ANNEX 
 
 : California 
 
 Regional 
 
 Facility
 
 Describing a Number of Interesting 
 Relics of Old London. 
 
 BY 
 
 OLD MORTALITY.' 
 
 ~j2t o n & o tr : 
 
 TRUSLOVE & SHIRLE Y, 
 7, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD*
 
 PREFACE 
 
 'V ^HE following pages contain illustrations and 
 
 particulars of a number of places and objects 
 
 -of historical interest, some being comparatively iin= 
 
 known both to residents of London and visitors, and 
 
 may therefore be of help to those who are fond of 
 
 seeking out the quaint and quiet spots with which our 
 
 ancient Metropolis abounds. 
 
 To visitors the book will also form a souvenir of 
 their visit to London. 
 
 Most of the illustrations are taken from the photo = 
 graphs of the Society for Photographing (Relics of Old 
 London, by permission of Mr. Alfred Marks. 
 
 2046578
 
 HE author of " The Good- 
 Natured Man" has left his 
 mark on the Inner Temple, 
 situated near old Temple Bar, 
 close by the Strand, and his 
 name to the chambers now 
 occupying Churchyard Court, as 
 it used to be known. The house of 
 Master of the Temple has placed 
 against it the tombs of John Hiccocks (which 
 is in the recumbent style) and of Samuel 
 Mead; in 1860 a tombstone was erected to 
 the memory of the gentle Goldsmith, to whose genius we owe 
 " The Vicar of Wakefield," and whose remains are stated to have 
 been placed in the churchyard. Of the rooks, which formerly 
 were a feature of Temple Gardens, Oliver Goldsmith remarks, 
 " I have often amused myself with observing their plans of policy 
 from my window in the Temple, that looks upon a grove where 
 they have made a colony in the midst of the City." Charles 
 Dickens might with truth say that there was at least one place 
 " where the dew falls in London," and it is a pleasant recollection 
 for those who have been charmed with the "sweet reasonableness"' 
 of Dr. Primrose to picture Goldsmith escaping from carking care, 
 and (must we add) the importunities of the duns, to " my window 
 in the Temple." Close to this is the ancient Temple Church 
 itself, with a history and associations of the deepest interest.
 
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 %# MRS ^

 
 LD Clerkenwell must have been nay, was 
 a pleasant suburb of London in ancient 
 days. There was a well here called 
 Clerk's Well, because the parish clerks of 
 London used to assemble every year to 
 perform a play from Scripture history. 
 In Richard II.'s time they played inter- 
 ludes before the King and Queen at Skinner's 
 Well close by, for three days together, and in 
 the reign of Henry IV. a play was given which 
 lasted eight days and no wonder, for it treated " of matter from the 
 creation of the world." People came from all parts of England to 
 see it. Now the Wells have disappeared,, the Fleet is imprisoned 
 underground, and only the name of Turnmill Street preserves the 
 memory of the pleasant clacking of mills which used to be heard 
 here. In this agreeable suburb, Jorden Briset, baron, and Muriell, 
 his wife, founded the Priory of S. John of Jerusalem, whose Knights' 
 profession was to defend Christians against Pagans. Wat Tyler 
 and his rebels burned it all down in a fire which lasted seven days. 
 It was rebuilt, but the buildings were again destroyed at the 
 Reformation, when the Church was blown up, and the stone taken 
 to build the Protector's house Somerset House, in the Strand. 
 In the old Gateway tower still standing, shown in our picture, 
 Edward Cave started the Gentleman's Magazine, to which 
 Dr. Johnson was a great contributor. Johnson told Boswell that 
 when he first saw S. John's Gate, he " beheld it with reverence." 
 It is now ^occupied by the S. John's Ambulance Society, and can 
 be seen by permission.
 
 mR. HENRY STACY MARKS, R.A., whose picture, 
 " Old Friends," is here reproduced by his generous 
 permission, has in this subject immortalised one 
 of those old shipping yards which are so fast 
 disappearing from " Quaint London." The figure-heads on which 
 the aged Greenwich pensioners, in their picturesque garb, are 
 casting their wistful eyes, seem to carry with them "a whiff of 
 the briny," and remind one of the figure-head carver, whose 
 humble employment has been adorned with the halo of fiction by 
 Mr. Walter Besant, in " All Sorts and Conditions of Men." As 
 the bowed figure of the old man, whose picture is drawn so 
 vividly by Mr. Besant, surveys the work he was formerly engaged 
 upon, the yard seems to fade into the distance of the past, and 
 the figure-heads, which some day will ornament the bows of 
 noble vessels, become to him living companions instead of inar- 
 ticulate wood. So one may imagine these heroes of a hundred 
 fights " bring back to memory the days of long ago," as they 
 halt to gaze at the figure-heads of "Old Friends" before them. 
 And here the " wooden walls of Old England " are brought after 
 years of service have rendered them useless for all but forming 
 part of a picture such as we have before us.
 
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 POWQATE ]~fiLL, CANNON 
 
 OHE handsome Chimney-piece which forms the subject 
 of this illustration may be found in the Court parlour. 
 The Great Fire of London demolished the Hall which 
 formerly stood on the site now occupied; but the 
 tallow-chandlers, loyal to their old home, rebuilt another edifice 
 in 1672. The table, seen on the left-hand side of the illustration, 
 was rescued from the flames of the Great Fire, of which Samuel 
 Pepys gives a graphic picture. 
 
 " Everybody," said this interesting diarist, " endeavouring to 
 remove their goods, and flinging into the river, or bringing them 
 into lighters that lay off; poor people staying in their houses as 
 long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, 
 or clambering from one pair of steps by the waterside to another." 

 
 33ELL," JioLBORN. 
 
 iHE " OLD BELL " is one of the few inns 
 of the old type still left in London. The 
 house is said to date from the early part of 
 the 1 6th century. 
 
 The "Old Bell" still retains something 
 of its renown as a coaching Inn. In the 
 summer months the passer-by may see placards an- 
 nouncing the departure and arrival, not only of a daily 
 omnibus, but also of an occasional coach not an 
 amateur revival, but a genuine survival from days 
 before railways. Mr. William Black has introduced 
 the "Old Bell" into "The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton," 
 where he speaks of it as "an ancient hostelry which used, in 
 bygone times, to send its relays of stage-coaches to Oxford, 
 Cheltenham, Enfield, Abingdon, and a score of other places. 
 Now from the quaint little yard, which is surrounded by frail and 
 dilapidated galleries of wood, that tell of the grandeur of other 
 days, there starts but a solitary omnibus, which daily whisks 
 a few country people and their parcels down to Uxbridge, and 
 Chalfont, and Amersham, and Wendover."
 
 ! \
 
 BARNARD ' S INN Holborn, was an- 
 ciently called Mackworth's Inn, from John 
 Mackworth, Dean of Lincoln, who left it 
 to the Dean and Chapter that they might 
 provide a Chaplain to say masses for the 
 repose of his soul. It was called " Barnard's 
 Inn " after " one Barnard," of whom the 
 historians of London tell us no more. The Hall 
 itself not visible in our picture, which gives the 
 inner courtyard is interesting as still showing 
 the arrangement by which the smoke of a fire kindled on a hearth 
 in the centre of the room was allowed to escape through an 
 opening in the roof. 
 
 To those who know Barnard's Inn, and its old-world air, it will 
 seem quite natural that the "last of the alchemists" pursued here 
 his search for the Elixir of Life. This was Peter Woulfe, F.R.S., 
 who died in 1805. His chambers were encumbered with furnaces 
 and apparatus, and the walls covered with prayers to Providence 
 for the success of his processes. To ensure a long day, he used 
 to breakfast at four in the morning ; and to guard against intrusion 
 and the possible theft of the Great Secret friends were admitted 
 only on giving a pre-arranged signal. 
 
 But Barnard's Inn is chiefly remarkable as the scene of many 
 chapters in Dickens's "Great Expectations," for here Pip had at 
 one time his quarters. The great novelist was perhaps hardly fair 
 to the Inn, of which he once speaks as " the dingiest collection of 
 shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a rank corner as a club 
 for tom-cats."
 
 IJNN J4ALL, JiiQH 
 
 IF tradition is to be trusted, this may be considered the 
 Inn of the Merchants of the Staple. Even our old 
 friend Stow, who is usually an authority on such 
 subjects, dismisses the question as to the deriva- 
 tion of the title with the remark, "There is Staple Inn, but 
 whereof so named I am ignorant." Established in 1415, the Inn 
 has seen many changes. The Hall was rebuilt two hundred 
 years after its foundation. The chief English staple commodities 
 in which, it is reasonable to think, the merchants who founded 
 this Inn dealt, were wool, skins, leather, tin, lead, and sometimes 
 cloth, butter, and cheese. Customs were levied on these, and 
 only certain persons who were privileged could trade in them. 
 The refreshing sight of green grass between two of the busiest 
 thoroughfares in London may still meet the eye of one who 
 wanders out of the " hurly-burly " into the stillness of Staple's 
 Inn, which resembles an Oxford quad, in its peaceful calm. The 
 Holborn frontage of the Inn has recently been restored, and a 
 fresher look has also been given to the other parts of this venerable 
 place.
 
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 DINCOLN'S INN takes its name from Henry Lacy, Earl 
 of Lincoln, who, in the thirteenth century, built here 
 his " inne " or " house," as we should say now on 
 the site of a house of Black or Augustinian Friars. 
 Sir Thomas Savell built the Gate-House, Chancery Lane, in 
 the reign of Henry VIII. It bears the date 1518. There is 
 a tradition that Ben Jonson, fresh from college at Cambridge, 
 worked as a bricklayer on the later buildings of Lincoln's Inn 
 with " a trowel in his hand and a book in his pocket." Perhaps 
 he did ; his stepfather was a bricklayer, and Ben was taken into 
 the business, and worked at it for about a year before he took to 
 writing plays. 
 
 The Gate-House of Lincoln's Inn is one of the few ancient 
 gate-houses still remaining in London, and is now entirely 
 occupied by the legal fraternity. The others are the Gate- 
 Houses of Lambeth Palace, the Priory of S. John's, Clerkenwell, 
 and S. James's Palace.
 
 CHURCHYARD Of j5. 
 
 jSlFJEET. 
 
 jHIS Church in old times possessed the finest 
 tower and spire within the City, and was 
 a most conspicuous object in the beautiful 
 view across the river from Bankside. It 
 was destroyed in the Great Fire, and not 
 rebuilt; but portions of its wall are still 
 to be seen in the fronts of houses at the north-west 
 corner of the Churchyard. This is, perhaps, the most 
 picturesque of all those City churchyards which Dickens, 
 the Arch-Londoner, as we may call him, has described 
 for us in his "Uncommercial Traveller," throwing the 
 magic of his fancy, like a glamour, over every brick and stone of 
 the Great City, whose genius he seems to be. Here, in the days 
 of Edward III., the journeymen weavers coming to be hired by the 
 weaver-Flemings and the weavers of Brabant, the hiring fair 
 ended but too often in a fight, until the Mayor and Aldermen 
 ordered that the Brabant weavers should do their hiring in the 
 Churchyard of S. Mary Somerset, leaving the Churchyard of S. 
 Lawrence to the Flemings. The Church was called Pountney 
 from a benefactor, Sir John Pountney, draper, and four times 
 Mayor of London.
 
 ARDLY any public building in London is 
 so full of interest as the Charterhouse. 
 A strange history it has. Its site, 
 near to Smithfield, was used as a 
 burial-ground during the awful visi- 
 tation of the Black Death. Ralph 
 Stratford and Sir Walter Manny 
 bought No Man's Land and Spittle 
 Croft, and gave them to bury the dead 
 in. Here over 50,000 persons were buried in a 
 single year, 1 349 ; and here, twenty years later, 
 Sir Walter Manny founded THE CHARTERHOUSE 
 a corruption, by-the-bye, of the " Chartreuse, ' from which 
 monastery the original monks came. Its history is a blank for 200 
 years. Then Henry VIII., in spite of the petition of the Londoners 
 who begged that it might be spared for the sake of the poor 
 suppressed it, having first hanged, drawn, and quartered Prior 
 Houghton, and set up his. dismembered limbs over one of the gate- 
 ways. The Charterhouse now became a gentleman's mansion, 
 whose successor sold the property to the Duke of Norfolk for 
 ^2,500 about ,50,000 of our present money. It was then called 
 Howard House. 
 
 Norfolk got into trouble about Mary Queen of Scots. He wrote 
 letters in cipher, and the key to the cipher was found under the tiles 
 of the roof of the Charterhouse, and the Duke made an edifying end 
 on Tower Hill. The son of this Duke sold the Charterhouse to 
 Sir THOMAS SUTTON, the richest merchant of his day. He wished 
 to devote his great wealth to the endowment of some great
 
 JHE J3HAF(TEF(HOUE (Continued). 
 
 Foundation, and at last he fixed on the Charterhouse. Button's 
 scheme was for a hospital for poor men (who had at one time been 
 householders) and a free school for the teaching and maintenance 
 of poor children and scholars. The original school is now removed 
 to Godalming, and the Merchant Taylors keep school in the old 
 Charterhouse. The Poor Brothers remain. They dine in the Great 
 Hall, the decorations of which, as well as the Grand Staircase, 
 are almost entirely the work of the Duke of Norfolk. The works 
 of Thackeray, who was educated here, abound in reference to " Grey 
 Friars," as he calls the Charterhouse. To its quiet cloisters and 
 ancient halls and courtyards came, as a Poor Brother, Colonel 
 Newcome, old and broken down. In the chapel he sat on 
 Founder's Day, bowed and bent, the Order of the Bath on his 
 breast, over his black gown. Hence he departed, one evening, 
 when, the chapel-bell having finished tolling, "a sweet smile shone 
 over his face, and he lifted up his head a little, and quietly said, 
 1 Adsum,' and fell back." 
 
 The Founder's Tomb, built mainly of alabaster, was not 
 completed till 1615. It is in the chapel, which is described in 
 " The Newcomes " : " The boys are already in their seats, with 
 smug fresh faces and shining white collars ; the old black-gowned 
 pensioners are on their benches ; the chapel is lighted, and 
 the Founder's Tomb, with its grotesque carvings and monster 
 heraldries, darkles and shines with the most wonderful shadows 
 and lights. There he lies, Fundator Noster, in his ruff and 
 gown, awaiting the great Examination Day." 
 
 The Brethren attend prayers every day at 9.30 and 6, in the 
 chapel, and visitors are admitted by permission of the Chaplain.
 
 AND 
 
 '1* 
 
 NTERIOR to the Victoria Embankment, 
 that distinguished addition to the 
 sights of London, stood a landing- 
 place, known as York Stairs, where 
 the "jolly young waterman" of 
 those da y s P n ' ed his trade. The 
 Water-gate is the sole remaining 
 relic of York House, which formerly occupied 
 the site now covered by Buckingham Street and 
 Villiers Street, Strand. This mansion became 
 the town residence of the Archbishop of York 
 when the magnificent Palace at Whitehall had 
 passed into the hands of the Crown. It was not 
 the first occasion that it had lodged Episcopal 
 dignitaries beneath its roof, for the Bishops of Norwich had used 
 it as an inn. At York House the great Chancellor, Lord Bacon, 
 lived for a time in close proximity to his birthplace. King James I., 
 in 1624, made a present of the house to the first Duke of Bucking- 
 ham, who at once pulled it down and built in its place a mansion of 
 costlier style, an'd the Duke is. said to have erected the Water-gate. 
 Two widely differing celebrities resided close to the old gate 
 Peter the Great, who had come to England to acquire a knowledge 
 of shipbuilding, and Samuel 'Pepys, who was then writing his 
 " Diary " in those curious shorthand characters of his.
 
 TONE. 
 
 N Cannon Street stands The London 
 Stone, which is of very remote 
 origin, and one of the oldest 
 antiquities of London. It has 
 been supposed to be a Roman 
 milestone, and was probably a 
 Saxon coronation stone, which 
 would account for the reverence 
 in which it was always held. 
 Certainly it existed in the time of 
 ^Ethelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great. 
 When Jack Cade (who claimed to be 
 
 Mortimer, Earl of March, and lawful heir to the crown) invaded 
 London, " he rode through divers streets of the City, and as he 
 came by London Stone he strake it with his sword, and said, 
 * Now is Mortimer lorde of this city.' " Most likely Cade did this 
 in accordance with some ancient custom. 
 
 Cade. Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting upon 
 London Stone, I charge and command that, of the City's cost, the conduit 
 run nothing but claret wine this first year of our reign. SHAKESPEARE (2nd 
 part of " King Henry VI."). 
 
 The chained bear, with a monogram and the date 1670, is a 
 sign, or more probably, the crest of the owner of a house formerly 
 6, Lower Thames Street. It was carefully built into the modern 
 house now standing on its site.
 
 Jiot!E IN pRURY |aANE. 
 
 HE gabled house was formerly the "Cock and 
 Pye," a house of entertainment in the reign 
 of Henry VII. It then looked over fields, 
 where, towards the close of James the First's 
 reign, the upper end of Wych Street was 
 begun. The following was the origin of the 
 sign, and of Master Shallow's oath, " By cock and pye." 
 
 In the days of chivalry it was the fashion to take 
 vows for the performance of doughty deeds. The 
 knight often took this vow at a feast, swearing by 
 the peacock, which noble bird was brought in roasted, and 
 dressed in all his feathers, on a golden dish, carried by ladies. 
 Long after this, peacock-pie was still a favourite dish, and it is 
 easy to suppose that the recollection of the old peacock-vows 
 gave birth to the jesting oath, " By cock and pie." 
 
 The Church in the background is S. Mary-le-Strand, on whose 
 site once stood the famous Maypole 
 
 "'Amid that area wide they took their stand, 
 Where the tall Maypole once o'erlooked the Strand, 
 But now (so Anne and Piety ordain) 
 A Church collects the saints of Drury Lane." 
 
 The Dunciad. 
 
 The narrow turning, now Drury Court, was once called May- 
 pole Lane. Here, in 1661, a Maypole 134 ft. high was erected, 
 " By the gracious consent of his Sacred Majesty Charles II., . . 
 
 . as near hand as they could guess in the very same pit 
 where the former stood, but far more glorious, bigger, and higher 
 
 than ever any that stood before it Ancient people 
 
 did clap their hands, saying, ' Golden days begin to appear.' "
 
 LOCK OF 
 
 HE figures striking the hours 
 and quarters at S. Dunstan's- 
 in-the-West, set up in 1671, 
 were long one of the most 
 popular minor sights of 
 London " More admired," 
 said the scandalised Company 
 of Parish Clerks, in their " New Remarks 
 of London," 1732, "by many of the 
 Populace on Sundays than the most elegant 
 Preacher from the Pulpit within." The 
 figures can still be seen in Regent's Park, 
 and do duty every quarter of an hour. 
 
 The Boy at Pie Corner was put up to commemorate the stay- 
 ing of the Great Fire, which, beginning at Pudding Lane, was 
 ascribed to the " sin of gluttony " (when not attributed to the 
 Papists, as on the Monument), and the boy was made prodigiously 
 fat to enforce the moral. He is built into the front of a public- 
 house, called " The Fortune of War," at the corner of Giltspur 
 Street and Cock Lane, which was the chief house of call, on the 
 'north of the river, for resurrectionists in body-snatching days. 
 Years ago the landlord used to show the room he may yet do so 
 where, on berrches round the walls, the bodies used to be placed 
 ^labelled with the snatchers' names), waiting till the surgeons at S. 
 Bartholomew's, dose by, could run round and appraise them.
 
 /^ \^
 
 LD TEMPLE BAR, which marked the west- 
 ern boundary of the City, adjoining the 
 Strand, was one of the most interesting 
 landmarks in ancient London, prior to its 
 removal and re-erection at Sir Henry B. 
 Meux's park, Cheshunt. The earliest 
 known document relating to Temple Bar is 
 dated 1327. After the Great Fire of London "the 
 Bar" was rebuilt (1670-72) by Sir Christopher 
 Wren, at a cost of 1,397, fr m a design taken 
 from an old temple at Rome. 
 
 Temple Bar has looked down on many a pageant and many a 
 tragic scene. Through its gates have passed the body of Henry 
 VII., the hero of Agincourt, on its way to Westminster, and the 
 hearse of Elizabeth, Queen of Henry VII., which halted here when 
 conveyed to the Tower. In contrast with these events was the 
 procession of Anne Boleyn on her way to the Tower, the day prior 
 to her coronation, for Temple Bar has played an important part in 
 almost every event connecting the City with the Court and 
 national life. The gruesome custom of placing the heads of 
 traitors upon the Bar remained in force till late in the eighteenth 
 century. The spikes upon which they were supported were re- 
 moved in the reign of George III. A " Griffin," erected by the 
 Corporation, now marks the site of Old Temple Bar. 
 
 It was an ancient custom, whenever the Sovereign approached 
 the City in state, to close the doors of Temple >Bar, as a sign that 
 the Lord Mayor is paramount within City bounds, and the 
 Sovereign knocked and craved and received permission to enter 
 from the Sheriffs waiting inside, and this ceremony was actually 
 repeated by Her Majesty in 1872.
 
 'HIS interesting specimen of Early Domestic Gothic archi- 
 tecture, still standing in Bishopsgate Street, belongs to 
 the period when the merchant princes began to take 
 rank with the nobles of the Court, and derives its name from 
 Sir John Crosbie, M.P. for London, Alderman, Sheriff, and Mayor
 
 of the Staple of Calais. This gallant merchant, who was knighted 
 for his valour in resisting the attack made on the City by the 
 Bastard Falconbridge, built Crosby Hall on land bequeathed to 
 him by Alice Ashfield, prioress of St. Helen's, where a recumbent 
 tomb of himself and his wife was erected after his death, in 1475, 
 four years after Crosby Hall was completed. Shakespeare, as an 
 old assessment roll for levying subsidies (dated October I, 1598) 
 shows, was an inhabitant of the parish of St. Helen's, and thus 
 had admirable opportunity of making himself familiar with Crosby 
 Hall, in which part of the scene in " Richard III. " is laid. It 
 was here that Richard was offered the crown, in the Council 
 Chamber of the Hall, by the Mayor, Sir Thomas Billesden, and 
 a deputation of citizens. Apropos of which, Sir Thomas More 
 notices the astuteness of Richard, who, he quaintly says, " Lodged 
 hymself in Crosbeye's Place, when by little and little all folks 
 drew unto, so that the Protector had the Court, and the King 
 was in a manner left desolate." Here, too, in the magnificent 
 Banqueting Hall, during the mayoralty of Sir Bartholomew Reed, to 
 whom, in 1501, Crosby Place was assigned by the executors of Sir 
 John Crosby, the ambassador from Maximillian of Germany was 
 entertained. Many other sumptuous feasts held here are mentioned 
 by Stow. The old Palace passed through many hands, among its 
 possessors being Antonio Bonvici, to whom Sir Thomas More 
 wrote the touching letter published in his Life by Roper, his son- 
 in-law. Sir Thomas Darcye, Sir John Spencer, Lord Compton 
 (afterwards created Earl of Northampton), Sir John Langham in 
 whose occupancy the great Banqueting Hall became a warehouse 
 also successively Downed this Hall. In 1672 the Upper Hall was 
 converted into a meeting-house, where Thomas Watson, pre- 
 viously Rector of S. Stephen's, Walbrook, preached. He was
 
 the author of a tract, " Heaven Taken by Storm," to which has 
 been attributed the conversion of Colonel Gardiner. In 1836, 
 owing to the exertions of Miss Hackett, the Hall was partially 
 restored by public subscription, and opened by the Lord Mayor, 
 W. J. Copeman, M.P., and a banquet in the Old English style 
 celebrated the event. After subsequently being occupied by a 
 literary and scientific society, it has become a large restaurant, 
 the leading features of its architecture being carefully preserved.
 
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