the beauty and charm of the buildings and their immediate surroundings, and the reproach they throw on us for the squalor of the outside world of East London ; and looking also at the pleasure and decency of life which they confer on the present inmates, I can think of nothing which {mutatis mutandis) fits the case better than the lines of Omar Khayyam : — I often wonder what the vintners buy One half so precious as the goods they sell. We must all recognise to the full my friend Mr. Ashbee's single-hearted and indefatigable efforts on behalf of the London citizens ; and none, I am sure, are more anxious to do so than our Society for the Protetflion of Ancient Buildings ; but lest anyone should think that we have been negledling our duties, I may venture to tell you that we have been doing our best to help him. I enclose my subscription toward the sum of ;^i50, which, as it seems, the Trinity Brethren are too poor to find, and am. Sir, yours obediently, Kelmscott House, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, Nov. 25. WILLIAM MORRIS. RAWNSLEY ^'^' — Unless strong remonstrance is made at the public meeting of inquiry which TO "THE will be held at the Trinity House at 11 o'clock of next Wednesday, November 27, and TIMES. unless good cause can be shown to the contrary, one of the most interesting and ancient of the English guilds, the guild of " the Mariners of England," will lose its habitation; one of the cleanest books of record of a useful charity for the past 400 years will be PLATE -9 vmjU. i^J^ rS';f^J ,^:^>^^ 27 closed ; and by the will of the Trinity House Corporation and the Charity Commissioners the fair haven of rest for ancient mariners in Mile End will be swept away. There may, of course, be something to say for outdoor relief as opposed to indoor charity. Almshouses for old people may perhaps with profit be removed from London fogs to country air. Doubtless if, as we hear, a big brewer offers a big price for the site, the charity may be the gainer in ^.s.d. The Skinners' Company would tell us so. But we can ill afford to part with the few piifturesque associations with the past of our great seamanship at this time of day. The merchants of London owe too much to the history of the flag which was taken from the Spaniards by Sir Francis Drake, which still hangs in the old hall of the Brethren— of which Sir Francis himself was one — to be able lightly to let its memory perish from their midst. " We are a nation yet," but we owe it largely to our strong sea-arm that it is so. And every year that adds to the prose of London life the poetry that remains to us is more dear. H. D. RAWNSLEY, Hon. Sec. National Trust, i, Great College Street, Westminster. Sir,— The Council of the Royal Institute of British Architeas are desirous of J^^i^.^q^j^ drawing public attention to an inquiry which is to be ht-ld by the Charity Commissioners p.r'.i.b a. and on Wednesday, the 27th inst., for the purpose of considering a scheme involving watek'^'*^'' alterations in the method of dispensing certain charities conneLT;ed with the hospital or ]^g^,ff^^-^- college of the Trinity House Corporation in the Mile End Road. The council are tkmes." advised that one of the results of the said scheme will be the demolition of the buildings in question. We shall therefore be mucli obliged if j'ou will allow us to point out that the buildings referred to are believed to have been designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and that they are among the most interesting examples of his work in London. They were eredted in the year 1695, and are thus contemporary with St. Paul's Cathedral. Robert Seymour, in 1734, refers to them thus:— "This Trinity College or Hospital," he says, "is a handsome strutflure of Brick and Stone, near Mile End, north of the high Road, with a graceful entrance consisting of two Rows of building one storey high fronting eacli other, the length whereof on both sides is paved with freestone; in the middle a Grass Plot enclosed with Pallisadoes, and set with young Fir Trees, and at the further end. Northward, stands a very comely Chapel, with a Clock, ascending with divers steps." This is an interesting description, but Seymour might have added that the buildings are rich in stained glass, carving, wall panelling, and leadwork. It is indeed a monument of unique architeiflural interest ; and when it is remembered that it stands on the borders of crowded Whitechapel and that its quadrangle forms a breathing space of great value to the distriift, we venture to express a hope that the Trinity House Corporation will exhibit sufficient public spirit to abandon any intention of demolishing the buildings, and that so interesting a relic of the past may be preserved by them in its entirety. We have the honour to be. Sir, your obedient servants, F. C. PENROSE, President, R.I.B.A. A. WATERHOUSE, Chairman of the Art Standing Committee, R.I.B.A. The Royal Institute of British Architeifls, g. Conduit Street, London, W., Nov. 23. Dear Sir Henry Longley, — Although the state of my health forbids mv attending i.oku any public meeting, or taking part in any public discussion, I am extremely anxious that p'.r.a. to" ' my absence from to-morrow's meeting should not be attributed t ) indifference on my lo'mgle^^ part to the grave matter before it. I feel, on the contrary, the keenest anxiety in regard to it, and should deplore more deeply than I can say the destrucflion of the most delightful and characfteristic group of buildings which is to-day menaced — a relic unique in its artistic characffer, and unlike man)' relics, still in the full efficiency of its usefulness. A relic, too, which surel)' the historic associations which are connetfted with it, should keep in the reverence of patriotic people. I should be grateful if you could make my feelings, for what they may be worth, known to your meeting. Believe me, dear Sir Henry, sincerely yours, FREDERIC LEIGHTON. 2, Holland Park Road, Kensington, W., November 26. Sir, — In a ledure delivered last night by Mr. Seymour Lucas, .\.R.A., he stated that ^;^,'^'J^f,'^^ when preparing for his picfture " Peter the Grest at Deptford," although he had been daily able to find in the Print Room of the British Museum prints depiifling the costume of '^"'*'^''''^'-'^-" various classes in the reign of Wilham III., he had bean unable anywhere to get a representation of a naval offii;(;r of th it pcrio 1 until he fortunately discovered one in a statue in the beautiful grounds of the Trinity Almshouses. — Yours. &c., Crouch End, November 27. NAUTICUS. 28 MISS OCTAVIA HILL TO "THE TIMES." THE RIGHT HON. VV. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. TO MR. ERNEST GODMAN. THE DUKE OF ARGYLL TO THE EARL OF MEATH. SiK, — 1 have watched with keen interest the course of the inquiry into the proposal to destroy Trinity Ahnshouses. It seems to me amazing that a building of such great architecftural value, situated in a districft where any beauty or space is blessing, possessing an historical interest calculated to call out national heroism and gratitude, should not be considered clearly worth the cost of drainage. I wonder what America or France would think of us. In the richest city in the world, possessed of a building reported to be the work of one of our greatest architecfls, a building which for 200 years has been associated with our national history, are we going to allow one generation to acftually destroy the fabric for lack of money to drain it, and that when apparently there are funds left for its maintenance ? "Oh!" but the Trinity House appears to be answering, " it is not only that we grudge the cost of drains, but we could do much more with the proceeds of the sale of the ground. We have been for some time asking possible future beneficiaries whether they would like anything better than what was left for them." Englishmen ! here is a gift of a collegium founded to provide this sort of home, it is full, the residents implore not to be turned out, it is no case of an obsolete charity, and yet it is proposed to abolish it because certain people say that they would prefer that the money should be differently applied. Is this the principle on which our charities are to be administered ? Is it faithful to the donor? Is it encouraging to donors in time to come ? If a donor leaves money for a training school for teachers, are our future Charity Commissioners to ask if the teachers would prefer pensions? If some one leaves a piece of land for an open space, are future Commissioners, while people are still using and enjoying that open space, to say to them, " Would you prefer the money which would be realized by selling it ? " Surely an almshouse built and founded in old days, and still used and cared for by the residents, has a claim to the ground on which it stands, and to money enough to redrain it, either from the funds left for its preservation, or from that which would be gladly contributed by a public who care for these small oases of beauty, for quiet, old-world life, and for air and light in an East End distridl inhabited by thousands, and witli little left to cheer its monotony. — I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 190, Marylebone Road, N.W., November 29. OCTAVIA HILL. Dear Sir, — In answer to the letter of your Guild, and to the resolution which I have received from the Institute of Architects, I beg to say that I have for many years been only a nominal member of the Trinity House Board, and consequently feel mysell disabled from any interposition. Nor do I know the merits of the case, which would depend upon particulars not now within my cognisance. But so far as my private sentiments go, I must say that I lament increasingly the barbarous work which has been so ruthlessly carried on in London, and the desecration, unless in cases of stridt necessity, of many characteristic buildings and ancient local features.- 1 remain your very faithful. W. E. GLADSTONE. E. Godman, Esq. November 29, 1895. Secietary to the Committee for the Survey of the Old Memorials of Greater London, Essex House, Mile End Road, Bow, London, E. My DEAR Lord Meath, — Although as a mere matter of taste I sympathize with the desire to retain a building which relieves the hideous miles of brick in the east of London, I cannot without more detailed information on the facis take any part in the agitation against a scheme which the corporation has deliberately framed in the interests of those whom it represents. Your letter does not satisfy me that the case has been considered from the point of view which must be that of the Elder Brethren. As one of the honorary members I have from time to time to dispose of one of the pensions to aged master mariners, and it has been my painful duty to select some one out of the numerous applications which come to us. The cases are often so piteous and so far more numerous than can be adequately dealt with that this duty of selection is a terrible revelation of sufferings in a most deserving class of men, which cannot be met out of the funds at our disposal. Ii the sale of a " home," however beautiful as a bit of architecture, would add materially to those funds I should feel it to be an absolute duty to support it. It would be an immense comfort to feel that a larger number of most afflicting cases could be met from year to year; and it is quite irrelevant to this consideration to argue that the home has revenue enough for its support. Out pensions are in numerous cases far more desirable than support in a home. Wives and daughters are thus enabled to live with poor and aged husbands and parents, and are relieved sometimes from exhausting and yet PLATE 12. ^*^**°*^?3^'" 29 unavailing toil. Considerations connected with open spaces naturally attract your attention who have taken such an honourable and benevolent part in securing these for the poor of London, but this is no reason for sacrificing any considerable revenue for the reliet of those for wliom the Trinity Corporation are bound to provide out of the property which belongs to them. Those who desire the ground for other purposes of the neigbdurhood ought to try to enter the field as purchasers. It is hardly fair that men whose profession is one of continual danger and exposure, and who are often reduced to the greatest penury m old age and sickness, should be called upon to sacrifice for such purpose their interest in the only charity which was specially intended to help them in their extremity. I almost feel sure that if you had to look over the list of cases which come before us only too often you would feel, as I do, the absolute duty of making the very most of the inadequate funds at our disposal. — I am, my dear Lord Meath, Yours very truly, ARGYLL. Inverary, Argyllshire, December 3, 1895. Sir, — Miss Odfavia Hill's letter on this subject published in your issue of yesterday, p^^^^^.d though based, I do not doubt, upon the most generous motives, is an attempt to influence to "THE the judgment of the public upon this question by what 1 cannot but consider as most '^'i^'^S-" misleading and unfair arguments. I know nothing of the case of these almshouses beyond what I have read in your paper, but I do know a good deal of the Cliarity Commissioners and of the law which they administer. It is obvious that Miss Hill knows nothing of the latter, and I should infer from her letter that she knows nothing of the former. If the object of this charitable trust is to maintain '• building of great architectural value," or to provide the blessing of ■' beauty or space ' in the district, or to " support an historical interest calculated to call out national heroism and gratitude," I have no doubt that the Charity Commissioners, like the other Englishmen to whom Miss Hill appeals, will do their duty and see that the rights of the public to these undoubted advantages are secured. But if, on the other hand, it should turn out that the object of the founders was to benefit "decayed mariners" or any similar class, I tail to see why all these other blessings should be provided at their expense, even if the law allowed it, which it does not. Surely, Sir, the persons who are so anxious to secure these advantages for the nation or the district should undertake the responsibility of providing for them, and not attempt to shift them to the shoulders of the poor decayed mariners. Funds subjecft to a trust for training teachers could under no circumstances, as the law now stands, be diverted to providing pensions for the same persons. — -I am. Sir, your obedient servant, BARNARD. Raby Castle, Darlington, December 3. Sir, — In the excellent letter of Miss Octavia Hill, which appears in your paper of MR. I. to-day, it seems to be implied that there is a lack of funds to carry out such work as may anderson, be found necessary in connexion with the sinitation of these buildings. It is well that it ^'.f^'g ■'^- ^° should be understood, once for all, that such is not the case. times." In the inquiry held last week at the Trinity House by an .Assistant Charity Com- missioner the secretary to the Trinity Corporation stated that, " Apart from the funds which were dealt with by the Public Accounts Committee, by Parliament, or by the Charity Commissioners, the Trinity House had an income of something like ^"8,000 a year," and it was shown that of this less than one-half is required to supplement the special endowments by which the charity is maintained. It was further stated by the Assistant Commissioner that " it might be taken from the evidence given that there was ample money to keep up the almshouses." This is conclusive. We have it on the best authority that there are ample funds applicable to the maintenance of the almshouses. It was further established at the inquiry that the buildings are in a sound and substantial strucflural condition, and only require some necessary sanitary improvements in order to bring them into conformity with the scientific requirements of the day. In view of these facts, and seeing that a comparatively trifling saving would be effected were the scheme of the Trinity Corporation to be adopted, it is difficult to conceive on what reasonable grounds the Charity Commissioners could sanction a proposal which would involve the de:nolition of buildings which, from a practical point of view, admirably fulfil their purpose, and from an aesthetic point of view constitute, in the opinion of all who are capable of judging, a unique and beautiful example of late 17th century work. — I am. Sir, your obedient servant, 6, Stratton Street, W., December 2. J. MACVICAR ANDERSON. 30 (from a correspondent.) THE CASE -f HE Charity Commissioners inquiry recently held at the Trinity House had a much TR?NITV wider scope than the public seemed to realize. In effect, the inquiry extended over the point'^of administration of all the charitable trusts of the Trinity Corporation, and the almshouse VIEW TO question was dealt witli incidentally in due course. Any one who sat through the tTmes." prolonged inquiry and carefully followed the points raised by the Commissioner could not fail to have been impressed with the careful and conscientious manner in which the various trusts are administered. But, in addition to the searching investigation of the Charity Commissioners, the corporation has had to endure much criticism of its proposed scheme for abandoning the almshouses at Mile End with a view to the extension of the out-pension system. The silence of the Elder Brethren on this subjedl: has been misunderstood, but the truth now appears to be that, their proposal having been formally submitted to the Charity Commissioners for adjudication, they felt it would be hardly right for them to appear in the public Press, arguing, defending, and passing judgment on the case which they had submitted for the Commissioners' consideration and judgment. Now that the inquiry is over and the heat of newspaper discussion is past, it may be well to look a little more carefully into the case presented by the Elder Brethren. But, in the first place, it is necessary to clear away the effedl of certain misstate- ments. It has been asserted that the income of the corporation is ;^300,ooo a year, and on this statement many arguments have been founded and much literary indignation has been expended. The statement is quite untrue, for the corporate income is in reality • only about ;£"! 7,000 per annum. It must here be explained that the corporation exists in a dual capacity. It is the general lighthouse authority of England and Wales and coUecfts light dues for keeping up the lighthouse system, but pays all the money so collected into the Mercantile Marine Fund, over which the Board of Trade has entire control. Not one penny of this income is applicable to the charitable purposes of the corporation ; it is all spent on lighthouses and other maritime purposes, and the amount so collected averages about £"400, 000 a year. In its second capacity the corporation is an ancient guild or fraternity, possessing property of its own and charged with the administration of numerous specific charitable trusts, and for these and other purposes of the corporation the total income is, as I have said, about £^'17,000 per annum. From the evidence given before the Commissioner it appeared that between £"8,000 and £"g,ooo of this income is appropriated to specific charities, and of the remaining moiety, known as the general funds of the corporation, an average of £"4,000 per annum is devoted to the relief of decayed master mariners and their widows, the balance being appropriated to the general expenses of maintaining the corporation. In the discussion in the newspapers a very strong point was made of the tempting offer said to have been put forward by a brewery company to purchase the land upon which the almshouses now stand. Holding the views they do on the subject, it is very probable that the Elder Brethren would have been glad to have received such an offer, but on inquiry' at the Trinity House it is positively asserted that there is no truth at all in the statement. It is nothing but surmise on the part of those eager to find a telling argument against the project. No offer whatever has been made diredtly or indiredtly, and the value of the site if realized has been only estimated according to the value of land in the neighbourhood. One other misapprehension has gathered some strength. It was assumed that the defedtive drainage of the place was the chief facTtor in determining the Elder Brethren to enter upon their policy of disestablishment of the almshouses, and that £"150 would cover the cost of repairs to the drains. As a matter of fadi, the tentative demand of the Mile End Vestry was equal to an expenditure of £"225, and this was to be followed by the demand of the Bethnal Green Vestry for about £^370 ; then the surveyor of the corpora- tion advised that the work could not stop there, but that all the old brick drains would have to be renewed, which w^ould cost about £"1,800, making a total of, say, £"2,400, instead of the paltry £"150 upon which so much stress has been laid. The main reasons which have induced the Brethren of Trinity House to propose the change are that, being the custodians of this charity, for the benefit of decayed master mariners and their widows, they wished to extend the benefits as much as possible, having hundreds of applicants on their lists ; that the almshouse system is costly and allows only a limited number to be benefited, and many of the eligible candidates decline to go to an almshouse, preferring to live by the sea at their own homes in preference to the breezy delights of the Mile End Road. Upon all this came the drainage projects, with their uncertain liability as regards expense, and then the Elder Brethren propounded their scheme. It is quite understood that the present inmates will not be allowed to r < a. < o 31 suffer. AH the talk about turning them out into the streets is absurd and deceptive. Every consideration would be shown to the old people, some of whom it is known would be glad to receive an enhanced pension and go to live with their friends by the sea. Those who do not desire to leave the almshouses will in all probability be allowed to end their days there, for the Elder Brethren would never force thciti out. But as the almshouses became vacant they would not be refilled and new out-pensioners would be chosen from the list. The effect of this change would in lime be that the number of persons benefited would be increased by probably 15 or 20 per cent. What does the merchant service say to this? This is a maritime charity, intended for ancient mariners all over the country ; it is not specially a London institution, and the Corporation of Trinity House, in trying to make it more beneficial for the class for whom it is intended, have brought down upiou themselves a stoim of reproach. From whom? Not from master mariners and their widows, not from the shipping interests of the country, but from archajologists and antiquaries, who fear that the change will involve the demolition of some interesting old buiHings. The obvious answer i^, let the archaeologists and antiquaries buy the houses and keep them up ; the charity will then be benefited by the enhanced value obtained on account of the antiquarian interest of the houses, and all will be satisfied. Of the eligible applicants for the benefits of the charity, not 5 per cent, desire almshouses, and there are several hundreds of such applicants. Sir, — In a letter which appeared in your columns yesterday it seems to be assumed qcxavia that I made an attack on the (Charity Commissioners. I am sorry that this should be so. hill to My letter was not so meant; the Commissioners have not even pronounced on thisT?MES" scheme. My letter was intended to protest against the prevalent tendency to change the form of trusts too readily, w'ith too exclusive a view to money value, and by reason of the votes of possible future beneficiaries. Westminster Abbey, or a park in a crowded neighbourhood, might on this principle be swept away because the land tliey occupy would realize a large price. Nor certainly was 1 urging the preservation of works of architeiflural value and beauty and space for the benefit of others at the expense of beneficiaries. What I meant to plead for was the fulfilment of the trust. I gather that it does not enjoin the giving of charitable relief to the largest number of decayed mariners, but the provision for a certain number of them in these houses. Are we to assume that there was no idea in the mind of the founder beyond that of money grant to decayed mariners — that he cared nothing for the dignified and somewhat stately little home, for the nearness to the river where their old ships come and go, for the gathering together of men of one profession ? If the old homes have become more dignified by age and historical association, if they are a blessing to the neighbourhood and the nation, that appears an added reason for preseiving them ; but it seems to me to be done by the simple fulfilment of the trust. I think trusts ought to be administered with perception of all these various values. But the Duke of Argyll says there are numerous pitiful cases of decayed mariners amongst whom it is hard to choose. To nie this seems a reason for our generation helping them in whatever way we consider best. Surely we are not so poverty-stricken that we need to pull down old buildings and sell land given freely to us in times past to provide for our poor. Why is all the cost of helping decayed mariners to be thrown on this trust at the expense of changing the form of bequest ? — I am, Sir, your obedient servant, OCTAVIA HILL. igo, Marylebone Road, N.W., December 7. P.S. — I do not quite understand the last paragraph of Lord Barnard's letter. Surely we have in our own day seen the transfer of large funds from eleemosynary to educational purposes legally effecfked, and in such a way that the whole clars of beneficiaries is also changed. Sir, — The letters from the Duke of Argyll and Lord Barnard in your issue of^R- c^R December 6, following as they do upon the statement from the Trinity House point of" the view, cannot be allowed to pass unanswered, for all three waive the main question at times." issue. The point is not whether certain almshouses and whatever pertains to them shall be sold, and the charity thereby increased with a greater number of ('Ut-pensions, but whether a venerable body like the Trinity House is justified in the eyes of the public in turning its historic assets into cash for charity. Nobody would deny for a moment that it would be unfair to burden a charity, and so indirecftly the needy sea captains whom it is intended to benefit, with the maintenance of an historical memorial, unless by express wish of the founders; but suicly it may 32 reasonably be expeifted that a wealthy corporation like the Trinity House should be mindful of its trusts as well as its charities, and not plead the latter as an excuse for shifting upon the public the responsibilities of the former. A straightforward appeal on behalf of their old seamen's charity, with the Elder Brethren headmg the list, would, I am convinced, meet with instant and warm response Irom all Englishmen, but the sale of an historic trust, to the great loss of the whole community, can only merit condemnation. — Yours obediently, Essex House, Bow, E., December 7. C. R. ASHBEE. MR. POYN- Sir, — While the public mind is occupied with Sir Christopher Wren and the TO "THE Trinity Almshotises, I shall be glad to be allowed to call attention in your columns to TIMES." another work of this great architeifl which, if not in such imminent danger of destrucflion, IS suffermg much from negleifl, and, as will be seen further on, from worse than mere neglecft. But first, with reference to the correspondence which has appeared on the subjeift of the almshouses, I should like to draw attention to a point which seems to have been missed by those who urge their removal, and this is, that the Brethren of the Trinity House, when they instituted the almshouses which are now proposed for demolition, thought it worth while to go to the greatest aichitecT of the day for a building which should be worthy of the chsrity winch they were endowing, and in doing so no doubt acfled in the simple spirit which has inspired the founders of so many glorious and noble buildings m past ages, that thty were working for the glory of God. 1 cannot help being reuiiiuied by the arguments brought forward by some of your correspondents of a certain box of ointment " which might have been sold for more than three hundred pence and given to the poor." And, moreover, once launched over this ground, where are we to stop ? There is another building of the same arcliitecT; covering a vast space of ground in the most valuable part of the City ; extend the argument a little, and there is n .j reason why St. Paul's itself should not be pulled down and the money derived from tlie shops and warehouses erected in its place devoted to charities. Then, no doubt, should we see Lord Barnard's argument again produced— that it is for those who wish to save St. Paul's to subscribe their mone)- and not to deprive the deserving poor. The principle is one to which any of our glorious monuments might be sacrificed, and will always appear reasonable to those who are not touched by works of beauty and imagination. Mr. Poynter then proceeds to discuss the neglected state of Sir Christopher Wren's banqueting house at Kensington Palace. SIR ROBERT SiR, — There is a certain naivete about the concluding paragraph of your correspondent "the"^'* ^° " ^^'-S-'s" letter in The Times of to-day. He attended tlie recent inquiry of the Charity time's." Commissioners on the first day, and, having heard the case of the Trinity Brothers, he concluded that it is unanswerable, without taking the trouble to hear the other side! It is perhaps a pity that the question should be lediscassed in the Press, for both sides were fully heard by the Assistant Commissioner, and the Charity Commissioners have now all the materials in their hands upon which to come to a decision upon the application made to them. But, as the subject has l)ce[i reopened, you will perhaps allow me to offer a few remarks. In the first place, it must be borne in mind that it is the Trinity Brothers and then- supporters who seek to disturb the present state of things. The almshouses are in existence and are in good repair ; their inmates are singularly healthy, and devotedly attached to their quarters. If " W.S." had attended throughout the inquiry he would have found that the suggestion of any necessity for "an outlay of thousands" was absolutely baseless. The almshouses are at the present moment " cheerful and healthy homes." Further, there has never been the slightest difficulty in filling the cottages, and the Trinity House have ample funds to maintain them. The Trinity Brothers, who conducted their case with conspicuous fairness and moderation, substantially admitted all these facts, and ultimately based their application wholly on the ground that by selling the almshouses they could provide a greater number of pensions. This brings me to the second consideration. Captain Henry Mudd, who founded the charity, did not leave money for pensions. He gave a piece of land for almshouses. The exacft words of his will, which probably many of your correspondents have not seen, are as follows : — " I give and bequeath unto the Master, Wardens, Brethren, and Assistants of the Corporation of Trinity House, of Deptford Strond, in the Coy. of Kent, all that my poore (piece) or parcell of land or ground with the appurtenances lying and being in Milend, in 33 the parish of Stepney alias Stebunheath aforesaid, near the Road there, for and during all my lease and term, to the end that the said corporation shall build almshouses thereon for the use and habitation of some of their poor." Now it IS a question whether the Charity Commissioners have power wholly to change the charatfter of a charity of this kind, where there are means of maintaining it in accordance with the donor's wishes. But, assuming that they have, it is certainlv a question whether thej^ should exercise such a power when there aie abundant reasons of public policy why thej should not do so, Parliament is open to the Trustees of the charity, if the Commissioners decline to act ; and Parliament seems to be the most fittmq; tribunal to effect a change of so radical a character. Parliament did not, however, think fit to sanction the demolition of the Charterhouse in order to establish pensions, although the arguments for a change were in that instance much stronger, as the Governors pleaded insufficiency of funds. Maj' it not be reasonably argued that questions of this sort should be treated either on narrow or on broad principles, and not upon some confused mixture of the two ? If the original intention of the charity is to be maintained, the almshouses should not be touched. If, on the other hand, considerations of general expediency are to prevail, then it is difficult to see why the welfare of a whole neighbourhood, the interests of art, and the preservation of a visible and inspiring memorial of the kindness of a bygone day are not to be taken into account as well as the supposed interests of a particular class. Why should a charity be recast when it is doing good work, and when to recast it i:i the way proposed would inflict an irreparable injury upon the community at lirge .' One word as to the alleged preference for pensions. Too much importance should not be attached to a circular issued by the Governors of a charity in the midst of a controversy in which they are known to be deeply interested. The vote of those in the almshouses seems to possess a m ire real significance. Moreover, the Trinity Brothers have already numerous pensions to bestow, so that to a large extent a choice is already offered to applicants. And it should be borne in mind that there is no herding of men or women, as so manj' individuals, in tliese almshouses. Men are accompanied by their wives and daughters, and each little cottage is a home of family life. Apologizing for the length to which this letter has run. — I am yours obt-dienth'. Reform Club, December. 13. ROBERT HUNTER. P.S. — There is another consideration which I have omitted to mention, but which I cannot help thinking should have weight. The Trinity Brotliers would not dream of selling the almshouses, were it not that the site has greatly increased in value. This increase is due to the growth of Mile End and the East End of London generall)'. The additional value thus conferred upon the property of the charity by the existence of a dense population at the East End should not be turned to account to their detriment, through the agencies of public bodies, such as the Trinity House and the Charity Commissioners. WITH these letters, and especially Sir Robert Hunter's, my Monograph on the Hospital may fitly close. The arguments for or against its des- truction will probably weigh with each man according as he values a great national memorial ; but a final reflection may be permitted. IT is impossible to study the history of the Trinity Guild, without being impressed by the wise and loyal regard which the Brethren have had throughout English histor}' for the wishes of the founders: it is impossible not to recognise their sense of charity and the admirable way in which the poorer Brethren have always been tended, and above all, the manner in which, up to now, they have maintained their position as Trustees of national greatness, and preserved the records of their own past history and human- ity. It comes as a shock to our regard for so venerable and dignified a body as the Corporation, that they should permit a little group of officials, however well meaning, to propose a scheme for the destruction of so noble a monument of their old time charity and patriotism. THE END. 34 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WORKS THAT REFER TO THE TRINITY HOSPITAL OR ARE REFERRED TO IN THIS MONOGRAPH. Barrett. The Trinity House of Deptford Strond. 1893. Grace. Collection of Prints, &c. Print Room, B.M. Dictionarj' of Architecture. See Wren. Vol. VII. 1887. Dock Plans, &c., in Map Room, B.M. See Deptford. Evelj'n's Diary and Correspondence. Wheatley's Edition. Ly son's Environs of London. Maitland's London. Oliver (G.) History of tlie Trinity Guild of Sleaford. Pepys' Diary. Wheatley's Edition. Pepys' Diary. Brayhrook' s Edition. Robinson (W.) History of Hackney. Strype. Stowe's Chronicle. Seymour (R.) Chronicle. The Royal Charter, B M. See Deptford Strond. Wren. Elmes' Memoires. Wren. Parentalia. W' atson (W.) History of Wisbeach. Walford (Cornelius). Guilds. Willis & Clark. History of Cambridge. PRINCIPAL PRESS REFERENCES. The Times. November 4, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29; December 4, 5, 6, 9, 11, 13, i6, 1S95 May 27, i8g5. Daily Chronicle. November 23, 25, 27, 28, 29; December 2, 4, 5, 6, 10, 1805. Westminster Gazette. November 25, 27, 28, 29 ; December 7, 1895. St. James' Gazette. November 29, 1895. Pall Mall Gazette. November 27, 29, 1895. Star. November 4, 9, 25, 27, 28, 1895. Echo. November 16, 1895. Daily Graphic. November 27, 28, 1895. East London Observer. September 21 ; October 26; November 16, 23, 1895. East London Advertiser. November 23, 1895. London. November 21, 1895. Church Times. December 13, 1895. Weekly Dispatch. December 8, 1895. , ,,„.i,,,„,,i,,r,,,},tjinii' '' irtwi>.nA3}ii.mi.ii>.}>/irjltt!!l,'i-rTTTr7S7irwtrr. PLATE -1 C.R?^SS • LAWN TM^ liHcvat* rAUNt the ^LLt•t AREOCCvPitD ffi PLATE •!• o c MILE END RpAD m e INDEX. FAOV Accounts CoiiiiiiiUee, Public 29 Adam's Work 21 Adniiraltj' 7, 14, 15, 16 Allen, Sir Tho. 13 Allen, Mr. J. 6, 7, 8, 19, 30, 31, 34, 35 Almshouses at Deptford 14, 15 America 28 Anderson, Macvicar 29 Architects, Royal Institute of 27 Argyll, The Duke of 28, 31 Armada, Spanish 12 .A.shbee, C. R. 25, 26, 32 Balfour, Max 18, 19, 20, 26, 28 Ballastage 14 Banqueting House at Kensington Palace 32 Barnard, Lord 29, 31 Barrett, Mr. 8, 18, 21 Batten, Lady 16 Besant, Sir Walter 11,25,26 Bethnal Green Vestry 30 Blake, Admiral 13 Blower, Thomas 10 Board of Trade 30 Bombay 20 Boston, The Trinity Guild of 9, 10 Braganza, Catherine of 20 Braybrook, Lord 20 British Museum 8« „ ,, Map Room 2311 „ ,, Print Room i5«, i8» Brown, Sir Richard 13, 14, 17, 18, 21 Brussels 20 Buoyage 14 Cambridge 22 Catherine of Braganza 20 Chapel of the Trinity Hospital 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, 27 Charity Commissioners 5, II. 18. 22, 25, 27, 28, 29, 31, 33 Charles U. 13. 24 Charter of the Trinity House as exempHfied at different times 12, 13, 15 Chelsea Hospital 22 Chess, Old Captains at 19 Chronicle. The Daily 6, 25, 26 Chronicles of London, Rob. Seymour 19 Church, Stepney 8 City Watch 12 Clayton, Sir Robert 23 Coat of Arms of Trinity House 21 Collegium ^ 7- 28 Committee for the Survey of the Old Memorials of Greater London 3, 28 Committee for Public Accounts 29 Company, Goldsmiths' 23 ,, Masons' 24 „ Skinners' 27 County Council, London 23, 25 Grace Collection in the British Museum 15 Craven, Earl of '3 Dartmouth, L<-'rd 13 Deptford Hospital 11, id Deptford, Alnieshouses at The Old Hall of the Trinity Guild ,, Docks Diiftionary of .Architecture Disraeli, Isaac rAOi 15 18 23 22» H Drainage of Trinity Hospital 25, 29, 30 Drake, Sir Francis 27 East India Trade 20, 26 „ End of London 26, 28, 30, 33 Effingham, Lord Howard of 12 Elder Brethren 21, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 Elizabeth 12, 13 Elmes, Memoires of Wren 23, 24 Emmanuel College, Cambridge 22 Essex House 25, 28 Evelyn, John 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, 23, 24 Fergusson (History of .'\rchite<5^ure) 22 Flagstafi" in the Trinity Hospital 16 France 28 Gable Ends of the Trinity Hospital 16, 19 Garbutt, Matt. 4, 5, 6, 18 Gascoine, Joel 23 Gladstone, W. E. 28 Glass, Stained 22, 23, 24, 25 Godman, Ernest 6, 14, 15, 19, 22, 23, 24. 25, 28, 34, 35 Goldsmiths' Company 23 Governor's Room (view Irom) Frontispiece Governor of Trinity Hospital 19 Grafton, Duke of 13 Grass Plot in Trmity Hospital 27 Green, Capt. William 15 Greenwich Hospital for Seamen 14, 22 ., Suivey 20, 23 Gribelin Print of the Hospital 18, 19, 22 Grove, John 23 Guilds, Maritime 8, 9, 16 Guild, Mariners' 8, 12, 16, 26 Hull 9. 10. I' ,, Newcastle 9 Lynn 9 ,, Wisbeach 10 Wyngale 10 „ and School of Handicraft 25, 28 Hackney, Robinson's History of 23» Hall of the Trinity Guild at Deptford 18 Handicraft, Guild and School of 25, 28 Henrv VIII. 7.8,9 Hill, Miss Oiflavia iih, 28, 29, 31 Hospital of the Trinity Guild at Deptford " II, 18 Howard of hllTingham, Lord 12 Hull, The Trinity Guild of 9, 10, 11 Hunter, Sir Robert 1 1", 32. 33 India (East) Trade 26 Institute of iiritish .\ichitcifVs 27 James II. 7. 13. '4. '5- 20 John 9 Katherine-by-tho-Tower, Cli. of St. 26 KayyiXm, Omar 26 36 Kensington Palace, Haiiqueiing Chamber 32 Kerrington, Capt. Nicholas 15 Leighton, Lord 27 London (R. Seymour's Chronicle of) 19 „ Count}' Council 25 ,, Greater 28 East End of 26, 28, 33 Longley, Sir Henry 27 Lucas, Mr. Seymour 28 L)'nn, The Trinit)' Guild of 9 Madrasspatam (Capt. Maples of) 1 7, 20, 26 Map Room, British Museum 23;/ Maples, Capt. 17, 20, 26 Marine, Mercantile g, 26 Mariners of England 8, 12, 16, 26 Maritime Guilds 8, 12, 16 Martin, Saint 9 Masters of the Trinity Guild in early times 21 Masons' Conipan)- of London 24 Meath, The Earl of 28 Mercantile Marine g, 26, 30 Merchant Adventurers 26 ,, Service 31 Mile End 33 ,, Waste 1 7 ,, Vestf)' 30 ,, Road 31 Modillioub 22 Morris, William 26 Mouldings 7, 22, 30, 31 Mudd, Capt. Henry, of Ratcliff 15, 18, 23, 32 National Trust, The 27 " Nauticus " 2o;i, 27 Nav)', Origins of the English 7, 9, C2, 16 Navy Office 14 Nelson 14 Newcastle, The Trinity Guild of 9, 10 Nichols, John Capt. 15 Omar Kayyam 26 Ormond, Duke of 14 Ossorie, Lord 14 Palisadoes ig, 27 Parclos at Wisbeach ro Parentalia 23, 24 Parliament 29, 33 Patrimony, The Right of 14 Paul's, Cathedral of St. 27, 32 Pembroke College, Cambridge 22 Pennell, Joseph Frontispiece, 22 Penrose 22, 27 Pepys, Samuel 7, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 20« Peter the Great 27 Pilotage g, 14 Poynter, Mr. 32 Print Room, British Museum i8« Protection of Ancient Buildings. Society for 26 Public .\ccou:its' Committee 29 Quoins 22 rAGE RatchfT, Capt. Mudd of 15, 23 Rawnsle)-, Canon 27 Reading Room at Trinity Hospital 19 Richard H. 10 Robinson (Histor}' of Hackney) 2yt Roj-al '.'harter of the Trinity House, as exemplified at different times 12, 13, 15 Royal Society H' ^3 ,, Institute of British Architecis 27 Sandes, Capt. 18, 20, 23 Sa)'es' Court 15, 18 Seymour Chronicle of London 19, 27 Skinners' Company 27 Skipper, The British 26 Sleaford, The Trinity Guild of 9 Society, Royal 14, 23 Society for the proteiffion of Ancient Buildings 26 Spert, Sir Thomas 7, 8 St. Katherine's by the Tower 26 St. Peter's, Westminster 26, 31 St. Martin y St. Paul's Cathedral 27, 32 Stepney 33 ,, Church 8 ,, Fields 19 ,, Green 22 Stone Ships at Gables 16, 21 Strongs, "The 22, 24 Stuarts 13, 15, 16, 23 Survey of the Old Memorials of (ireater London 3, 28 Surveyor-General 23, 24 .Sylva 14 Taylor (the poet) ii The Times 5, 25,26,27, 28, 29,30,31,32,33 Tower of London 20 „ Hill 21 Trade, Board of 30 Travers, Mr. 23 Trusts 5 Trust, The National 27 Tuke, Sir Samuel 24« Turner, Mr. Thackeray 18 Vanslipperken, Mr. 20 Walford (Guilds) gu Watch of the City of London 12 W'aterhouse, Alfred 27 Waste, Mile End 18, 19 Watson (History of Wisbeach) 10 Wentworth 22, 23 Westminster Abbey 26, 31 Wheatley (Edition of Evelyn) ii«, 24;; Whitechapel Road 26, 27 William HL 7, 27 Willis and Clark 2 2« Wisbeach 9, 10 ,, The Trinity Guild of 10 Wren, Sir Christopher 7, 18, 22, 23, 24, 27, 32 Wyngale, The Trinity Guild of 9, 10 York, The Duke of See James H. 5 o I o I I I I Publications of the Guild &' School of Handic7'aft^ or Wor'ii^ ^Jl^^^^^ under its a uf pices : THE TRANSACTIONS OF THK GUILD AND SCHOOL OF HANDICRAFT, Vol. I. Edited by C. R. Ashbee : Preface bv G. F. Watts, R A. ; Lectures, Addresses. Recipes, by Alma Tadsma, R A., W. Holman Hunt, Henry Holiday, T. Stirling Lee, E. P. Warren, Walter Crane, W. B. Richmond, A.R.A., &c. Set of proofs on hand-made Japanese vellum, touched by the Artists '° Richly bound in cow-hide, hand pressed, chased, coloured and' gilded from ;i2 iS. t 0^5 ON SCULPTURE. L. Alma Tadem-i, R.A AN ADDRESS ON THE OPENING OF THE WHITECHAPEL PICTURE EXHIBITION. W. Holman Hunt PARLOUR ARCHITECTURE. E. P. Warren RECIPES AND NOTES. Walter Crane, &c. ON GESSO. \V. B. Richmond. A.R.A A SHORT HISTORY OF THE GUILD & SCHOOL OF HANDICRAFT C. R. .\shbee I O THE IDEALS OF THE CRAFTSMAN. An .Vddress to the Craftsman Club I O DECORATIVE ART FROM A WORKSHOP POINT OF VIEW. C. R. .\shbee I O SOME ILLUSTRATIONS FOR A COURSE OF LECTURES ON DESIGN IN ITS APPLICATION TO FURNITURE. C. R. Ashbee I o THE MANUAL OF THE GUILD AND SCHOOL OF HANDICRAFT Being a Guide to County Councils and Technical Teachers 10 A MAP OF ITALY IN THE TIME OF DANTE, with decorative wood-cuts, hand coloured. Ed. Mary Hensman. Designed and executed by John Williams (/'«6. Wkh) 7 6 A TABLE OF THE ARTS AND CRAFTS OF THE REN.\ISSANCE. C. R. .\shbee i o DITTO. Of the 17th Century i o DITTO. Of the i8th Century i <> FROM WHITECHAPEL TO CAMELOT. C. R. Ashbee A Story 2 6 CHAPTERS IN WORKSHOP RECONSTRUCTION AND CITIZENSHIP. C. R. Ashbee 5 o Large Paper Copies with Special Hand-coloured Blocks, in White Japanese Vellum Covers (limited to 75 Copies) £\ \ o BENVENUTO CELLINI'S TREATISES ON METAL-WORK AND SCULPTURE. For the first time translated into English (in preparation.) THE REGISTER OF THE WATCH. Being an abstradl of the survey of the old and interesting Monuments of Greater London and Essex, within a radius of 20 miles from -Aldgate, and comprising the parishes of Aldgate, Whitechapel, Bow, Bromley, Mile End, Leyton, Leytonstone, Stratford, Poplar, Epping, &c. Prtfarti under the auspicis of the Watch Commitlee and edited by C. R. ASHBEE (in preparation.) THE DINGS SONG BOOK. Printed for Mr. H. H. GORE, of Bristol I o THE REPORTS OF THE SCHOOL OF HANDI- CRAFT from IS88 to 1S95 bound uf together 2 6 THE TRINITY HOSPITAL IN MILE END. By C. R. Ashbee, With Illustrations by Members of the Watch Committee 7 6 THE GUILD OF HANDICRAFT: Illustrations of some of its works. A lithographic series i o THE above may be had (post free) of the Secretary of the Publishing Department, GUILD &■ SCHOOL OF HANDICRAFT. Essex House. Mile End Road. London . • Thii book is now out of prim, but there are > few copies left wbich «tc sold for the benefit the School, «t the advanced price of £1 m. the Urce paper, and -«. 6d. the ordinary copies. # • « * •«."• PLATE I THE GREAT HOUSE, LEYTON. BY EDWIN GUNN, ARCHITECT. BEING THE FOURTH MONO- GRAPH OF THE COMMITTEE FOR THE SURVEY OF THE MEMO- RIALS OF GREATER LONDON- # MEMBERS OF THE SURVEY COMMITTEE DURING THE PERIOD OF THE WORK. The former Presidents of the Committee were — The Late LORD LEIGHTON, P.R.A., and The late Right Rev.Dr. CREIGHTON, LORD BISHOP OF LONDON. Honorary W.ADAMS. The lord ALDENHAM. R. A. ALLISON, M. P. Mrs. C. R. ASHBEE. Mrs. H.S. ASHBEE. The lord BALCARRES. B.T. BATSFORD. ALBERT E. BERNAYS. The late Sir WALTER BESANT, M.A., F.S.A. Mrs. BIGHAM. BOARD OF EDUCATION, SOUTH KENSINGTON. LEONARD BORWICK. CECIL C. BREWER. E. W. BROOKS. A. G. BROWNING, F.S.A. WILFRED BUCKLEY. W. CARPENTER. Miss A. G. E. CARTHEW. TheCHELSEAPUBLICLIBRARY E. COLQUHOUN. The Right Hon. L. COURTNEY, P.C. GEO. WASHINGTON CRAM. WALTER CRANE. G.J. CROSBIE DAWSON. W. H. DICKINSON, M.A., L.C.C. CAMPBELL DODGSON. Miss S.DUCKWORTH. F. M. DUTTON. OWEN FLEMING. T. MACKENZIE FOWLER. GEORGE FRAxVIPTON, A.R.A. W. WATERHOUSE GIBBINS. Members. RICKMAN J. GODLEE. The rev. W. GOODCHILD. The GUILDHALL LIBRARY. RICHARD W.HALE. W.J. HARDY, F.S.A. J.S.HILL. J. |. HOLDSWORTH. M'rs. E.HUBBARD. VICTOR TYLSTON HODGSON. Dr. G.B.LONGSTAFF,J.P., L.C.C. The countess OF LOVELACE. Mrs. F. LOWREY. WILLIAM MACGREGOR. MAURICE MACMILLAN. F.E. MASEY. J.PAGETMELLOR. J. T. MICKLETH WAITE, F.S.A. F. D. MOCATTA. The LORD MONKSWELL, L.C.C. A.MOORE, F.S.I. G. VAUGHAN MORGAN. Dr.J. D.E.MORTIMER. A.J. MUNBY, M.A., F.S.A. PHILIP NORMAN, F.S.A. The Rev. J. P. NOYES, M.A. VERE L.OLIVER. Dr. G. PAGENSTECHER. F. W. PETERS. H. H. PETERS. The PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC LIBRARIES. The Rev. MANLEY POWER. AMBROSE M. POYNTER. SirE.J. poynter,p.r.a. Colonel W. F. PRIDEAUX, C.S.I. 3 EDWARDS. PRIOR. W.G. RAWLINSON. COLIN E. READER. Mrs. COLIN E. READER. J. S. REDMAYNE. The REFORM CLUB. Sir JOHN RIGBY. THE MARQUIS OF RIPON. F.W.SARGANT. Maj.-GeneralE.H.SARTORIUS. SirCOLIN SCOTT-MONCRIEFF. T. MYDDELTON SHALL- CROSS. W.K.SHIRLEY. H. C. SOTHERAN. The Hon. LYULPH STANLEY. J.J.STEVENSON. Miss STONE. R.G.TATTON. W.THOMPSON. T.THORNTON. HAMO THORNYCROFT, R.A. The LORD TREDEGAR. Mrs. THACKERAY TURNER. J.A. C.VINCENT. G.HARRY WALLIS. T. HUMPHREY WARD. Sir JOHN WATNEY. J. WELLS, M.A. Mrs.WESTLAKE. Mrs. S. a. WHITBOURN. J.G.WHITE. JOHNE. YERBURY. KEITH D. YOUNG. Active Members. C. R.ASHBEE,M.A., Chairman of the Committee. ERNEST GODMAN, Secretary of the Committee. W.ASCROFT. TheRev.A.G.B.ATKINSON,M.A MAX BALFOUR. C.J. BATHURST. J. H. BELFRAGE. REGINALD BLUNT. W.J.CAMERON. R. CURWEN. SPEDDING CURWENJ.P. G.DIXON. MATT. GARBUTT, A.M.I.C.E. A.R.I. B.A. W.H.GODFREY. AUSTIN GOMME. A.GRENVILLE. EDWIN GUNN. OSBORN C. HILLS, A.R.I. B.A. HENRY KING. H.CLAPHAM LANDER,A.RI.B.A. GILBERT H. LOVEGROVE. ERNEST A. MANN, M.S.A. E.T.MARRIOTT, M.A. THEO. MOORE, A.R.I. B.A. MissB. NEWCOMBE. SYDNEY NEWCOMBE. CHAS. NICHOLAS. E. C. NISBET. SIDNEY V. NORTH, A.R.I. B.A. A. E. NUTTER. W.J. PLAYER. J. HENRY qy INN. F.W. READER. Miss E. SPARKS. Mrs. SPOTTISWOODE. F.R.TAYLOR. G.TROTMAN. W.A.WEBB,A.R.I.B.A. R. WELLBYE. ALFRED P. WIRE. W. WONNACOTT. E. L.WRATTEN. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. THE task of writing this monograph has been rendered some- what difficult, so far as the historical data are concerned, by the paucity of references and the way in which the description of Strype has been utilised again and again by subsequent writers. I would here acknowledge the valuable help I have received from vari- ous sources. My thanks are due to the Rev. John Kennedy, who both personally and through his interesting 'History of Leyton,' has led me to much useful information. I regret that I have been unable to agree with several of the statements given in his book as to the fabric of the Great House, which however, he gives me to understand are admittedly based upon oral tra- dition, to be taken for what thev are worth. Mr. Vere L. Oliver has kindly supplied valuable details of the history of the Tench and Oliver families, of which I have made free use. I am further indebted to my friend Mr. Sidney North, A.R.I.B.A., for the drawings reproduced under his name and to Mr. Ernest Godman and Mr. A. P. Wire for their fine photographs and other material help. Mr. C. R. Ashbee, M.A, has made suggestions which I have found of great service in the preparation of this Work, and I have also received assist- ance in measuring the buildings from Messrs. T. Frank Green, S. J. Tatchell, W.J. M. Thomasson, and A. G. Parker, to whom I gratefully acknowledge my obligations. My thanks are also due to Mrs. Davey, to Mr. Miles, the present owner of the Great House, and toMr. Lawton Baker,for the facilities they have granted me for the preparation of drawings and photographs, and to the Rev. J, T. Inskip for similar facilities for work at the Parish Church. In conclusion I must express my gratitude tor the interest shown in this work by many friends, which has served to make the task one of great pleasure to me. EDWIN GUNN. London, June 1903. CONTENTS. PAGE MEMBERS OF THE SURVEY COMMITTEE DURING THE PERIOD OF THE WORK - - - - 3 AUTHOR'S PREFACE ------- 5 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ------ 7 AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY C.R. ASHBEE ON THE PUBLIC DUTY OF PRESERVING THE GREAT HOUSE, LEYTON ------- 9 DESCRIPTION AND HISTORY OF THE GREAT HOUSE --------- II INDEX ---------- 23 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 1 Viewof House,conjectural restorationasin 1720 (drawing) Edwin Gunn. 2 Basement Plan - - - ,, „ „ 3 Ground Floor Plan - - „ „ „ 4 First Floor Plan - - „ „ „ 5 Attic Plan - - _ „ „ „ 6 North-west Elevation, Entrance front „ „ „ 7 South-east Elevation, to Garden - „ ,, „ 8 View of Entrance front - - (photo) Ernest Godman. 9 Vases on Parapet of Roof, Entrance front „ „ „ 10,11 Exterior Details - - (drawings) Edwin Gunn. 12 Sections through House - - „ „ „ 13 Details of Hall and Landing - „ „ „ 14 Details of Stairs - - „ „ „ 1 5 Carved spandrils and corbel of Stairs in Hall (photo) „ „ 16 Detailof Stairs, First Floor Landing „ A. P. Wire. 17 Details of Oak-panelled Room - (drawing) Edwin Gunn. 18 Details of South Parlour - - „ „ „ 19 Chimney-piece in First Floor Room ,, „ „ 20 Stable Building - - - „ » » 21 Hall and Staircase - - „ „ „ 22 Tomb of Sir Fisher and Lady Tench in Leyton Churchyard (drawing) - - „ „ 23 Arms of Tench, Fisher, and Oliver (drawing) „ „ 24 Staircase and Landing on First Floor „ Sidney V. North. 25 Entrance front and Stables as they appeared in 1902 (drawing) _ _ _ » » AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY C. R. ASHBEE ON THE PUBLIC DUTY OF PRESERVING THE GREAT HOUSE, LEYTON. THE beautiful work of which this monograph treats, and which has been recorded, drawn, & described with such conscientious care by Mr. Gunn and those members of the Survey who have helped him, must speak for itself. The object, as he rightly states, of here presenting it to the public among the Survey Monographs is to awaken if possible some sentiment of the need, before it is too late, of preserving it for public purposes. What, it will at once be asked, can be done with this house in this posi- tion ? What, it may be answered, is continually being done in other neighbourhoods, spoiled like theLeyton neighbourhood is beingspoiled by the immense inrush of the population of greater London, the growth of dreary ugly streets, slums, and wildernesses of brick ? When a neighbourhood is thoroughly spoiled, when nothing of any beauty or interest or dignity is left in it, pious and public spirited people come together and say, " This will never do, we must have some public place, some institution, some reading room, some garden, something for the Corporate lile of the neighbourhood, anything to relieve the mono- tony of dulness to which we have been reduced. Oh if only we could find some nice old Queen Anne house in its garden to save us the expense and trouble of building afresh !" And they thereupon proceed to gather to- gether Committees and raise subscriptions to buy up at very high prices land and buildings, and to construct, with the aid of architects & others, buildings at high rates of wages, which have to be skimped & cut down because there is not near enough money to erect them as well or as beau- tifully as the simplest of the works of our forefathers. This, as is well known by members of the Survey Committee, is being done in parish after parish of the poorer districts of London, & it is done often because of the shortsightedness & the want of public spirit of those whose business is the public interest. I know nothing of the Leyton District Council, or whether among its members there are any who are willing or able to look ahead & judge ot the future, but I do know that there is nothing left in Leyton that comes up to the Great House for beauty. I know that it is a worthy and fitting repository of local history, that it still has some little scrap of its grand old gardens, that it is admirably placed opposite the County Cricket 9 ground for a house of public recreation, and that to save it from destruc- tion and preserve it for public purposes would be a public-spirited and genuinely democratic thing to do. This monograph is in the nature of an appeal to those who should take the lead in such an undertaking. One point too I think Mr. Gunn has not sufficiently brought out in his description of the house, or his plea for its retention, is that of the record in English history of its builders, and of the family to whom it owes its origin. TheTench family, orthat portion of it which has left ustheGreat House is, in this County, presumably extinct, but the family has left other and greater records than only the house. Nathaniel Tench was one among that little group ofstrong men who saw this Country through one of its greatest crises, established the mighty Bank of England to do it, steered the ship of State through its financial difficulties after the overthrow of the Stuarts, the peaceful Revolution of 1 688, and laid the foundation of English world-wide finance. All this was the work of the first directors of the Bank of England, and we owe them honour for it. One among them was Nathaniel Tench, the family which he established at Leyton and the Great House they built is the mark and token of this work, and who shall say that it was not well done. George I. recognised it with the gift of a Baronetcy ; did the family yet survive the whole face & history of Leyton might now be different. May we not hope for some little recognition byalater generation of that public spirit and fine taste of which they have left so speaking a record. I know of no other house so near London, in such a splendid condition, or that tells so eloquently of the wise work of the Old Lady of Thread- needle Street, as this house of the Tench's, and in their honour, if not for the sake of its own intrinsic beauty and future usefulness, the district of Leyton owes to posterity the duty ot its preservation. C. R. ASHBEE. lO THE GREAT HOUSE, LEYTON. CALAMITY, and the handof the modern "improver" have dealt hardly with Leyton, & but little now remains to recall its former character. A map of the Parish published in 1777 shows the vil- lage to contain a goodly number of important seats. Dilapidation has accounted for some, fire has destroyed one at least, and the scanty survi- vals become yearly reduced by the steady flow of London's millions. The latter end ot the last century saw the disappearance of Leyton Grange (1861), Leyton Manor House (1884) and Phillibrook House (1889), the estates in each case being cut up into building plots and the houses demolished. More fortunate in this respect, the Great House yet stands, although its grounds have been already blotted out and its fate hangs in the balance. Eighteenth century works describe the village of Low Leyton as "a The History pretty retiring place from London " " furnished with divers fair, & some of the House of them magnificent houses inhabited by divers wealthy Citizens and other Gentlemen." Of these was "Nathaniel Tenche, Esq.,* a very grave, intelligent and worthy Citizen and Merchant," an Alderman of London and one of the first directors of the then newly constituted Bank of England, which he ably defended by like means against the attacks of numerous pamphle- teers. He traded with the Baltic, being a member of the Eastland Com- pany, formerly known as the Merchants of Elbing, and "was for many years their Governor and so remained to his death." He is buried with * Nathaniel Tench, who first liijedat Leyton, was descended from a family set- tled at Shrewsbury, one of whom, William, was Bailiff' in 1560. Nicholas Tench, father of Nathaniel, was a Merchant of London, took out a grant of arms in 1628,©' recorded a pedigree of three generations only in the Visitation of London in 163 3-34. Nathaniel . . . lived at one time in the Parish of St. Dionys Backchurch, in the Register of which is recorded the burial of his son Nicholas in 1 66 2, the baptism and burial of his son Ambrose in 1 663, ©* the burial of his first wife Elizabeth in 1663 [Harl. Soc. Pub.]. He married his second wfe Anne, daughter and heiress of Alderman William Fisher, at Islington, on i^th July, 1666 [Ly- sons" Environs of London]. In the London Directory for 1677 is this entry evidently relating to him : ''Aid. Tinch, Fanchurch Street.'' \Reprint \i'J^. In the Church of St. Catherine Coleman, Fenchurch Street, was a tomb for Nathl., Edgar, and Samuel, sons ofNathl. Tench and his wife Anne, dau. of Wm. Fisher, 1 680-1. \Fisher s London Tombs]. {Communicated by Mr. Fere. L. Oliver). 1 1 his wife, the daughter of Alderman Fisher, in Leyton Parish Chu rch, to which, during his hfetime, he had repeatedly been a benefactor. It is to the son of these worthies,* Sir Fisher Tench, Bart., member in several Parliaments for the Borough of Southwark,that the Great House owes its origin. Sir Fisher's name occurs with great frequency in the Leyton parochial records. The ministry of the Rev. John Strype at Leyton was a time of great local activity and with most of the work of organisation undertaken by him the name of Fisher Tench is associated — as trustee of the Almshouses, of the National Schools, and of theBread Fund, — the two latter new foundations. He was also a Justice of the Peace and, in 1 7 1 2, Sheriff for the County of Essex, the wild legends lo- cally current of highwaymen imprisoned in the cellars and hanged from a tree in the gardens of the Great House probably being an elaborated traditional version descriptive of his shrieval duties. So far as can be discovered he did not so actively engage in commercial life as his father; he may indeed have found little time to spare from his public duties. He was created a Baronet in the second year of King George L, August 8th, 171 5, presumably as a matter of policy on the part of the none too firmly seated monarch, in conciliating men of in- fluence. The exact date when his fine mansion was completed is not certain. Strype writing in 1720 describes it as "modern," and its characteristics of style serve to place it with some degree of accuracy within the early years of the eighteenth century. Little more than passing mention is accorded the house by contempo- rary chroniclers dealing with the topography of London and Essex, but from their allusions one fact at least is clear — that shorn as it is of its extensive gardens, it loses what was regarded by them as its principal charm. The Rev. John Strype, Vicar of Leyton and a personal friend of Sir Fisher Tench and his father, gives the following description in his well known edition of Stowe's Survey published in 1720 : " of more mo- " dern erection is the magnificent and beautitul seat of SirFisher Tench, " Bart., adorned with large and most delightful gardens, plantations, " walks, groves, mounts, summerhouses, and pleasant canals, stored with " fish and fowl, and curious vistoes for prospect." Other writers echoing Strype are similarly appreciative, but it would seem that Sir Fisher him- self derived little satisfaction from his work, for at his death on October ^ Lysons in his '■Environs of London,' by a curious slip gives '■'■Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Bird, Esq." as the mother instead of the wife of Sir Fisher 'Tench. Did Sir Fisher s Christian name cast no light upon this, the inscriptions upon the monuments of himsef and his father ivould dispel any doubt on the point. 12 3 1 St, 1736, at the age of 63, a funeral sermon for which he by his will ordered 10 guineas, was preached from the following text, taken by his direction from Ecclesiastes II. 4, 5, 6, 10, 11 :" I made me great works, " I builded me houses, I planted me vineyards, I made me gardens and " orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits ; I made me " pools of water to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees, " And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld " not my heart from any joy,for my heart rejoiced in all my labour. Then " I looked on all the work that my hands had wrought and on the labour " that I had laboured to do, and behold all was vanity and vexation of " spirit, and there was no profit under the sun." The following quaintly worded comments are from the 'London Magazine' of November, 1736, from which the above is taken : " Words exceedingly applicable to the " house and gardens of that gentleman at Low Lay ton, which are reck- " oned among the most elegant in the country ; & at the same time most " beautifully set forth the vanity of all sublunary enjoyments." Sir Fisher Tench left two daughters & one son, Nathaniel, to whom the baronetcy and estate passed. He however died a bachelor in less than a year, when the title became extinct and the property descended to the only surviving sister, Jane, who upon the death of Lady Tench on March 3rd 1738, became sole heiress to ^^50,000. She married, on Dec. i6th, 1740, Adam Sowerby of Chesterfield, Derbyshire, and lived until May 1 8th 1752, the Great House having meanwhile been purchased by Mr. John Stanniland of London, Haberdasher. About 1750 it again changed hands, being bought by Major Richard Oliver, a West Indian Merchant and Planter. As previous accounts have been in several ways defective and confused, the following genealogy of this family is given (upon the authority of its present representative, Mr. Vere L. Oliver) to explain more fully the relationship of the various persons taking part in the important events related below : — Margaret ^ Col. Richard Oliver of Antigua = Sarah d. 1701 \ died 1716 | d. 1726 I I Col. Robert 2nd son = Major Richard 01iver=Mary Langford Col. Rowland 01iver=:Sarah b. 1700. d. 1762 I b. 1694. d. 1763 ofLeyton b. 1704. d. 1767 I I I I Thos. Lt. Govr. of Thomas of Leyton = Isabella Mary =Richd. Aldn. & M.F. Massachusetts b. 1740. d. 1803 I Langford d. 1788 I d. 1784 b- 1733/4^.181 5. ^./>./«. I I a quo s.p. Vere. L. Oliver, Esq. a great, great grandson 13 Richard Oliver of the Island of Antigua in the West Indies, Speaker of the Assembly 6c J. P. 1704, Colonel of Militia 171 5, Member of H.M. Council 1 708 until his death May 1 7 1 6, left with other issue by his first wife Margaret, who d. Aug. 1701 : — I. Richard, b. 1694, Merchant & Planter, Member of Assembly 172 1- 1738, Major of Militia 1723, Member of H. M. Council 1739, removed to London about 1744, resided at Greenwich 1746-7, purchased the Great House, Low Leyton, about 1750, where he d. 10 June 1763, aged 69. By Mary his wife, daughter of Jonas Langford, Esq., of Antigua, marrd. 9 May 1724, d. at Bath 7 July 1773, he had issue 1. Thomas, only s. and h. of the Great House, Leyton, and of Mark Lane, West India Merchant, b. at Antigua 24 Nov. 1740, d. at Leyton 29 Jan. 1 803, aged 62. By Isabella his wife and first cousin, 5th dau. and coh. of Jonas Langford, Esq. of Antigua and Theo- balds, co. Herts., b. I 2 June 1 74 1 at Antigua, d. in Wigmore Street, July 1 8 1 3, aged 72 ; he left issue three sons and three daus. 2. Mary, marrd. at Leyton 2 Feb. 1758 her cousin Richard Oliver junr. M.P. Shed, in Welbeck Street, Nov. 1788 j./». II. Robert b. 1700. Member of Assembly 1725, removed to Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1738, Colonel of Militia, d. 16 Dec. 1762, aged 62, leaving by Anne Brown his wife, marrd. 3 Feb. 1721-2, with other issue Thomas ists.&h. of Cambridge, Mass.b. 5 Jan. i733-4at Antigua, B.A., Harvard, 1753, Lieut. Governor of Massachusetts, 1774-6. His estates were confiscated for his loyalty ; d. s.p. m. at Bristol, 29 Nov. 1815, aged 83. Col. Richard Oliver left (with other issue) by his 2nd wife Sarah, d. Dec. 1726, a third son. III. Rowland, b. 1704, Colonel of Militia, Member of H. M. Council 1753, d. at Bath 16 July 1767, aged 64, and by Sarah his wife, d. Nov. 1 758, left an only surviving s. and h. Richard, bap. at Antigua 7 Jan. 1734-5, West India Merchant of Fenchurch Street, sometime a partner with his uncle Richard Oliver, senr., of Leyton, Alderman and M. P. for London 1770-80, Sheriff of London and Middlesex 1772, marrd. his cousin Mary Oliver as above and d. s.p. at sea on the voyage home from Nevis 16 Ap. 1784. In 1 768, Richard Oliver, junr. and his cousin and brother-in-law Thos. Oliver of Leyton, became active supporters of John Wilkes, and with their friends formed the "Society for the Support of the Bill of Rights," of which Richard Oliver acted as Treasurer. In June 1770, on the death of Lord Mayor Beckford, M.P. for the City, Thos. Oliver of Leyton H was selected to succeed him, but being seized with a dangerous fever, Richard Oliver took his place and was returned without opposition as M.P. on I I July, and as Alderman of Billingsgate Ward on 14 July. He first made himself obnoxious to the Ministry by refusing to back press- warrants in the City. In 1 77 1 the Speaker having issued a warrant for the arrest of a printer & citizen who had printed Parliamentary debates, the printer was discharged by Alderman Oliver, who also signed the com- mitment of the messenger for assault. Lord Mayor Brass Crosby, M.P., and Alderman John Wilkes, M.P., acted in like manner. The House of Commons by a majority considered this an infringement of its rights, and the Lord Mayor & Alderman Oliver were committed to the Tower where they remained from March 26th to May 8th. On April 9th 1771, at a meeting of the supporters of the Bill of Rights, Thos. Oliver and his friends objecting to subscribe any more for the payment of Wilkes' debts, seceded from the Society and proceeded to form a new one called the " Constitutional Society," whose chief aim was to effect the shortening of Parliaments, and they elected Alderman Oliver as their Treasurer. It was stated in the newspapers that Thomas and Richard Oliver had themselves contributed one-tenth of all the public subscriptions tor Mr. Wilkes. On 24th June 1771 a silver cup of ^(^ 100 in value was voted by the City to Alderman Oliver. This cup now forms part of the Corpora- tion plate at the Mansion House. It is silver-gilt, about i foot 10 inches in height, and weighs 162 oz. Its two handles are surmounted with the City supporters. The cover is fluted & surmounted by a figure ot Liberty. On the front are two shields with the arms of the City and of Richard Oliver [Ermine on a chici Sable, three lions rampant Argent) with this inscription : This Cup Presented by the City to Aldn Oliver, for joining with Other Magistrates in the release of a Freeman who was arrested by Order of the House of Commons ; and in a Warrant for ittiprisoning the Messenger who had arrested the Citizen, and refused to give Bail. Is by him deposited in the Mansion House, to remain there a publick Memorial of the Honour which his fellow Citizens have done him and the Claim they have upon him to persevere in his Duty March 1772. WILL!? jSfASH • Tlf^li'Ci? 15 After these events there was no hindrance to the tree publication of Par- liamentary debates. On July 3rd 1 772, Richard Oliver, M. P., headed the poll for Sheriffs for London and Middlesex. In August 1774 he was elected General of the Hon. Artillery Company. On i 5th October 1 774 he was re-elected one of the four M.P.s for the City. On 25th November 1 778 he resigned his gown and went out to Antigua to attend to his plantations in that and adjoining islands. After the dissolution of Parliament in 1 780 he did not offer himself for re-election. Returning from the Island of Nevis,hedied on board ship i6th April 1784. During the period he sat in Parliament he upheld the rights & liberties of the citizens on every occasion. A loyal Colonial himself he repeatedly protested against the fatal policy of the Ministry forcing the New Eng- land Colonies into rebellion and civil war. He often spoke against the corruption of the House and advocated short parliaments. In 1803-5 John Theophilus Daubuz bought the house and lands from the heirs of Thomas Oliver for _^58oo, and it is probable that about this date the extensive alterations carried out in the style of the Brothers Adam, were made.* Mr. Daubuz was of French extraction, his ances- tors having come to this country at the time of the Rev^ocation of the Edictof Nantes (1685). Apparently something of aPhilistine he (among other alterations) converted the two tine panelled rooms for use as do- mestic offices, had much of the panelling in other rooms stripped from the walls, which were canvassed and papered, and the remainder ot the woodwork including the staircase and hall, painted stone colour ! He is also credited in the Parish Records with blocking church improvements which threatened encroachment on his family pew. At his death in 1831 the greater part of his property, including the Great House, passed to his daughter Ann Hand Mary Daubuz, who however lived only until 1836, when the estate was inherited by her married brother Lewis Charles Daubuz, of Truro, who lived for three years at the Great House with his daughter. His two sons, Charles Lewis and William to whom it next descended, let the house in 1840 to Stephen Cattley, a Russia merchant, who lived in it till 1 845. It was then let to Mr. Kennard, and after him as a school to Mr. Arnold, a relative of Dr. Arnold of Rugby. In 1855 the Great House was a Boarding House, managed by Mr. Dovey. From 1858 to i860 it was again inhabited by a member of the Daubuz family, Mr. James Daubuz, and soon after this date was rented by Mrs. Davey (then Woods) who a few years afterwards purchased it. The house now became a Private Lunatic Asylum (a fate which has * The Brothers Adam died 1 792-94. 16 helped to preserve many a fine mansion in districts which have seen better days) and as such it continued to be used until 1 896. After remaining in the market tor some time it has now been acquired by Mr. Miles and seems likely to share the fate of the Manor House, Leyton Grange, and other fine houses destroved long since to furnish accommodation for the housing of the ever-increasing population of London. Should a purchaser be found there is a chance of reprieve, as although the greater part of the extensive grounds are already built over, having in fact furnished space for the formation of several new roads, the house still stands and is offered for sale as a club or institution, for which purpose it is well adapted. It is to be hoped that it may yet be spared — Greater London can ill afford to lose such relics of times that are past. In common with most other buildings of the period not assigned by The Author- direct documentary evidence to other authorship, the design of the Great ship of the House has been attributed to Sir Christopher Wren. In this connection House it should be borne in mind that, in the words of a recent writer on the English Renaissance, " it is not necessary to assign directly to his " (Wren's) design all the charming brick & stone houses built between " the Restoration and 1700 .... on the other hand .... if not by Wren, " they were certainly inspired by his work." In the present instance, moreover, while many admirable points are displayed in the treatment, a certain lack of the dominant " idea " with which Wren was able to in- fuse even the least important of his works, militates strongly against the assumption of direct connection between that great designer and the building as executed. It is of course possible that a sketch by Wren may have been materialised by some less able hand, perhaps that of Dickin- son, Clerk of Works under him at Greenwich, who having been married in the parish church in 1701, appears to have been in some way con- nected with Leyton. Whether this be so or not there is nothing to show, but it is abundantly evident that the influence of the Wren School is re- sponsible for the distinction of the detail, which though mainly of simple character is exceedingly well designed. The broad and ample treatment of the panelling, refined moulding, & (though the latter is but sparingly introduced) vigorous carving, are surely the work of some of that nu- merous band of craftsmen whose familiarity with his methods did much to establish the influence of Wren far beyond his own immediate sphere of action. Tradition has been very active in relation to the Great House. It is use- less to repeat all the idle stories in local circulation, most of which are too absurd to need refutation, asforexampleone which jointly attributes the authorship to Inigo Jones and the ownership to Queen Elizabeth's '7 " Earl of Essex." A statement, however, detailed by the Rev. John Ken- nedy in his ' History of the Parish of Leyton,' requires some explana- tion. He writes : "This house originally had two wings, from one of " which the cupola now on the tower of the Parish Church was taken. "The present front of the house was originally the back, the present " High Road and the County Cricket Ground being fields attached " thereto. The High Road then followed nearly the line of the present " Scotts Road, the estate on that side extending as far as the Phillibrook, " which divided it from the Phillibrook Estate." Whilst hesitating to cast doubt upon conclusions accepted by so eminent an authority on local history, & admitting that the statement has a basis of fact, its accuracy in detail one must be allowed to question. It is diffi- cult to see in what direction any extension ot the Ground plan can have existed; it is in its main lines obviously complete as it stands and the original plan, notwithstanding extensive remodelling during the Adam period, is still fairlv well discernible. A type quite usual at the date of erection is followed — that of a centre block with wings, the principal floor being raised upon a low basement & approached by external steps. The wings project axially, which fact has apparently given rise to the evident misunderstanding, Mr. Kennedv having probably been led to as- sume that an E shaped plan was intended by the description upon which his statement is based. Probably the mutilation which the north wing of the stable buildings has suffered is the origin of the story. The cupola now on the Church Tower which is said to have been removed hence, may indeed well have come from the Great House, since it is unusual to find a house of this type without some feature of the kind. By the Church- wardens' accounts it appears that the date of its erection on the tower was 1 806, which would coincide with the probable date of the extensive alterations made here. The turret itself bears internal evidences of adap- tation to its present position, and it is not of such a character as might be looked for in an original work of 1806, while within the roof of the Great House indications are visible of provision for the support of a central feature. In the view on Plate i it is restored to the position which it prob- ably occupied. As to the transposition of front and back, granting some alteration in line of road, the detail of the present entrance front is such as to lead one to the conclusion that it was always intended as the principal fafade, & the map of Leyton dated 1777 before referred to clearly indicates it as such, and moreover shows the site of the present cricket ground forming part of the Grange Park. The Plan The disposition of the plan requires little explanation. The main block is divided into three approximately equal areas, the centre of which 18 forms the hall and contains the main staircase. On either side rant^^ed two square rooms, between which short passages gave access to the wings. This arrangement has been disturbed on the east side by the creation of the large Drawing Room and consequent recasting of the plan, but the original disposition is evidenced by the correspondence of the basement on this side with that under the west wing, which latter preserves more nearly the original plan. The rooms fronting the terrace were formerly entered directly from the hall, beneath the half-landing of stairs, but the doorways are now blocked and the space under stairs enclosed. The cellars, absurdly named dungeons by local tradition, are raised so that the windows are above the general level of the ground as favoured in the works of Inigo Jones. The cellars beneath the hall and wings are vaulted in brick with semi-elliptical barrel vaults, the door and window openings having semicircular vaults intersecting these. Below the rooms on either side of the hall are unvaulted apartments, apparently devised as offices, the vaulting being omitted to get light through to stairs and passages. Blue & white Dutch picture-tiles line the walls of one of these. The ever-recurring tradition as to a subterranean passage appears in this case to be even less warranted by facts than usual. The hall extends from front to back of the house. The portion containing The Hall the stairs runs up through two stories and is surmounted by a shallow in- ternal dome. The front portion, one story only in height, has a ceiling painted upon canvas with columns and balustrading in perspective. The dome & ceiling over first floor landing are also painted, with allegorical figures attributed to Thornhill. The floor of the hall is laid with squares of black and white marble arranged in a simple pattern. The walls are panelled from front to foot of stairs, which ascend on either side to ahalf- landing from whence a single central flight continues to first floor level. A semi-elliptical arch beneath the halt-landing gives access to the ter- race door. Since the design and detail of hall & stairs are fully illustrated, a more precise description is unnecessary. The two rooms on the west side of the Hall are lined with simple panel- Panelled lingof bold design, the panels standing out in advance of the stiles, a feature Rooms shared by all the panelling coeval with the original design. Both these rooms retain their old marble chimney-pieces, which were surmounted until quite recently (1901) by carved overmantels with mirrors & paint- ings. The details of the North room which is panelled in oak are illus- trated on Plate 17 & the South room on Plate 1 8. The resemblance both in proportion & detail to Wren's work at Hampton Court Palace is very striking. Particulars of the overmantels have been obtained from draw- ings made before their removal by Mrs. Davey. The Dining Room took its present form at the time of the Adam re- The Dining modelling. The design is not ineffective, but the detail, by contrast with Room 19 Drawing Room Kitchens Outbuild- ings First Floor Attics the bold treatment of the original work, is perhaps a little tame and me- chanical. A small ante-room connects the Hall with the Drawing Room, which is a large room in the manner of the Brothers Adam. It has a fine plaster ceiling and a delicately carved marble mantelpiece of almost Greek re- finement of design.*' Rigid adherence to symmetry has produced the comical result that a door of apparently equal importance to the en- trance, is found to open upon a small and quite unnecessary cupboard, being provided solely for balance owing to the exigencies of planning having precluded a central entry. The Kitchen & Long Room — serving as a business room during the late tenant's occupation — are fine spacious rooms, the former stone-paved, but contain no features that call for remark. The laundry and outbuildings are additions of comparatively modern date. The approach to the first floor by the principal stairs has considerable dignity of effect and is quite the best contrived device exhibited in the internal planning of the house. The central flight conducts to a broad landing, having its walls panelled in a large manner. Facing the stairs is a wide doorway with Corinthian pilasters and pediment ; narrower door- ways similarly embellished flank the landing to right and left. It is how- ever somewhat disappointing to discoverthatthisfine spacious approach is not terminated in a more worthy manner. So powerful is its effect that a stranger ascending the stairs forms expectant visions of a fine " state apartment" as a culmination, but the central double door opens upon quite a small chamber, presumably original, there being no apparent dis- turbance of the architectural detail, which is here similar in character to the rest of the work. The rooms on this floor present few details calling for note. One room is fittedasa library with solid & rather cumbrous bookshelves in the taste of the Greek revival. Where not affected by the Adam remodelling, there are bold wood cornices, that in the chamber over the Long Room being especially fine and of different design to any other in the house. A well- proportioned marble mantelpiece in this room is illustrated on plate 19. The radical inconsistencies which appear inseparable from the style of the period are well exemplified in several instances on this floor. The design of the Terrace front depends largely for its effect upon a rather steeply pitched central pediment. This is here discovered to have no le- gitimate raison d'etre, consisting in fact of naught else but 9 in. brick- work, overlooked in the rear at a distance of but few inches by dormer * 'This chimney-piece is said to have been brought from Wanstead House, de- stroyed iu 1824. 20 windows. If this pediment, which is partially justified on the score of effect, had been carried back by a roof intersecting with that of the main building — the window openings being formed in its tympanum — the purist would have been satisfied. The device by which the shallow dome over the upper part of staircase Roofs hall is obtained, is also laid bare. It results in the formation of three rooms (store rooms only, be it said) in which a moderately tall man can- not stand upright. Injustice to the original design it may be noted that, with these exceptions, the more glaring instances of architectural false- hood evidently arose at the time of the Adam remodelling. Very interesting is the peculiar, though not unusual roof construction, The Fronts which is accessible so far as the main roof is concerned, by means of a trap-door on the landing. The timbers are of heavy scantling and very roughly wrought, while quarter-split larch poles, entirely unsquared, form the ceiling ioists. The internal slopes of roofs are slated with small thick green slates of delightfully varied colour. The brickwork of which the bulk of the walling is composed differs greatly in colour from the familiar dingy greyish yellow of the modern London 'Stock.' The prevailing tone is deep red brown with a distinct purple tinge. It is perhaps in the skilful and harmonious use of colour in material that the beauty of the Wren School finds its best and most char- acteristic expression, and in this case the effect so produced is fine and must have been yet finer before the modern sashes disturbed the " tex- ture" of the front ; the fact that the stone-work has been heavily painted is also prejudicial. Nevertheless the mellow and rich tint of the walling, relieved by dark red dressings round openings and angles, having bands and arches of excellent gauged work in bright red rubbers, the whole surmounted by the bold wooden modillion cornice, achieves a result which is of noteworthy interest and quiet beauty. The entrance front is further embellished with gauged brick pilasters having stone capitals & bases to the main block, and central projecting features of similar gauged work to each wing. The angles of this front have also stone quoins, and above the cornice rises a parapet with panels and dies of gauged brick surmounted by a stone coping, with stone urns of good design above the pilasters and quoined angles. The fact that the members of the main cor- nice are here alone enriched is strong evidence that this front has always been the principal one. The unusual spacing of the pilasters is hardly to be commended, going further than anything else to render it improbable that the design is Wren's. They are, it will be noticed, centrally placed between the openings. The more usual and rational disposition (if the pilasters are to be recognised as an organic part of the design) and one which Wren would almost certainly have followed, is to set them out first, placing the windows symmetrically in relation to the niterspaces. 21 The pilasters are, however, without diminution or entasis, following Wren's frequent practice in this respect. The entrance doorways on both fronts with their porticos are not the original ones, dating probably from the Adam remodelling, though they may be even later. The sashes also have been renewed with the exceed- ingly slender bars characteristic of the early nineteenth century. The windows overlooking the terrace, however, with the exception of those to the large drawing-room, retain their frames fixed flush with the ex- ternal face of the walls, and from these it may be judged how much the entrance front has suffered by the recessing of its sash frames behind brick reveals and the consequent enlargement of glass area with its dis- turbance of scale. T'heGardens At the date of writing, the grass terrace is the only vestige remaining of the extensive gardens so enthusiastically described by Strype. A plan of the gardens as existing in i 896 is in the possession of the Survey Com- mittee, but it seems hardly likely that this represents at all closely the lines of the original laying-out, which would probably be much more formal in character. Stables The simple stable buildings with their effective stall divisions & fittings, have suffered mutilation as before-mentioned, the North wing being curtailed to allow of the High Road being widened. They are internally very dilapidated. The yard gates and walling have been destroyed. It must not be supposed that the slight criticisms made as to the struc- ture or design of the whole fabric are intended to be taken in any abso- lute sense. They are merely offered as personal opinion based upon a careful study of the building and to assist in determining its authorship. Whether the Great House be by Wren or not matters very little after all; it matters little also whether some of the details conform to those more refined & subtle standards of criticism which the expert sometimes sets before him & which the vandal as often uses as an excuse for the destruc- tion of a beautiful thing. In the Great House we have a beautiful thing, comprehensible in its unity, which in these days & in this part of Greater London it would be quite impossible to reproduce, and except at a cost far beyond the means of a poverty-stricken district, to rival. All we can do is to preserve what we have got, & the purpose of this monograph is to bring home to those who may have the necessary influence, intelligence, or public spirit, the possibilities and the need of so doing. 22 INDEX. PAGE Adam's period, work of the, in the Great House - 16,19,22 Alterations to Great House by J. T. Daubuz - - 16,18 Arnold, Mr., former resident at Great House - - - 16 Ashbee, C. R., Introductory Note on the Public Duty of preserving the Great House - - - - - - 9 Bank of England - - - - - 10, ii Baronetcy conferred on Fisher Tench, Esq., - - 10,12 Boarding House, The Great House a - - - - 16 Cattley, Stephen, former resident at the Great House - -16 Cellars at the Great House - - - - - ^9 Chimnev-pieces at the Great House - - - 19,20 Committee for the Survey of the Memorials of Greater London, members of, during the period of the work - - - 3 Cupola on Leyton Church Tower - - - -18 Daubuz family, former owners of the Great House - - 16 Davey, Mrs., last resident at the Great House - - - 16 Description of the house and garden by Strype - - - 12 Dickinson, Clerk of Works at Greenwich, married at Leyton - 17 Dining Room - - - - - " ^9 Dovey, Mr., former resident at the Great House - -16 Drawing Room - - - - - - 20 Eastland Company - - - - - -11 Elbing, Merchants of - - - - - - 11 Funeral Sermon on Sir Fisher Tench - - - ~ '3 Gardens of the Great House _ _ - - 9,12,17,22 Greek revival period, work ot the - - - - 20 Hall ofthe Great House - - - - - 19 Hampton Court Palace, resemblance of panelling to that at - 19 Introductory Note on the Public Duty of preserving the Great House, by C. R. Ashbee - - - - - 9 Kennard, Mr., former resident at the Great House - -16 Kennedy, Rev. John, description ofthe Great House by - -18 Kitchen at the Great House - - - - - 20 23 Leyton Church _ _ _ _ Leyton Parish, description of, in former times - — — records, reference to - List of Illustrations - - _ _ London Magazine, reference to - - Lunatic Asylum, Great House a - - Map of Leyton, reference to old Materials of Great House _ _ _ Miles, Mr., owner of Great House Monograph, purpose of _ _ _ North, S. v., drawings by Oliver, V. L., Information supplied by - Oliver cup at Mansion House - - - Oliver family, former owners of the Great House Overmantels removed from panelled rooms Paintings at Great House _ _ _ Panelling at Great House _ _ _ Parish Records of Leyton _ _ _ Parliament, Sir Fisher Tench a Member of Peculiarities of design of the Great House Plan of the Great House _ _ _ Plaster ceiling in the Adam style Porticos, of later date than original design Preface _ - _ _ _ Roof construction _ _ _ _ School, the Great House a _ _ _ Sheriff, Sir Fisher Tench a _ _ _ Sowerby, Adam, marries Jane Tench Stabling of the Great House - - - Stairs of the Great House _ _ _ Stanniland, John, former owner of the Great House Strype's edition of Stowe's Survey, reference to - Strype, Rev. John, Vicar of Leyton Tench family, builders and owners of the Great House i o, 1 1 , i 2, i 3 Thornhill, Sir James, painted ceilings at the Great House attrib- uted to - - - - - - "I9 Traditions as to the Great House - - - ~ ^7 Wanstead House, reference to - - - - 20 Wren, Sir Christopher, and the design of the Great House 17, 19, 21 24 PAGE - 18 12 1 1 ,16 - 7 13 16 I I: ,18 - 21 - 17 9 - 5 II, 1 3' 14, 15' . 13 15 , 16 19 17' 12, 19 19 16 - 12 20, 21 18 - 20 - 22 - 5 - 21 - 16 - 12 : 13 22 - 20 ~ 13 12 - 12 A LIST OF BOOKS AND PRINTS YIELDING INFORMA- TION EMBODIED IN THIS WORK. Belcher and Macartney. Later Renaissance Architecture in Eng- land ----_____ 1900 Blomjield, Reginald, M.A. A History of Renaissance Architec- ture in England -_--___ 1897 Burke, yohn. A genealogical and heraldic history of the extinct and dormant Baronetcies of England, Ireland, & Scotland 1 844 C«ry. A survey of the country 25 miles round London - - 1786 Francis, yohn. History of the Bank of England, its times and traditions _-__-__- 1847 (G(5//^/z.) x'l new history of Essex- _____ 1770 Kennedy, Rev. John, M.A. A history of the Parish of Leyton, Essex _---_-_-_ 1894 hysons. Rev. Daniel. The environs of London. Several editions. 1 795-181 1 [Mailman, Peter, F.S.A.) A new history of Essex, from a late survey. By a gentleman. _____ 1769-72 Stow, John. A survey of London. Edition enlarged and brought to date by John Strype, M.A. - - Editions 1720 and 1754 Wright, Thos. The History and Topography of the County of Essex - - - - - - - - -1 83 1 London Gazette - - - - - - -1710-1715 London Magazine -------- 1736 Ordnance Survey Map. Sheet I. - _____ 1840 HERE ENDS THE FOURTH MONOGRAPH OF THE COM- MITTEE FOR THE SURVEY OF THE MEMORIALS OF GREATER LONDON, ON THE GREAT HOUSE AT LEY- TON, WHICH WAS WRITTEN BY EDWIN GUNN FROM NOTES AND DRAWINGS MADE BY HIM IN 1902-1903. WITH AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY C. R. ASHBEE. PRINTED FOR THE COMMITTEE AT THE ESSEX HOUSE PRESS, CAMPDEN, GLOS., MDCCCCIII. Published in England by Edward Arnold, 37 Bedford Street, Strand; and in America by Samuel Buckley & Co., 100 William Street, New York. 350 copies, of which 200 are reserved for the Committee. This is No. /-I PLATE 2. 3 o 9, yg C P ^ LJ! PLAT?: 3 ^1 u n fT- -r L -m M uz: o n o 11 PLATE II PLATE 5. 3 1_(M ^8 fB!^* hO-- ^ ^ P f , PLATE . at tig r^ P "- — ^ S-' 1^ ^- ?X C» I£ cv |8S8 a Q C ^2 3- I— 7^ lU e "^ - !j lip 35Sr S ft. §1 ? s- O ar I 3 H ■0^3; PLATE 7. n ^ o o p tJ <0 ''^ _s -^ 5Sg C- O i= C S a y e 3 •* II ■* ■<: 3 PLATE 8. \] h c w u < H 2 W O PLATE 9 r -^^ VASES ON PARAPET OF ROOF, ENTRANCE FRONT. PLATE lo. ^vlPCHID T71C TceninflD I ^ A jTcnc como IT iL] W VflJC AT JV A/ioLT 15 mwi in PEOPreTIOn BVT noT JPtmiiY nvrn? jTcnc tie WGDP eoenicc 3T0NE VM5D5 ST MHOixs or MMM BLOCK PEPIMEHT LCflP IHCR cams TILT "7= 4 v ^"^->>-^-^A-^ -v,v,^,-^v^- --^^r-.^^ ' J (ZL MCdi Irrrr tjiLiL2 vv\ ;;>mvv ;y^a >^^vv ))*:^ JJm^JJJ T/«iDc cnizicfncnis nnns-CT-PCLT 1902 PLATE I raiD" MCE MBOVE JTOTIE Lr-u- romER TDE5 ^ meicnnnnT on mwma.- 'At.v^\;r.^.^fy!£f!ai-^S,^i^/f-' iff&KnZ - CPT BRICK FffiLEyEL ncm3 m rpoiTcnLT 'S^^ .w i^iry.v, IMlfC iniffimcErEoriT) CVT lElCK MCmiMVE TO CEKIID WMDOW ^ cpwvi-cwri- rrnj-a-iiLT- < a. 3 h a b i^.l PLATE 13. xiroiUjdio rrviriu/vi- Tfiva-ctLT-re PLATE 14 MiYTOE 5HF mrraaiLCT in DCJKjri or V1CX 6IM.K.CT) \fXKt> PLATE 15. CARVED SPANDRILS AND CORBEL OF STAIRS IN HALL. PLATE 1 6. o z ^-H r^ Q Z < < J '<— ■r. -• , ^ O c o Tt 1 <■ H H w Q u. r H < 0. t. ^ Q 5 ^ r' b a H d 8 :) # PLATE 19 wciUinchfs f--t » T ' ' > - • -' i I S « ■£ — » — 3 r^ o < Q 1^ ill C 9 ^1 a I Sis y83c3 8 ^Ip? /TBk S 1^8 26 64 13 ri 111 c PLATE 22. ^ .^^te TOMB OF SIR FISHER AND LADY TENCH IN LEYTON CHURCHYARD. PLATE 23. ARMS FROM MONUMENT OF SIR FISHER TENCH. Arg. on a chevron bet. j Hosts' heads erased gu. a cross crosslet or. ARMS FROM MURAL MONUMENT OF NATH. TENCH AND HIS WIFE. Tefuh arrns as above, impaling az. a fess anbaitled counter embattled bet. j dolphiiis Jiaiant arg. f Fisher J. ARMS OF OLIVER FROM THE OLIVER CUP. Enn. on a Chief sa. ^ lions rampant arg. PLATE 24. ijAj.r -.- '^V- ■•F -" ' I / ^ V PiO«TM VIEW ON STAIRCASE, FIRST FLOOR LANDING, -flfr PLATE 25. 'i:^l^^k ^i'l^i^'utim ENTRANCE FRONT AND STABLES AS THEY APPEARED IN 1902. *.V KOf^T>«- # ,♦ m m^ .^ '.^p» BROOKE HOUSE, HACKNEY. BY ERNEST A. MANN, ARCHITECT. BEING THE FIFTH MONOGRAPH OF THE COMMITTEE FOR THE SURVEY OF THE MEMORIALS OF GREATER LONDON. a 2 MEMBERS OF THE SURVEY COMMITTEE DURING THE PERIOD OF THE WORK. The former Presidents of the Committee were — The late LORD LEIGHTON, P.R.A., and ThelateRightRev.Dr.CREIGHTON,LORD BISHOP OF LONDON. Honorary Members. The lord ALDENHAM. R.A.ALLISON, M. P. Mrs. C. R. ASHBEE. Mrs. H.S. ASHBEE. The lord BALCARRES. B.T. BATSFORD. ALBERT E. BERNAYS. The late Sir WALTER BESANT, M.A., F.S.A. Mrs. BIGHAM. Thebishopsgate institute. BOARD OF education, south KENSINGTON. LEONARD BORWICK. Miss M. BRADFORD. CECIL C. BREWER. E.W.BROOKS. A. G. BROWNING, F.S.A. WILFRED BUCKLEY. W. CARPENTER. Miss A. G. E. CARTHEW. TheCHELSEAPUBLICLIBRARY. E. COLQUHOUN. The Right Hon. L. COURTNEY, P.C. GEO. WASHINGTON CRAM. WALTER CRANE. G.J. CROSBIE DAWSON. CAMPBELL DODGSON. OWEN FLEMING. T. MACKENZIE FOWLER. GEORGE FRAMPTON, R.A. W. WATERHOUSE GIBBINS. RICKMAN J. GODLEE. as The guildhall LIBRARY. RICHARD W.HALE. W.J. HARDY, F.S.A. J.S.HILL. J.J. HOLDSWORTH. Mrs. E.HUBBARD. VICTOR TYLSTON HODGSON. Dr. G. B. LONGSTAFF, J.P., L.C.C. The countess OF LOVELACE. Mrs. F. LOWREY. WILLIAM MACGREGOR. F.E. MASEY. J.PAGETMELLOR. F. D. MOCATTA. The lord MONKSWELL, L.C.C. A. MOORE, F.S.I. G. VAUGHAN MORGAN. Dr. J. D. E. MORTIMER. A.J. MUNBY, M.A.,F.S.A. PHILIP NORMAN, F.S.A. The Rev. J. P. NOYES, M.A. VERE L.OLIVER. Dr. G. PAGENSTECHER. F. W. PETERS. H. H. PETERS. The PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC LIBRARIES. The Rev. M ANLEY POWER. AMBROSE M. POYNTER. SirE.J. POYNTER,P.R.A. Colonel W. F. PRIDEAUX, C.S.I. EDWARDS. PRIOR. W.G. RAWLINSON. COLIN E. READER. 3 Mrs. COLIN E. READER. J. S. REDMAYNE. The REFORM CLUB. THE MARQUIS OF RIPON. F.W.SARGANT. Maj.-GeneralE.H.SARTORIUS. SirCOLINSCOTT-MONCRIEFF. T. MYDDELTON SHALLCROSS. W.K.SHIRLEY. H.C. SOTHERAN. J.J.STEVENSON. The LORD STANLEYOF ALDER- LEY. T.THORNTON. The lord TREDEGAR. T. HUMPHREY WARD. Sir JOHN WATNEY. Mrs.WESTLAKE. Mrs. S. a. WHITBOURN. J.G.WHITE. JOHNE.YERBURY. KEITH D. YOUNG. Active Members. C. R.ASHBEE, M.A., Chairman of the Committee. ERNEST GODMAN, Secretary of the Committee. W.ASCROFT. TheRev. a. G. B. ATKINSON, M. a, C.J.BATHURST. J. H.BELFRAGE. REGINALD BLUNT. W.J.CAMERON. J.G. N.CLIFT. R.CURWEN. G.DIXON. MATT. GARBUTT, A.M.I.C.E. A.R.I. B.A. W.H.GODFREY. Mrs. ERNEST GODMAN, A.R.E. T. FRANK GREEN. EDWIN GUNN, A.R.I.B.A. OSBORN C. HILLS, A.R.I.B.A. HENRY KING. H.CLAPHAM LANDER,A.R.LB.A. GILBERT H. LOVEGROVE. ERNEST A. MANN, M.S.A. E.T.MARRIOTT, M. A. THEO. MOORE, A.R.I.B.A. SYDNEY NEWCOMBE. CHAS. NICHOLAS. E.C.NISBET. A. E. NUTTER. W.J. PLAYER. H. PRINCE. J. HENRY QU INN. F.W. READER. Mrs. SPOTTISWOODE. F.R.TAYLOR. G.TROTMAN. W.A.WEBB, A.R.I.B.A. R. WELLBYE. ALFRED P. WIRE. W. WONNACOTT. E.L.WRATTEN, A.R.I.B.A. CONTENTS. PAGE Members of the Survey Committee during the period of the work 3 List of Illustrations ------ ..r An Introductory Note by C. R.Ashbee ----- 6 Chapter I. Historical and Topographical - _ _ _ 7 „ II. Biographical ----___ i^ „ III. Descriptive ------- 26 Index -----__-__ ^o >5 9> LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. View in North Quadrangle - [etching) Jessie Godman, Frontis- A.R.E. piece. Plate To face page I. Brooke House from North-east (f«^r<2i;/«^) W. Hollar 1642 14 „ „ ,, South-east „ Chatelaine 1750 „ North-east {photo) A. P. Wire 1904 16 „ South-east {engraving) Malcolm 1797 3. Ground Floor Plan - - {drawing) - - - 20 4. First Floor Plan - - „ _ _ - 24 5. Elevations of South and West Sides - - - - „ J.Burlisoni842 30 6. Interior of Chapel, with tomb of Ralph de Elryngton - {engravings) W. Hollar 1642 28 7. View of West, or Garden Side {photo) G. H. Love- grove, 1904. 38 8. Details of panelling, &c., in ErnestGodman, Long Gallery - - - {drawing) T. Moore, & Chas. Nicholas 38 9. Lord Hunsdon, and Sir Fulke Greville - - -{engravings) - - - 12 a 4 5 AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE. BY C. R. ASHBEE. IT is a privilege to have seen Brooke House, and all dwellers in East London — indeed all Londoners — are the gainers by being reminded that so beautiful a thing is still with us. Mr. Mann's monograph, giving as it does a careful and well-planned account of the whole fabric, speaks for itself ; but a word from the Editor may perhaps be permitted as to the value and purpose generally of antiquarian research among existing buildings, and as to what the Committee's special function may be said to be in regard to it. This function may be termed an educative one. We desire to remind Londoners of the beautiful things still in their midst, and to encourage an endeavour and determination for their maintenance. It is often difficult, it is often costly, to do this, but it is never impossible where the public are sufficiently educated to desire the maintenance of historical & beautiful architecture. In two of our previous publications the Committee had to lament the destruction of noble buildings which, with a little more intelligence on the part of local governing bodies, could quite well have been saved & turned to wise public service. Scarce two weeks after the appearance of the Committee's monograph on the Great House, Leyton, the splendid work of Sir FisherTench — with the Thornhill frescoes, the fine later Adam's workmanship, the terraced garden, and all the other beautiful things it contained — was relegated to the housebreaker, and swept away. We now see spawned over the site rows of tiny brick cottages, & doubtless in a few years some enlightened Councillor of Leyton will be raising the twin cries of overcrowding and the need for a public library, garden, and institute ; whereupon ten times the sum that bought the Great House will be levied on the rates, and nothing near so fine as what we have lost will be given us again. It is a curious reflection how singularly unpractical the average Englishman sometimes is, owing to the want of the esthetic sense ! We trust some Councillors of Hackney who still appreciate the beauty of Brooke House may chance to see this, and so mock at the Councillors of Leyton. C. R. ASHBEE, Chairman of the Survey Committee. CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL AND TOPOGRAPHICAL. " What boots it now to Percy's gallant heir, "That once he stood the rival to his King ; " And side-long glances stole from Anna's eyes. "... In yonder lonely churchyard laid, " Scarcely distinguished from the common dead, " No noises now rouse up the list'ning sense, " Save that, from yon old tower, our village clock " Strikes on the ear his deep and drowsy chime."* SO sang the local poet of a dead and gone generation, and the senti- ment is no less applicable to the subject we are about to consider, in this more modern but less poetic age. The stately dead still live in history's page; the old tower still stands; and Brooke House — where once dwelt " Percy's gallant heir" — with all its associa- tions of a regal past, and much of its original splendour, remains to us. One marvels that the rapacity of the modern speculator has permitted this old-world mansion, with its acres of ground ripe for the brick-and- mortar harvest, to remain so long untouched. Although, in a sense, 'Ichabod' might fitly be inscribed across the por- tal of Brooke House, yet we shall hope to show, before we turn the last page of this monograph, that much of its ancient glory remains, a pre- cious heritage to those who revere and love the memorials of the past. It is not surprising, in attempting to trace the history of such a parish as Hackney back to the time of the Conquest, to find some divergence in the conclusions arrived at by the various historians of the intervening periods. At the Conquest, all England became vested in William I., as in fee. To whom he allotted the lands in Hackney it is impossible, in the absence of all recordor tradition, to determine. The principal manorof Hackney (says Lysons.-j- writing a century ago) was formerly parcel of the bishop- ric of London ; and, though not mentioned in the record of Domesday, was, it is probable, included in the Survey of Stepney. "In the reign of Henry III., when the first mention of the place occurs as a village, it is called Hackenaye and Hacquenye ; and in a patent ot Edward IV. granting the manors of Stepney and Hackney to Thomas Lord Wentworth, it is styled Hackeney otherwise Hackney."."]: * " La Bagatella" f Quoted in MSS. ' Hist, of Hackney: J. Thomas. X Walford's ' Old and New London.' Vol. T. /. 5 1 2. 7 In the year 1233 the Knights Templars purchased in this parish half a hide of land with its appurtenances, of Ralph de Burgham, for sixteen marks sterling. This order — the Knights Templars — was in 131 2 dis- annulled in England, and the knights, being condemned to perpetual penance, were sent into monasteries where, it is recorded, they behaved themselves modestly. The Temple, with all the lands belonging to it in the City & suburbs, was given to Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, by Edward II. in 1307 with remainder to the king and his heirs, by which entail it came again to Edward III. in i 327, who gave it to the Knights Hospitallers of St. John Baptist of Jerusalem.* It is recorded that when Philip de Tame, prior of Saint John of Jerusalem (to which monastery all the possessions of the Knights Templars were granted upon the dissolution of that Order) took possession of them, he was admitted by suit of Court. An annual quit rent was also paid to the Bishop of London. -j- The Bishop of London had a grant of free-warren in Hackney in the year 1291. There was formerly a manor termed "The King's Manor" in the parish of Hackney, granted in the fifteenth year of Richard II., i 392, to the Earl of Cambridge, whose title is still recognised in " Cambridge Heath," a neighbouring district. Tradition has carried the origin of this denomination — the King's Manor — as high as King Alfred, from whose grant the Kings-land is probably descended. ;|. The manor of Hackney seems to have been — from about the year 1 4 1 o — part of the dowry of the English queens, and there is record of a grant of the "Manor of Hackneis " (with other lands) to Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV., dated July 7, "in the seventh year of our reign" (1467). After the dissolution of the Priory of S. John of Jerusalem this estate at Hackney appears to have been granted to Henry, Earl of North- umberland. The Crown having resumed the immediate tenure of all the Church lands in Hackney — which comprehended those of the Monastery of St. John, the Hospital of St. Mary, and the demesne of the Bishop which included the manors of the Rectory — these were bestowed on certain lay persons for good and faithful services done the King; and hence arose the manors of Lordshold, Kingshold, and Brooke, the two former of which, with that of the Rectory or Grumbold now chiefly remain. § Robinson, in his history of Hackney, states that the manor of Lordshold * Mag. Britt. ,1724. ■]• Lysons. % WalfortTs Old & New London. § Papers relating to Hackney Manors : T'yssen hib. 8 was co-extensive with the parish of Hackney, and was in the time of Edward VI. valued at jr6i 9s. 4d. This estate at Hackney having been granted by the King, probably in trust,to the Earl of Northumberland, was re-conveyed by this nobleman in 1535 to Sir Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor, and others, for the King's use ; but it appears, nevertheless, that the Earl kept possession of it till his death which happened two years afterwards "at his manor of Hackney." It then reverted to the Crown, and from that time was called the Manor of King's hold.* It appears that it was the King's intention to have bestowed the manor upon Sir William Herbert, K.G., Earl of Pembroke, Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and the lineal descendant of Sir William Herbert ap Thomas of Raglan Castle, Mon., who was knighted for his valour in the French wars by Henry V. ; but before this intention could be put in force the King died. This event was not allowed to defeat the intentions of the deceased monarch; consequently Edward VI. and his Council in pursuance thereof, by letters patent A.D. i 547 (the first of his reign) granted Sir William Herbert for the support of his high appointment a manor in Hackney " of the clear yearly value of 40 marcs,"-)- or, accord- ing to Lysons, j^jg i 5s. 4d. per annum. In the grant to Sir William the manor is termed "part of the Kings Majesty's purchased lands" and is called "our Lordship and manor of Hackney." The letters patent define the manor to be "all and singular^our houses, edifices, barns, stables, dove-houses, buildings, gardens, orchards, garden- grounds, lands & soil being within the scite, enclosure, circuit, compass, or precinct of the said capital mansion." This " capital mansion " can be no other than Brooke House, which is described as " a fayre house, all ot brick, with a fayre hall and parlor, a large gallery, a proper chapel, and a proper library to laye books, in, &c.," situated on the London Road and enclosed on the back side with a broad and deep ditch which tormed the "scite, circuit, or precinct" referred to, which certainly does not at all coincide with the description of the manor of Hackney or the Kingshold as set forth in the letters patent of James I., by which it was granted to Hugh Sexey and others. Brewer, in his " Beauties of England & Wales," states that "the Manor HouseofKingshold, long termed Brooke House, is yet remaining, and is now used as a receptacle for insane persons under the direction of Mr. Holmes." Wheatley and Cunningham^ also agree that Brooke House was the manor house of theManor of Kingshold, and was sometimes known as Kingshold. It would therefore seem that what * Lysons. -V MSS. Hist. T/iomas. X'-'- London^ Past and Present." was known as the Manor of Brooke was ultimately merged into that of Kingshold. Besides, the Manor of Hackney did not necessarily imply that of Kingshold, since the Lordshold and Kingshold both have the general description of Manors of Hackney.* Another historian however states, and the record is quite authentic, that " the manor belonged of old to the Bishop of London till Dr. Nicholas Ridley, bishop of that see, by indenture bearing date April i 2, 4 Edward VI. about the time of the Reformation, granted or surrendered this ma- nor," and all & singular the messuages, lands, tenements, hereditaments, whatsoever to the said manor belonging or appertaining" — with that of Hackney — to the said king his heirs and successors for ever, in conside- ration of certain other lordships. The Earl of Pembroke, in the same year in which the grant was made to him, sold the manor to Sir Ralph Sadleir. From him it passed the year following to Edward Carew, Esq., and having continued for some years in that family, by a quick succession was alienated in 1578 by Richard Carew, Esq., to Sir Henry Carey, first Lord Hunsdon, by whom it was conveyed in 1583 to Sir Rowland Hayward. In 1596 this manor, with the capital mansion called the King's Place (then lately in the tenure of Sir Rowland Hayward), was conveyed by Anthony Radcliffe and others (the executors, it is probable, of Sir Row- land) to Elizabeth Countess of Oxford, who in the year 1609 alienated the Manor of Hackney, (/.f. this of the Kingshold), with four messuages, two cottages, two tofts, &c., 100 acres of land, 50 of meadow, 100 of pasture, and 20 of wood, in the parishes of Hackney and Tottenham, to Fulke Greville (afterwards Lord Brooke) his heirs and assigns. Soon afterwards by some grant or exchange the manor (formerly valued at £29 1 5S- 4d.) became vested in the Crown ; " for," says Lysons, " I find it granted by letters patent of James I. anno. 1614 [9th May 1615, ac- cording to John Thomas] to Hugh Sexey, Henry Mildmay, Thomas Laud, and Thomas Banckes, their heirs and assigns for ever, for the sum of £2^6, reservingcertain portions however." Hugh Sexey subsequently purchased the interests of Thomas Laud and Thomas Banckes ; and in 1 6 1 9 the manor was vested in Sir Laurence Hyde and nine others ; in 1633 Humphrey Hurleston, Esq., of the Inner Temple; and in 1644 William Benning, gentleman, of Tottenham High Cross. It was after- wards, in 1646, the property of William Hobson, Esq., citizen of Lon- don, who died in 1 662. Byhiswill William Hobson directed all his estates & manors in Hackney and elsewhere to be sold for the payment of his debts, but expressed a * T/iomas' MSS. 'Hist, of Hackney.' 10 desire that this manor of Saint John of Jerusalem (or the Kingshold) might it possible be reserved.* In 1659 William Smith and others, who it is probable purchased it of the Parliamentary Commissioners, alienated it to William Hobson,Esq., whose three daughters and co-heirs married Sir William Bolton, Kt., Patient Ward, and William White, Esquires, who were Lords of the Manor till 1 669, when they alienated it to John Forsyth, Esquire, citi- zen and alderman of London. -f- In 1676 the property came to Nicholas Gary and Thomas Cook, gold- smiths, of London.."!". Other records state that the manor appears to have been alienated in 1 677 by Benjamin Bannister, citizen & apothecary, and William White, citizen and haberdasher, as sons-in-law and trustees of William Hobson, to Sir George Vyner, whose first court was held in 1668. His father Sir Thomas Vyner, by his will bearing date 1 665, directed ;C70oo to be laid out in the purchase of lands for his son Sir George. During the tenure by Wm. Hobson, however, or his trustees, it is evi- dent that the house was in the occupation for some time of Lady Brooke, as Evelyn in his Diary under May 8th, 1 654, writes : " I went to Hack- ney to see my Lady Brooke's garden, which was one of the neatest and most celebrated in England, the house well furnished, but a despicable building." Pepys also writes under date June 25, 1666: "Mrs. Pen carried us to two gardens at Hackney (which I every day grow more and more in love w^ith) Mr. Drake's one, where the garden is good, and house and the prospect admirable ; the other my Lord Brooke's, where the gardens are much better, but the house not so good, nor the prospect good at all. But the gardens are excellent ; & here 1 first saw oranges grow : some green, some half, some a quarter, and some full ripe, on the same tree, and one fruit of the same tree do come a year or two after the other. I pulled off a little one by stealth (the man being mightily curious of them) and ate it, and it was just as other little green small oranges are : as big as half the end of my little finger. Here were also great variety of other exotique plants, and several labarinths, and a pretty aviary." The manor was purchased in the year 1694 by John Sikes, Esq., of the co-heirs of Sir Thomas Vyner, Bart., the infant son of Sir George. Mr. Sikes in 1698 sold it to Francis Tyssen ; in 1724 it was in the hands of Thomas Cook, as before noted; and in 1781 it became vested in John Dent, John Wormald,& the Rev. Peter Beauvoir, who held it as trustees * Lysons. '\- Hackney Journal, April 1 842. X Hackney Journal, 1842. II until 1 8 14, when it became the sole property by purchase, June 8, of William George Daniel Tyssen. The mansion, now called Brooke House, was reserved by Lord Broolce, when he sold the manor, for his own residence, & it has continued ever since in his family, the freehold being now vested in the Earl of War- wick. The remainder of a long lease was assigned to the late Dr. Munro, and is now vested in his sons. The house, which was at the time of this recital by Lysons, in the immediate tenure of a Mr. Holmes, had then been for many years occupied for the reception of insane persons. It will thus be seen that we are dealing with no ordinary structure, and that the long line of successive royalties, courtiers, gallants, wits, and statesmen, with whose careers the ancient manor and manor-house have been for so many centuries coincident, and whose history is so clearly defined & recorded, should make it one of the chief glories of this once- royal suburb — a treasure-house of sentiment and beauty, and as one of the last surviving remnants of the past, and the only baronial mansion in the neighbourhood, to be religiously preserved. Appended is a table showing from the preceding notes the chronological succession of the owners and occupiers of the manor and manor-house from its earliest times : — 1233. The Knights Templars purchase land in Hackney. I 3 1 2. The Order disannulled & the property confiscated by the Crown and given by Edward II. to Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke. 1 327. Reverting to the Crown, is given by Edward III. to the Knights Hospitallers of St. John Baptist of Jerusalem. 1410. Part of the dower of the Queen Margaret of England. 1467. Granted to Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV. Dissolution of the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem and confiscation by Henry VIII. Presented by Henry Vill. to Henry, Earl of Northumberland. 1535. Reconveyed by Earl of Northumberland to Sir Thomas Audley for the King's use, the Earl still residing, and dying here two years after. 1547. Reverting to the Crown, the manor is bestowed by Edward VI. upon Sir William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. Purchased by Sir Ralph Sadleir from the Earl. 1548. Edward Carew. Richard Carew. 1578. Sir Henry Carey, ist Lord Hunsdon. 1583. Sir Rowland Hay ward. (Q. Elizabeth's visit). Anthony Radcliffe and others. 12 PLATE Sir Henry Carey, I St Lord Hunsdon. From engraving in Tyssen Library. Sir Fulke Grevii/e, I St Lord Brooke. From engraving in Tyssen Library. 1 596. Elizabeth, Countess of Oxford. 1609. Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke. The Crown. James I. 1 6 14^ Thomas Laud, Thomas Banckes, Hugh Sexey, and 1 6 1 5 S Henry Mildmay. Hugh Sexey purchased the interests of Laud and Banckes. 161 9. Sir Laurence Hyde and nine others. 1633. Humphrey Hurleston of the Inner Temple. 1644. William Benning of Tottenham High Cross. 1646. William Hobson, Citizen of London. William Hobson's sons-in-law as trustees probably. 1654. Lady Brooke (in occupation : Evelyn's visit) . 1659. William Smith and others. 1662. William Hobson's sons-in-law: Sir William Bolton, Knight; Patient Ward, Esquire; William White, Esquire. 1666. The Right Hon. Robert Lord Brooke (in occupation: Pepys' visit). 1669. John Forsyth, Esquire. 1 676. Nicholas Carey and Thomas Cook. 1677. Sir George Vyner. Sir Thomas Vyner. 1694. John Sikes. 1698. Francis Tyssen (by purchase) Francis John Tyssen. 1724. Thomas Cook. 1777. William Clark. 1 78 1 . John Dent and others. 1 8 14. W.G.D. Tyssen. 181 1 K;r TT 1 SLvsons. 1 8 1 6 5 ^'■- ^^^^'^^ ( Brewer's "Hist, of Middlesex." Dr. Munro. 1 868. Dr. Adams (the present holder of the lease and occupier). 13 CHAPTER II. BIOGRAPHICAL. I T will be of interest to know something of the position and charac- ter of some of those to whom Brooke House has — at one time or another — belonged. There are in the Cottonian MSS. in the British Museum, particulars of the possessions of the Templars in '■'' Hakeney" dated 5 Edward III., I 332.* When the order was abolished, all their possessions in England near the Metropolis were granted to the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem at Clerkenwell ; thewhole brotherhood of which, though theydisclaim- ed the military and political pursuits of their predecessors, continued their Ecclesiastical establishments, and even improved upon their system.-^- There is, as before stated, extant, the record of the grant of the manor of Hacktieis (with other lands) to Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV. This grant is dated July 7th "In the seventh year of our reign." [1467]- Henry : Henry Algernon Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland, to whom, Henry Earl of VIII. presented the manor, was eldest son of Henry Algernon the 5th Northum- Earl. He was born about i 502, and was sent when quite young to be a her land P^g^ in Wolsey's household. He was knighted in 15 19, and, in spite of the fact that his father had destined him as early as 15 16 for Mary Talbot, the daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, he fell in love with Anne Boleyne, then aged about 20, one of the maids of honour to Queen Catherine. The intrigue was soon discovered, & Wolsey, who knew by this time the King's inclinations, scolded the young man. Lord Percy gave way, but there is little doubt that the attachment lasted through his life. On the 19th May, 1527, he succeeded his father as 6th Earl of Northumberland, and in 1530 was employed in the arrest for high treason of his old employer Cardinal Wolsey. He had many misfortunes. He was constantly ill from a kind of ague, burdened with debt, and yet had to keep up a vast establishment, and engage in fighting on his own account. To add to his other distresses, he disagreed with his wife, who soon returned to her father, and hated her husband heartily for the rest of his short life. In 1532 Northumberland stood in great peril. His wife,drawing doubtless upon herrecollection of matrimonial squabbles, accused him of a pre-contract with Anne Boleyne, confiding her alleged grievance to her father, who cautiously mentioned the matter to the Duke of Norfolk. Anne Boleyne herself ordered a public enquiry, Northumberland denied the accusation, and his accusers were routed. |. * Cott. MSS. Nero E. VI. p. 64. fRobinsons Hackney. X Diet, of Natl. Biog. 14 PLATE I, Brooke House, from the North-east. W. Hollar. I 642. llie S(nitli£altViovv' of iJi-ookHoiife .*-' J'~c '{•0^-tr . '."i£^ Brooke House, from the South-east. C hate la in. 1750. When the jealous and inconstant Monarch's affection for Anne Boleyne (then his Queen) began to decline, this pre-contract was made the pre- tence for a divorce, and the King having procured the condemnation of the amiable but unfortunate Anne by addinsj insult to cruelty, he deter- mined to give her fresh cause of mortification before she died. To this end a confession vyas extorted from her that the pre-contract before re- ferred to existed between Lord Percy's father and herself on behalf of Lord Percy ; but this was strongly denied by the Earl in a memorial, dated Newington Green, May i 3, 1 537, and written to Cromwell, Earl of Essex. In this letter he denied that he had been pre-contracted to her. There is little doubt of the Earl's veracity, for we are informed that the avowal was drawn from the Queen "by an intimation that the King would upon no other condition mitigate her cruel sentence of burning into the milder one of being beheaded."* The following is a copy of the memorial above referred to: — '■'■Mr. Secretary^ This shall be to signify unto you that I perceive by Sir Reynold Carnaby that there is supposed a precontract between the Queen and me : "whereupon I was not only heretofore examined upon mine oath before the Archbishops of Canterbury & Tork, but also received the Blessed Sacrament upon the same before the Duke of Norfolk and others the Kings Highness Council learned in the Spiritual law assuring you, Mr. Sect etary, by the said oath and Blessed Body which afore I received, and hereafter intend to receive that the same may be my damnation if ever there was any contract or promise of marriage between me and her. At Newington Green the 1 3M day of May in the 2%thyearofthe reign of our Sovereign Lord King Henry 8 th. Your assured H NORTHUMBERLAND:' Having no children, in 1535 he began to arrange his affairs. He wrote to Cromwell, Earl of Essex, that the king had given him leave to name any of his blood his heir, but on account of their "debylytery and un- naturalness" he had determined to make the king his heir ; and this de- cision he confirmed later. In May i 536 he formed one of the Court for the trial of Anne Boleyne, but when he saw her, was overcome and retired. * MSS. Hist. Thomas. [Mr. Thomas, however, is wrong when in his MSS. History he states that this letter was written by Lord Percy s father the ^th Earl, and suggests that the contract was supposed to have been between him and Anne Boleyn on behalf of his son: this is impossible as the sth Ear I died ten years before this date.'\ b I 15 Sir IVm. Herbert, Earl of Pembroke By June 1537 his mind was fast failing. He removed to Newington Green, where, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, Richard Leighton visited him on June 29th 1 5 37. He says that he found him "languens in extremis, sight and speech failed, his stomach swollen so great as I never see none, and his whole body as yellow as saiFron." * The account of his funeral in the Herald's College says : — "Henry Earl of Northumberland died at his manor of Hackney, in the King's House, between 2 and 3 in the morning, on the 29th of June 1537, 29 Hen. 8." From this record it would certainly appear that the Earl breathed his last at Brooke House, and not at Newington Green. He was buried in Hack- ney Church (then known as St. Augustine's) , and his funeral was attended by the four orders of friers, clerks, and "priests a great number." Divine service was performed by the Bishop of St. Asaph and the Abbot of Stratford.'j-Weever.'j: quotes the following inscription from his tomb: — " Here lieth interred Henry hord Percy, Earle of Northumberland Knight of the Most Honorable Order of the Garter loho died in this Toiune the last of June 1 537, the zqth of Henry 8." Dying without issue, and his brother having been attainted, the earldom became extinct, but was revived again in the person of his nephew, Thomas Percy, in 1 557. The Earl of Northumberland having in 1535 conveyed the manor to Sir Thomas Audley for the king's use, though he retained and resided in the manor house until his death, the manor seems to have remained vested in the Crown, being then known as Kingshold, until the first year of the reign of Edward VI., when the young king, following out the intention of his father, granted the manor to Sir William Herbert, Earl of Pem- broke. This grant is dated July i oth 1 547 [ i Edw. VI.] and records the "grant of the Manor of Brook or King's Place to Sir William Herbert, Knt., gent, of the Privy Chamber to K. Hen. VIII." With reference to this grant the Harleian MSS. record under date 28 Apl. I Edwd. VI. in an account "pro Willm. Herbert, Knt." " The Manore of Hackeney nath thappurtenaces in ye Countie ofMidd-.pcllofye Kinges Matie purchasd land: above fio: 12. 11. for the moyetie of the keepere of the Manore and Bailifes fee li s d there by the yeare. cleere 19 2 5 * Diet, of Nat. Biog. 16 •f Lysons. 1 IVeever Fun. Mon. PLATE 2. Brooke House, from the North-east. Photo by A. P. Wire. 1 904. Brooke House, from the South-east. Malcolm. 1797. Sir William, born 1 501, was the first Earl of Pembroke of the second creation, and as a youth seems to have entered the service of his kinsman the Earl of Worcester, and soon attracted notice at Court. He became in I 526 a gentleman pensioner and esquire of the body of the king. He has been styled a " mad young fighting fellow^," and it is related of him that on Midsummer day 1527 he took part in an affray at Bristol between some Welshmen and the watchman, and a few days later killed a mercer named Vaughan on account of a" want of some respect incompliment." Thereupon he is said to have fled to France, to have joined the French army, and to have distinguished himself so conspicuouslybyhiscourage andwit, that the French king wrote in his favour to Henry VIII. He re- turned home and married Ann, younger daughter of Sir Thomas Parr, and sister of Catherine Parr who became, on July 12th 1543, Henry VIII. 's sixth queen. Thenceforth Herbert's place in the royal favour was assured, and royal grants soon made him a man of fortune. He was knighted in i 543, was an executor of Henry VIII. 's will, and was no- minated by the king as one of Edward VI. 's new Privy Council.* His London residence was probably Baynard's Castle, which came to him through Henry VIII., with the Manor of Hendon, Midd. He died at Hampton Court on the 17th March 1569-70, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, on the north side of the choir. In an account rendered by the King's Bailiffs "of all the lordships, ma- nors, lands, & possessions, as well temporal as spiritual, whatsoever being in the hands of our Lord the King, as well by reason of the suppression and surrender of divers late monasteries, priories, and other religious houses, as by reason of exchange, purchase, and attainder," it is stated that this account is rendered because the said manor (of Hackney) with the appurtenances, is granted (among other things) to " the Most Noble Wm. Earl of Pembroke by the name of Sir William Herbert, Kt., and to his heirs for ever by the letters patent of our Lord King Edward VI. dated the I oth day of July in the I St year of his reign . . . To hold the same of our said Lord the King his heirs and successors In capiie by the service of the twentieth part of a knight's ffee and at the yearly rent of 38s. 3d. to be paid yearly." Sir Ralph Sadler, [Sadleyer or Sadleir] who purchased the manor from Sir Ralph theEarlof Pembroke, was born in Hackney in 1507, and was descended Sadler from an ancient family seated at Hackney. He was the eldest son of Henry Sadleir, received a good education, and entered at an early age the family of Thomas Cromwell, afterwards Earl of Essex, whose in- creasing favour with King Henry VIII. proved highly beneficial to his ward's fortunes. -f- * Diet of Nat. Biog. f IbiJ. b2 17 He married Margaret Mitchell, a laundress to the Earl's family, in the lifetime, though absence, of her husband — Matthew Barr, a tradesman, presumed to be dead at that time — andheprocuredan Act of Parliament (37 Hen. 8) for the legitimation of the children by her. Being Secretary to the Earl of Essex he wrote many things treating of State affairs, & by that means became known to the "Bluff Harry, "who took him from his master in the 26th year of his reign, and appointed him Master of the Great Wardrobe. This was a happy circumstance for him, as it relieved him from the danger of falling wnth his noble patron. In the 30th year of his reign Mr. Ralph Sadleir was sworn of His Ma- jesty's Privy Council, and appointed one of the principal Secretaries of State. The King appointed him by his will as one of the Vice-Regents of the kingdom during the minority of his son Edward VI., and he be- queathed to him;(^200 as a legacy. He acquired also (32nd Henry VIII.) by grant from the King, the Manor of Bromley, together with the church and the suppressed monastery.* In the first year of Edward VI. Sir Ralph was appointed Treasurer for the Army. He was present at the battle of Musselburgh in Scotland — loth September 1547 — and when the English were almost routed, rallied our scattered troops, and invited them to fight by his example. For this his General created him a Knight- Banneret, and the King of Scots' standard which he took in that battle, stood afterwards by his monument in the Church of Standon, Herts. The pole only is said to be now left, about 20 feet high, of fir, encircled with a thin plate of iron from the bottom above the reach of a horseman's sword. In the time of Queen Mary he resigned and lived privately at Standon. He was a Privy Counsellor to Queen Elizabeth in the first year of her reign, and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the tenth, which he held till his death on 30th March, 1 587, in the 80th year of his age. Sadleir is described as a most exquisite writer and a most valiant and ex- perienced soldier — qualifications that seldom meet. "He was small in stature, but tall in performances ; little was his body, but great his soul." He was accounted at one time the richest commoner of England, & the great estate which he got honestly, he spent nobly. -j- He was a great promoter of the glorious Reformation ; and he left — be- sides a good estate to his family — a pardon gained of the Pope by his servant, when he was at Rome with his master Cromwell, for his own and successors' sins for three generations ; but he was too wise to make any other use of it than to be merry. .|. *See Vol. I. Register of Comm. Survey of London, page 1 1 . "i • Fuller. :[. Magna Brittannia. Middx. Lond. 1 724. 18 He IS buried under a splendid monument with recumbent effiijv in Standon Church. His descendant, Sir Edwin Sadleir, was made a Baronet in 1661. The title is now extinct. Of the earlier members of the flimily of Carew, the next holders of the The Carews manor, full accounts are not forthcominfr. An extract from the originalia of the Exchequer MSS. in the British Museum shows the following : — 2 EJivd. 6}D. homagio Wim. de Carewe mit p dmo Gf Manio de Middx. ^Hackneya/ ptn p licene inde fact. 3 Edwd. 6^ Thome Carewarjil e /icred WimondeCarewe m/tdefunct. Hert. \ Wimond tenuit de Rige in Capite. Middx. J 20 Eliz. } Rdlicen dedit Rico Carewe ar alien mania de Hackney c Middx. ^ at tr Henrico Carey Mit Dno Hunsdon c heredsuis. From these records it is evident that Sir Wymond Carewe died seized of the manor, anno 1549, leaving Thomas his son and heira?t. 22. Tho- mas Carew died anno 1 564, leaving Richard his son and heir set. 17.* In 1578 we find the manor alienated to Sir Henry Carey, first Lord Hunsdon. Sir Henry Carey is perhaps the most interesting character of all those Lord who claimed at one time or another the proprietorship of the manor & Hunsdon itsmanorhouse. Born about 1524, he was the only son of William Carey, "penniless but nobly born," esquire of the body of Henry VIH., by his wife Mary, sister of Anne Boleyn. Through his mother he was first cousin to Queen Elizabeth, by whom he was knighted soon after her ac- cession, and was created Baron Hunsdon on January i 3, i 558-9. He has been described as "very choleric but not malicious," and it was merrily said by Sir Robert Naunton in his "Fragmenta Regalia" that his "Latine and his dissimulation were both alike, and that his custom in swearing and obscenity in speech made him seem a worse Christian than he was, and a better knight of the carpet than he could be." " He might have been with the Queen whatsoever he ivould himself; but would be no more than what he was, preferring enough above z feast in that interest." "He hung at Court on no man's sieve but stood on his own botome till the time of his death, having a competent estate of his own, given him by the Queen." *Hc!r/.MSS.,No. 160. b3 19 Three times he was in election to be Earl of Wiltshire, but some inter- vening accident retarded it. When he lay on his death-bed the queen gave him z gracious visit. Causing his patent for the said earldom to be drawn, his robes to be made, & both to be laid down upon his bed, " this lord" (who could dissemble neither well nor sick), " Madam," said he, " seeing you counted me not worthy of this honour whilst I was living, I count myself unworthy of it now I am dying." Hunsdon died 23rd July 1 596 at Somerset House, the use of which the queen had granted him; and, as Fuller reports, "of disappointment." He was buried at Westminster Abbey, on the site of the altar in the chapel of St. John the Baptist, on 1 2th August, at the queen's expense ; and a magnificent and stately monument of alabaster and marble was erected to his memory by his son. Sir George Carey, who succeeded to the title. Hunsdon was Lord of the Manor from 1 578 to 1583, and it was during his tenure that the manor house was so considerably altered, his work surviving to the present day; though, unfortunately, the exigencies of modern occupancy have destroyed at least the character of the old gallery. In the British Museum is a copy of "Froissart's Chronicles" at one time in the possession of Lord Hunsdon, and upon the flyleaves is a record, in his own handwriting, of the births of his children. " It is character- istic of Lord Hunsdon," says Sir Robert Naunton, "to have entered these family notes — which are usually made in a Bible — in such a book as "Froissart," a work that doubtless he had read through a hundred times. He was one who " lived in a ruffling time, and loved sword-and- buckler men." Possibly Froissart was his text book. The It would appear from contemporary records that shortly before Lord Countess Hunsdon's occupation of Brooke House, the queen had permitted the of Lennox tenancy of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, daughter of Queen Margaret Tudor, a god-child of Cardinal Wolsey and grandmother of King James I. ; and it is said that she removed here from Barber's Barn, an ancient house in another part of Hackney. This was a small favour, considering the nearconnection between these two ladies — andone that was soon to be cancelled by death, for on March 7, 1 577-8 the question- able Earl of Leicester called upon, and, after long private conversation dined with her. On his departure the Countess was seized with sudden illness, and expired shortly after, popular report j udging the earl as guilty of her death.* She was at first interred in Hackney Church, but James I. on his accession removed her body, and his mother's, to Westminster — where both lie under marble altar tombs in Henry VII. 's chapel. * Simpson's '■Hackney.^ 20 PLATE 3. ;:; Holinshed records: "The Ladie Margaret Countesse of Lennox de- ceased on the loth March at hir house in theparish of Hackneie besides London." In 1586 Lord Hunsdon conveyed the house by sale to Sir Rowland Sir Hay\vard,as appears by an entry in the "Originalia of the Exchequer": Roivhwd nf-jj -nr r> /• Hiiyward Middx. 25 hlvz: Ru licen dedit Henrico Carey milit dm Hunsdon alien maneria de Hackney cuptin in com pdco Rowlando Hayward et heredsuis. In 1563 he was SherifFof the City of London ; in 1 570 — as Sir Rowland Hey ward, Clothworker — he was Mayor ; and in 1 590, Mayor for part ot the year. Queen Elizabeth held her Court at Hackney about i 587, and stayed in Sir Rowland Hay ward's House — i.e., Brooke House (King's Hold).* We find by the Churchwarden's Accompts of St. Margaret, Westmin- ster, that their bells were rung on the 28th May, 1590, "when her Majesty removed from Hackney, to my Chancellor Sir Chris: Hatton at his then newly-erected mansion." After Sir Rowland's tenure ceased, the house was for a period occupied Lady successively by two widowed ladies — the Lady Katherine Vaux, & the Kat/ierinc Lady Elizabeth, Countess Dowager of Oxenford. Vaux The Lady Vaux was a pronounced adherent of the Roman Catholic party, and gave much of her time & wealth to the fostering of the tenets of that taith. She was a devoted friend to the priesthood and provided shelter for manv a hunted "father" in one or other of her houses. Of the " priest's hole " at Brooke House we have already written. The Rt. Hon. the Countess Elizabeth of Oxford was the daughter of The James Trentham, of Rowcester, Staffs., and at one time was maid ot Countess honour to Queen Elizabeth. She was second wife to Edward de Vere, of Oxford 17th Earl of Oxenford, who was buried at Hackney the 6th of July 1604. The Countess became tenant of the mansion (according to Thomas) in I 596, and retained it till 1 609, when she alienated it to Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke. In a tableof those living at Clapton in 1605, this lady is noted as residing at Brooke House. She was buried in Hackney Church Dec. 3, i6i2.i- It was during the occupancy of the Countess of Oxford, or shortly after when it again became vested in the Crown (temp. James I.)|. that an in- ventory of the goods in the house was prepared. § It is now in the British * Simpson s Mem. of St. John at Hackney. ■\- JVeever says Jan. 1, 1612-1 T,. + Lysons. § AyscougKs Catalogue No. 103, Sloan Roll XXX. i . b4 21 Museum, and is a curious document, worthy of reproduction as indicat- ing very precisely the apartments then existing and their contents : — No. I. The In the litle Parlor. Item. — A story of the Rich Man and Death, a Httle Inventory cubberd by the chimney wth locke and key, a locke to the parlor dore, noe key. /// the great Parlor. Item. — Hanginge of blewe and yellow seige, a side cubberd, a picture hanging over the same wth an iron rodde for a cur- tayne, a story of Mounte Syon in a byble, one other table wth a story of Moyses and Aaron. //; the Bisttery. Item. — One cubberd wth three pticons & twoe locke and noe key, one little hinge. I/! the Hall. Item. — Slayne clothes, a picture of Adam and Eve, a picture of Fame and Tyme, a waynscott cubberd, with inner cubberds, twoe lockes and one key, and a table uppon a frame, with one forme, and twoe benches. In the Kitchen. Item. — A beame of iron in the chimney, with the sup- porters. Inthehardery. Item. — One cubbord, one hanging shelfe,one ironhooke. In the Sty I I House. Item. — One iron chest. //; my La. Chamber. Item. — Paynted cloohes, a yellow cubbord. //; the Little Chamber. Paynted clothes, a troundle bedd, a cubbord locke and keye. No. 2. //; the Presse Chamber. Item. — A clere story glased with two casements and iron barres, a newe presse with three romes, and a little presse, with four bolts to them, and a locke, a presse of waynscot ij romes, and ij cob- erdes, ij lockes, j key. /// the Study in the great Chamber. Item. — A dore with lock and key, a bench and a shelfe, the study cealed with deale, two .... windows of . . . . lights, and two casements, newe glazed, and iron barres. //; the Wash-house. Item. — An oven in the chimney, a great iron barre. //; the Chamber over it Item. — A bedstede, the windowes unglased, two wodden windowes to shutt, two dores, to the great dore a lock and a key, and two great bolts and a chayne, a bolte to the other dore, a dore to the chamber with lock and key, a window glazed, and a great casement. //; the Wash-yarde. Item. — One great cesterne of leade, and a cock to serve them. Item, — In the ffield, 2. ctHtrne of leade sette in stone, to water horse att, with cock and pipe thereto. It'm. — In the gardeyn, a cesterne 22 of leade with pipe and cock thereto. Item.— A cesterne of leade in the orchard, with pipe and cock thereto. In the Stable. Item. — A dore with a chayne and lock ; there are xij barres of iron to the wyndowes,the stable planked, and a rack and manger, and a rack to hang bridles on ; a provinder bin. //; the Hen-house. Item. — A coope, a dore with a haspe. In the Olde Storehouse. Item.— A dore with lock and key and haspe, a dore in the cole-house. Inthegreate Come Loft. Item. — A dore with a haspe, a joyned windowe glased, lacking a casement, a lattis windowe with iron lattis, a casement nere the dore, a shelf of deal borde. In the next Lofte. Item. — A dore with lock and key, a dore to the office- house, wherein is slate, a windowe with iron lattis, a drawe windowe thereto. In the Men s Chamber. Item. — A wyndoweglasedof ffyve lights, another wyndowe with shuttings, a dore and lock and key, a bedstead with a and an old chest. In the next Chamber. Item. — A wyndowe of vij lights, and a casement wanting. In the Well-yarde. Item. — A pumpe of elme,and sesterne of lead. To the Milke-house, a dore, locke, and ij keyes. To the IVood-barne, a dore with lock and key. No. 3. /// the Stairecase. Item. — In the stairecase there is three clere stories of ten lights, two casements newlie glased, and all with iron barres, a case- ment. In my Ladies Chamber. Item. — A transomed window of twelve lights, with two casements newe glased, and with iron barres, adore with locke and key, and two boltes and a latch, a dore with a bolte to the Mayd' Chamber. In the Snidy. Item. — A dore to the Study with lock and key, and in the Studya presse,a shelf,and awyndoweglasedof fyve lights & iron barres, one casement. In the Maydes Chamber. Item. — A transomed wyndowe newe glased of ten lights, without barres, no casement, a drawe wyndow. In the Entry to the Office-house. Item. — There is a . . . wyndowe of six lights, and one casement, live barres of iron, & in the house a casement, and to it a dore with a bolte. /// Row/and Beresfourd Chamber. Item. — Two faire wyndowes of viij lights, a peece besides thereto newlie glased with two casements and barres of iron with curtayn rodds, a portall of waynscott and three cub- berd dores without locks and keyes, to the portall a latche, one dore of 23 deal borde with the flower of the same, one bolte to the dore, no locke but a ring, a dore to the Study in that chamber with a very good lock and key, in that Study a clere story of two lights, with one casement & iron barres and two shelves. In Mrs. Norris, her Chamber. Item. — Two transomed wyndowes of viij lights a peece to each of them, two great casements all barred with iron . lights, the wyndowe peeces of newe waynscot, and the portall with a peece of waynscot betwene the portall and wyndowe, to the por- tall there is two dores, and to them two latches a story of the vj maide. //; the entry to the Great Chamber. Item. — A fay re transomed wyndowe ot ffourtene lights, one casement and iron barres, two clere stories both of twelve lights, two dores with two locks, and one key to open both. /// the Great Chamber. Item. — The same chamber waynscotted, a portall with two waynscot dores and fyve other waynscot dores to it, to those dores foure latches, no locks nor keyes, a . . . coberte and one bolte, a dore with lock and key, to the staireshed, two transomed wyndowes of tenn lights a-piece, three casements and twoe ende lights in the study, within it a dore, locke, and key, the study waynscotted with deal, & two wyndowes glased, with xij lights, ij casements, iron bars, a tabell with frame, and iij . In the foure upper Lofts of the newe frame. Item. — One dore for the one, of thick elme, nayled, with a locke and key and a bolte, a dore to the next lofte, of deale, a bolte without a locke ; an old dore to the inner lofte, with a lock & bolte ; to these four lofts there are seaven transomed wyn- dowes of eight lights a-peece, to every wyndowe a casement, and all wodden barres. It'm. — In the study loft two shelves, and in the . lofte a tabell and two tresseles. In the /itt/e Chamber. Item. — Two wyndowess of vij lights, well glased, with iron barres and two casements, two dores, one bolte, two locks, and one key. SirFulke Three years before the Countess of Oxford's death she alienated the Greville, Manor House to Fulke Greville, ist Lord Brooke. It has been stated Lord Brooke that it was this nobleman who first gave the title of Brooke House to the mansion, but from the Hackney records previously referred to, this would appear to be incorrect. It is a fact also that he was not the first Brooke to occupy the mansion, and it is quite likely to have received its Sir Willm. designation from Sir William Brooke, Lord Cobham, as during the Brooke., tenure of the Carews it is probable that Sir William was in occupation, Lord the Hackney registers recording the birth of a daughter, June 2, 1563. Cobham Sir Fulke was the only son of Sir Fulke Greville, of Beauchamp Court, Warwickshire.* * Diet, of Natl. Biog. 24 PLATE 4. Brooke House next served as a residence for the Right Hon. Robert second Lord Brooke, but for how long is not known. The Hackney Vestry minutes record that : " //; conformitie to the Imtrumt. of the ninth day of Decembr . 1 6 1 ijrom the Bishp. of this dyosses aforesaid, have made choyce accordyngly \f the MostEmynent^ablest, Antiant of the said parish for the supply of Vestry Men whose Names are heare Under written. The Ryghthonble. Robart Lord Brooke, Baron, of Brooke Cort" &c. This is the only instance where we have noted the term "Court" applied to the manor-house. On the death of this Lord Brooke the house came into the possession of his son the Rt. Hon. Robert ; and the local Church-records show that — with his wife Dame Anne — he was residing in the mansion in the years 1664-5. Lord Brooke left no male issue at his death, which happened in 1676.* Of William Hobson, who next held the proprietorship, we have no William knowledge beyond the fact that the mansion was, by his sons-in-law as Hobson trustees, alienated to the Rt. Hon. Sir George Vyner, Kt. and Bart. The Communion plate of St. John's Church dates from 1 662 to 1 689, and amongst this were two silver flagons "ex dono Sir G. Vyner" with- out date, but probably about 1 672. -f- The Tyssens — subsequent owners — were formerly merchants at Flush- Francis ing, and settled in London about the time of James IL Francis Tyssen Tyssen lived at Shacklewell and purchased the manor in 1 698. He died in 1 7 1 7 and was buried at Hackney. His posthumous heir, Francisjohn Tyssen, Lord of the Manor of Hack- Francis ney, died in 1781, leaving a daughter, who subsequently conveyed the John property by marriage to the Amhursts of Rochester. Tyssen At the beginning of the last century the property passed — through failure of male heirs and by marriage of an heiress — to Mr. William George Daniel of Foley House, Kent, who thereupon assumed, by royal assent, the surname and arms of Tyssen. His eldest son, who inherited the manor, took the additional name of Amhurst. * hysons. ■f Simpson s Notes on St. John at Hackney. 25 CHAPTER III. DESCRIPTIVE. The Front of Brooke House The Basement F ^ROM the Clapton High Road one is neither attracted nor im- pressed with the comparatively modern front, which gives no sign of the dignity and antiquity of which it is the screen. This front, of quiet but characteristic design, built perhaps 130 years ago, was the last of several considerable alterations, and replaced what was existing at the time of Hollar's drawing dated 1 642, and Chatelain's of 1750. (Plates J & 2.) Itwill be seen by comparison that this re-fronting entirely destroyed all vestige of the arrangement then existing with re- gard to the front portion of the premises, with the exception of the two- storied wing at the south end, which still exists and is now known as "the cottage." Both Hollar's and Chatelain's drawings show an arched entrance of considerable height, which doubtless gave sufficient access for equestrians to the courtyards in the rear, while for those who came on foot a central portico entrance was available. Near to and southward of this last, was an octagonal turret threeorfourstoreys high; and a simi- lar turret, some remains of which may still be found, was attached to the cottage before mentioned. Exception has before now been taken to Hol- lar's want of accuracy in many of his drawings, but when one compares the position of the southern turret in the three drawings we reproduce which show it. Hollar will not, in our view, be without company in this condemnation. There is little doubt, too, that the earlier rear structure bore little resem- blance either in plan or elevation to the present. Lord Hunsdon, with theusual desire of a courtier to compliment his queen, when making his alterations brought the mansion into the shape of an E, the open side of the letter fronting to the high road ; a later owner closing up the open side by adding the front building, extending from the central to the southern wing. Portions of the original foundations of this later front structure are still to be seen, and, indeed, form the base of the walls to the present front. The basement of the earlier front building appears in a measure to have been utilised to erect the later and existing front buildings upon, and though the bricks are not of the best, the solidity of the structure evi- dently appealed to the later builders as a means of economising. The front wall rises from the basement level with six flush courses, above which are five sets-off, & on these a wall 2 ft. 6 in. thick. It is noticeable also that considerable alterations must have occurred in the ground level in the course of years, the various alterations having been adapted each to the other. The level of the original front entrance above referred to, and which is now known as the "marble hall," is some 5 ft. 6 in. below the ground floor of the modern front building ; and the old front door- 26 way to the marble hall, still existing, now leads — or would do if it were not sealed — to the basement of the front portion. Near this are some of the old oak timbers used in the construction of the previous building. The basement extends the full length of the front building, and at the northern end consists of vaulting below the old kitchen, and is paved with old red bricks and stone flagging. A systematic inspection is made comparatively easy, and what, to a stranger, is a maze of odd corners, corridors, & staircases, becomes, under the sympathetic guidance of the matron, a deeply interesting study. The careful unlocking of the front door precedes one's entrance to the The hall, open for the height of two storeys. On the left is the drawing-room, Entrance in which a marble chimney-piece of good modern design is alone notice- able for our present purpose. From this we go direct to a corridor extend- ing the whole length of the front building,but which, together with the various rooms entered from the same, is jealously kept locked against the intrusion of patients from the rear portion. At the southern end is the The Main principal staircase, the width of which ranges from 6 ft. to 9 ft. round a Staircase central well, with oak treads, carved ballusters, and heavy square newels surmounted by ball heads. Heavy beams carry the landings. This stair- case starts, as has already been stated, 5 ft. 6 in. below the main ground floor level, and above the first floor becomes much narrower and the ceiling lower as it winds up to the domestics' dormitory on the upper floor of the front building. At dado-height is an incised moulding of intersecting circles and quad- rants, very similar in character to that in the staircase of the Strangers' Hall at Ipswich, added to the building in 1627. A modern replica of this moulding has been fixed in thecorridor at the side of the quadrangle. 6@>. Ascending the main staircase, at the level of the first corridor we enter "the cottage," which, with the servants' hall at the opposite end of the building, are undoubtedly the earliest portions of the structure. On the upper landing there still exists, close up to the back wall of "the cottage," one of the small circular windows which appear on the print by Malcolm dated 1797 ; and from the lower half-landing between the two ground floor levels, a small lobby, now enclosed, originally led by stone steps (still in position) to the side garden. These steps with the doorway are shown in the reproduction of Burlison's drawing, dated 1842. (Plate 5.)* At the foot of the stairs the marble hall (so called because of the black- and-white quarries of marble with which it is paved) is divided from the main staircase by glazed doors; and with a width of 6 tt. 4 in. the * One of the landings below window is partly constructed of a solid baulk oj rough-hewn elm. 27 stairs rise ten steps up to the level of the first corridor. The old partition which formerly separated the main staircase from the women's quarters was removed many years ago, and is said by the steward, who well remembers the alteration, to have been composed of clay and straw, a common composition for internal partitions in the days of Elizabeth.* Behind and partly below the stairs is a small, low-ceiled room used as a kitchen, with a borrowed light originally looking out to the cottage garden. The floor is believed to be at the old ground level. From the foot of the stairs we enter what is now known as the "ladies' drawing-room," a long apartment (originally four separate rooms, as shown on ground plan), with panelled ceiling divided in the centre by an arched rib springing from a plain square pilaster on each side. At the far end a cupboard has been formed in the thickness of the wall. The Chapel Beyond this, & entered by folding doors, is a small room used as a chapel ; and an attempt has been made, with some success, to impart an eccle- siastical atmosphere. This was an arrangement byDr. Adamssomethirty years ago, and here daily services are held, led at times by the Rector of the parish. We are more interested, however, in the legends and history of the old chapel. The exact position is now a matter of conjecture only ; but, in addition to that suggested later, a room likely to answer to its position is one with a coved and ribbed ceiling, above that which is now used as a chapel. On Plate 6 will be found a reproduction of Hollar's drawing of "ye old chappel of ye Elryngtons at ye Brooke House in Clapton," with the tomb of Ralph de Elryngton. This shows an ante-chamber with an open timber roof, and in the floor two sepulchral tablets ; and beyond, a more ornate, unmistakeably gothic, chamber with a groined ceiling, & clustered columns with caps and bases, generally of the fourteenth cen- tury or "Decorated" period. The central boss to the groining shows a carved grotesque ; immediately below is the tomb of the same period. The recumbent figure would certainly suggest that in life De Elryngton was a member of the fraternity of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, who were in possession of the manor house from the time of Edward III. until the dissolution by Henry VIII. Hollar's note referring to the mar- riage of the " last " of the Elryngtons in 1 465 must have referred to this particular branch, as the family connection with Hackney continues long after this date. Records are extant of many of its members. The family of Elryngton (often spelled EUerington, Etherington, or Elderton) is not, so far as we know, traceable in Hackney before the be- ^ Alluding to the clay or '■'■cob'''' walls then still used in the west of 'England^ Holinshead wrote that the Spaniards were especially surprised at the excellent housekeeping which they found within walls of '•'■ sticks and dirt. ^^ 28 I'LATK 6. V ■I.,.' '.I , .U -Si, .1 -U'l I _iwi I i^l_ Interior of Chapel^ Brooke House, with tomb of Ralph dc E/ryngton. I r. Hollar. 1642. ginning of the fifteenth century ; but Hollar's etching goes to prove that The some time before that date Ralph de Elryngton was either lessee of Elryngton Brooke HouseundertheKnightsHospitallers,orof eminent rank in that Family Order. The small size of the chapel shown seems to favour the former supposition, while the latter would fully account for the facts as we find them; for nothing is more likely, or more in accordance with history, than that a warrior-monk, denied the opportunity of transmitting to his own posterity the fruits of his stout lance & sword, should use his power to further the worldly advancement of a brother or a nephew, either by profitable leases of land, or by promoting a match with some rich heir- ess. In this way the family may have been transplanted quite suddenly from any part of the country & firmly established in Hackney, or rather near it, for apart from Sir Ralph we cannot trace the family quite so early in Hackney as in Hoxton, which was the family burial-place. In a Hexham deed of the time of King John we find mention of Adam de Elrington, and soon after that date in a Featherstonhaugh deed, Ran- ulph of Elrington. There were William de Elrington (temp. Edward I.), Hugh of Elrington (1336), Robert de Elrington, Esquire (i44i),John Elrington, Esquire (1454), Simon Elrington (i 568), & others, of whom a fairly complete pedigree for a century and a halt could be made out. The names Ralph, Simon, John, Robert, Rowland, & Francis, remind us at once of the Hackney family, whose coats of arms bearing the well known "storks and fess cJancette" of the southern branch of the family, are not, however, identical with those of the northern, which always bore "three water bougets." In the Hackney Collection Portfolios appears an illustration of the tomb of Sir John Elrington, 1 48 1 , on the north side of the altar in St. Leonard's Church, Shoreditch, 1735, his wife by his side. No trace of this is now to be seen at St. Leonard's, and Hughson in his "London," published 1807, states of this Church, that "there are no monuments of peculiar notice." It was therefore probably removed at the time of the rebuilding, 1735. During the latter years of Elizabeth's, or the earlier years of James I.'s, reign,when Brooke House was in the possession of the Vaux family — of whom we shall have more to say hereafter— the chapel was evidently the scene at times of considerable excitement. Mr. Allan Feain "Secret Hiding Places," (Chap. III.) states that: "At The 'priest's Hackney the Vaux family had another residence with its chapel and hole' inihe 'priest's hole,' the latter having a masked entrance high up in the wall. Chapel. which led to a space under a gable projection of the roof. For double se- curity this contained yet an inner hiding place. In the existing Brooke House are incorporated the modernised remains of this mansion." No knowledge of the "masked entrance" however now remains, & the 29 "priest's hole" probably disappeared in the various alterations which have been made in the buildings. Unaccounted-for places such as these, when detected, are readily utilised. Passages are run through the heart of many a secret device with little veneration for the mechanical ingenuity — begotten of a terror of the scaffold or the stake — that has been dis- played in their construction. The modern builder, as a rule, knows but little of, and cares less for, such contrivances, and they are swept away without a thought. The following Confession of Ralph Myller, a prisoner in Bridewell (9 Oct. 1 584) gives us an insight into the late Lord Vaux's London house : "This examinant did afterwards meet one Robert Browne, who hath an uncle, a priest with the Lord Vaux, who is a little man with white heade, and a little browne heare on his face; goeth in an ash-colour doblet coat and a gowne faced with conye, and he was made prieste long sithens at Cambray as this examinant thinketh. This examinant spoke with the Lord Vaux and his Lady at Hackney, after that his Sonne Mr. George and the said Robert Browne had told him that this exami- nant was a taylor at Rheymes, and on Sonday was fortnight this exami- nant did hear Masse, whereat were present about XVIII persons, being my lord's householde, and the Priest last before named said the Mass. The said Priest lieth in a chamber beyonde the hall on the leftehande the stayre that leadeth to the chambers,& the Mass is said in the chappel beinge righte on the porte entringe into the hall; and the way into it is up the staire aforesaid on the left hand at the further end of the gallery : and there is a very faire crucifixe of sylver." (P.R.O. Dom. Eliz. Vol. 173. n. 64). The topography of the chapel as given in this last note is notof theclear- est, and coincides with one of the suggested positions only in the state- ment that it was at the further end of the gallery ; but, if one couples the description in the confession before related, that the chapel was "over the porte entring into the hall" with that of the hiding place "in the space under a gable projection of the roof," one would have ground for believing that the upper floor of "the cottage" is the site of the old "chappel" ; and the three-light window as shown on Malcolm's draw- ing would strengthen this supposition, especially as the gable with roof space below is conveniently adjacent ; and this is not, we think, neces- sarily negatived because the earlier drawing does not so clearly show this arrangement, as the appearance of this cottage-front was consider- ably altered between the dates of the two drawings. Father Gerard further states that, " Besides others of less standing whom she* brought me to be reconciled, she had nearly won over a certain * Lady Vaux. 30 PLATE 5. 00 <3 % H 00 i^H — ftp 1 5: eg \t:\t >g:!^?l '< ,■-« oq n- ■a great lady,* a neighbour of hers. Tho' this lady was the wife of the richest lord in the whole county & sister to the Earl of Essex (then most powerful with the Queen) and was wholly given to vanities, neverthe- less she brought her so far as to be quite willing to speak, with a priest if only he could come to her without being known. This the good widow told me. I consequently went to her house openly and addressed her as tho' I had something to tell her from a certain great lady her kinswo- man, for so it had been agreed. I dined openly with her & all the gentry in the house and spent three hours at least in private talk with her."-}- (circa 1594.) It is noteworthy that religious services of a very different character from those above alluded to, were a century and a half later held under the same roof. In Robert Seymour's "Survey," published 1734, occurs the following in the reference to Hackney : "The remarkable places and things are, three dissenting Meeting houses, oneof which is lately set up in Brooke house." Through what appears to be a cupboard, but is in reality a doorway, in the corner of the present chapel, carefully locked after our egress, we enter the corridor, commanding a good view of the quadrangle prettily arranged with flowers and shrubs. Here we note, at the side of the chapel, a bedroom fitted as a strong room for refractory patients, and opposite to this and adjoining the "ladies' drawing-room" is a sitting- room, a feature of which are the curious high cupboard fronts which have been formed to fill in what at one time were arched openings to the adjacent apartments, and the whole of which fronts — including archi- traves, dados, and skirtings — open as doors. Beyond is a passage way from the courtyard to the ladies'drawing-room, the entrance to which from the garden has a doorway with a keel-arched head. East of this is the surgery, with a high cupboard-fronted door-way similar to those before mentioned, opening to the marble hall. Outside thedoorway,leadingfromthehall to the quad: is laid as a landing half a millstone, the corresponding half being similarly placed in front of the doorway to the servants' hall. Both stones still show the toothing which served for the grinding. From the corridor along the back of "the cottage," the dining-room is " The reached, the exterior of which, fronting to the cottage garden, is shown Cothigc " on Plate 5 ; and east of this is a square hall, with a staircase to the upper floor of the cottage. This appears to have been a side entrance of some importance at one time (see Chatelain's view on Plate i), and though * Lady Penelope Devereux, wife of Robert Lord Rich. f ''During the Persecution" Autobiog. of Father Gerard. ci 31 the floor is now rather lower than the level of the garden, it was pro- bably approached earlier by a flight of steps. An old doorway to the left of this entrance, with pointed arch, now bricked up and covered by " rough cast " was, it is said, until a few years ago in evidence, suggesting by its position a lower ground level than is now the case ; but we do not find any indication of this on Burlison's drawing of 1 842. Across the hall is a small room with a marble mantel-piece of some merit, but of uncertain date. Retracing our steps we find, on the other side of the corridor, what is now a lumber room, but was originally the bath room. The floor level is several steps below that of the cottage, and is partly stone flagged. It is lighted by a small barred window, and the rather low ceiling is supported by an old oak bresummer. The old bath, said to be six feet deep but now filled up, was a square sinking in the floor, and the descent into it by way of several steps ; the sides & bottom were overlaid with tiles with patches of cement and stone. The old well which supplied the bath is below the cottage sitting-room ; & the pump, removed from its old position adjacent, is now at the side of the steps leading from the principal staircase to the garden, referred to at page 27. t@.In the upper floor of the cottage is a box room in the internal angle close to where the great arch, shown in the old prints, came. This has a small chimney-opening, and a window overlooking the main front ; the ceiling slopes to the pitch of the roof. Opposite this is a lobby, with the second of the small circular windows hung on centres and looking south, as shown on Malcolm's drawing. Beyond the last is the assistant matron's room, the chimney-piece of which alone claims attention. 'f/ig Completing our tour of the women's section, on the upper floor a corri- supposed dor runs westward the length of the wing, as shown on Plate 4. The position of doorway entrance to the corridor has heavily wave-moulded jambs,with the old carved bases. It has been supposed by some that here is to be found the Chapel position of the old chapel. The ceiling of the principal room on the south is of vaulted shape, with stout moulded ribs at intervals springing from moulded corbels, below which have been fixed, at a laterdate,wood pilastersforsupport.The apartment is about 29 feet longby 1 1 feet wide. Apart from the roof, however, there is nothing to support the assump- tion that this was at one time the chapel, and it is, the writer thinks, dis- proved by other evidence. Beyond is a bedroom with a similarlycovedorvaultedceiling,&another room with a plaster panelled ceiling with arms and crests thereon. The walls are partly panelled with seven rows of panels, spaced with fluted and reeded pilasters with carved and moulded caps, and a frieze sur- mounting the panelling. The mouldings are very small and clean, and form, in all probability, part of Lord Hunsdon's work. 32 Turning northward, we enter the corridor which, together with the separate apartments to which it gives access, formed the great gallery of The the old mansion. The length of this gallery, or " long room " as it is now Gallery known, has been variously stated at 174 feet and i 56 feet, the difference in the latter figure being probably accounted for by the exclusion of one of the end rooms. We believe that the gallery extended originally from endtoendofthebuilding,&that the longerdimension is the correct one. t@.The ceiling ofthis gallery as originally existing, was panelled by inter- secting modelled plaster mouldings, and these were filled with the arms and crests, alternating, of Lord and Lady Hunsdon. This panelling still remains, tho' by reason of the alterations which have been made, the work is now neither perfect nor complete. It is this portion of the house (the long gallery) which mainly shows the lavish expenditure which must have been made by Lord Hunsdon, the walls being richly panelled with oak, elaborately carved, from floor to ceiling. The very careful drawing of the gallery as restored, made for Lord Tys- sen by Mr. Burlison some 62 years ago, and now in the Tyssen Library, gives an excellent idea of the appearance the gallery originally bore. An old writer upon Elizabethan Architecture thus aptly described simi- lar apartments : "The long and ample galleries of the period referred to, often of very low proportion as to height, which, although frequently placed on the upper floor were intended for exercise, libraries, or for pictures ; the state rooms with delicate and rich cabinets, daintily and richly hung, glazed with crystalline glass and all other elegancy that may be thought upon, show clearly enough that these grand rooms, in addition to the hall of Tudor times, and many chambers, small in fact, but much larger and more numerous than the closets of the medieval dwellings, were the re- quirements of the day for mansions. At the same time that the plan of the medieval residence was fitted to receive these results of alterations of manners & customs, it had, especially towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, to find room for the staircases, which became spacious & splendid examples of skill, decorated with carved ballusters and newels." Modern requirements, however, necessitated the cutting up into ten or eleven separate apartments of this once splendid gallery, with the pro- vision for each of a fireplace ; and the row of chimnies from these built up from the ground level, and all on the outside, give a singular appear- ance to the garden front of the house. It is said that in the open roof of one of the older parts of the house signs of smoke still mark the fact of its erection before chimneys were much in vogue. It would appear that the divisional partition is quite modern square C2 11 framing, while the internal face of the outer wall abutting on the quad : is lined with the original Elizabethan panelling. Several of the windows have been filled up between the mullions, which remain still in position, with lath and plaster (the consequence perhaps of a window tax) & the deep recesses of the old windows have been converted into cupboards enclosed with modern panelling, which — were it in a more exposed po- sition instead of on the dark side of the narrow gangway — would more glaringly exhibit the incongruity of its position — contiguous to the rich old work — than it does. The outer face of the windows where this filling in has been done has, alas ! been cemented and painted to represent sham windows. The windows, deeply recessed, are flanked by cased carved and fluted pilasters, the base and surbase extending from floor to window-board; the lower third of the shaft is carved with leaf and tongue of quaint pat- tern, and the upper part divided by a moulded band from the lower, di- minishing and fluted. Above is a moulded capping returned round the pilasters, and, as before-mentioned, the mouldings are of very small di- mensions. The pilasters flanking one of the windows have been repaired for a height of 5 ft. 3 in. by portions of carved work, to which there is no re- spond in the building. It may have formed part of an enrichment some- where in the portion of the old mansion demolished at the time of Lord Hunsdon's alterations. Its character is certainly of an earlier date than the work it was intended to repair, and has no connection with the ad- jacent design. (See Plate 8.) The windows of the long gallery on the garden-front are mostly mo- dern, but those on the quadrangle side are of the original oak, and the panelling removed from the back wall has been utilised in the partitions which now divide the gallery into separate apartments. The first of these separate apartments is now a bedroom, and has a chimney-piece of oak. The window is modern, one end of the room is panelled with the original wainscotting, and some of the same work, though mutilated, remains by the window. The second room has also a good stone chimney-piece of the period, with an oak panelled mantel-piece with fluted pilasters over. The ceiling is plain, but traversed by oak beams. In the angle turret by last is a small room now used as a housemaids' pantry, which was at one time probably a staircase to the lower floor. Two other rooms follow, both with portions of the " Hunsdon " ceiling intact. Then eastward, on the right of the corridor are other rooms of little im- port, except that one has one of the curious high cupboard fronts previ- ously noticed. 34 A "strong room" with a padded room adjoining follow, and here one cares not to linger. We have now reached the upper floor of the more modern building, and T/ic this is practically within the roof: the king post trusses being 8 feet Servants' apart, and filled in to divide up the roof-space into rooms. A portion at Quarters the back is parted off with ashlaring to form a corridor the full length of the building.These attic rooms are the domestics' sleeping quarters, and complete the section allotted to the women. From the entrance hall northwards is a dining-room ; and beyond, the kitchen and scullery (stone-flagged). Westward of the kitchen, & at a lower level, is what is now the servants' Present hall — an oblong room, at one time divided by a central partition , as shown Servants' on ground plan. This is undoubtedly one of the most ancient parts of the Hal/ building, as a small, low, stone-mullioned casement, and wide old- fashioned fireplace testify. One does not need a vivid imagination to picture the dressing here of many a boar's head and baron of beef for consumption by my lords and ladies of a bygone age. The flight of stone steps leading down from the kitchen level was re- moved to its present position from the opposite end of the room (as shown on plan, they originally led up to the room over), and reversed within the term of the present occupier about thirty years ago, but the old square newels and carved balusters are still doing duty. This department forms the central wing of the E plan, and divides the southern or inner quad from that on the north. To the north of the kitchen is a store room (with a mighty key), once The Brew the brew-house, with corner vat, and now used by the steward, who has House occupied his present office for some forty or fifty years, and to whose care we are indebted forthepreservationof someof the most interestingrelics of Lord Hunsdon's work — e.g., the stone corbels dated 1 573, of which more presently. Adjoining the steward's room is a carpenters' shop, now much dilapi- dated ; and, though neither is of modern date, there is nothing calling for remark, except perhaps that where now is the fireplace in the steward's room was once a doorway leading to the gateway entrance to the second quadrange. Opposite this, and at the end of what is the northern limb of the E, another old opening has been bricked up, a fresh entrance being constructed on the return as access to what once were the servants' sleep- ing rooms. At the other end a door opens on to the high road, and seems to have been the servants' entrance in the old days. In the internal angle formed by this projecting limb and the main build- Staircase ing is the hexagonal staircase turret illustrated on Plate 9. A similar Turrets angle turret is at the western end of this wing. C3 35 rhe Old Laundry The East Corridor The four and three- bedded roo7tis The Exterior, South Side The original laundry is now divided into three rooms, and beyond is a passage-way between the second and third quads. Turning from this wing into the eastern main building, one enters the men's quarters, the dining room flanking eastward on to a corridor with an outlook to the quadrangle. This corridor is an extension made by the present proprietor. Dr. Adams, and is external to the main wall. The old three-light window was removed from the main wall, and re-fixed in its present position. This corridor is a continuation of that on the women's side, but is separated from it by a door, locked and sealed. The upper floor of the men's quarters is approached by an angle stair- way from the corridor, and to the left, in the central wing, is a billiard room — oak panelled from floor to ceiling, with windows on north and south overlooking the quadrangles. Beyond is a corridor where once a flight of stairs led down to the servants' hall, over which is now a bed- room with steps leading up to a door communicating with a room over the kitchen, part of the women's quarters. From the corridor on this upper floor are entered further rooms com- prising the remainder of the "gallery," the ceilings and panelled walls corresponding with the other parts previously noted. Two of the rooms have good chimney-pieces. Beyond the last, and forming the upper floor of the northern wing, are rooms designated the " four-bedded room " & the " three-bedded room," the latter being panelled with oak on three of its sides and having a narrow muUioned window. In the "four-bedded room" is an over-door with a portrait head in full relief, carved to repre- sent ('tis said) the queen-relative of Lord Hunsdon, If this be so, one cannot but assume that the carver was more complimentary than clever. A small leaded-light in the spiral staircase near this room is noticeable. Towards the front of the premises is a room, now used by the Assistant Medical Officer ; and which has an unusually heavy door and frame, rebated all round, with heavy ledges and chamfered panels on the outer side, close-boarded on the inner side, and hung with cross-garnet hinges. A small angle cupboard of the period, with moulded front and quad- rant shelves, also should be noticed. t@kThe illustrations will show the external appearance of the mansion in its various aspects. The southern garden front has already been referred to, but one may, in addition, notice the three-centred window in gable. To this front has been quite recently added the projecting wing known as the servants' mess-room, built only about eight years ago. The small garden on to which this front looks is seldom used, the larger garden west of this being the daily exercise ground for the women-patients. It is " the cottage," with the servants' hall on the north, which claim to 36 be the most ancient portions of the house. The southern front had at one " The time, according to Chatelain's print of 1750, a projecting central por- Cottage" tion, with angle pilasters supporting a frieze and pediment, and on this a further wing addition with balcony, the octagonal turret showing in the rear. All these external features have disappeared, & the south front is now as shown on Plates 5 and 9. The weather vane which once surmounted the turret now adorns the southern gable. Below and between the two outside chimneys is a small projecting win- The South dow, which, local report says, is where the Front monks of olden time used to hear the con- fessions of their penitent followers. Some of the old decorated chimnev-pots are still doing duty, and there is still in position a lead rain-water pipe and cast lead head with the crest ot Lord Brooke — a swan rising from a ducal coronet — and the date, 1 650. There is also a shield bearing the arms on the collar of the pipe below this. (See sketch.) The west,or garden, front is shown The West on Plate 5. SicJe The feature of this frontage is unquestionably the row of external chim- neys which break the long western face into many bays. Mention may here be made of the traditional underground passage, which was said to have had its exit at the end of the lawn tar away from the house, and of an old well which has within recent years been located, also on the lawn. At the front of the house are placed several stones, finials and corbels, The East claimed to have been discovered & since cared for by the steward. Con- Side sidering the date of their execution and the fact of their having been dis- interred from a rubbish-heap, they are in a remarkable state ot preserva- tion. This is doubtless due to the properties of the stone, apparently a blue-grey Portland, which has weathered excellently and preserved the very beautiful though grotesque designs to be seen thereon. The corbels now at each side of the entrance-gate are about 20 x i 5 x 7 inches, that on the south side has one face only in good condition, repre- senting awell-designed floral scroll of conventional character entwining an ape chained by the neck to a portion of the design, other portions being grasped by the animal. The reverse to this stone has suffered much and the design is almost obliterated. The lower and outer edges ot the corbel show a border of castanet pattern, continued round the volute which fronts the upper portion. C4 37 The corbel on the north side of the entrance gates shows on the north face a similar design to that just referred to, with the exception that the figure of an infant is substituted for the ape, the chain being absent, but the position with regard to the design being identical. On the reverse appears the scroll design surrounding the presentment of a parrot ram- pant regardant, holding aloft a pair of spectacles, of a size nearly its own. These two stones were in all probability the supports to a bay window of slight projection such as may now be seen overlooking the central quad. fc@i.A pair of stones, now placed at the top of the steps leading from the front to the tradesmen's entrance, measure about 2 feet in height by a projection of only 6 inches, with a width of 7 inches. These exhibit on the side faces a scroll design finishing at the upper and slightly wider end with a flower-calyx, from the centre of which emerges an infant's figure. The fronts are carved. The remaining two of these most interesting relics of Lord Hunsdon's occupation, are now at the foot of the steps of the principal entrance, and exhibit on the front face of each the date 1 573. It seems probable, there- fore, that these all formed part of what was in existence when Lord Hunsdon came into possession, & were incorporated in the new works, only to be again disturbed when their surroundings were demolished to make way for the present modern front. They have much of the Italian character of the work of the period. The Quad- Of the quadrangles every corner seems to have an old-time aspect : the rangles narrow mullioned bays, carried from cill level on carved brackets ; the over-hanging eaves ; the Tudor and keel-headed doorways ; the quaint latticed windows and angle stair-turrets ; the huge buttressed chimney, seven feet thick at the base, are some of the features; and one cannot help contrasting the quiet restfulness of the quad with the noisy mo- dernity of the high road beyond : or the goings to and fro' of the mighty dead — of kings and queens, statesmen and warriors, saints and martyrs, philosophers and poets, priests and reformers — whose power and intel- lect have made English history — with the sad collection of overwrought or undergifted men and women to whose footfall these walls now echo. The ;©^A terrace of private houses situated to the south of Brooke House, outlying forms part of the estate and is now utilised with the main building for Properties asylum purposes. A corner of the block is to be seen in Malcolm's view of 1 797. There are, on the extreme north, other buildings of ancient date, also forming part of the estate, and doubtless in other days the quarters for the retainers of the noble dwellers at the mansion ; but now let separ- ately and turned into shops. The line-of-frontage scare has not yet affected the boundaries, though one hears that a part of the "cottage" is already doomed, to accommodate a tramway scheme ; but whether this be so or no, one quits the building 38 PLATE 7. t1- o o ■^ ^ s^ PLATE S. Panelling, IVmlows, &c., on East side of . Long Gallery. ! I No. 2. No. I. General Eleim- tion and plan . No. 2. Detail of car- ving on pilasters B.B. No. 3. Detail of car- ving on pilasters A. A. kl •o 'o- •O O 'O with the hope that Hackney, together with all who are personally con- nected with Brooke House, may permit no vandalism to rob of one of its long treasured possessions, a district richer, as Sir Walter Besant maintains, in memorials of this kind, than any other suburb of London ; and it the publication of this monograph do no more than create an in- creased interest in this local specimen of Elizabethan architecture, with its romance and tradition, and a determination to save it from destruc- tion, we shall not have laboured in vain. The writer's thanks are due, and are here gratefully tendered to those who have so willingly assisted in, and afforded facilities for, the compi- lation of these notes: — to Dr. J. O. Adams the proprietor, and Miss Hobbs the Matron, for free access and conduct to the uttermost parts of the building ; to Mr. W. Haskett Smith, a descendant of Sir John El- ryngton, for valuable information as to the Elryngton family ; to the Hackney Borough Council for permission to reproduce from theTyssen Library some of the illustrations, and to Mr. F.W. Reader for much ex- pert assistance in the reproduction ; to Mrs. Ernest Godman, whose charming frontispiece speaks for itself; to my colleagues of the Survey Committee whose names appear against their work, & to the Secretary to whose initiative the work owes its inception. The fol lowing is a list of the chief books and MSS. consulted for historical and other information : — J. Thomas, History of Hackney {unpublished MSS. in Tyssen Library) ; Robinson, History of Hackney ; Simpson, History of Hackney ; Weever, Funeral Monuments, 1631; Brewer, Beauties of England and Wales ; Malcolm, Vieivs of London ; Wheatley and Cunningham, London Past and Present; Strype's edition of Stow's Survey of London ; Templaria [Knights Templars) 1828; Taylor, Order ofS. John of Jerusalem in Eng- land, 1864; Morris, The Condition of Catholics under James /., 1871 ; Public Record Office, Domestic State Papers, Eliz. Vols. 92, 99, and 1 02, and James L , Vols. 1 5 3 ©" 1 70 ; Tyssen Li brary. Papers relating to Hack- ney Manors; British Museum, Cottonian MSS.; Holinshed's Chronicles; Hackney Journal, 1 842 ; Kingdon, During the Persecution, i 872; Camden, Historic of Elizabeih, 1675 ; Nichols, Progresses of Q^ Elizabeth, 1788 ; Dictionary of National Biography ; Father Gerard, Autobiography, 1883, and Weeks, Months & Tears, 1895 ; Lysons, Environs of London; Hugh- son's London, 1 805 ; Thorne, Handbook to the Environs of London, 1 876 ; Seymour, Survey of London, 1734; Magna Brittania, 1724; Waltord, Old and New London, and Greater London ; ]tsit\ London; Allan Fca, Secret Chambers, &c., 1 90 1 . 39 INDEX. Adams, Dr. J. O., lessee of Brooke House Audley, Sir Thos., possessor of Manors in Hackney Banckes, Thos., part owner of Brooke House Bannister, Benjamin, owner of Brooke House - Benning, William, owner of Brooke House Bibliography _ _ _ _ Brooke House, descriptions of - - „ „ inventory of /'t'/«/> James I. Lady _ _ _ . ,, the Lords, owners of Brooke House Burlison, J., drawings of Brooke House by Carew, or Carey family, owners of Brooke House Cary, Nicholas, owner of Brooke House Chapel and "priest's hole" _ _ - Chatelain's engraving of Brooke House Cook, Thomas, owner of Brooke House "Cottage, The," at Brooke House - Crown, The, in possession of Brooke House Elizabeth, Queen, visit to Brooke House Elryngton family, history of - - - Evelyn, description of Brooke House and garden Forsyth, John, owner of Brooke House Gallery of Brooke House _ _ _ Gerard, Father, confession of - Godman, Mrs. Ernest, frontispiece by - Great House, Leyton, reference to destruction of Greville, Fulke, Lord Brooke Hackney, Parish and Manors of - - Hayward, Sir Rowland, owner of Brooke House Hobson, William, owner of Brooke House Hollar's engravings of Brooke House, &c. Holmes, Mr., lessee of Brooke House - Hunsdon, Lord, owner of Brooke House Hurleston, Humphrey, owner of Brooke House Hyde, Sir Laurence, „ „ „ 40 page 13.39 9, 12 10,13 - 1 1 10,13 - 39 9,26 - 22 11,13 10, 12, 13,24,25 27,33 10, 12, 19 11,13 28, 29, 32 26,31,37 11,13 26,31 10,13 12, 21 - 28 - 1 1 11,13 - 33 - 30 - 39 6 10,13,24 7,8,9 10, 12, 21 10, II, 13,25 26, 28 - 13 10, 12, 19, 26 10,13 10,13 page KnightsTemplars, The, owners of lands in Hackney - 8,12 Knights Hospitallers, The, owners of lands in Hackney - 8, i 2,' 1 4 Laud, Thos., part owner of Brooke House - - 10,13 Lennox, Countess of - - - _ _ - 20 Malcolm'sengravingof Brooke House - - 27,32 Mildmay, Henry, part owner of Brooke House - 10,13 Munro, Dr., lessee of Brooke House - - - 12,13 Myller, Ralph, confession of - - - - -30 Northumberland, Henry, Earl of, owner of Brooke Ho. 7, 8, 9, i 2, 1 4 Oxford, Elizabeth, Countess of, „ „ „ 10,13,21 Pembroke, Earls of, owners of Brooke House, Manor, &c. 9, 10, 12,16 Queens of England, owners of lands in Hackney - 8,12,14 Radcliffe, Anthony, owner of Brooke House - - 10,12 Reader, F. W., work by - - - - "39 Ridley, Dr. Nicholas, Bishop of London - - - 10 Sadleir, Sir Ralph, owner of Brooke House - - 10,12,17 Sexey, Hugh, „ „ ,, - - g,io,i2 Sikes,John, „ „ „ - - 11,13 Smith, Mr. W, Haskett, history of Elryngton family by - 39 „ William, owner of Brooke House - - 11,13 Strangers' Hall, Ipswich - - - - ~ ^7 Tyssen family, owners of Brooke House - 11,12,13,25 Tyssen Library, Hackney _ _ _ - 29, 39 Vyner family, owners of Brooke House - - 11,13,25 Vaux, Lady Katherine - - - - - 21 Ward, Patient, Lord of the Manor of Kingshold - 11,13 Warwick, Earl of, owner of Brooke House - - - 12 Wentworth, Thomas Lord - - - - - 7 White, William, Lord of the Manor of Kingshold - 11,13 41 HERE ENDS THE FIFTH MONOGRAPH OF THE COM- MITTEE FOR THE SURVEY OF THE MEMORIALS OF GREATER LONDON, ON BROOKE HOUSE, HACKNEY, MIDDLESEX; WHICH WAS WRITTEN BY ERNEST A. MANN, M.S.A., IN 1 903-1 904. WITH AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY C. R. ASHBEE, M.A. PRINTED FOR THE COM- MITTEE ATTHE ESSEX HOUSE PRESS, CAMPDEN,GLOU- CESTERSHIRE. MDCCCCIV. Published by the Committee for the Survey of the Memorials of Greater London, 37 Cheyne Walk, London, S.W. 350 copies, of which 200 are reserved for the Committee. This is No. «//) T I I I I '"m- THE LIBRARY II ill D Ouu J. i ,; ^ J -