This was scanned in from an old document which has caused numerous misreadings of words. As time moves on, this will be improved.
SAVOY {THE).
ON the spot, south side of the Strand, and which still bears the name of Savoy, but is now mostly occupied by Wellington-street and Lancaster-place, was anciently a noble palace, magnificently rebuilt by Henry, first Duke of Lancaster. Here was confined John King of France, taken prisoner by Edward the Black Prince, at Poictiers, in 1356 ; ” and thyder came to se hym the kyng and the quene often tymes, and made hym gret feest and cheere :” he was released in 1360 ; but returning to captivity, died in the Savoy, ” his antient prison,” in 1364. The demesnes descended to John of
Gaunt : here the poet Chaucer was his frequent guest ; some of his poems were written in the Savoy ; and Chaucer’s Dream allegorises his own marriage with Philippa, a lady of the duchess’ household. But Gaunt, a staunch Wickliffite, had his palace attacked by the Londoners in 1377. In 1381 it was burnt by Wat Tyler’s rebels : the costly plate and furniture were destroyed or thrown into the Thames, and the great hall and several houses were blown up. Shakspeare lays a scene of his Richard II. in a room of the Savoy, which, however, was then in rums. Thus it lay until 1505, when was commenced building the Hospital of St. John the Baptist, the history of which, and its celebrated Chapel Eoyal, is narrated at pp. 142-144. Here Charles II. established “the French Church in the Savoy;”* and here were churches for the Dutch, High Germans, and Lutherans; the German- Lutheran church has been rebuilt. (Savoy Prison, see p. 703.)
SCHOOLS, PUBLIC.
THE great Schools of London are as follow : Chaeterhottse, described at pp. 86-88;
Christ’s Hospital (Blue-coat School), described at pp. 95-101. The City OF London School occupies the site of Honey-lane Market, in the rear of the houses facing Bow Church, and was designed by J. B. Bunning ; the first stone laid by Lord Brougham, Oct. 21, 1835. The style is Elizabethan, with earlier and more enriched principal windows and entrance; the latter, a rich arched doorway, sur
mounted by a lofty gable pediment, and above, an open gallery of five trefoiled pointed arches on lofty pillars, flanked by buttress-turrets 76^ feet high, is novel and picturesque. The cost of the edifice, about 12,000/., was defrayed by the Corporation of London, who gave the site, which produced a yearly rental of 300/. The school, for 400 scholars, is partly supported with 900/. a-year derived from certain lands and tenements bequeathed by John Carpenter, Town-Clerk and ” Secretary” of London in the reign of Henry VI. ; and who several times represented the City in Parliament, and was ” executor of the will of Bichard Whityngton.” Carpenter’s bequest, originally but 19/. 10*. per annum, was “for the finding and bringing up of four poor men’s children with meat, drink, apparel, learning at the schools, in the universities, &c, until they be preferred, and then others in their places for ever.” (Stow.)
The bequest was thus appropriated in 1633, when the boys wore ” coats of London russet,” with buttons; and they were accustomed from time to time to show their copy-books to the Chamberlain, in proof of the application of the Charity. In 1827 it was extended to the education of four boys, sons of freemen, and nominated by the Lord Mayor, at the Tonbridge Grammar School ; each boy, on quitting, received 100/., thus increasing the annual expense to about 420/. In the lapse of nearly four centuries, the value of Carpenter’s estates had augmented from 19/. 10s. to 900/., or
nearly five-and-forty fold, when the school was re-established as above. The form of admission must be signed by a member of the Corporation of London ; the general course of instruction includes the English, French, German, Latin, and Greek languages. The school is mainly indebted to Mr. Alderman Hale (Lord Mayor 1864-5), for its re- establishment and great extension.
* The first five churches in London appropriated to the Protestants of France were the old Temple in Threadneedle-street, and those of the Savoy, Marylebone, and Castle-street ; and a church in Spitalfields, added upon the application of the consistory to James II. To these were successively added twenty-six others, mostly founded during the reigns of William III., Queen Anne, and George I. :— That of Leicester-fields, founded in 1688, of which Saurin was minister; that of Spring-gardens, whose first pastor was Francis Flahaut ; that of Glasshouse-square, formed in 1688 ; Swallow-street, Piccadilly, 1692 ; Berwick-street, 1689 ; Charenton, in Newport-market, 1701 ; West-street, Seven Dials, which the refugees called the Pyramid, or the Tremblade; the Carre, Westminster, 1689; the Tabernacle, 1696; Hungerford. 1689, which subsisted until 1832 ; the Temple of Soho, or the Patent, erected in 1689 ; Eyder’s-couro, 1700; Martin’s-lane, City, 1686; St. James’s, 1701; the Artillery, Bishopsgate, 1691; Hoxton, 1748; St. John, Shoreditch, 1687 ; the Patent, in Spitalfields, or the New Patent, 1689; Crispin-street, 1693; Peart-street, 1697; Bell-lane, Spitalfields, 1718; Swanfields, 1721; Wheeler-street, Spitalfields, 1703; Petticoat-lane, Spitalfields, 1694; Wapping, 1711; Blackfriars, 1716. Several of these churches ultimately adopted the Anglican ritual.— Weiss’ Hist. French Protestant Refugees,
There are eight free foundation scholarships available as exhibitions to the Universities, in addition to the following: the Times’ scholarship {see Cheist’s Hospital, p. 99), three Beaufoy scholarships, the Salomons scholarship, and the Travers’ scholarship, and the Tegg scholarship (“Sheriff’s Fine”), varying-from 35/. to 501. a year each ; and there are other valuable prizes determinable by examination at Midsummer.
Upon the great staircase of the school is a statue, by Nixon, of John Carpenter, in the costume of his period ; he bears in his left hand his Liber Alius, a collection of the City laws, customs, and privileges, compiled in 1419, and still preserved in the Corporation archives; translated 1861. The statue is placed upon a pedestal inscribed with a compendious history of the founder, and his many benevolent acts.*
Mercers’ School, College-hill, Dowgate, was founded and endowed by the
Mercers’ Company, for seventy scholars of any age or place. It is mentioned as early
as 1447, and was then kept at the Hospital of St. Thomas of Aeon ; but was removed
to St. Mary Colechurch, next the Mercers’ Chapel. After the Great Fire of 1666,
the school-house was rebuilt on the west side of the Old Jewry. In 1787 it was
removed to 13, Budge-row ; in 1804, to 20, Eed Lion-court, Watling-street ; and from
thence, in 1808, to premises on College-hill. The present school, designed by George
Smith, is an elegant stone structure (adjoining St. Michael’s Church), on the site of
Whittington’s Almshouses, removed to Highgate to make room for it. The education,
classical and general, is free ; the boys being selected in turn by the Master and three
Wardens of the Mercers’ Company. Among the early scholars were Dr. Colet, Sir
Thomas Gresham, and Bishop Wren.
Merchant Taylors’ School, Suffolk -lane, Cannon-street, was founded in 1561 by
the Merchant Taylors’ Company, principally by the gift of 500Z., and other sub-
scriptions by members of the Court of Assistants, among whom was Sir Thomas White,
sometime Master of the Company, and who had recently founded St. John’s College,
Oxford. With these funds was purchased part of ” the Manor of the Rose,” a palace
originally built by Sir John Poultney, Knt., five times Lord Mayor of London, in the
reign of Edward III.; the estate successively belonged to the De la Pole or Suffolk
family (whence Suffolk-lane), and the Staffords, Dukes of Buckingham :
” The Duke being at the Kose, within the parish
Saint Lawrence Poultney.” — Shakspeare, Henry VIII, act i. sc. 2.
Hence, also, ” Duck’s-Foot-lane” (the Duke’s foot-lane, or private way from the
garden to the Thames), which is hard by. These ancient premises were destroyed in
the Great Fire of 1666, and the present building was erected on the same site, in
1675, by Wren : it is a large brick edifice, with pilasters ; the upper school-room, and
library adjoining, supported by stone pillars, forming a cloister ; there are also other
rooms, and the head master’s residence. The boys are admitted at any age, on the
nomination of the forty members of the Court of the Company in rotation ; and the
scholars may remain until the Monday after St. John the Baptist’s Day preceding
their nineteenth birth. Hebrew, Greek, and Latin have been taught since the
foundation of the school ; mathematics, writing, and arithmetic were added in 1829,
and French and modern history in 1846. The boys are entitled to thirty-seven out of
the fifty fellowships at St. John’s College, Oxford, and several other exhibitions at both
the Universities; the election to which takes place annually on St. Barnabas’ Day,
June 11, when the school prizes are also distributed: there is another speech-day,
“Doctors’ Day,” in December. Plays were formerly performed by the Merchant
Taylors’ boys, who, in 1664, acted Beaumont and Fletcher’s Love’s Pilgrimage in the
Company’s Hall, but under order that this ” should bee noe precident for the future.’*
Amongst the eminent scholars educated at Merchant Taylors’ were, Bishops Andrewes, Dove, and
Tomson, three of the translators of the Bible ; Archbishop Juxon, who attended Charles I. to the scaf-
fold ; Bishop Hopkins (of Londonderry) ; Archbishops Sir William Dawes, Gilbert, and Boulter ; Bishop
Van Mildert, and eleven other prelates; Titus Oates, who contrived the “Popish Plot;” James
* At the expense of John Carpenter was ” artificially and richly painted” the Dance of Death upon
the north cloister of St. Paul’s, and thence called the ” Dance at Paul’s.” It consisted of a long train
of all orders of mankind; each figure having for a partner the spectral Death leading the sepulchral
dance, and shaking the last sands from his hour-glass : intended as a moral memorial of the Plague and
Famine of 1438. Among Carpenter’s property is a lease of premises in Cornhill, granted by the City, for
eighty years, at the annual service of a red rose for the first thirty years, and a yearly rent of 208. for
the remainder of the term.
3a2
724 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON.
Whitelock, Justice of the King’s Bench; Bulstrode Whitelock, who wrote his Memorials; Shirley,
the dramatic poet, contemporary with Massinger; Charles VVheatley, the ritualist; Neal, the historian
of the Puritans; Edmund Calamy, and his grandson Edmund, the Nonconformists— the former died in
1666, from seeing London in ashes after the Great Fire; the great Lord Clive; Dr. Vicesimus Knox, one
of the ” British Essayists;” Dr. William Lowth, the learned classic and theologian; Nicholas Amhurst,
associated with Bolingbroke and Pulteney in the Craftsman ; Charles Mathews, the elder, come.lian ;
Lieut.-Col. Denham, the explorer of central Africa; and J. L. Adolphus. the barrister, who wrote a History of the Reign of George III. Also, Sir John Dodson, Queen’s Advocate ; Sir Henry Ellis, and Samuel Birch, of the British Museum; John Gough Nichols, F.S.A.; Albert Smith, litterateur.
St. Olave’s and St. John’s Feee Gbammab- School (originally St. Olave’s) was founded by the inhabitants in ( 1561 ; and endowed, among otber property, with the ” Horseydowne” field, at the yearly rent of a red rose, which is paid by the Church-wardens and Overseers previously to the annual commemoration sermon on Nov. 17, by presenting to each of the School Governors a nosegay of fiowcrs with a rose in it.
The School originated in the bequest of a wealthy brewer named Leeke, who in 1561 left 81. a-year for a free school in St. Savyor’s, which bequest, however, was to go to St. Olave’s, if within two years of his death a school should be built and established there. St. Olave’s contrived to secure the legacy ; and in 1 567 the school was made free, and incorporated by Queen Elizabeth ; charter extended by Charles II., 1674.
In 1579, Horseydowne (now Horselydown;, was passed over by the parish to the use of the School. It was originally a large grazing field, down, or pasture, for horses and cattle, containing about sixteen acres ; but having long since been covered with houses erected on building leases, which have fallen in, the yearly income of the School from this source is upwards of 20001. The old school, in Churchyard-alley, was taken down about 1830, for making the approaches to the new London Bridge, when a piece of ground in Duke-street was granted by the City of London as a site for a new school ; but this ground was exchanged with the London and Greenwich Railway Company for a site in Bermondsey-street, where the school was rebuilt, and opened Nov. 17, 1835.
It was in the latest Tudor or Elizabethan style, of red brick, with an octangular embattled tower, lantern-roofed j James Field, architect. In 1849, this new building being required for the enlargement of the terminus of the London, Brighton, and South-Coast Railway Company, they paid a considerable sum of money for it, the Governors undertaking to find another site for the school, and rebuild the same ; the tuition being in the meantime carried on in a temporary building in Maze Pond.
The School is free to ” children and younglings,” rich or poor, inhabitants of St. Olave’s and St. John’s parishes, admitted by presentation from the Governors. The Classical School consists of about 220 boys ; and the branch or English School, in Magdalen-street, and built in 1824, contains about 260 boys. The Governors also award annually four exhibitions at Oxford or Cambridge University, besides apprentice-fees for poor scholars, and funds for other benevolent purposes. Commemoration-day, Nov. 17 (accession of Elizabeth).
“The seal of the corporation, dated 1576, and distinguished by a rose displayed, the ancient cog-
nizance of Southwark, represents the master sitting in a high-backed chair at his desk, on which is a
book, and the rod is conspicuously displayed, to the terror of five scholars standing before him.” — G. B.
Corner, F. S. A.
St. Paul’s School, east end of St. Paul’s Churchyard, was founded in 1512, by Dr.
John Colet, son of Sir Henry Colet, mercer, and lord mayor in 1486 and 1495 ; and it
is ” hard to say whether he left better lands for the maintenance of his school, or wiser
laws for the government thereof” (Fuller). The school is for 153 boys of “every
nation, country, and class;” the 153 alluding to the number of fishes taken by St.
Peter (John xxi. 2). The education is entirely classical ; the presentations to the
school are in the gift of the Master of the Mercers’ Company; and scholars are
admitted at fifteen, but eligible at any age. The original school-house was built
1508-12 : this was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, but was rebuilt by Wren ; this
second school was taken down in 1824, and the present school built of stone from the
designs of George Smith : it has a handsome central portico upon a rusticated base,
projecting over the street pavement. The original endowment, and for several years
the only endowment of the school, was 551. 14?. 10^d., the value of estates in Bucking-
hamshire, which now produce 1858Z. 16*. 10^d. a-year ; and with other property make
the present income of the school upwards of 50001. Lilly, the eminent grammarian,
the friend of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, was the first schoolmaster of St. Paul’s,
and ” Lilly’s Grammar” is used to this day in the school : the English rudiments were
written by Colet, the preface to the first edition by Cardinal Wolsey j the Latin syntax
SCHOOLS, PUBLIC. 725
chiefly by Erasmus, and the remainder by Lilly. Colet directed that the children should
not use tallow but wax candles in the school ; 4d. entrance-money for each was to be given
to the poor scholar who swept the school j and the masters were to have livery-gowns
” delivered in clothe.” The present teachers consist of a high-master, salary 618/. per
annum, with spacious house j sur-master, 307/. ; under-master, or ancient chaplain,
227/. ; assistant-master, 257/. : the last master only having no house. The scholars’
only expense is for books and wax tapers. There are several very valuable exhibitions,
decided at the Apposition, held in the first three days of the fourth week after Easter,
when a commemorative oration is delivered by the senior boy, and prizes are presented
from the governors. In the time of the founder, the ” Apposition dinner” was ” an
assembly and a litell dinner, ordayned by the surveyor, not exceedynge the pryce of four
nobles.”
In the list of eminent Paulines are — Sir Anthony Denny and Sir William Paget, privy councillors
to Henry VIII.; John Leland, the antiquary; John Milton, our great epic poet ; Samuel Pepys, the
diarist; John Strype, the ecclesiastical historian; Dr. Calamy, the High Churchman; the great Duke
of Marlborough : It. W. Ellistou, the comedian : Sir C. Mansfield Clarke, Bart. ; Lord Chancellor
Truro, &c.
On Apposition Day, June 4, 1851, were announced these three additional prizes : 1. ” The Chancellor’s
Prize,” by Lord Truro, 1000£.; the interest to be applied in awarding a gold medal, value ten guineas,
and a purse of twenty guineas, or books to that amount, each yearly Apposition, to the author of the
best English Essay. 2. ” The Milton Prize,” by Sir C. M. Clarke, Bart., for English Verses on a sacred
subject, annually. 3. “The Thurston Memorial,” an annuai prize for a copy of Latin Lyrics, given by
the parent of a student named Thurston, recently deceased ; the High Master to apply a portion of the
endowment to keeping up the youth’s gravestone in the Highgate Cemetery.
St. Saviour’s Grammar-School, Sumner-street, Southwark-Bridge-road, was re-
built 1830-9, nearly adjoining St. Peter’s Church. The school was founded by
parishioners in 1562, and chartered by Queen Elizabeth ; the original endowment being
40/. a-year. The scheme, approved by the Court of Chancery in 1850, provides six
governors to manage the school property ; the instruction to comprise religion, classical
learning, English composition, grammar, arithmetic, history, geography, mathematics,
&c, subject to the approval of the Bishop of Winchester ; the head master to be a Master
of Arts, and to be appointed in conformity with the statutes of 1614. Small prizes are
adjudged yearly, and there are two University exhibitions. Among the olden rules for
the choice of a master are the following :
The master to be ” a man of a wise, sociable, loving disposition, not hasty or furious, or of any ill
example ; he shall be wise and of good experience, to discern the nature of every several child ; to work
upon the disposition for the greatest advantage, benefit, and comfort of the child ; to learn with the
love of his book.” It was necessary then, as now, to add, ” if such an one may be got.” — The corpora-
tion seal represents a pedagogue seated in a chair, with a group of thickly-trussed pupils before him ;
date, 1573.
The original school-house, on the south side of St. Saviour’s churchyard, was burned in
1676, but was immediately rebuilt : it had a richly-carved doorway-head. This build-
ing was taken down after the erection of the new school in Sumner-street. Among the
donations is 500/. by Dr. W. Heberden, the celebrated physician, who is said to have
been partly educated in the school.
Westminster School (St. Peter’s College), Dean’s-yard, was originally founded by Henry VIII., on the remodelling of the Abbey establishment ; but inadequately supported until 1560, when Elizabeth restored its revenues, and the foundation of an Upper and Lower Master, and 40 scholars, and gave the present statutes. The College consists of a Dean, 12 Prebendaries, 12 Almsmen, and the above 40 ¦ Queen’s Scholars,” with a Master and Usher ; maintained, since the Restoration, by the common revenues of St. Peter’s Collegiate Church (the Abbey), at 12,000/. a year.
These scholars wear a cap and gown ; and there are four ” Bishop’s boys,” educated free, who wear a purple gown, and have 60/. annually amongst them. Besides this foundation, a great number of sons of the nobility and gentry are educated here. Of the Queen’s Scholars, an examination takes place on the first Tuesday after Rogation Sunday, when four are elected to Trinity College, Cambridge, and four to Christ Church, Oxford ; scholarships about 60/. a year. The scholars from the 4th, 5th, and Shell Forms ” stand out” in Latin, Greek, and grammatical questionings, to fill up the vacancies on the Wednesday before Ascension Dayj when the ” Captain of the Election” is chaired round Dean’s-yard. There are other funds available to needy scholars.
Any boy may enter at Westminster School ; the entire annual charges (including board and lodging) are from 76 to ’83 guineas ; or if he board and lodge at home, 25 guineas. From the boarders are elected the Queen’s Scholars, who, after four years’ residence, have the chance of obtaining good scholarships; they are charged about 401. a year.
The entrance to the school-court, Little Dean’s-yard, is under a low groined gateway : the school-porch is said to have been designed by Inigo Jones ; and adjoining is the paved racket-court. The venerable School was once the dormitory of the monks : it is 96 feet long and 34 feet in breadth, and has a massive open chestnut roof; at one end is the Head Master’s table, and four tiers of forms are ranged along the east and western walls.* The Upper and Lower Schools are divided by a bar, which formerly bore a curtain : over this bar on Shrove Tuesday, at 11 o’clock, the College cook, attended by a verger, having made his obeisance to the Masters, proceeds to toss a pancake into the upper school, once a warning to proceed to dinner in the Hall.
Upon the walls are inscribed many great names ; in the library is preserved part of the form on which Dryden once sat, and on which his autograph is cut.
In the Census Alumnorum, or list of foundation scholars, are Bishops Overall and Ravis, translators of the Bible ; Hakluyt, collector of Voyages ; Gunter, inventor of the Scale ; ” Master George Herbert ;’* the poets Cowley and Dryden ; South ; Locke ; Bishops Atterbury, Sprat, and Pearce ; Prior and Stepney, poets and statesmen ; Rowe and ” Sweet Vinny Bourne,” the poets ; Churchill, the satirist ; Warren Hastings; Colman the Elder; Everard Home, surgeon; Dr. Drury, of Harrow School, &c.
Among the other eminent persons educated here were Lord Burghley; Ben Jonson ; Nat Lee; Sir Christopher Wren; Jasper Mayne, the poet; Barton Booth, the actor, Blackmore, Browne, Dyer, Hammond, Aaron Hill, Cowper, and Southey, the poets ; Home Tooke; Gibbon, the historian ; Cumberland, the dramatist; Colman the Younger; Sir Francis Burdett; Harcourt, Archbishop of York; the third Marquis of Lansdowne ; Lord John Russell ; the Marquis of Anglesey ; Sir John Cam Hobhouse (Lord
Broughton), &c.
Among the eminent Masters are Camden, ” the Pausanias of England,” who had Ben Jonson for a scholar; and Dr. Busby, who had Dryden, and who, out of the bench of Bishops, taught sixteen.
Between the years 1810 and 1856 only seven officers of the British army (royalty excepted) rose to the rank of Field Marshal. Of these seven, five were brought up at Westminster, one at Eton, and one at a private school. The five Westminster boys were — Thomas Grosvenor, Henry Paget, John Byng, Stapleton Cotton, and Fitzroy Somerset; the Etonian was Arthur Wellesley; and the seventh, Henry Hardin ge.
The College Hall, originally the Abbot’s refectory, was built by Abbot Litlington, temp. Edward III. : its dimensions are 47 feet by 27^ feet in width ; the floor is paved with chequered Turkish marble ; at the south end is a musicians’ gallery, now used as a pantry, and behind are butteries and hatches ; upon the north side, upon a dais, is the high table ; those below, of chestnut- wood, are said to have been formed out of the wreck of the Armada; and the roof- timbers spring from carved corbels, with angels bearing shields of the Confessor’s and Abbot’s arms. A small louvre l-ises above the central hearth, upon which, in winter, a charcoal fire used to burn until 1850. The Library is a modern Italian room, and contains memorials of the attachment of ” Westminsters.” The old dormitory, built in 1380, was the granary of the monastery ; and was replaced by the present dormitory in 1722, from the designs of the Earl of Burlington : it is 161 feet long by 25 feet broad, and its walls are inscribed with names.
Here Latin plays are represented upon the second Thursday in December, and the Monday before and after that day ; those acted of late years were the Andria, Phormio, Uunuchus, and Adeljphi, of Terence, with Latin prologue and epilogue/f Warton mentions, ” this liberal exercise is yet preserved, and in the spirit of true classical purity, at the College of Westminster.” The scenery was designed by Garrick ; the modern dresses formerly used were exchanged for Greek costume in 1839. Boating is a favourite recreation of the Westminsters, who have often contested the championship of the Thames with Eton. On May 4, 1837, the Westminsters won a match at Eton.
There exists to this day, at Chiswick, the house which was purchased as a retiring-place for the Master and scholars of Westminster : it was for many years well known as ” The Chiswick Press,” having been long occupied by Mr. Whittingham, and previously by his uncle, who there executed many works of remarkable typographical beauty. The present tenant is bound, as were Messrs. Wbifc-
* The basement story beneath the school serves as an undercroft, has semicircular groined Saxon arches, considered to be of the time of Edward the Confessor, whose steward, Hugolin, was buried here. Here is deposited the standard money, which, when there is a new Master of the Mint, is taken out to be carried to the Exchequer, for a Trial of the Pix. The outer doors have seven locks, each lock a different key, and each key a different possessor ; so that the seven holders assemble on the above occasion. The last trial of the Pix was in 1851, on the admission of Sir John F. W. Herschel, Bart., to the Mastership of the Mint, which office was held by Sir Isaac Newton from 1699 until 1728.
t These performances superseded the old Mysteries and Moralities in the reign of Queen Mary, when the boy-actors were chiefly the acolytes who served at mass.
A large field at the back of the house, known as ” The Home Field,” is held upon the same condition.
(See The Great Schools of England, by Howard Staunton, 1865.)
SEWAGE OR DRAINAGE.
A SEWER is, according to Lord Coke, a place where water issues ; or as is said vulgarly, ” suer,” whence the word suera or sewer. Callis derives it from the Saxon sai-wceer, that is — a sea fence, a protection against sea-tides ; but this derivation is ill-founded. The subject is too large for treatment here ; but we may note that the Institution of Civil Engineers recognise the commissioners of Sewers as first instituted in the reign of Henry VI., when they acted in every part of the country, having jurisdiction on the borders of tidal rivers. Their duties were to repair sea or river banks, and to keep the main drains and outfalls of level districts in repair, and keep them clear for the passage of water.
The first general measure was the ” Bill of Sewers,” in 1531 ; superseded, in 1848, by the “Metropolitan Commission of Sewers,” whose jurisdiction extended 12 miles round St. Paul’s, and for whom a new block plan of the metropolis was prepared by the Ordnance Office. By this map, the sewerage amounted to upwards of 7 millions of cubic feet on the north side of the Thames, and nearly 2 millions on the south side.
The great receptacle was the Thames ; and of the new system, from 1848 to 1854, there were constructed 80 miles of brick sewers, and 346 miles of pipe-drainage. The oldest and largest sewer is the Fleet Sewer, which drains, or drained, by collateral sewers, an area six or seven times the size of the City of London. (See p. 348.)
The new Main Drainage, by Mr. Bazalgette, engineer, has been executed by the Metropolitan Board of Works. As much as possible of the sewage is removed by gravitation ; and for this purpose there are three lines of sewers at each side of the Thames, termed respectively High, Middle, and Low Level. The two former discharge by gravitation ; but pumping is required for the third ; and for this purpose double-acting rotative beam engines, with plunger and ram-pumps, have been adopted.
The intercepting plan, as its name implies, consists in cutting three great main drains on both sides of the river, and which, instead of running due north and south like the former system, run from west to east. These great main lines intercept and cut oif all the existing lines of drains from the river, carry their contents away down below Barking Creek and Erith Marshes, where they are poured into gigantic reservoirs, and afterwards, when deodorized, turned into the river at high tide, and swept away by the ebb almost to sea. Thus, the sewage is not only turned out free from smell, but turned out into a body of water nearly thirty times as great as that into which it used to be poured, and becomes lost in the volume of water which rolls down between the marshes on each side of the river to far below Gravesend. The maximum quantity of sewage to be lifted by the engines at Crossness Point will ordinarily be about 10,000 cubic feet per minute : but during the night that quantity will be considerably reduced, while, on the other hand, it will be nearly double on occasions of heavy rainfall. These works were publicly opened by the Prince of Wales April 4, 1867. The Sigh Level, on the north side, is about eight miles in length, and runs from Hampstead to Bow, being at its rise 4 ft. 6 in. in diameter, and thence increasing in circumference as the waters ot the sewers it intercepts require a wider course, to 5 feet, 6 feet, 7 feet, 10 feet 8 inches, 11 feet 6 inches; and at its termination, near. Lea Biver, to 12 ft. 6 in. in diameter. Its minimum fall is 2 feet in the mile; its maximum at the beginning, nearly 50 feet in the mile. It is laid at the depth of from 20 feet to 26 feet below the ground, and drains an area of fourteen square miles. The Middle Level, as being lower in the valley on the slope of which Loudon is built, is laid at a greater depth, varying from 30 feet to 36 feet, and even more, below the surface. This extends from Kensal Green to Bow. The Low Level will extend from Cremorne to Abbey Mills, on the marshes near Stratford, and one portion of it will pass through the Thames Embankment. At Bow, the Low Level waters of the sewer will be raised by engines at a pumping station to the junction of the High and Middle Level ducts, thence descending by their own gravity through these tunnels to the main reservoir and final outfall at Barking. On the south side of the Thames the three great sewer arteries are constructed on similar plans — the High Level from Dulwich to Deptford; the Middle from Clapham to Deptford; and the Low Level from Putney to Deptford.
At this point is a pumping station, \ Inch raises the water from the low to the high level, whence it flows away through a 10 feet tunnel to Crossness Point. One part of this tunnel, passing under Woolwich, is a mile and a half in length, without a break, and driven at a depth of 80 feet from the surface. At the outfall another pumping station lifts the water to the reservoir. The southern reservoir is only five acres in extent ; that on the north is fourteen. In the reservoir takes place the deodorisatkm.
The two culverts which carry the sewage to the east and west pumping stations are as large almost as railway tunnels, Before the entrance to the pumps are massive iron strainers, which keep out all the coarse refuse brought down the sewer, and which is afterwards dredged up by the filth hoist into the filth chamber, which is flushed into the river at low water.
There are now about 1 300 miles of sewers in London, and 82 miles of main intercepting sewers. Three hundred and eighteen millions of bricks and 880,000 cubic yards of concrete have been consumed, and three and a half million cubic yards of earth have been excavated in the execution of these main drainage works. The total pumping power employed is 2380 nominal horse-power ; and if at full work night and day 44,000 tons of coal per annum would be consumed. The sewage, north of the Thames, at present (1867) amounts to 10,000,000 cubic feet a day, and on the south side to 4,000,000 cubic feet per day ; but provision is made for an anticipated increase up to 11£ millions on the north side, and 5f millions on the south side, in addition to 28″ target=”_top”> million cubic feet of rainfall per diem on the north side, and 17 million cubic feet per diem on the south side, or a total of 63 million cubic feet per diem, which is equal to a lake of 482 acres, 3 feet deep, or fifteen, times as large as the Serpentine in Hyde Park. The cost of these stupendous works had, in 1867, only amounted to little more than 4,000,000/.
SHERIFFS.
THAT London had its Sheriffs, or ” Bailiffs,” as they were originally styled (or Shire Keve, scygerefa, from the Saxon reqfan, ” to levy, to seize”) prior to the Norman Conquest, is attested by William the Conqueror’s second charter being addressed to William the Bishop and Sweyn the Sheriff. The union of the sheriffwick of London and Middlesex took place in the reign of Henry I., of whom the citizens purchased the power of electing the sheriff of Middlesex, ” to farm for 300/. :”* the mayor and citizens now hold the office in fee, and appoint two sheriffs for London, which by charters is both a city and a county, though they make but one sheriff jointly for the county of Middlesex. The third charter of King John and the first charter of Henry TIL minutely describe the sheriff’s office and duties. Any citizen is eligible, unless he swear himself not worth 15,000?. ; and no alderman can be chosen lord mayor unless he has served as sheriff. A list of citizens is nominated on Midsummer-day, when two are elected by the Livery in Common Hall. Much of the pomp and circumstance of past times incident to the ceremony are still maintained, and there is a good deal about it that is sentimental and picturesque. The floor of the platform, as of old, is still strewn over with cut flowers and green herbs, mint and thyme prevailing, and each high City functionary, from the chief magistrate downwards, carries a bouquet of flowers ; the persons chosen are obliged to serve, under a penalty of 400/. and 20 marks ; and the fines paid within the present century have exceeded 70,000/. In 1734 there were fined 35 persons, and 11 excused. The fine is 413/. 6s. 8d., with an additional 2001. if the lesser fine is not paid within a certain time. In 1806 the fines amounted to 10,306/. 135. Ad., and to 9466/. 13s. Ad. in the year 1815. But the election is sometimes contested, as in 1830, when there were six candidates. The sheriffs-elect were formerly presented for approbation to the Cursitor Baron of Exchequer, as the representative of the Sovereign : that being found most inconvenient, a short Act of Parliament was passed to do away with the ceremony of presentation, but reserving all the other ancient ceremonies, appointing the Barons, or their chief officer, the Queen’s Remembrancer, to see the ceremony performed, on the morrow of St. Michael, as described at pp. 508-509. The numerous trusts of the sheriffs are mostly performed by the under-sheriffs, but the State-duties by the sheriffs themselves. They receive from the City about 1000/. during their year of office ; but the State and hospitality they are expected to maintain usually cost each sheriff upwards of 2000 guineas : for
State-chariot, horses, and State-liveries ; the inauguration dinner. The mayor’s banquet, at Guildhall, on the 9th of each November, throws on the lord mayor and corporation but one-third of its cost; the remaining two-thirds devolve on the unhappy sheriffs, although but eight of their private friends can be invited to the feast. The cost of this is generally 800/. to each of the sheriffs, being 200/. for each of their guests : the Old Bailey dinners {see p. 506) ; besides meat at the City prisons, which the sheriffs * This fee-farm rent has lpng since been given away by the Crown, is now private property, and is paid half-yearly by the sheriff. In the charters granted to the City of London by Henry II., Richard I., and in the first charter of King John, no mention whatever is made of the sheriffwick. There are many City ordinances for the office of sheriff, disobedience to which is in some cases marked by dismissal. A History of the Sheriffdom was published in 1723.
The sheriffs are always sworn in on the eve of Michaelmas-day, upon which the Livery-men meet at Guildhall to elect the Lord Mayor for the ensuing year, and their first duty is to take part in that ceremony. The first Jew sheriff was Mr. David (now Alderman) Salomons, 1835 ; and the first Roman Catholic sheriff was Mr. Richard Swift, M.P., 1851 : the latter was attended in State hy a Romish priest as his chaplain. A factious sheriff (Slingsby Bethel) is thus commemorated, as Shimei, by Dryden :
” No Kechabite more shunn’d the fumes of wine ;
Chaste were his cellars, and his shrieval board
The grossness of a City feast abhorr*d ;
His cooks, with long disuse, their trade forgot —
Cool was his kitchen, though his brains were hot.”
Absalom and Achitophel.
One of the oldest shrievalty customs was that of the Lord Mayor drinking to persons for nomination to the office : it was revived in 1682, at the request of Charles II., with a factious object ; when Sheriffs Shute and Pilkington were committed by the King to the Tower, upon a false charge of riot. In 1685, Alderman and Sheriff Cornish, being implicated in the Rye-house Plot, was hanged, drawn, and quartered at the end of King-street, Cheapside, fronting his own house.
Sheriff Hoare has left a journal of his shrievalty, in 1740-41, in his own handwriting : describing his investiture in his scarlet gown, the gold chain taken off the former sheriff and put on him ; the delivery of the prisoners and prison-keys, and the keeper’s treat of sack and walnuts, Sept. 28th ; how the sheriffs, April 6tb, entertained the Exchequer officers with 52 calves’-heads, dressed in different manners ; how, Sept. 2nd (anniversary of the Fire of London), the sheriffs went to St. Paul’s, in their ” black gowns, and no chains, and heard a sermon ;” how, Sept. 8th, they went with the lord mayor to proclaim Southwark Fair ; the Christ’s Hospital treat of sweet cakes and burnt wine, on St. Matthew’s day (Sept. 21st) ; and sack and walnuts on Sept. 28th, when the sheriff returned home, to his ” great consolation and comfort.” In the permission granted to sheriffs to keep condemned prisoners in the Sheriffs’ own houses, as well as in the gaols, is thought to be traceable the origin of the ” Sponging-house.”
The Sheriffs Fund was established by Sir Richard Phillips, sheriff 1807-8, who, in his Letter to the Livery of London, tells us that, after a few visits to Newgate, he discovered so many well-founded claims of a pecuniary nature on his charity, that it became impossible to meet a tenth part of them.
A Sheriffs Fund was therefore publicly announced, and the design was generally applauded, if not generally aided ; though the Sheriff collected, in the course of the year, about 500?., and assisted and relieved many thousands of distressed individuals and their families, a trifling balance was handed over to his successors in the Shrievalty. The Sheriffs’ Fund, in 1867, amounted to nearly 13,000?.
In 1840, Sheriffs Evans and Wheelton were imprisoned by the House of Commons at Westminster, for an alleged breach of privilege.
SHOREDITCH,
AN ancient manor and parish, extending from Norton Folgate to Old-street, and from part of Finsbury to Bethnal-green. It was originally a village on the Roman military highway, called by the Saxons Eald (i.e., Old) Street. Stow declares it to have been called Soersditch more than 400 years before his time : and Weever states it to have been named from Sir John de Soerdich, lord of the manor temp. Edward III.,* and who was with that king in his wars with France. The legend of its being called after Jane Shore dying in a ditch in its neighbourhood, is a popular error, traceable to a hlack-letter ballad in the Pepys Collection, entitled, The Woful Lamentation of Jane Shore, a Goldsmith’s Wife in London, some time King Edward IV. his Concubine
” I could not get one bit of bread,
Whereby my hunger might be fed;
Nor drink, but such as channels yield,
Or stinking ditches in the field.
Thus, weary of my life at lengthe,
I yielded up my vital strength
* The same family of Soerdich, or Shordich, it is believed, possessed the manor of Ickenham, near Uxbridge, and resided at Ickenham Hall, from the reign of Edward III. to our own time. The last of this family, Paul Ricaut Shordiche, civil engineer, grandson of Michael Shordiche, of Ickenham Manor, died at Antigua, July 13, 1865.
Within a ditch of loathsome scent,
Where carrion dogs did much frequent :
The which now, since my dying daye,
Is Shoreditch call’d, as writers saye.”
But this ballad is not older than the middle of the 17th century ; and no mention is made of Jane so dying in a ballad by Th. Churchyard, dated 1587. Dr. Percy erroneously refers Shoreditch to ” its being a common sewer, vulgarly shore, or drain.”
It is sometimes called Sorditch, which is the most correct, according to the above explanation. An archer of this parish, named Barlo, was styled ” Duke of Shoreditch ** by Henry VIII., for having outshot his competitors in a shooting match at Windsor ; and the Captain of the Company of Archers of London was long after styled ” Duke of Shoreditch.” In the Beaufoy Collection are four Shoreditch tokens, one with figures of Edward IV. and his mistress ; and the sign of Jane Shore is extant at a public-house in the High-street.
Shoreditch is the scene of another apocryphal tragedy ; the old ballad laying here the locus in quo of George Barnwell’s dissipation, where lived Mrs. Millwood, who led him astray :—
” George Barnwell, then quoth she,
Do thou to Shoreditch come,
And ask for Mrs. Millwood’s house,
Next door unto the Gun.”
Now, Shoreditch was formerly notorious for the easy character of its women ; and to die in Shoreditch was not a mere metaphorical term for dying in a sewer. {Cunningham). See the story in Romance of London, vol. i. pp. 314 — 324. James Smith wrote the ballad of ” George Barnwell travestie ;” and Thackeray a famous caricature romance, entitled ” George de Barnwell.”
Holywell Lane and Mount (” heightening of the ground for garden-plots,” Stow), and Holywell Row, in Shoreditch, are named from a holy well there ; and a house of Benedictine nuns of that name, founded by a Bishop of London, and rebuilt, with the Church of St. John and the chapel, by Sir Thomas Lovel, of Lincoln’s Inn, Treasurer of the Household to King Henry VII., K.G., &c.
Sir Thomas Lovel was buried there June 8, 1525, ” in a tombe of whyte marbell, on the southe syde of the quyre of the saide churche.” — (Book of the College of Arms) At his funeral there were present the Bishop of London, Lord St. John, Sir Eichard Wyngfield, and many others, nobles and gentlemen.
The Abbot of Waltham, the Prior of St. Mary Spital, four orders of friars, the Mayor and all the aldermen of London, gentlemen of the Inns of Court, the Lord Steward, and all the clerks of London attended.
Part of the Chapel remains under the floor of the Old King John, and the stone doorway into the porter’s lodge of the Priory still exists. (Notes and Queries, No. 179.) Shoreditch Cross is believed to have stood on the west side of Kingsland-road, and to have been demolished in 1642.
St. Leonard’s Church, at the north end of Shoreditch, is described at p. 173. Near the altar is a tablet to the memory of a descendant of the royal house of Hungary ; and in the crypt is the noble altar-tomb of a descendant of the great John Corvinus Huniades, whose son was elected King of Hungary. In the belfry are recorded several feats of bell-ringing, including 16 March, 1777, when the ” College Youths” performed 11,000 changes in eight hours, adding that their names would be handed down to posterity, “insaturated with glory.” In the churchyard is buried Gardner, the worm destroying doctor of Long Acre ; his tombstone inscribed, ” Dr. John Gardner’s (intended) last and best bed-room.” In 1811, a writ of arrest was served by a sheriffs officer upon a dead body, as it was being conveyed to this churchyard ; which occasioned Lord Ellenborougb to declare the process altogether illegal. In St. Leonard’s Church is some painted glass from one of the Priory windows. ” Neare thereunto are builded two publique houses for the acting and shewe of comedies, tragedies, and histories, for recreation. Thereof one is called the Courtain, the other the Theatre, both standing on the south-west toward the field.” (Stow, 1st edit, p. 349.) Hence the Curtain Theatre, built in Holy well-lane, and Curtain-road; in the latter, at the Blue Last public-house, porter is traditionally said to have been first sold, about 1730.
A Public Hall has been built for St. Leonard’s, facing Old-street, of Corinthian and Doric architecture ; in the basement are the parochial offices ; and on the first-floor the Great Hall, to hold 1800 persons. In 1854 were erected almshouses in Brunswick-street, Hackney-road, for twenty aged women of the parish; the architecture is Jacobean. The Great Eastern Railway crosses the main street, and near the station is the first of the buildings erected by the trustees to whom the disposal of Mr. Peabody’s munificent gift to the City of London was referred. Hard by is Colombia Market, erected at the expense of Miss Burdett Coutts (see p. 558). Philanthropy has long been at work here, but much remains to be done.
The people of St. Philip’s, Shoreditch, are types of a class which is no small one — the quiet poor, the people who struggle earnestly to obtain subsistence out of the workhouse, who abstain from beggary, and who arc not brought under our notice by their crimes. This district of Bethnal-green seems to •consist almost wholly of such persons. A small space of ground is there covered with about fourteen thousand of them, weavers, costermongers, and others, each family lodged in a single room. The mass of this population subsist upon earnings that average little more than threepence a-day, for the maintenance of each body, great and small, with shelter, food, and clothing. They are not squalid or vicious, they will work their hearts away for the most miserable hire, they work and help each other, they work and grieve and die. In this one district of St. Philip’s, Shoreditch, which is but a little island in the world of sorrow, there is work for thousands of warm-hearted people, who with scanty aid may do great service. — Examiner, abridged.
SKINNER- STREET AND SNOW-HILL.
SKINNER-STREET, extending from Newgate-street to Holborn-hill, was built about 1802, to avoid the circuit of Snow-hill, also called Snor, Snore, and Sorrhill; the projector of the improvement was Alderman Skinner. Here was a large seven-storied house, burnt down in 1813, estimated loss 25,0O0£. At No. 41, “William Godwin, author of Caleb Williams kept a bookseller’s shop, and published his juvenile works under the name of Edward Baldwin : over his shop-door is an artificial stone relief of J2sop narrating his tables to children. Opposite No. 58, in 1817, was hung Cashman the sailor, who had joined a mob in plundering the gunsmith’s shop at the above house.
In a shop-window on Snow-hill, Vandyke saw the picture by Dobson, which led him to seek out the painter in a garret, and recommend him to Charles I. At the sign of the Star, on Snow-hill, at the house of his friend Mr. Strudwick, a grocer, died 12th August, 1688, John Bunyan, author of the Pilgrim’s Progress, and was buried in that friend’s vault in Bunhill-fields burial-ground. At No. 37, King-street, Snowhill, was formerly the Ladies’ Charity . School, which was established in 1702, and remained in the parish 145 years. Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson were subscribers to this school ; and Johnson drew from it his story of Betty Broom, in The Idler. In the school minutes, 1763, the ladies of the committee censured the schoolmistress for listening to the story of the Cock -lane Ghost, and ” desired her to keep her belief in the article to herself.” The School-house is No. 30, John-street, Bedford-row. Great part of Skinner-street has been taken down in clearances for the Holborn- valley and the Metropolitan Railway works.
SMITHFIELD,
ANCIENTLY just outside the City wall, was the great public walk of the citizens, their race-course, and live market (see p. 561; vulgo, Smiffel). It was a great field for quintain-matches, and was called ” Ruffians’ Hall,” for its frays and common fighting with sword and buckler, superseded by the deadly fight of rapier and dagger. Ben Jonson, in his Bartholomew Fair, speaks of ” the sword and buckler age in Smithfield ” having but recently passed away ; and in the Two Angry Women of Abingdon, 1599, complaint is made that “the sword and buckler fight begins to grow out of use.” The town-green had its clump of trees, ” the Elms,” which was the place of public execution until the middle of the 13th century, when it was removed to Tyburn. At the Elms suffered William Fitzosbert (Longbeard) ; here ” Mortimer was executed, and let hang two days and two nights, to be seen of the people ;” and here perished the patriot Wallace, on St. Bartholomew’s even, 1305 — the place of blood being in Cow-lane, close to the end of St. John’s-court. At Smithfield, on Saturday, June 15th, 1381, Richard II. met Wat Tyler and his ” shoeless ribalds,” the King towards the east, near St. Bartholomew’s Priory, and the Commons towards the west ; when Tyler, seizing the boy -king’s horse, was stabbed by Walworth, mayor of London ; and a few days after, Jack Straw, the second rebel in command, was hanged at the Elms. But Smithfield has its sunnier epoch of jousts, tournaments, and feats of arms. Here Edward III. commemorated the brilliant realities of Cressy and Poictiers ; and here the doting monarch feasted Alice Pierce (” the lady of the sun”) with seven days’ chivalric sports. Richard II. held “a great justing” here in 1390, when was ” given first the badge of the White Hart, with golden chains and crowns •” and here, in 1396, the king celebrated his marriage by three days’ tournament. In 1393 ” certain lords of Scotland came into England, to get worship by force of arms in Smithfield” (Froissart). This was likewise the scene of ordeal combats, when the place of battle was strewed with rushes : here was fought the whimsical combat of Horner and Peter, as told by Holinshed, and dramatized by Shakspeare {King Henry VI., Part II.)
The reality is thus recorded in the Grey Friars’ Chronicle, Hen. VI. : ” xxv° A 0- Thys yere was a fyghtynge in Smythfelde betwene ane armerar of fletstret and his servant, for worddes agenst the kynge, whereof hys servant asseld hym; and the servant slew the master in the felde.”
In the play of Henry VI. is the king’s sentence : *’ The witch in Smithfield shall be burn’d to ashes.”
The martyrology of Smithfield forms a still more terrible page of its history. Here were burnt the martyrs, from John Rogers, ” the protomartyr of the Marian persecution,” in 1555, to Bartholomew Leggatt, in 1611, the last martyr who suffered at the stake in England. Of the 277 persons burnt for heresy in the reign of Mary, the great majority suffered in Smithfield : a large gas-light (in the middle of the pens) denoted the reputed spot ; but the discovery in 1849 of some blackened stones, ashes, and charred human bones, at 3 feet from the surface, opposite the gateway of St.
Bartholomew’s Church, induces the belief that here was the great hearth of the bigot fires. Charred human bones and ashes were also discovered, at 5 feet from the surface, at the west end of Long-lane, in July, 1854. In Smithfield, likewise, poisoners were ” boiled to death” by statute, in the reign of Henry VIII.
” xiij° A°” Thys yere was a man soddyne in a cautherne (boiled in a cauldron) in Smythfelde, and lett up and downe dyvers tymes tyll he was dede, for because he wold a poyssynd dyvers persons.”
“xxij°A° – This yere was a coke boylyd in a cauderne in Smythfeld, for he wolde a powsynd the bishoppe of Rochester, Fy cher, with dyvers of hys servanttes ; and he was locky d in a chayre, and pully up and downe with a gybbyt, at dyvers tymes, till he was dede.”
xxxiij° A 0- The x day of March was a mayde boyllyd in Smythfelde, for poysyng of dyvers persons.”
— Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, edited by J. Gough Nichols, F.S.A. Printed for the Camden Society, 1852.
From this Chronicle we learn that the gallows was ” set up at sent Bartylmewys gate.”
The entries of burnings for ” errysee ” are also very numerous. Burning for other crimes was, however, continued : Evelyn records, ” 1652, May 10. — Passing by Smithfield, I saw a miserable creature burning who had murdered her husband.”
In Stow’s time, the encroachments by ” divers fair inns, and other buildings,” had left but a small portion of Smithfield for the old uses. After the Great Fire, the houseless people were sheltered here in huts. Over against Pie-corner is Cock-lane : Goldsmith’s pamphlet respecting the Cock -lane ghost was first included in his collected Works edited by Peter Cunningham, F.S.A., 1854. This ancient locality has been much disturbed by the removal of the old market, and by railway encroachments.
Bartholomew Faire, held in Smithfield from the reign of Henry I. to our own time, is described at p. 32-36. The Fair was finally abolished in 1853. The Churches of St. Bartholomew and St. Bartholomew-the-Less are noticed at pp. 152, 153.
SMITHFIELD, FAST,
BETWEEN Little Tower-hill and Ratcliff-highway, was, according to Stow, before the reign of King Stephen, made a vineyard by the Constables of the Tower, being forcibly taken by them from the Priory of the Holy Trinity, within Aldgate.
Here Edward III. founded New Abbey, in 1359, called the White Order, and named Eastminster. Spenser the poet is said to have been born in East Smithfield ; and here, 24th July, 1629, Charles I. killed a stag, which he had hunted from Wanstead, in Essex. (Stow.) A plan of East Smithfield in Elizabeth’s reign shows the site of an ancient stone cross, and the stocks and cage.
SOCIETY OF ARTS. 733
SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES.
THE early history of this Society, from 1707, when the few members first met, ” upon pain of forfeiture of sixpence,” is noted at page 530 : the plan was drawn up by Humphrey Wanley; and the minutes date from Jan. 1, 1718, when the members brought to the weekly meetings, coins, medals, seals, intaglios, cameos, manuscripts, records, rolls, genealogies, pictures, drawings, &c. The first president was Martin Folkes, 1751. The Society occupy apartments in Somerset House, formerly the Royal Society’s. The president is Earl Stanhope, the accomplished historian.
Terms of admission reduced in 1853 from eight to five guineas entrance fee ; and from four to two guineas annual subscription. The strict form of admission is by the president or presiding officer placing upon his head a cocked-hat ; in one hand he holds the Society’s iron gilt mace, and with the other hand he welcomes the new Fellow, saying : ” By the authority and in the name of the Society of Antiquaries of London, I admit you a Fellow thereof.” To the names of the members are usually appended F.S.A. The Obligation Book contains the signatures of the leading antiquaries, Fellows of the Society. The Society possess a Library, noticed at page 516 ; and a Museum, see page 590. A synopsis of the contents of the Museum is presented to the Fellows. The old paintings and memorials in the Meeting-room are curious.
The Society’s Transactions (Archaologia), published annually, date from 1770. Among their other publications are Vetusta Monumenta, vol. vi., illustrating the Baieux tapestry; Folkes’s Tables of English Silver and Gold Coins ; Wardrobe-book of Edward I. ; Ordinances and Regulations of the Royal Households, from Edward III. to William and Mary ; Roy’s Military Antiquities of the Romans in Britain ; Account of the Collegiate Chapel of St. Stephen, at Westminster ; Accounts of the Cathedrals of Exeter, Durham, and Gloucester, and of Bath and St. Alban’s Abbey Churches ; Csedmon’s Metrical Paraphrase of the Holy Scriptures in Anglo-Saxon. The Society have also published large historical prints of the Field of the Cloth-of-Gold, 1520; Francis I.’s attempt to invade England, 1545; the Procession of King Edward VI. from the Tower to Westminster; Aggas’s Plan of London, &c.
SOCIETY OF ARTS.
THE Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, originated with William Shipley, a drawing-master, and brother to the Dean of St. Asaph. With the concurrence of Jacob Viscount Folkestone, Robert Lord Romney, and Dr. Maddox, Bishop of Worcester, the Society first met, March 29, 1754, at Rawthmell’s Coffee-house, Henrietta-street, Covent-garden : Shipley acting as Secretary ; and the plan of the Society being drawn up by William Baker, the microscopist.
Oliver Goldsmith took great interest in the early proceedings of the Society, in a magazine published by Newbery ; and the Doctor was a candidate for the secretary-ship. Much attention was then bestowed upon ” the polite arts :” among the first objects was the offer of premiums for drawings by girls and boys under 16 years of age. The Society next met, 1754-5, in apartments over a circulating-library in Crane-court, Fleet-street ; next in Craig’s-court, Charing-cross ; at the corner of Castle-court, Strand; in 1759 they removed to a house (afterwards Dibdin’s Sans Souci) opposite Beaufort-buildings ; and next to their new house in John-street, Adelphi, in 1774. Presidents: Viscount Folkestone, 1755-1761; Lord Rodney, 1761-1793; the Duke of Norfolk, 1793-1815 ; the Duke of Sussex, 1815-1843 ; Prince Albert, 1843-1861 ; and the present President, the Prince of Wales.
’Early Award* of the Society. — The first prize to Richard Cosway, then 15. In 1758, Bacon, the sculptor, for a small figure of Peace ; and he gained 9 other high prizes ; 1761, Nollekens, for an alto-relievo of Jephtha’s Vow, and in 1771 for a more important piece of sculpture; in 1768, Flaxman, and in 1771 the Society’s Gold Medal. Lawrence, when 13, received a silver-gilt palette and 5 guineas for his crayon-drawing of the Transfiguration. In 1807, to Sir William Ross, then 12, a siver-gilt palette for a drawing of Wat Tyler ; in 1810, a similar reward to Sir Edwin Landseer for an etching ; and to B. Wyon, in 1818, the Gold Medal for a medal die. Among the other recipients of prizes may be named Allan Cunningham, Mulready, and Millais.
The first public Exhibition of the works of British Artists was held at the Society’s house in the Strand, in 1760 : hence originated the Royal Academy, who, in 1776, with Sir Joshua Reynolds at their head, refusing to paint the Society’s Great Council-room at the Adelphi, next year Barry, who had signed the refusal with the rest, volunteered to decorate the room without any remuneration at all : the pictures are described at page 603 : the room is 47 feet in length, 42 feet in breadth, and 40 in height. Among the prime objects of the Society were the application of Art to the improvement of Design in Manufactures, now developed in ” Art Manufactures ;” the improvement of Agriculture and Horticulture ; and in 1783 a reward was offered for a reaping-machine.
The Society has distributed more than 100.000Z. in premiums and bounties. The growth of forest-trees was one of its early objects of encouragement ; and among the recipients of its Gold Medal (designed by Flaxman) were the Dukes of Bedford and Beaufort, the Earls of Winterton, Upper Ossory, and Mansfield; and Dr. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff. Then came Agriculture, Chemistry, Manufactures, and Mechanics, including tapestry and the imitation of Turkey carpets, Marseilles and India quilting, spinning and lace-making, improved paper, catgut for musical instruments ; straw bonnets and artificial flowers. Among the Society’s colonial objects were the manufacture of potash and pearlash, the culture of the vine, the growth of silk-worms, indigo, and vegetable oils. Very many rewards have been given by the Society to poor Bethnal-green and Spitalfields weavers for useful inventions in their manufacture.
The Society’s Libeaet is described at page 525 ; and its Museum of Models, and the Pictures and Sculpture, at pp. 603. Dr. Johnson says of Barry’s paintings, ” There is a grasp of mind there which you will find nowhere else.” The Society held the first regular Exhibition of Useful Inventions in 1761, when a Mr. Bailey explained the several articles to the visitors. The Premiums are annually presented in the Great Boom, where have been held Exhibitions of Decorative Art unequalled in this country. The Society chiefly prepared the public mind for the Great Exhibition of 1851 ; and here Mr. Paxton first developed his plan of its stupendous building, Nov. 13, 1850. Annual Subscription to the Society, two guineas. Among the Special Prizes is the bequest of Dr. Svviney of 100 guineas, in a Silver Cup of the same value, to be given every fifth year for the best treatise on Jurisprudence ; the Cup, designed by D. Maclise, R.A., is surmounted by figures of Justice, Vengeance, and Mercy ; in the centre is a niello of a hall of justice; and at the base are four kneeling slaves. The Centenary of the Society of Arts was celebrated July, 1854, by a banquet in the Crystal Palace, Sydenham.
For many years the office of Secretary was filled by Arthur Aikin, eldest son of Dr. Aikin, the friend of John Howard, and brother of Lucy Aikin ; and who published a Manual of Mineralogy, Arts and Manufactures, and a Chemical Dictionary. He died in 1854, aged 80. Among the Society’s Vice-Presidents was Thomas Hope, author of some tasteful works on costume, furniture, and decoration; and whose house in Duchess-street was a model of artistic design (described at page 551) : here was a piece of carved furniture, which, many years after it was executed, was specially noticed by Sir Francis Chantrey : on being asked the reason, he replied, ” That was my first work.”
SOHO,
A DISTRICT north-east of Piccadily, extending to Oxford-street. Mr. Cunningham has found the name ” Soho” in the rate-books of St. Martin’s as early as the year 1632 ; thus invalidating the tradition by Pegge and Pennant, that Soho* being the watchword at the battle of Sedgemoor, in 1685, it was given to King-square, in memory of the Duke of Monmouth, whose mansion was upon the south side. The boundaries of Soho are Oxford-street, north ; Crown-street, east ; King-street, south ; and Wardour-street and Princes-street, west. Soho-square and the adjoining fields passed by royal grants to the Earl of St. Albans, the Duke and Duchess of Monmouth, and the Earl of Portland; and the streets are named from this appropriation, or from their builders. The houses in Soho-square and the streets adjoining are remarkably well built, and were tenanted by nobility and gentry until our time. Carlisle Souse and Street, named from having been the residence of the Earls of Carlisle, are described at p. 446 : here lived Bach and Abel, the musical composers. Greek-street and Church-street are named from the Greek Church in Crown-street. In Greek-street the elder Wedgwood had warerooms before he removed to St. James’s ; and Mr. (after Sir Thomas) Lawrence, R.A., was living here in 1806. In Wardour-street (Old Soho) French Protestants were early * ” Soho is the same as ’.pray stop* ” (Booth’s Analytical Diet.) -. hence it may have been appliecl, in the above instance, to the extension of building in this direction, more especially as it was prohibited by a proclamation in 1671.
Settlers, and probably brought the trade in foreign art. Berwick-street is described by Hatton (1708) as ” a kind of row ; the fronts of the houses resting on columns, make a small piazza.” In Dean-street lived Sir James Thornhill, at No. 75, which has the staircase-walls of his painting; and at No. 33 died young, in 1819, Harlowe, the painter of the Trial of Queen Katharine.
Gerard-street is named from Gerard, Earl of Macclesfield, the owner of the site, formerly ” the Military Garden” of Henry Prince of Wales, eldest son of James I. {see p. 458) ; and Princes-street is built upon part of the ground : here, in 1718, lived Halley the astronomer. The landlord’s title is also preserved in Macclesfield-street. In Gerard House lived the profligate Lord Mohun.
At No. 43, Gerard- street, John Dryden resided with his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard : his study was the front parlour ; Dryden died here in 1700. In Gerard-street lived Edmund Burke at the time of Warren Hastings’ trial; and here at the Turk’s Head, (removed from Greek-street, where met the Loyal Association of 1745), Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Burke founded the Literary Club in 1764 {see p. 251). Here a Society of Artists met in 1753 ; and another Society, including West, Wilson, Wilton, Chambers, Sandby, &c, who, from the Turk’s Head, petitioned George III. to patronize a Royal Academy of Art. In Gerard-street was formerly the chief receiving-house of the Twopenny Post. Compton-street was built in the reign of Charles II., by Sir Francis Compton; and New Compton-street was first named Stiddolph-street, after Sir Richard Stiddolph, the owner of the land. — Dr. Rimbault, in Notes and Queries, No. 15. {See Sqt/abes : Soho.)
The Lion Brewery, in Soho, was formerly the property of the uncle of Sir Richard Phillips, who was brought up in this establishment, to which he was heir. This prospective fortune did not, however, overcome his distaste for the business of a brewer ; and a passion for literature, particularly mathematics and natural philosophy, led him, at the age of 17, to detach himself from his family connexions, and seek his own chance of life.
SOMERSET HOUSE, OLD, OR, SOMERSET-PLACE, on the north side of the Strand, was commenced building about 1547, by the Protector Somerset, maternal uncle of Edward VI. To obtain space and materials, he demolished Strand or Chester’s Inn, and the episcopal houses of Lichfield, Coventry, Worcester, and Llandaff, besides the church and tower of St. John of Jerusalem ; for the stone, also, he pulled down the great north cloister of St. Paul’s ; St. Mary’s Church too was taken down, and the site became part of the garden. The Duke’s cofferer’s account shows the building, in 1551, to have
cost 10,091Z. (present money, 50.000Z.). The architect was John of Padua, contemporary with Holbein ; and there is a plan of the house among Thorpe’s drawings in the Soane Museum ; it was the first building of Italian architecture erected in England.
Stow describes it in 1603, as ” a large and beautiful house, but yet unfinished.” The Protector did not inhabit the palace; for he was imprisoned in the Tower in 1549, and beheaded in 1552. Somerset Place then devolved to the Crown, and was assigned by Edward VI. to his sister the Princess Elizabeth.
” Feb. 1566-7, Cornelius de la Noyne, an alchymist, wrought in Somerset House, and abused many in promising to convert any metall into gold.” — Lord Burghley’s Notes.
In 1570, Queen Elizabeth went to the Royal Exchange, ” from her house at the Strand, called Somerset House ;” it also occurs as ” Somerset Place, beyond Strand Bridge.” The Queen lent the mansion to her kinsman, Lord Hunsdon, whose guest she occasionally became. At her death, the palace was settled as a jointure-house of the queen-consort; and passed to Anne of Denmark, queen of James I., by whose command it was called Denmark House. Inigo Jones erected here ” new buildings and enlargements.” Here the remains of Anne and James I. lay in State. For Henrietta Maria, queen of Charles I., Inigo Jones built a chapel, with a rustic arcade and Corinthian columns, facing the Thames ; and here the Queen established a convent of Capuchin friars ; in the passage leading from east to west, under the quadrangle of the present Somerset House, are five tombstones of the Queen’s attendants.
From a manuscript inventory in the library of Mr. Gough, ” the chappel goods at Somerset House” were numerous and costly. Of the goods and furniture appraised in 1649, the arras hangings and tapestry were of great value; the state-beds, pavilions, canopies, cloths-of-state, carpets, mantles, table-linen, &c., were very rich : one of the beds of embroidered French satin was valued at 10CKM. Among the pictures were the Madonna by Raphael, valued at 2000J. ; a Sleeping Venus by Correggio, at 10CXK. ; and many by Titian, And. del Sarto, Julio Romano, Guido, Correggio, Giorgione, Vandyke, &c.
Of the tenements ” belonging unto Somerset House” (20 inns), the Bed Lion, nearly opposite, in the Strand, is the only remaining one among the signs in the list : the sculptured sign-stone is built into the house No. 342, Strand.
Inigo Jones died here in 1652. During the Protectorate, the altar and chapel were ordered to he burnt ; and in 1659 the palace was about to be sold for 10,000Z. ; but after the Restoration, the Queen-mother Henrietta returned to Somerset House, which she repaired; hence she is made to exclaim, in Cowley’s courtly verse:—
” Before my gate a street’s broad channel goes,
Which still with waves of crowding people flows ;
And every day there passes by my side,
Up to its western reach, the London tide,
The spring-tides of the term. My front looks down
On all the pride and business of the town.”
Waller’s adulatory incense rises still higher :
” But what new mine this work supplies ?
Can such a pile from ruin rise ?
This like the first creation shows,
As if at your command it rose.”
Upon her Majesty’s New Buildings at Somerset House.
Here was introduced into England the inlaying of floors with coloured woods.
Pepys gossips of ” the Queen-mother’s court at Somerset House, above our own Queen’s ; mass in the chapel; the garden; and the new buildings, mighty magnificent and costly,” ” stately and nobly furnished ;” and ” the great stone stairs in the garden, with the brave echo.” The Queen-mother died abroad in 1669. In 1669-70 the remains of Monk, Duke of Albemarle, ” lay for many weeks in royal state” at Somerset House ; and thence he was buried with every honour short of regality. Thither the remains of Oliver Cromwell were removed from Whitehall in 1658, and were laid in State in the great hall of Somerset House, ” and represented in effigy, standing on a bed of crimson velvet ;” he was buried from thence with great pomp and pageantry, which provoked the people to throw dirt, in the night, on his escutcheon that was placed over the great gate of Somerset Place ; his pompous funeral cost 28,000£. On the death of Charles II., in 1685, the palace became the sole residence of the Queen Dowager, Catherine of Braganza ; and in 1678 three of her household were charged with the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, by decoying him into Somerset House, and there strangling him. (See Pkimeose Hill, p. 692.) The Queen had here a small establishment of Capuchins, who inhabited ” the New Friary,” as did the Capuchins in Henrietta Maria’s time, ” the Old Friary ;” both are shown in a plan 1706.
Strype describes the palace about 1720 ; its front with stone pillars, its spacious square court, great hall or guard-room, large staircase and rooms of State, larger courts, and ” most pleasant garden ;” the water-gate with figures of Thames and Isis ; and the water-garden, with fountain and statues. Early in the last century, court masquerades were given here : Addison, in the Freeholder, mentions one in 1716 ; and in 1763 a splendid fete was given here by Government to the Venetian Ambassador. In 1771, the Royal Academy had apartments in the palace, granted by George III. In 1775, Parliament settled upon Queen Charlotte Buckingham House, in which she then resided, in lieu of Old Somerset House, which was given up to be demolished, for the erection upon the site of certain public offices ; the produce of the sale of Ely House being applied towards the expenses. The chapel, which had been opened for the Protestant service, by order of Queen Anne, in 1711, was not closed until 1777. The venerable court-way from the Strand, and the dark and winding steps which led down to the garden beneath the shade of ancient and lofty trees, were the last lingering features of Somerset Place, and were characteristic of the gloomy lives and fortunes of its royal and noble inmates. ” The best view of the ancient house is preserved in the Dulwich
Gallery.”— Charles Seed, F.S.A.
SOMERSET HOUSE
OCCUPIES the site of the old palace, an area of 800 feet by 500, or a few feet less than the area of Russell-square. It is the finest work of Sir William Chambers: the first stone was laid in 1776 ; and the Strand front, 7 stories high, was nearly-completed in 1780.* It consists of a rustic arcade basement of 9 arches, supporting Corinthian columns, and an attic in the centre, with a balustrade at each extremity ; the whole in Portland stone. The key-stones of the arches are colossal masks of Ocean, and the eight great rivers of England, — the Thames, Humber, Mersey, Medway, Dee, Tweed, Tyne, and Severn — sculptured by Carlini and Wilton. In the frieze of the three middle windows are medallions of George III., his queen, and the Prince of Wales. In the attic are statue3 of Justice, Truth, Valour, and Temperance ; the summit being surmounted by the British Arms, supported by Fame and the Genius of England. The vaultings of the vestibule are enriched with sculptures from the antique, and are supported by two ranges of coupled Doric columns. On the east side are the entrances to the apartments of the Royal Society, the Society of Antiquaries, the Royal Astronomical Society, and the Geological Society ; and on the west were those of the Royal Academy, subsequently of the School of Design, next of the University of London Board. Over the central doorway, east, is a bust of Newton west, of Michael Angelo j by Wilton, R. A.
Facing the vestibule is a massive bronze group of George III. leaning upon a rudder, backed by the prow of a Roman (!) vessel, and a couchant lion j and at the monarch’s feet is a figure of the Thames, with an urn and cornucopia : the work of John Bacon, R.A. ; cost 200W.
The inner side of the Strand front has in the attic statues of the four quarters of the globe ; and over the centre are the British Arms, supported by marine deities holding a festoon of netting filled with fish, &c. Ornaments of antique altars and sphinxes screen the chimneys ; and on the key-stones are sculptured masks of tutelar deities.
The east, west, and south sides of the edifice are Government Offices, which occupy, besides the superstructure, two stories below the general level of the quadrangle, the passages to which are skilfully contrived. The centre of the south side is enriched with Corinthian columns and pilasters, and a pediment with a bas-relief of the arms of the navy of Great Britain, a sea-nymph, sea-horses, and tritons ; trophies, vases, &c.
The Thames front, 800 feet in length, is in the Venetian style, and is enriched with columns, pilasters, pediments, &c. : at each extremity is an archway opening to Somerset-place on the west, and King’s College on the east ; the latter built by Sir Robert Smirke, in 1829, in accordance with Chambers’s design. In each end a portico stands on the summit of a semicircular arch, the bases of two out of its four columns resting on the hollow part, giving an air of insecurity intolerable in architecture.
The Terrace is 50 feet in width, and raised 50 feet above the bed of the river, upon a massive rustic arcade, which has a central water-gate surmounted with a colossal mask of the river Thames. The side arches are flanked by rustic columns, and surmounted by stone couchant lions, between 8 and 9 feet in length. The terrace is skirted with a balustrade ; and here again is a colossal figure of the Thames. The walk was formerly opened to the public on Sundays : the prospect includes the river, with its magnificent bridges and picturesque craft ; the city, with its domes, towers, and spires j the forest of masts ; and the Surrey hills on the south : recalling Cowley’s lines:
” My other fair and most majestick face
(Who can the fair to more advantage place ?)
For ever gazes on itself below,
In the best mirrour that the world can show ;
And here behold, in a long bending row,
How two joynt cities make one glorious bow ;
The midst, the noblest place, possessed by me ;
Best to be seen by all, and all o’ersee.
Which way soe’er I turn my joyful eye,
Here the great Court, there the rich Town I spy.
On either side dwells safety and delight ;
Wealth on the left, and Power on the right.”
In the quadrangle are the Admiralty Offices, where are the Model Room ; the Audit Office, the Legacy Duty Office, and Inland Revenue Office (Stamps, Taxes, and Excise). The mechanical stamping is executed in the hasement : the presses for stamping postage envelopes, hy Edwin Hill, are the perfection of automatic machinery.
In Somerset-place, west, is the office of the Tithe Commission and of the Registrar-General : to the latter are transmitted registers of a million hirths, deaths, and marriages in a year.
Over the entrance to the Stamps and Taxes Office, on the south side, is a watch-face, popularly believed to be the watch of a bricklayer, and placed there as a memorial of his life having been saved in his fall, when the wall was building, by his watch-chain catching in some portion of the scaffold. Such is the traditional story ; but the watch-face was really put up some forty years since as a meridian-mark for a transit instrument in a window of the Boyal Society’s ante-room, in the inner face of the north front.
Mr. Cunningham, in his Handbook of London, relates the following interesting circumstance, which he was told by an old clerk on the establishment of the Audit Office, at Somerset House : — ” When I
first came to this building,” he said, ” I was in the habit of seeing, for many mornings, a thin, spare naval officer, with only one arm, enter the vestibule at a smart step, and make direct for the Admiralty over the rough, round stones of the quadrangle, instead of taking what others generally took, and continue to take, the smooth pavement of the sides. His thin, frail figure shook at every step, and I often wondered why he chose so rough a footway ; but I ceased to wonder when I heard that the thin, frail officer was no other than Lord Nelson, who always took,” continued my informant, ” the nearest way to the place he wanted to go to.”
Telford, the engineer, when he came to London in 1782, got employed on the quadrangle, then erecting hy Sir William Chambers.
Somerset House is almost the only public building which distinguishes the reign of George III. : it cost half a million of money by the extant accounts. The style is Italian, ” refined to a degree scarcely excelled by Palladio himself.” (Elmes.) The exterior is the perfection of masonry. The Ionic, Composite, and Corinthian capitals throughout the building were copied from models executed at Rome, by Chambers, from antique originals : the sculptors employed in the decorations were Carlini, Wilton, Ceracci, Nollekens, Bacon, Banks, and Flaxman.
The west wing, left incomplete by Sir W. Chambers, was resumed in 1852 (for the Inland Revenue Office), Pennethorne architect : this wing, 300 feet in length, will face Wellington-street ; its south end was completed in 1853 : the details are copied from the main building; but the ornamental sculpture is very inferior. The central mass is composed of a pediment, the tympanum of which is filled with the Royal arms, surrounded with foliage, and the national emblems of the rose, thistle, and shamrock in high relief. On the apex of the pediment is a sitting statue of Britannia, 7 feet in height and 4 feet in width at the base ; at the extreme ends are sea-horses. On the lower range of the facade, standing on pedestals, there are colossal statues, 7 feet 6 inches high, emblematic of Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, Manchester, Dublin, and -Belfast; and over the principal entrance a group, the centre of which contains a medallion of Queen Victoria, surrounded by a wreath of laurel, and supported by recumbent female figures of Fame and History. Somerset House covers 12 acres.
SOUTH-SEA HOUSE, THE,
THREADNEEDLE-STREET and Old Broad-street, was the office of the South-Sea Company, originated by Harley, Earl of Oxford, and Sir John Blunt (” much injured Blunt”), in 1711, for the discharge of nearly ten millions of public debt ; for which they were granted, in 1720, the monopoly of the trade to the South Seas and the mines of Spanish America. In April, 1720, the Company’s stock rose to 319Z. per cent. ; and early in June it had risen to 890Z. per cent. The Directors then opened fresh books for a subscription of 4,000,000Z. at 1000Z. per cent. Before the expiration of the month, the subscription was at 200Z. per cent premium, and the stock at nearly 1100Z. Newton, on being asked as to the continuance of the rising of the South-Sea Stock, answered, that ” he could not calculate on the madness of the people.” Prior writes : ” I am tired of politics, and lost in the South Sea. The roaring of the waves and the madness of the people were justly put together.” A journal of Aug. 5 says :
” Our South-Sea equipage increases every day ; the City ladies buy South-Sea jewels, hire South-Sea coaches, and buy South-Sea estates.” With the connivance of the Government, the scheme reached this climax, when the frauds of the Directors transpired : within three months the stock fell to 86Z. per cent, and ” the South Sea-Bubble” burst. (See Exchange Alley, p. 333.)
The South-Sea scheme was lampooned by Swift, and satirized by Pope :
” Statesmen and patriots plied alike the stocks,
Peeress and butler shared alike the box;
And judges jobbed, and bishops bit the town,
And mighty dukes packed cards for half-a-crown :
Britain was sunk in lucre’s sordid charms.”
Among the victims was the poor maniac, “Tom of Ten Thousand” (Eustace Budgell), who lost his whole fortune and his reason. The Duke of Chandos lost 300,0002. Gay, the poet, possessed 20,0002.
South-Sea Stock, which he neglected to sell, and thus lost profit and principal. (See Mackay’s Popular Delusions.)
The Company has long ceased to be a trading body : and in 1853-4 the South-Sea Stock, to the amount of ten millions, was converted or paid off. The original office (formerly the Excise Office) was in Old Broad-street, and was known as ” the Old South-Sea House.” The new building in Threadneedle-street had a Doric portico, and incloses a quadrangle, with a Tuscan colonnade and a fountain : but it had latterly ” few or no traces of goers-in or comers-out — a desolation something like Balclutha’s.” (C. Lamb.) The great hall for sales and the dining-room were hung with portraits of governors and sub-governors, huge charts, &c. Underneath are vaulted cellars, wherein were once deposited dollars and pieces of eight. The premises, sold for 53,0001., are now let in suites of chambers.
SOUTHWARK.
OF the etymology of this ancient suburb, Mr. Ralph Lindsay, F.S.A., has collected ninety -seven authorities, commencing with SuSpepke, during the Saxon Heptarchy : but there is abundant proof that it was an extensive station and cemetery of the Romans during an early period of their dominion in Britain, attested by the fictile vases and pavements (portions of Roman houses) found in Southwark.
In November, 1866, there were found in digging the foundation of a warehouse, between Southwark-square and Winchester-street, in a space of about 100 feet by 40 feet, sixteen pits, each disclosing Roman pottery above piles and puddled clay ; and when this was removed, shells, pebbles, and refuse, such as is always seen along the water’s-edge, although the spot in question is now full 300 yards from the Thames shore. The piles were of oak and beech, with pointed bases, and masses of Kentish rag, which Mr. Syer Cuming thinks these groups of piles once supported as lake dwellings, similar to those formerly in Finsbury and Moorfields; each group with a kitchen-midden; latest food relics, oyster-shells, may indicate the presence of Romans in the neighbourhood; and near the piles was found a pavement of red tessellse, broken fictilia, piece of a Samian bowl, &c, the remains, probably, of a Boman villa. The evidence of the age of the piles is questionable; but these discoveries, made north and south of the Thames, manifest how appropriate and descriptive was the British name of our ancient metropolis, Lyn Din, the lake-town. — Proc. British Archaeological Association.
It was embanked, contemporaneously with the three great Roman roads shown to have terminated in St. George’s Fields, and to have communicated with the City by a trajectus, or ferry, over the Thames to Dowgate, from Stoney-street, Bankside ; and another to the Tower, or Arx Palatina, from Stoney-lane, Tooley-street. To its fortification may be traced the Saxon name, Sudwerche, the south work of London.
It is called Surder-virke in a Danish account of a battle fought here by King Olaf in 1008 j and Suth-weorce in the narrative of Earl Godwin’s attack in 1052, when here was a wooden bridge.
Southwark was burnt by William the Conqueror. In Domesday-book the Bishop of Baieux hath here one monastery (Bermondsey), and one haven (St. Saviour’s dock). On coins of William I. we find Svethewer, or Svetherk; on pennies of William II., Svthevk, Svthewi, and Svthewr; and about 1086, the annual revenue derived from it was only 162″. In 1327, upon the complaint that Southwark was the refuge of felons and thieves, Edward III. sold the vill or town to the citizens of London, — the king still being lord of the manor, and appointing the bailiff.
Edward IV. granted the citizens an annual Fair ; by charter of Edward VI., the full control of Southwark was vested in the citizens ; and by Act of Common Council, 1550, was constituted a ward of the City, by the name of Bridge Without, — the first alderman of which was Sir John Ayliffe, 1551. Southwark has sent members to parliament since temp. Edward I. It was formerly famous for its artists in glass, who, temp. Henry VIII., glazed the windows of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge.
On July 1, 1450, Jack Cade arrived in Southwark; and on Feb. 3, 1554, Sir Thomas Wyat and the ” Kentyshemen” appeared here ; both, probably, in St. George’s Fields.
” At this time was Wyat entered into Kent-street, and so by Sainct George’s Church into Southwarke. Himselfe and part of his companye cam in goode array down Barmesey-strete.” — The Chronicle of Queen Jane, Queen Mary, &c.
In 1642, Southwark was defended by a fort with four half bulwarks, at the Log and Duck, St. George’s Fields ; a large fort with four bulwarks, near the end of Blackman-street; and a redoubt with four flanks, near the Lock Hospital, Kent-street. The ancient town, however, was but a small portion of what we know as the Borough, and was the Guildable Manor, extending from St. Mary Overy’s Dock westward to Hay’s-lane ; Tooley-street, eastward ; south as far as the Town-hall, thence to Counter-street and St. Mary Overy’s Dock. The other portions — viz., the King’s Manor and the Great Liberty Manor, were not part of the Borough until they were purchased by the Corporation of London from King Edward VI. ; the Corporation being the Lords.
Southwark was first called the Borough in the eighteenth century ; it occupies an area nearly equal to that of the City of London itself. The principal street, from the south end of Old London Bridge to St. Margaret’s Hill, was formerly called Long Southwark (Howell’s Londinopolis), afterwards High-street, but is now Wellington-street ; thence St. Margaret’s Sill; and next Sigh-street, Blackman-street, and Newington Causeway. The old High-street had many picturesque gabled houses in the present century, thelast of which were removed for the approach to New London Bridge {see p. 450) .
On the east side remain several old inns (see p. 456) ; one of the taverns on the west side
was the Tumble-down- Lick, in our time painted as a drunken toper, but originally a
caricature of the downfall of Richard Cromwell, ” the new Protector.” Nearly opposite
the east end of St. Saviour’s Church and tower, and the Lady-chapel, was built in
1854 a clock-tower, resembling a market-cross, of Gothic design, with a canopied
niche for a statue of the great Duke of Wellington. Adjoining the Railway Station,
was St. Olave’s School, taken down in 1849 (see p. 726). Here also was St. Thomas’s
Hospital, described at p. 435. Tooley-street (eastward of London Bridge) is corrupted
from St. Olave’s, or St. Olaff’s, street. Here, were the Bridge Souse and Yard, for
the stowage of materials for the repairs of London Bridge; besides corn granaries,
public ovens, and a public brew-house; the site is now Cotton’s Wharf and Hay’s
Wharf. The site of the Borough Compter, a prison, in Mill-lane, was formerly occupied
by the Inn of the Abbot of Battle, its mill, &c.
Southwark possessed two Mints for coinage, described at pages 508 and 509 : the
ancient mint is thought to have stood upon the site of the house of the Prior of Lewes,
in Carter-lane, nearly opposite St. Olave’s Church, in Tooley-street. (See Ceypts,
p. 302.) Here too was ” the Abbot’s Inn of St. Augustine” (deed 1280), afterwards
belonging to the St. Leger family : and thence called Sellinger (i.e. St. Leger’s), now
Chamberlain’s, Wharf. Next was the Bridge-house ; and then, eastward, the Inn of
the Abbot of Battle ; and Battle-bridge, over a water-course pertaining to the Abbey.
The Manor of the Maze, Sir John Burcettor’s, temp. Henry VI., is kept in memory
by Maze-lane and Maze-pond ; and upon the site of ” St. Thomas’s Tents” the Pro-
testant refugees of the Palatinate in Germany ” pitched their tents” in the reign of
Queen Anne. The Maze was built upon in Aubrey’s time, 17th century.
Sorselydown extends from Tooley-street to Dockhead : it was temp. Elizabeth, a
grazing-field (Horseydowne.) Here was rebuilt, upon a handsome scale, St. Olave’s
Grammar-school for 600 boys (see p. 726.)
” This street, Horselydown, (as I was told by a sober counsellor-at-law, and who said he had it from
an old record,) was so called, for that the water, formerly overflowing it, was so effectually drawn off,
that the place became a plain green field, where horses and other cattle used to pasture and lye down,
before the street was built.” — Hatton, 1708.
On May 11, 1854, Mr. G. B. Corner, F.S.A., communicated to the Society of Antiquaries Notices of a
Drawing in the Society’s possession, being a copy of a picture at Hatfield House, representing s.fete on
Horselydown ; and of a plan of Horselydown in 1544, belonging to the governors of St. Olave’s and St.
John’s Grammar-School. The picture shows a view of the Tower of London in the distance. The fore-
ground is occupied by holiday groups ; cooks are preparing a large repast at a kitchen ; and in the mid-
distance are the stocks with a solitary tenant. Underneath a tree are two figures, supposed to represent
Ben Jonson and Shakspeare, who are not unlikely to have been present at this/e/e. To Mr. Corner we
are indebted for many valuable illustrations of the antiquities of Southwark.
The Friory of St. Mary Overie, and Church of St. Saviour, are described at
SOUTHWARK. 741
pp. 199-202 : in the Cotton Collection is a book which formerly belonged to a Prior.
The church was approached from High-street by ” Chain Gate” (the Priory gates).
The restoration of the tower and choir, and the Lady Chapel, by George Gwilt, F.S.A., attest Mr.
Gwilt’s scrupulous accuracy in following the mouldings and detail of the former design, and the care
and attention which he has bestowed on the restoration of those parts which had been entirely lost:
of this the gables are instances. A beautiful drawing of the choir, by the architect’s eldest son, George
Gwilt, hangs in the vestry : for which this young and promising architect was presented with 100 guineas.
Suffolk House, which is prominent in the foreground of Wyngrerde’s view, was
sumptuously built, almost directly over against St. George’s Church, by Charles Brandon
(Duke of Suffolk) early in the reign of Henry VIII. ; but coming into the king’s
hands, it became Southwark Place, and a Mint of Coinage, as described in p. 569.
After the death of King Henry VIII., Southwark Place became neglected. Edward
VI. occasionally visited it, and feasted here the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs. Queen
Mary granted Southwark Place to Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York, as a recom-
pense for York House at Westminster. The Archbishop disliking the situation of
Suffolk Place, sold the buildings, and the estate. The purchasers had most of the
buildings taken down, sold the materials, and a number of small houses were erected
on the site. That part of the building left standing was purchased by Alderman
Broomfield, Lord Mayor, whose son marrying the daughter of Thomas Lant, Esq.,
the estate devolved to the Lant family. Thus, Suffolk -street, Lant-street, the
Mint, and other places in Southwark obtained their names from the owners or occu-
piers of Suffolk-place, and its extensive park. ” Brandonne’s Place, in Southwerke,”
is mentioned in Sir John Howard’s Expenses under the year 1465. One of the last
of the barbers who let blood, and drew teeth, was Middleditch, of Great Suffolk-street,
Southwark, in whose shop-window were displayed heaps of drawn teeth, and at his
door the barber’s pole.
Southwark is a Shakspearean locality. The site of the Globe Theatre is believed
to be included in that of Barclay and Perkins’s Brewery. All vestiges of times as
old as Shakspeare and the playhouses there seem to have vanished, except a house
which some think may be part of the the original Falcon Tavern. This is situated
not far from Pellatt’s Falcon Glass-works. The register of the burials in St. Mary Overie’s,
1607, has ” Edmund Shakspeare, the Poet’s brother, player, in the church.” Gerard
Johnson, the sculptor of Shakspeare’s bust on his tomb, in the church, at Stratford-on-
Avon, lived in St. Thomas Apostle’s parish, not far from the Globe, and he must often
have seen Shakspeare, as Dugdale assures us. In the Vestry-room of St. Saviour’s
church long hung a presumed portrait of Shakspeare, which is now in the collection of
pictures at the Foundling Hospital.
Montague-close, adjoining St. Saviour’s Church, was the cloister of the monastery;
and, after the Dissolution, appertained to the mansion built by Sir Anthony Browne
(Viscount Montague), who obtained a grant of the site of the Priory of St. Mary Overie,
and the messuages, wharfs, shops, &c. ; and in St. Mary Overy’s Dock was situated the
Priory mill.
Bankside, “the Bank” (Thames-bank in Domesday -book), extends from near St.
Saviour’s Church to Blackfriars-bridge. Here were two ” Beare-gardens, places wherein
were kept beares, bulls, and other beasts, to be bayted; as also mastives, in several
kenles, nourished to bayt them” (Stow). Here Edward Alleyn, the founder of Dulwich
College, kept the Bear-garden, temp. Elizabeth and James I.; but “His Majesty’s
Bear-garden” was removed to Hockley -in-the- Hole, Clerkenwell, in 1686-7. Here
also were the Globe, the Rose, the Hope, and the Swan Theatres (see Theatees).
The Stew-houses were put down by sound of trumpet, by Henry VIII. Before the
Restoration the theatres had disappeared, and Bankside became the abode of dyers, for
” the conveniency of the water.” Here are Rose Alley and Globe Alley, from the old
theatres. Pike Garden is named in a parliamentary survey of 1649 as ” late parcel
of the possessions of Charles Stuart, late king of England ;” and in another survey,
made in 1652, occurs ” the late king’s barge-house on the Bankside.” (See also p. 31.)
Winchester Souse, or Palace, founded about 1107, by Bishop Walter Giffard, with
its court, offices, and water-stairs, occupied great part of the ” Bank ;” and had, on the south, gardens, statues, fountains, and a spacious park : hence Park-street. The decaying palace was let as warehouses and wharfs ; and the venerable remains of its great
hall, with a grand circular gable-window, of rare tracery, were laid open by a fire in
August, 1814. The Vinegar-works of Messrs. Pott are upon a part of the park site, and
are held of the see of Winchester. Adjoining was Rochester House, the residence of
the Bishops of Rochester : it stood on the nortb side of the Borough Market-place, part
of which was Rochester-yard ; and Rochester-street still exists. This estate, anciently
called Grimes Croft, was granted by William, second Earl of Warren, to the monks of
Rochester, by placing his knife upon the altar of St. Andrew. Rochester House was
taken down in the year 1604.
Deadman’s-place, west of the Market, is said to be corrupted from Desmond -place,
where dwelt the Earl of Desmond : here are the College founded by Thomas Cure,
saddler to Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth ; almshouses built by Edward Alleyn, 1616,
and other almshouses.
Southwark Tokens. — In the Beaufoy Collection, at Guildhall, are “the Bore’s Head,” 1649 (between
Nos. 25 and 26, High-street) : it was leased to the family of the author of the present volume, and was
sublet in tenements, as ” Boar’s-Head-court,” taken down in 1830. Next also is a “Dogg and Dvcke”
token, 1651 (St. George’s Fields) ; “the Greene Man,” 1651 (which remains in Blackman-street) ; “ye
Bull Head Taveme,” 1667, mentioned by Edward Alleyn, founder of Dulwich College, as one of his
resorts; “Duke of Suffolk’s Head,” 1669; and the “Swan with Two Necks.”
Southwark and the adjacent districts are noted for their manufactures : as rope-
walks and tan-pits at Bermondsey; barge and boat-builders, sawyers and timber-
merchants, at Rotherhithe; also, hat making, brewing, vinegar-yards, and distilleries,
glass-houses, potteries, and soap and candle works.
The High-street is crossed nearly opposite St. Saviour’s church by an ugly railway
bridge, and the line trends thence, anaconda-like, along the south bank of the Thames,
which it crosses by three bridges. In the railway works were demolished some Eliza-
bethan houses in Stoney-street, close to the palaces of the Bishops of Rochester and
Winchester, between the bear-gardens of Bankside and the Clink Prison, chiefly occu-
pied by the licensed keepers of houses of infamous resort, from the twelfth till the six-
teenth century, when that nuisance was at length suppressed by law. Almost parallel
extends SouthwarJc-street, flanked with groups of lofty warehouses, banking-houses,
Hop Exchange, &c. ; eastward, the street is continued into Bermondsey and Rotlier-
hithe, and is a noble improvement. A subway* is formed in the centre of the road,
and is thus described : —
This subway is an arched passage, 12 ft. wide and nearly 7 ft. high, from which are side passages
leading to cellars built beneath the footwalks. In the subway the gas, water-mains, and telegraph-
wires are laid, the side passages conveying the two former necessaries direct into the cellars, and
thence into the houses themselves. The object of this new work is, of course, to do away with the nuisances
caused by the stoppage of thoroughfares to repair a gas or water main. This subway is wide and high
enough to allow of any repairs of this kind being carried on. The drains from the houses are formed of
strong stoneware pipes, passing at a rather steep incline beneath the subway into the main sewer, which
is placed below the floor of the passage in the centre, but not so deep but that it can instantly be opened
for repairs or removal of stoppages. Every part of the subway is ventilated in the most perfect manner.
The Southwark arms are, Arg., a rose displayed. The Bridge-house mark is usually,
but erroneously, used to designate Southwark, because the manors form part of the
Bridge-house estates. That mark is, Azure, an annulet ensigned with a cross patee, or,
interlaced with a saltire conjoined in base, of the second. The City jurisdiction, ac-
cording to the inscription upon the boundary-stone at the western extremity of Beth-
lehem Hospital wall, and other parts of the liberties, extends northward to the Thames,
and eastward to St. Thomas-a- Watering in the Kent-road j comprehending the parishes
of St. George, St. Saviour (exclusive of the Clink Liberty), St. Thomas, St. Olave, and
St. John. Southwark occupies an area of 590 acres ; the City of London 600 acres.
At No. 6, Blackman-street, Sir James South (eldest son of a dispensing chemist in
the High-street) made several valuable astronomical observations. (See Kensington,
p. 488.) At No. 104, High-street, sign of the Golden Key (of which a Token exists),
lived Mr. Elliotson, chemist and druggist, father of John Elliotson, M.D., F.R.S.
The historic Inns of Southwark are described at p. 456.
* Subways, or passages beneath the streets of the metropolis, were advocated in 1828, by Mr.
Williams, of Birchin-lane, in a bulky octavo volume. In 1859, this great improvement was commenced
by the Board of Works under the new street leading from Cranbourn-street to Covent-garden.
SOUTHWARK FAIR,
ANCIENTLY called ” Our Lady Faire in Southwark,” was granted by Edward VI., in 1550, when the sum of 647Z. 2s. Id. was paid by the Corporation of London for
the two manors and divers lands and tenements. The Fair, held on September 7th,
8th, and 9th, was opened by the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs riding to St. Magnus’ Church
after dinner, at two o’clock in the afternoon : the former vested with his collar of SS. f
without his hood ; and all dressed in their scarlet gowns, lined, without their cloaks.
They were attended by the Sword-bearer, wearing his embroidered cap, and carrying
“the pearl sword;” and at the church were met by the aldermen, all of whom, after
evening prayer, rode over the bridge in procession, passed through the Fair, and con-
tinued either to St. George’s Church, Newington Bridge, or to the stones pointing out
the City liberties at St. Thomas-a- Watering. They then returned over the bridge, or
to the Bridge House, where a banquet was provided, when the aldermen took leave of
the Lord Mayor ; and all parties being returned home, the bridge-masters gave a supper
to the Lord Mayor’s officers. Sheriff Hoare thus describes the ceremony in 1741 : On
the 8th of September the Sheriffs waited on the Lord Mayor in procession, ” the City
music going before, to proclaim Southwark Fair, as it is commonly called ; although
the ceremony is no more than our going in our coaches through the Borough, and
turning round by St. George’s Church, back again to the Bridge House ; and this is to
signify the licence to begin the Fair.” ” On this day the Sword-bearer wears a fine
embroidered cap, said to have been worked and presented to the City by a monastery.”
Evelyn and Pepys describe the Fair. Jacob Hall was one of its famous rope-dancers j
and early in the last century, Crawley’s puppet-show of the Creation, ” with the addi-
tion of Noah’s Flood,” Squire and Sir John Spendall; Dancing Dogs, and “the Ball of
Little Dogs,” danced before Queen Anne ; were Southwark Fair sights. Hogarth, in
his plate of the Fair, shows Figg the prize-fighter, and Cadman the rope-flyer. In
1743 the Fair continued fourteen days, and extended to the Mint : an attempt was
then made to put down the shows, but the Fair was not finally suppressed until 1763 i
the booth-keepers used to collect money here for Marshalsea prisoners.
SPITALFIELDS
INCLUDES large portions of Bethnal-green, Shoreditch, Whitechapel, and Mile-end New- town. Part of the site was anciently Lolesworth, a cemetery of Roman London, in breaking up which, “for clay to make brick,” about 1576, were found several urns full of ashes and burnt bones, and copper coins of Claudius, Vespasian, Nero, Antoninus Pius, Trajan, &c. ; also fragments of Roman Pottery and glass. (See Stow, p. 64.)
At the same time were found some stone coffins (British or Saxon), which are preserved in the vaults of Christchurch.
Spitalfields is named from its having been the site and property of the Priory and
Hospital of St. Mary Spittle without Bishopsgate, founded in 1197, by Walter Brune,
citizen of London, and Rosia his wife, for Augustine canons; at the Dissolution in
1534 it had 130 beds for the receipt of the poor of charity. Bagford, in Leland’s Col-
lectanea, mentions the priory, then standing, strongly built of timber, with a turret at
one angle : its ruins were discovered early in the last century north of Spital-square.
In one of the houses built here lived the celebrated Lord Bolingbroke. At the north-
east corner of Spital-square was placed the Pulpit-cross, whence were preached, in the
open air, the Spital Sermons* (see p. 157) : the pulpit was destroyed in the Civil Wars.
In the Map executed in the reign of Elizabeth, the Spittle fields are at the north-east
extremity of London, with only a few houses on the site of the Spital. The map of a
century later shows a square field bounded with houses, with the old Artillery Ground
on the west, which was let by the last prior to the Artillery Company, and is now
the site of Artillery-street. ” A Faire in Spittlefields” is described in a scarce pamphlet in the British Museum, whereat William Lilly announces his astrological wares for sale ; and Nicholas Culpepper, the herbalist, says :
” Bid money, tho’ but little ;
For night comes on, and” we must leave the Spittle.”
Culpepper occupied a house then in the fields, and subsequently a public-house at the corner of Red-Lion-court. Hard by the priory site is Paternoster-row, where, and not in Paternoster -row, St. Paul’s (see p. 668), some antiquaries maintain, Tarlton, the player at the Curtain Theatre, “kept an ordinary in these pleasant fields.”
An Order in Council, 5th March, 1669, states, the inhabitants of the pleasant locality of Spitalflelds petitioned the Council to restrain certain persons from digging earth, and making and burning bricks in these fields, which would not only render them ” very noisome,” but ” prejudice the cloathes which are usually dryed in two large grounds adjoyning, and the rich stuffs of divers colours which are made in the same place, by altering and changing their colours,” &c.
Bethnal-green and Spitalfields were grassy open spaces in the last century; but Spital- square, at the south-east corner, has been the heart of the silk district since ” the poor Protestant strangers, Walloons and French,” driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, settled here, and thus founded the silk-manufacture in England; introducing the weaving of lustrings, alamodes, brocades, satins, paduasoys, ducapes, and black velvets : in 1713 it was stated that silks, gold and silver stuffs, and ribbons, were made here as good as those of French fabric ; and that black silk for hoods and scarfs was made annually worth 300,000£. Tapestries and hangings of the interiors of English houses were manufactured in Spitalfields, even before the settlement of the French refugees in that district. In the Queen’s Bedchamber at Windsor Castle was a bed of state, of rich flowered velvet, made at Spitalfields in the reign of Queen Anne.
About this time, bedchambers were hung with tapestry made in Spitalfields, where an
artist, named Boyston, excelled in tapestries of harvest-fields and other ruralities. After
the discontinuance of the use of tapestry, the skill of the weavers was confined mainly to
the manufacture of silks and velvets. During the reigns of Anne, George I. and II.,
the Spitalfields weavers greatly increased : in 1832, 50,000 persons were entirely
dependent on the silk-manufacture ; and the looms varied from 14,000 to 17,000. Of
these, great numbers are often unemployed ; and the distribution of funds raised for
their relief has attracted to Spitalfields a large number of poor persons, anil thus
pauperized the district. The earnings of weavers in 1854 did not exceed 10s. per
week, working from 14 to 16 hours a day : the weaving is either the richest or the
thinnest and poorest. In 1867, the Rev. Isaac Taylor, Incumbent of St. Matthias’, in
a terrible and touching picture of the condition of his parish, stated :
“The great difficulty which confronts us is the dead level of excessive poverty. A skilful workman,
making costly velvets or rich silks, and labouring from 12 to 16 hours a day, will only earn, on an average,
about 128. a week. There are many who do not earn above 7s. or 8*. ; and the labour required to gain
these miserable wages is great and excessive. To make a single inch of velvet, the shuttle has to be thrown
180 times, 180 times the treadles have to be worked, 60 times the wire has to be inserted, 60 times to
be withdrawn, 60 times the knife has to be guided along the whole breadth of the work, and 60 times
the pressure of the chest has to be exerted on a heavy beam, which is used to compress the work. 600
distinct operations are thus required to make one single inch of velvet, the average payment for making
which is Id. The women, whose strength does not enable them to move so heavy a beam with the
chest, are employed in making velveteens, chenilles, silk and cotton trimmings, and bead trimmings.
They earn about one-third the wages of the men. For fancy braid the payment is one halfpenny a yard.
Even at these starvation wages work is very scarce ; the men are often for weeks together out of employ,
or, as it is termed by a wretched mockery, ’ at play.’ Yet these poor people, with all the burden of their
poverty, are wonderfully uncomplaining and self-reliant.”
The weavers are principally English, and of English origin ; but the manufacturers
or masters are of French extraction ; and the Guillebauds, the Desormeaux, the Chabots,
the Turquands, the Mercerons, and the Chauvets, trace their connexion with the
refugees of 1685. Many translated their names into English, by which the old
families may still be known : thus, the Lemaitres called themselves Masters ; the
Leroys, King; the Tonneliers, Cooper; the Lejeunes, Young; the Leblancs, White;
the Lenoirs, Black ; the Loiseaus, Bird. Many of the weavers still cherish proud
traditions of their ancestry ; though now, perhaps, only clad in rags, they bear the old
historic names of France — names of distinguished generals and statesmen; names
such as Vendome, Ney, Racine, De Foe, La Fontaine, Dupin, Bois, Le Beau, Auvache, Fontaineau, and Montier.
The weavers’ houses, built in narrow streets, have wide latticed windows in the upper stories, which light the work-room. Upon the roofs are bird-traps and other bird-catching contrivances; for the weavers supply London with singing-birds, as linnets, woodlarks, goldfinches, greenfinches, and chaffinches ; and many, in October and March, get their livelihood by systematic bird- catching ; matches of singing or “jerking ” call-birds are determined by the burning of an inch of candle.
Spitalfields weavers have extremely small heads, 6″ target=”_top”>, 6^, and 6f inches being the prevailing widths; and the same fact is observable in Coventry; the medium size of the male head in England is 7 inches. The weavers’ practice of singing at their looms was doubtless brought with them from the Continent, as was the custom of woollen-weavers.
” I would I were a weaver, I could sing all manner of songs.” — Fahtaff, in Henry IV. Part I. act ii.
” He got his cold with sitting up late, and singing catches with clothworkers.” — Cublard, in Ben Jonson’s Silent Woman, act iii. sc. 4.
Spitalfields was a hamlet of Stepney until 1729, when it was made a district parish, and Christchurch was consecrated (see p. 157). Among the parochial charities is ” cat and dog money,” an eccentric bequest to be paid on the death of certain pet cats and dogs : a sickening bequest in such a locality of poverty and starvation.
The Sisters of Charity have been working in these districts since the winter of 1854 ; they visit an extent of several miles of habitations of the poor, tending, washing them, and nursing them, and supplying them with warm food, clothes, and other things necessary to sickness ; and these ministering angels nurse the sick, who cannot be removed to hospitals, in their own houses.
In Crispin-street is the Government School of Design, where are awarded prizes for
designs for fabrics, drawing and painting from nature, crayon-drawing, &c. Spitalfields
Market is mentioned by Hatton, in 1708, as fine for ” flesh, fowl, and roots.” In the
district are Victoria Park (see p. 655), and the City Consumption Hospital.
In Crispin-street, until 1845, the Mathematical Society occupied large apartments, for their philo-
sophical instruments and library of 3000 volumes. The Society, which also cultivated electricity, was
established in 1717, and met at the Monmouth’s Head in Monmouth-street, until 1725, when they
removed to the White Horse Tavern, in Wheeler-street ; from thence, in 1735, to Ben Jonson’s Head, in
Pelham-street ; and next to Crispin-street. The members were chiefly tradesmen and artisans ; among
those of higher rank were Canton, Dollond, Thomas Simpson, and Crossley. The Society lent their
instruments (air-pumps, reflecting telescopes, reflecting microscopes, electrical machines, surveying
instruments, &c), with books for the use of them, on the borrowers giving a note of hand for the value
thereof. The number of members was not to exceed the square of seven, except such as were abroad or
in the country ; but this was increased to the squares of eight and nine. The members met on Saturday
evenings : each present was to employ himself in some mathematical exercise, or forfeit one penny ; and
if he refused to answer a question asked by another in mathematics, he was to forfeit twopence. The
Society long cherished a taste for exact science ; but in 1845, when on the point of dissolution, the few
remaining members made over their books, records, and memorials to the Royal Astronomical Society,
of which these members were elected fellows. — Abridged from Weld’s History of the Soyal Society,
vol. i. pp. 467-8. At Bethnal-green, in 1648, Sir Balthazar Gerbier established ” The Academy for Foreign Languages, and all Noble Sciences and Exercises.”
SPRING GARDEN,
ORIGINALLY an appurtenance to the palace of Whitehall, and situate on the north-western verge of St. James’s Park, is named from its water-spring or fountain, set playing by the spectator treading upon its hidden machinery — an eccentricity of the Elizabethan garden. Spring Garden, by a patent which is extant, in 1630 was made a bowling-green by command of Charles I. ” There was kept in it an
ordinary of six shillings a meal (when the King’s proclamation allows but two elsewhere) ; continual bibbing and drinking wine all day under the trees ; two or three quarrels every week. It was grown scandalous and insufferable : besides, my Lord Digby being reprehended for striking in the King’s garden, he said he took it for a common bowling-place, where all paid money for their coming in.” — (Mr. Garrard to Lord Strafford.)
In 1634 Spring Garden was put down by the King’s command, and ordered to be hereafter no common bowling- place. This led to the opening of ” a New Spring Gar-
den” (Shaver’s Hall), by a gentleman-barber, a servant of the lord chamberlain’s.
The old garden was, however, re-opened ; for 13th June, 1649, says Evelyn, ” I treated divers ladies of my relations in Spring Gardens :” but 10th May, 1654, he records that
Cromwell and his partisans had shut up and seized on Spring Gardens, ” w ch till now
had been y e usual rendezvous for the ladys and gallants at this season.”
Spring Garden was, however, once more re-opened ; for, in A Character of England,
1659, it is described as
” The inclosure not disagreeable, for the solemnness of the grove, the warbling of the birds, and as it
opens into the spacious walks at St. James’s It is usual to find some of the young company
here till midnight; and the thickets of the garden seem to be contrived to all advantages of gallantry,
after they have refreshed with the collation, which is here seldom omitted, at a certain cabaret in the
middle of this paradise, where the forbidden fruits are certain trifling tarts, neat’s tongues, salacious
meats, and bad Rhenish.”
” The New Spring Garden”* at Lambeth (afterwards Vauxhall) was nourishing in
1661-3 j when the ground at Charing Cross was built upon, as ” Inner Spring Garden”
and ” Outer Spring Garden.” Buckingham-court is named from the Duke of Buck-
ingham, one of the rakish frequenters of Spring Garden ; and upon the site of Drum-
mond’s banking-house was ” Locket’s Ordinary, a house of entertainment much
frequented by gentry,” and a relic of the Spring Garden gaiety :
” For Locket’s stands where gardens once did spring.”
Dr. King’s Art of Cookery, 1709.
In Outer Spring Garden lived, 1661, Sir Philip Warwick, author of the Memoirs
which bear his name : ” Warwick-street, adjoining, was, I believe, named after him.”
{Cunningham.) Here, too, lived Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, 1667-1670. Prince
Rupert resided here from 1674 to his death :
” 1682, Nov. 29. — Died of a fever and pleurisy, at his house in the Spring Garden, Rupert, Prince
Palatine of the Rhine, &c., in the 63rd year of his age.”— Historian’s Guide, 3rd edit. 1688.
Sir Edward Hungerford lived here in 1631, after he had parted with his estate for
the site of Hungerford Market.
Milton, when first appointed Latin secretary, lodged at one Thomson’s, at Charing
Cross, opening into the Spring Garden. Here the witty and beautiful dramatist, Mrs.
Centlivre, died, December 1, 1723, at the house of her third husband, Joseph Centlivre,
” Yeoman of the Mouth” (head cook) to Queen Anne. Colley Cibber lived ” near the
Bull-head Tavern, in Old Spring Garden,” from 1711 to 1714. George Canning, in
1800, resided at No. 13, right-hand corner at Cockspur-street.
Spring Garden was formerly noted for its sights : the Incorporated Society of
Artists exhibited here ; here, in 1806, at Wigley’s Rooms, were shown Serres’s Pano-
rama of Boulogne ; foreign cities and sea-pieces j also Maillardet’s automatic figures,
including a harpsichord-player, a rope-dancer, and a singing-bird. Here also was
exhibited Marshall’s Peristrephic Panorama of the Battle of Waterloo, which the
spectators viewed turning round.
Berkeley House, on the right as you enter by the Spring-garden-gate, St. James’s Park, the mansion of the Berkeley family, was taken down in 1862, and upon its site has been erected the chief office of the Metropolitan Board of Works, of poor but pretentious design.
SQUARES
THE garden-spaces or planted Squares are the most recreative features of our metropolis ; in comparison with which the piazze, plazas, and places of continental cities are wayworn and dusty areas, with none of the refreshing beauty of a garden or green field :
“Fountains and trees our wearied pride do please,
Even in the midst of gilded palaces;
And in our towns the prospect gives delight,
Which opens round the country to our sight.”
Sprat, quoted in Wren’s Parentalia.
Yet the majority of the London Squares are the growth of the last century ; and few * Named from the Garden at Charing Cross, as we do not trace any “water-spring” at Vauxhall. Sir John Hawkins says : — ” Sir Samuel Morland having planted the large garden with stately trees, and laid it out in shady walks, it obtained the name of Spring Gardens. There was likewise a ’New Spring Garden’ at Pimlico, the name having been applied to a public garden generally.” of the western Squares existed before 1 770 ; their sites being then mostly sheep-walks,
paddocks, and kitchen-gardens. It was at first attempted to name squares ” quad-
rates :” in 1732 Maitland wrote, ” the stately quadrate denominated King-square, but
vulgarly Soho-square j” and the phrase is retained in Maitland’s edition of 1756.
Bedford Square, which appears in Harwood’s Map, 1799, was formerly ” St.
Giles’s ruins.” The centre house on the east side used to be the official residence of
the Lord Chancellor. Lord Loughborough lived there, and at the time of the Corn-
law Riots it was occupied by Lord Eldon. The mob made an attack on the house at
night, when Lord and Lady Eldon escaped over the back wall into the British Museum
Gardens, and took refuge in the guard-house. Here it was that the Prince of Wales
called upon the Chancellor, and got from him, as he lay in bed with gout, a vacant
Mastership in Chancery for the Prince’s friend, Jekyll. The keystone over the en-
trance doorway of some of the houses displays a very fine made head. (Builder,
No. 651.) Some of the houses were designed by Sir William Chambers.
Belgrave, Chester, and Eaton Squares, named from their ground-landlord, the
Marquis of Westminster, are noticed at p. 37 : the centres of the first and third
were nursery-grounds. At No. 19, Chester-square died, in 1852, Dr. Mantell, F.R.S.,
the eminent geologist.
Berkeley Square, built 1698, is named from Berkeley House, which occupied the
site of Devonshire House. On the south side of this square is Lansdowne House (see
p. 551) : the beehive upon the gate-piers is one of the family crests. At No. 11 died
Horace Walpole in 1797. No. 44, built by Kent, has a noble staircase and saloon.
At No. 45 Lord Clive destroyed himself in 1774. A few link-extinguishers remain
flanking doorways : the trees in the centre are old and picturesque : here was formerly
an equestrian statue of George III.
Bloomsburt, first named Southampton, Square, from Southampton House upon
its north side, was built by the Earl of Southampton, whose daughter, Lady Rachel
Russell, dates her Letters from here. Evelyn, in 1665, notes it as ” a noble square or
piazza, a little towne,” with ” good aire.” The site formerly constituted the manor of
Lomesbury, in which, according to Hughson, the kings of England anciently had their
stables until removed to the Mews, near Charing-cross. Coming into the hands of
the Russell family, by marriage with the Earl of Southampton, it was called first
Southampton-square, and then Bloomsbury-square. Bedford House has been ascribed
to Inigo Jones, but it would seem erroneously. It was built a few years after his
death. Thornhill’s copies of Raffaelle’s Cartoons were in one of the wings of this
house. It was sold by auction in the year 1800, and immediately pulled down. Pope
alludes to this once fashionable quarter of the town : —
” In Palace-yard, at nine, you’ll find me there,
At ten, for certain, sir, in Bloomsbury-square.”
The Grand Duke Cosmo was taken to see Bloomsbury as one of the wonders of
England. Baxter, the Nonconformist divine, lived here when he was persecuted by
Judge Jeffreys. The Earls of Chesterfield had a mansion here. Sir Hans Sloane
lived on the south side ; and here Dr. Franklin came to see Sloane’s Curiosities, ” for
which,” says Franklin, ” he paid me handsomely.” Dr. Radcliffe lived here when he
gave 5201. to the poor Nonjuring clergy. Lord Mansfield’s house was at the north-
east corner, when it was burnt to the walls by the rioters of 1780 j and his books,
papers, and furniture made into a bonfire in the square. Lord and Lady Mansfield
escaped by a back door from the mob. On the north side is a bronze sitting statue of
Charles James Fox, by Westmacott. Ralph describes this side as ” one of the finest
situations in Europe for a palace,” with gardens and view of the country. Dr. Aken-
side, and the elder Mr. Disraeli, resided in this square. The latter compiled the
Curiosities of Literature in No. 6, which house was built in 1766, by Isaac Ware, the
editor of Palladio, originally a chimney-sweep, and whose skin, it is said, was so
engrained with soot, that he bore till his dying day the marks of his early calling.
Bridgewater Square, Barbican, was once the site of the mansion and gardens
of the Earl of Bridgewater. ” The middle is neatly enclosed with palisado pales
and set round with trees, which renders the place very delightful.” — Strype.
Brunswick and Mecklenburgh Squares, with the Foundling Hospital and grounds between them, form an airy group ; northward is Torrington Square : No. 55, residence of Sir Harris Nicolas, the genealogist.
Beyanston and Montague Sqtjaees were built on Ward’s Field, and the site of Apple Village, by David Porter, who was once chimney-sweeper to the village of Marylebone. At St. Mary’s Church, Bryanston-square, June 7, 1838, Miss London (L. E. L.) was privately married, by her brother, to George Maclean, governor of Cape Coast Castle. The Rev. Dr. Dibdin was Rector (see p. 198).
Cavendish Square (between two and three acres), named from the Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holies, the wife of Harley, Earl of Oxford, was planned on the north side of Tyburn-road in 1715, when the locality was infested by footpads, who often robbed and stripped persons in the fields between London and Marylebone. Margaret-street Chapel about seventy years since was an isolated building in Marylebone-fields : a shady ” Lover’s Walk” passed close by the chapel to Manchester-square ; another walk led through the fields to Paddington. The Square was laid out about 1717; the whole of the north side being taken by “the Grand Duke” of Chandos, who proposed to build here a palatial residence, and to purchase all the property between Cavendish-square and his palace of Canons at Edgeware, so that he might ride from town to the country through his own estate. In the British Museum is a view of the mansion, designed by John Price : the wings only were built ; one being the large mansion at the corner of Harley-street, which was occupied by the Princess Amelia, aunt to George III. ; also by the Earl of Hopetoun, and the Hopes of Amsterdam ; next by George Watson Taylor, Esq., who assembled here a very valuable collection of paintings. The other wing of the Duke’s plan is the corresponding mansion at the corner of Chandos-street. The centre is principally occupied by two splendid mansions, with Corinthian columns, designed by James of Greenwich. At this period Harcourt House on the west side was the only other house here : ” it presents, with its high court-walls and porte-cochere, more the appearance of a Parisian mansion than any other house in London.” (S. Angell.) The ground was first sold at 2s. 6d. per foot. In the centre of the Square is an equestrian metal statue of William Duke of Cumberland ; and on the south side a colossal standing bronze statue of Lord George Bentinck, third son of the Duke of Portland. Southward is Holies-street, where, at No. 24, Lord Eyron was born. Mr. Coke, in 1833, told Haydon, the painter, that he remembered a fox killed in Cavendish-square, and that where Berkeley-square now stands was an excellent place for snipes.
Charterhouse Square is described by Hatton (1708) as “a pleasant place of good (and many new) buildings, the whole in the form of a pentagon.” Here was Rutland House, in which the Venetian ambassadors lodged. Baxter the Nonconformist died in this square in 1691. It has been partly taken down. On the north side is the Charterhouse, see pp. 85-88.
Covent Garden, see pp. 292-296.
Devonshiee Squaee, Bishopsgate Without, ” a pretty though very small square inhabited by gentry and other merchants” (Hatton, 1708), was named from the Earls of Devonshire having lived there in a mansion previously possessed by the Earl of Oxford : ” the Queen’s majesty Elizabeth hath lodged there” (Stow.) The mansion was built in the midst of gardens and bowling-alleys, by Jasper Fisher, one of the six Clerks in Chancery, who thereby outrunning his income, the house was mockingly called ” Fisher’s Folly.” It next became a conventicle ; hence ” Fisher’s Folly congregation” (Hudibras.) Here Murray and Dockwra set up the Penny Post in 1680.
Murray also introduced the Club of Commerce (one of a trade) ; and at Devonshire House he opened a Bank of Credit, where money-bills were advanced upon goods deposited.
Euston Square, St. Pancras, is named from the ground-landlords, the Dukes of Grafton and Earls of Euston. Upon the site of the north side of the square, then a nursery-garden, Dr. Wolcot, the political satirist (Peter Pindar), ended his misspent life in blindness.
Finsbury Square was built in 1789, by George Dance, R.A., on the north side of Moorfields. At the north-east corner lived the estimable Dr. Birkbeck, the founder of Mechanics’ Institutions: he died here December 1, 1811, the eighteenth anniversary of the establishment of the first Mechanics’ Institution in London.
Fitzroy Square is named from Charles Fitzroy, second Duke of Grafton : the E. and S. sides were commenced by W. and J. Adam in 1790. On the south side lived Sir W. C. Ross, R.A., the celebrated miniature-painter; and at No. 7, Sir Charles L. Eastlake, President of the Royal Academy.
Golden Square, Westminster, ” not exactly in anybody’s way, to or from anywhere,” was ” so called from the first builder, a very new and pleasant square” (Hatton, 1708) ; contemporary evidence, more reasonable than Pennant’s hearsay anecdote that the name was Gelding, altered from the sign of a neighbouring inn.
One of its earliest inhabitants was Lord Bolingbroke, when secretary -at-war, 1704-8.
In the centre of the square is a statue of George II., formerly at Canons, near Edgeware. Golden-square is a locality of Smollett’s Humphrey Clinker, and of Dickens’s Nicholas Niclcleby.
Haydon Square, Minories, is named from Alderman Haydon, the ground-landlord.
Close by were found, in 1852, sculptured gravestones and urnsj and in 1853 a sarcophagus ; all of Roman work. In Haydon-square lived Sir Isaac Newton when Master of the Mint : the house was taken down about 1852. Here is Allsopp’s Burton Ale Depot, occupying 20,000 square feet ; cargoes of ale are sent here from Burton, by railway (140 miles), in an afternoon ; and the platforms and wagons are lowered by hydraulic cranes into the vast cellars. Here also is the spring of pure water, which formerly supplied the priory of the Holy Trinity upon this spot.
Gordon Square, New-road, has at the south-west angle the Catholic Apostolic Church : cathedral-like Early English exterior, and Decorated interior, with a triforium in the aisle-roof; the ceilings are highly enriched, and some of the windows are filled with stained glass ; the northern doorway and porch, and the southern wheelwindow, equal old examples; and gothic houses, with projections and gables, pointed-headed windows, and traceried balconies, group around the church : architects, Brandon and Ritchie. ” Near the spot occupied by Gordon-square, a circular enclosure was constructed, about the year 1803, for the exhibition of the ” first locomotive,” the production of Trevithick. Its performance was then so satisfactory that a bet was offered by the proprietors to match the engine to run a greater number of miles in twenty-four hours than any horse that could be produced, but there were no takers. — Communicated to The Builder.
Gough Square, between Fetter-lane and Shoe-lane, contains the house, No. 17, wherein Dr. Johnson compiled most of his Dictionary ; his amanuenses working in the garrets.
Grosvenor Square, six acres, is named from Sir Richard Grosvenor, who died in 1732. The houses, some of rubbed bricks with stone finishings, are spacious. The centre landscape-garden was laid out by Kent, and the stone pedestal in the centre once bore an equestrian statue of George I.; the line of fortification during the Civil War ran across the space now the square. It is a place of high fashion ; and Dr. Johnson once desired to be ” Grosvenor of that ilk.” Here lived Lord North and John Wilkes ; and at No. 39 (the Earl of Harrowby’s) his Majesty’s Ministers were to have dined on the evening the Cato-street conspirators had planned to assassinate them, and to bring away the heads of Lords Liverpool and Castlereagh in two bags !
Hanover Square, built about 1718, was named in honour of George I., when it was proposed to change the place of execution from Tyburn elsewhere, lest the procession of malefactors might annoy the inhabitants of the new square. Here lived Field-Marshal Lord Cobham, the owner of princely Stowe. Admiral Lord Rodney died here in 1792. On the east side are the Hanover Square Rooms ; the great room is 90 feet by 35 feet, and will hold 800 persons ; the ceiling was painted by Cipriani. No. 11 is the Zoological Society ; No. 12, the Royal Agricultural Society ; and on the west side is the Oriental Club (see p. 196). In Tenterden-street is the Royal Academy of Music, founded in 1823, incorporated 1830. Upon the south side of Hanover-square is a colossal bronze statue of William Pitt, by Chantrey.
” This square, in connexion with George-street, has always struck me as one of the most scenic architectural displays that London presents i the street expanding towards the square, the unique and
elegant style of the surrounding mansions, the judicious mixture of red brick and stone, Chantrey’s statue, and the successful ecclesiastical work of James (St. George’s), altogether produce the most agreeable effect.” — S. Angell.
St. James’s Square, between Pall Mall and Jermyn-street, is built on part of St. James’s Fields. Godfrey’s print, from a drawing by Hollar, has a stone conduit near the centre of the present square. Mr. Cunningham found several of its tenants rated in T the parish-books of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields in 1676 ; and among them, on the west * side, Madame Churchill, mistress of the Duke of York ; and Madame Davis (Moll Davis), mistress of Charles II. On the north side was Romney House, where, in 1695 and 1697, King William III. visited the Earl of Romney, to witness fireworks in the square; and in the latter year the Dutch Ambassador made before his house a bonfire of 140 pitch-barrels, and wine was ” kept continually running among the common people.” On the north side also was Ormond House, the mansion of the great Duke of Ormond ; the duchess died here in 1684 ; in 1698 the house was let to Count Tallard, the French Ambassador, for 600Z. per annum, then a large rent. In the rear of the present houses is Ormond-yard, now a mews. Appletree-yard, opposite, keeps in memory the apple-orchards of St. James’s Fields. Hatton describes St. James’s-square, in 1708, ” very pleasant, large, and beautiful ; all very fine spacious buildings (except that side towards Pall Mall), mostly inhabited by the prime quality.”
Sutton Nicholls’s print, 1720, shows a fountain in the centre of the square, with a basin, ” filled by contract, in 1727, with water from York-buildings.” (Malcolm.) A pedestal for an equestrian statue of William III. was erected in the centre of the square in 1732 ; but the statue, cast in brass by the younger Bacon, was not set up until 1808, the bequest in 1724 for the cost having been forgotten, until the money was found in the list of unclaimed dividends. The Earl of Radnor had on the north side a mansion, painted by Vanson, over doors and chimney-pieces; the staircase by
Laguerre; and the apartments hung with pictures by Edema, Wyck, Roestraten, Danckers, old Griffier, young Vandervelde, and Sybricht. At No. 7, lived Josiah Wedgwood, and here his stock of classic pottery was dispersed by auction. No. 2 is Lord Falmouth’s : the street-posts are cannon captured by his ancestor, Admiral Boscawen, off Cape Finisterre. No. 4, Earl de Grey (see p. 548) ; the late Earl received here the Royal Institute of British Architects. No. 6, Marquis of Bristol. No. 11, Right Hon. William Windham; Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough in 1814; John Duke of Roxburghe; now the Wyndham Club (see p. 261). No. 12, London Library (see p. 522) ; here lived Lord Amherst when Commander-in-Chief. No. 13, Liclifield House, was built by Athenian Stuart for Lord Anson; from the balcony, on June 20, 1815, the Prince Regent displayed the trophies just received from Waterloo to the delighted populace.
No. 15 (Sir Philip Francis’s) was lent by Lady Francis to Queen Caroline, in 1820, who delighted to show herself at the drawing-room windows, and proceeded from thence
daily, in State, to her trial in the House of Lords ; at this time No. 16 was Lord
Castlereagh’s. No. 17, the Duke of Cleveland’s : here is Lel/s fine whole-length
portrait of the Duchess of Cleveland. No. 19, the Bishop of Winchester. No. 21,
Norfolk House (see p. 554), occupies the site of the mansion of Henry Jermyn, Earl
of St. Albans, who died here in 1683. No. 22 is London House, rebuilt in 1820 for
the Bishops of London. Upon the lower or Pall Mall side lived the father of H. R.
Morland, and grandfather of George Morland, all three painters.
Leicester Square (see pp. 511-515.)
Lincoln’s Inn Fields (see pp. 527-529).
Lowndes Square, Belgravia, was built 1837-1839, and named from the ground-
landlord, W. Selby Lowndes, Esq. The seven houses at the south end, by Lewis
Cubitt, resemble an Italian palace, with embellished chimney -shafts, Tuscan cornice,
and Venetian balconies. The site of the square was once a coppice, which supplied the
Abbot and Convent of Westminster with wood for fuel.
Manchester Square was begun in 1776, by the building of Manchester House
upon the north side (see p. 552). At the north-west corner of the square is Man-
chester-street, where died, in 1814, the impostor, Joanna Southcott, after imposing
upon six medical men with the story of her being enceinte with the young ” Shiloh.”
Myddelton Sqetare, Islington, near the New River Head, is named from its origi-
nator, Sir Hugh Myddelton, the early engineer.
Portman Square, upon the estate of W. H. Portman, Esq., and once the property
of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, was begun about 1764, but not completed until
1784 ; it is 500 feet by 400. The centre is laid out as a shrubbery wilderness ; and
here is a moveable kiosk, constructed for the Turkish Ambassador about 1808, when he
resided at No. 18 ; his Excellency customarily took the air and smoked here, surrounded
by a party of his retinue. At the north-west angle is Montague’ House (see p. 554) :
here were the feather-hangings sung by Cowper ; here Miss Burney was welcomed, and
Dr. Johnson grew tame. No. 15 (Duke of Leeds) : the architectural embellishments
of the staircase and principal rooms of this noble mansion, the rich mahogany doors,
sculptured marble chimney-pieces, and the cornices and ceilings, are all in the fine taste
of Robert Adam, who built the Adelphi-terrace.
Prince’s Square. — ” As St. Giles’s parish contains the largest square (Lincoln’s
Inn Fields), so it also may boast of the smallest, which is situated near it— namely,
Prince’s Square, containing only one house ” (Dobie), between Little Queen-street and
Gate-street ; a stone tablet is inscribed, ” Prince’s-square, 1736.”
Prince’s Square, Ratcliffe Highway. — Here is the Swedish Church, in which is
interred Emanuel Swedenborg; in the vestry-room are a few portraits, including
that of Dr. Serenius, Bishop of Stregnas. About the year 1816 the cranium of
Swedenborg was taken from the coffin by a Swedish captain, but was replaced after
his death.
Queen Square, Bloomsbury, built in the reign of Queen Anne, has a railed garden
for the north side. Jonathan Richardson, the painter, died here in 1745. At the
north-west corner Dr. John Campbell, editor of the Biographia Britannica, gave his
Sunday-evening conversation-parties, at which Dr. Johnson used to meet ” shoals of
Scotchmen.” On the south-west side is the church of St. George-the-Martyr, of which
Dr. Stukeley was rector (see p. 163) ; he lived in the square.
Queen Square, Westminster, contains a statue of Queen Anne, mentioned in
1708. Here was born in 1684, Admiral Vernon, the hero of Portobello ; here lived the
Rev. C. M. Cracherode, who bequeathed his books, medals, and drawings to the British
Museum. In this square died, in 1784, Dr. Thomas Francklin, the erudite Greek
scholar. (Queen Square Chapel, see p. 214). In 1832 died, aged 85, Jeremy
Bentham, in Queen-square-place, where he had resided for nearly half a century.
Red Lion Square, ” a pleasant square of good buildings, between High Holborn
south, and the fields north” (Hatton, 1708), was named from the Red Lion Inn. In 1733,
Lord Chief Justice Raymond lived here j Sharon Turner, the historian, lived many years
at No. 13 ; the benevolent Jonas Hanway, the traveller, lived and died (1786) here, in a
house, the principal rooms of which he had decorated with paintings and emblematical
devices, ” in a style peculiar to himself :” Hanway was honoured with a public funeral.
Sir John Prestwick, in his Bepublica, tells us ” Cromwell’s remains were privately
interred in a small paddock near Holborn, on the spot where the obelisk in Red Lion-
square lately stood.” Prestwick does not give his authority for this statement ; it
may be a blunder, caused by the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw being
carried from Westminster Abbey to the Bed Lion Inn, Holborn, and the next day
dragged on sledges to Tyburn. (Wood’s Athen. Oxon. art. ” Ireton.”) No. 13 is the
Mendicity Society. The author of A Tour through Great Britain notes : ” This
present year, 1737, an Act was passed for beautifying Red Lyon-square, which had
run much to decay, and no doubt but Leicester-fields and Golden-square will soon follow
these good examples.”
Russell Square, north of Bedford-square, occupies part of Southampton Fields (1720), subsequently Long Fields. Its dimensions are 665 feet 6 inches north side,
665 feet 3 inches south ; 672 feet 7 inches west ; and 667 feet 1 inch east — 2665-1
feet square, or about 140 feet less than Lincoln’s Inn Fields. In 1800 Long Fields
lay waste and useless, with nursery grounds northward ; the Toxopholite Society’s
ground north-west; and Bedford House, with its lawn and magnificent lime-trees,
south. At the north-east end of Upper Montague-street was ” the Field of Forty
Footsteps ” (see p. 337). The east side of the square was the house and gardens of
the dissolute Lord Baltimore ; the mansion is now divided.
Bedford House stood across the present Woburn-place. At that time Bolton House, which occupied
the north extremity of the single line of houses forming Southampton-row, was the extreme of London
in that direction, for there was no building in the then clear open ” Long-fields” between Bolton House
and the Southampton Arms Tea-garden at Camden-town, to which there was a footpath crossing the
New-road, leaving the Soot, immortalized by Dickens in Barnaby Budge at some distance on the
right. The view northward from Queen-square was then quite uninterrupted. — Builder.
Here, in No. 21, Sir Samuel Romilly died by his own hand. Lord Chief Justice Tenter-
den died in No. 28. Baltimore House, at the corner of Guilford-street, was long the
residence of Wedderburn, Lord Chancellor Loughborough. Mr. Justice Talfourd was
resident at No. 67. Sir Thomas Lawrence lived for a quarter of a century in No. 65.
In the Gentleman’s Magazine, the Rev. John Mitford notes : “We shall never forget
the Cossacks, mounted on their small white horses, with their long spears grounded,
standing sentinels at the door of this great painter, whilst he was taking the portrait of
their general, Platoff ” (1818). On the north side is the picturesque bronze sitting
statue of Francis, Duke of Bedford, by Westmacott.
Salisbury Square (see Fleet-street, p. 349) ; at the north-west corner was the
printing-office of Richardson, the novelist.
Soho Square, originally King’s-square, was begun in the reign of Charles II. ; the
south side consisting of Monmouth House, built by Wren for the Duke of Monmouth,
and after his death purchased by Lord Bateman ; in 1717 it was an auction room ; part
of the site is now occupied by Bateman’s-buildings.
J. T. Smith, in Nollelcens and Ms Times, describes the pulling down of Monmouth Souse, which he
witnessed : the gate entrance was of massive ironwork, supported by stone piers, surmounted by the
crest of the Duke of Monmouth ; and within the gates was a courtyard for carriages. The hall was
ascended by steps. There were eight rooms on the ground-floor : the principal one was a dining-room
towards the south, the carved and gilt panels of which had contained whole-length pictures. At corners
of the ornamented ceiling, which was of plaster, and over the chimney-piece, the Duke of Monmouth’s
arms were displayed. The staircase was of oak, the steps very low, and the landing-places were tessel-
lated with woods of light and dark colours. Upon ornamented brackets were busts of Seneca, Cara-
calla, Trajan, Adrian, &c. The principal room on the first-floor was lined with blue satin, superbly
decorated with pheasants and other birds in gold. The chimney-piece was richly ornamented with
fruit and foliage : in the centre, within a wreath of oak-leaves, was a circular recess for a bust. The
beads of the panels of the brown window-shutters, which were very lofty, were gilt ; and the piers
between the windows had been filled with looking-glasses. The paved yard was surrounded by a red
brick wall, with heavy stone copings, 25 feet in height.
Shadwell, in his plays (1661), mentions ” Soho-square ;” Maitland, 1739, ” King’s-
square,” then a sort of Court quarter : Evelyn wintered ” at Soho, in the great square,”
in 1690. Bishop Burnet, the historian, lived here before he removed to Clerkenwell; his
Curiosities included the supposed ” original Magna Charta,” with part of the Great Seal
remaining. The shipwrecked remains of Sir Cloudesly Shovel lay in state in 1707. At the
corner of Greek-street, No. 1, was the mansion of Alderman Beckford, now the House of
Charity (see p. 211) ; and thither came the partisan City procession, who prevailed
upon Beckford to serve his second mayoralty, in commemoration of which he feasted the
poor of St. Anne’s, Soho. At the corner of Sutton-street was Carlisle House, where
Mrs. Cornelys gave her concerts, balls, and masquerades ; the present Roman Catholic
chapel in Sutton-street having been Mrs. Cornelys’s banquetting-room (connected with
the house by ” the Chinese bridge “), and the gateway was the entrance for sedan-
chairs. In 1772 the ” furniture, decorations, china, &c,” of Carlisle House were sold
by auction ; but it was re-opened in 1774 ; Mrs. Cornelys returned here in 1776 ; and
it was next an exhibition-place of ” monstrosities,” a ” School of Eloquence,” and an
” Infant School of Genius;” it was closed in 1797, and taken down in 1803 or 1804;
some of its curious paintings were preserved ; and an account of Mrs. Cornelys’s enter-
tainments has been privately printed by Mr. T. Mackinlay. (Dr. Rimbault; Notes and
Queries, No. 28.) No. 20, ” D’Almaine’s,” with a banqueting-room ceiling, said to have
SQUARES. 753
been painted by Angelica Kauflinann, was built for Earl Tilney by Colin Campbell,
architect of Wanstead House. No. 32 was Sir Joseph Banks’s, P.R.S., next the house
of the Liunean Society (see p. 598), exempted from the poor-rate in 1854 on account
of its being used for the purposes of science. {Court of Queen’s Bench Rep. May 30.)
At a house in Soho-square, Richard Payne Knight, the classic antiquary (died 1824),
assembled his collection of ancient bronzes, and Greek coins, value 50,000/., which he
bequeathed to the British Museum. At the corner of Bateinan’s-buildings, left, lived
George Colman the elder ; and right, Samuel Beazley, the dramatist, and architect of
the Lyceum and St. James’s theatres. The Soho Bazaar (north-west corner) is
described at p. 35. In the centre of the square is a pedestrian statue of Charles II.
(See Fountains, p. 356.) In Frith-street, on the south side of the square, died of
cholera, in 1830, William Hazlitt, the eloquent essayist : he was buried in St. Anne’s
churchyard, where is ” a stone raised by one whose heart is with him in his grave.”
Frith-street is named ” from Mr. Fryth, a great (and once rich) builder” (Ratton) ;
Maitland calls it ” Thrift-street.”
Tavistock Square, Euston-road, is named from the ground-landlord, the Duke of
Bedford, and Marquis of Tavistock.
Southward is Tavistock-place. At Xo. 31 lived Mary Ann Clarke, mistress of the Duke of York ; at
No. 32, Francis Douce, the illustrator of Shakspeare, and subsequently, in the same house John Gait
when editor of the Courier; at No. 19, Sir Harris Nicolas, K.C.M.G., the peerage antiquary; and at
No. 10, John Britton, before he removed to No. 17, Burton-street. In Tavistock-place, at No. 37,
Francis Baily, F.R.S., President of the Boyal Astronomical Society, lived from 1825 to 1840. The
house stands isolated in a garden, so as to be free from any material tremor from passing carriages. A
small observatory was constructed in the upper part ; and herein Mr. Baily contrived a pair of scales
that enabled him approximately to vreigh the earth. The house and room are engraved and described
in Things not generally Known, 1856. ” The building in which the earth was weighed, and its bulk
and figure calculated, the standard measure of the British nation perpetuated, and the Pendulum ex-
periments rescued from their chief source of inaccuracy, can never cease to be an object of interest to
astronomers of future generations.” — Sir John Herschel, Bart.
Trafalgar Square, Charing Cross, formed by the removal of the lower end of St. Martin’s-lane, a knot of courts and alleys, the Golden Cross inn,* and low buildings adjoining, was planned by Barry, and is named from the last victory of Nelson, to whom a column is erected on the south side (see p. 283) : the four colossal bronze lions at the base of the pedestal, modelled by Sir E. Landseer, R.A., were added in 1867. The whole square is paved with granite, has two large tanks with fountains (see p. 357), and has on the north side a terrace, which imparts elevation to the National Gallery facade.
At the north-east and north-west angles are granite pedestals ; the former occupied by Chantrey’s bronze equestrian statue of George IV., intended for the top of the marble arch at Buckingham Palace. The granite capstan posts in the area are characteristic ; but the square has been condemned as ” an artificial stone-quarry.” The massive lanterns at the angles were originally designed by Barry for Bude-lights.
In 1831, upon the ground cleared for Trafalgar-square, was exhibited in a pavilion the entire skeleton of a Greenland Whale, taken off the coast of Belgium in 1827 ; total length, 95 feet; breadth, 18 feet; width of tail, 22£ feet; length of head, 22 feet ; height of cranium, 4^ feet ; length of fins, 12 J feet ; weight of animal, 249 tons, or 480,0001b. ; weight of skeleton, 35 tons, or 70,0001b. ; oil extracted, 4000 gallons.
The skeleton was raised upon iron supports, and visitors ascended within the ribs by a flight of steps. It had been previously exhibited at Paris, where Cuvier and others estimated the age of this whale at from 900 to 1000 years. (See Mirror, August 13, 1831.)
Vincent Square, Westminster, a portion of Tothill Fields, is named after Dr. Vincent, then Dean of Westminster. Here is the church of St. Mary the Virgin, consecrated 1837 : style, Early Pointed, with lancet windows ; architect, E. Blore.
Wellclose Square was originally called Marine-square, from its being a favourite residence of naval officers. ” It is very near a geometrical square, whose area is about 2f acres; it is situated between Knockfergus north and Katcliff Highway south.” (Hatton, 1708.) Here is the Danish (now Sailors’) Church. In Well-street, adjoining, was the Royalty Theatre, burnt down April 11, 1826 ; upon the site was built the Brunswick Theatre ; it was performed in only three nights, and fell to the ground Feb. 28, 1828 ; within six months of which was built upon the same site the Sailors’ Home.
Woburn Squaree, St. Pancras, named from a seat of the Duke of Bedford, has in the centre a Pointed church, by L. Vulliamy, built in 1834: the spire is 150 feet high.
STATE COACHES.
THE ” glistering coach” (Shakspeare) dates from the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who, April 2, 1571, at the meeting of Parliament, rode for the first time in a coach, drawn by two palfreys, covered with crimson velvet housings, richly embroidered : but this was the only carriage in the procession ; the Lord Keeper, and the Lords spiritual and temporal, all attending on horseback. In 1588 the Queen went from Somerset Place to St. Paul’s Cross, to return thanks after the destruction of the Spanish Armada, in a coach presented to her by Henry Earl of Arundel, and called by Stow ” a chariot-throne.” In a print in the Crowle Pennant, in the British Museum, representing Queen Henrietta-Maria doing penance beneath the gallows at Tyburn, Charles I. is seated in a large and ornamented coach ; but this print is apocryphal.
The Coach of Queen Anne had its panels painted by Sir James Thornhill ; and a friend of J. T. Smith possessed a portion of a panel. This coach was used by George I. and II., and by George III. when he first opened Parliament, and also at his marriage; after which it was broken up, and the State Carriage now used by the sovereign was built.
The Queen’s State Coach, sometimes called the ” Coronation Coach,” was designed by Sir William Chambers, R.A., who recommended Joseph Wilton, R.A., and the sculptor Pigalle, to conduct the building of the carriage. The model was executed from Chambers’s design by Laurence Anderson Holme, a Dane.
Wilton was appointed state-coach carver to the King:, and erected workshops opposite Marylebone-fields, on the south side of what was afterwards named Queen Anne-street East, now called Foley-place,
and occupying the large house now remaining at the south-east corner of Portland-street, adjoining.
Here Geo. III.’s state-coach was built ; the small model of which Garrick of a carver.” The panels were painted by Cipriani, who received for the same 800?. The chasing was executed by Coit, the coachwork by Butler, the embroidery by Barrett, the gilding (triple throughout) by Rujolas, the varnishing by Ansel, and the harness by Ringstead. The whole cost was as follows :
Coachmaker (including Wheelwright and Smith) . . £1637 15
Carver 2500
Gilder 935 14
Painter 315
Laceman 737 10 7
Chaser 665 4 6
Harnessmaker 385 15
Mercer 202 5 10J
Beltmaker 99 6 6
Milliner 31 3 4
Saddler 10 16 6
Woollendraper 436
Covermaker 396 £7523 4 3
The bill was 8000?. ; but being taxed, was reduced as above, the odd pence arising from the ribbon-weaver’s bill. The superb hammercloth, of scarlet silk Genoa velvet, with gold badges, fringes, ropes, and tassels, was renewed in 1838. The Royal State Coach was first used Nov. 16, 1762. Walpole writes to Sir Horace Mann : “There is come forth a new state-coach, which has cost 8000Z. It is a beautiful object, though crowded with improprieties. Its supports are Tritons, not very well adapted to land carriage ; and formed of palm-trees, which are as little aquatic as Tritons are terrestrial. The crowd to see it, on the opening of the Parliament, was greater than at the coronation, and much more mischief done.”
The Coach was kept in a shed at the King’s Mews, Charing Cross ; upon the taking down of which, it was removed to the Royal Mews, Pimlico, where also is kept the State Harness for the eight horses by which the carriage is drawn when used by the sovereign. The Coach and Harness may be inspected upon application. The new hammercloth in the reign of William IV. cost 500?. (See Mews, Royal, p. 565.)
The Lord Mayor’s State Coach is kept at the City Green-yard, Whitecross-street, Cripplegate, opposite the Debtors’ Door : the coach may be here inspected. It was built in 1757, by a subscription of 60?. from each of the junior aldermen, or such as had not passed the civic chair. Subsequently, each alderman, when sworn into office, contributed 60?. towards keeping the coach in repair ; for which purpose also each Lord Mayor gave 1001. In a few years, the whole expense fell upon the Lord Mayor, and in one year it exceeded 300?. The coach was then transferred to the Corporation, and it has since been kept in repair by the Committee of General Purposes. Twenty years after its construction, the repairs in one year cost 335?. ; and the average of seven years’ repairs in the present century was 115?. The design of the coach is more magnificent than graceful : the carriage consists of a pair of grotesque marine figures, who support the seat of the driver, with a large scallop-shell as a foot-board ; at the hind-standard are two children bearing the City arms, beneath which is a large pelican ; the perch is double, and terminates in dolphins’ heads; and the four wheels are richly carved and gilt, and resemble those of ancient triumphal chariots. The body is not hung upon springs, but upon four thick red leather straps, fastened with large gilt-brass buckles of spirited design, each bearing the City arms. The roof was ori*ginally ornamented with eight gilt vases ; in the centre is a leafy crown, bearing the City arms, and from which small gilt flowers trail over the remainder of the roof, painted red : originally, a group of four boys supporting baskets of fruits and flowers occupied the centre. The upper intervals of the body, save at the back, are filled with plate-glass ; and the several lower panels are painted as follow :
Front Panel.— Faith supporting a decrepit figure beside a flaming altar ; Hope pointing to St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Back.— Charity ; a wrecked sailor, with a ship in the offing, and two females casting money and fruits into his lap.
Upper Back. — The City, attended by Neptune ; Commerce introducing the Arab with his horse, and other traders with the camel, elephant, &c.
Might Boor. — Fame, with her wreath, presenting a Lord Mayor to the City, who bears the sword and sceptre, the mace, &c., at her feet. In the very small panel beneath are fruit and flowers. Side Panel*. — Beauty with her mirror ; female with bridled horse, &c.
Left Door. — The City seated, and Britannia pointing with her spear to a shield inscribed with ” Henri Fitz-Alwin, 1189″ (the first Mayor). In the very small panels beneath are the scales of justice and sword of mercy, grouped. Side Panels, — Justice with her scales and sword; Prudence, &c.
The original heraldic paintings were executed by Catton. one of the foundation members of the Royal Academy. In shields at the lower angles of each door, and of the back and front panels, are emblazoned the arms of the Lord Mayor for the time being.
The framework is richly carved and gilt : over each door is a scallop-shell ,- and at the lower angles of the body are dwarf figures emblematic of the four quarters of the globe.
The smaller enrichments about the panels, as shells, fruits, and flowers, are admirably carved and grouped : over the upper back panel is an exquisite bit — a serpent and dove.
The perch and wheels are painted red, picked out with gold ; and massive gilt bosses cover the wheel-boxes : the wheels were renewed in 1828. The coach is lined with crimson corded silk and lace; and in the centre is a seat for the mace and sword bearers. The hammercloth is crimson cloth, but the original one was of gold lace.
This coach was repaired, new-lined, and regilt in 1812, at an expense of 600?., when also a new seat-cloth was furnished for 90?. ; and in 1821 the re-lining cost 206?. In 812, Messrs. Houlditch agreed to keep the coach in fair wear-and-tear for ten years, at 48?. per annum. The total weight of the coach is 3 tons 16 cwt. : it is drawn by six horses, for whom a superb state harness was made in 1833, that for each horse weighing 1061b.
It is not positively known by whom this coach was carved, nor by whom the panels were painted. Cipriani is stated by some to be the painter ; but others assert that after the present Royal State Coach was built in 1762, the old Royal State Coach was purchased by the City of London, and the panels re-painted by Dance : such is the statement of Smith, in Nollekens and his Times ; but in the Report of the Municipal Corporation Commissioners, the City Coach is stated to have been built in 1757. The Lord Mayor rode in state upon horseback until 1712, when a state carriage, drawn by four horses, was first used. In 1741 the horses were increased to six. This State Coach is represented in Hogarth’s print of the Industrious Apprentice, date 1747 ; it is somewhat plain, but has ornamental vases upon the roof. In 1762, Lord Mayor Beckford purchased the very fine set of Flanders mares of M. Boreel, Ambassador of the States General to the Court of St. James’s ; and they were used in Beckford’s Mayoralties. Every time the City State Coach is used, it costs the Lord Mayor 20?. : Alderman Samuel Wilson used the coach twelve times in his Mayoralty, 1839-40. (See Lord Mayor’s State, pp. 536-^538.)
“Our Lord Mayor and his golden coach, and his gold-covered footmen and coachman, and his golden chain, and his chaplain, and his great sword of state, please the people, and particularly the women and girls, and when they are pleased the men and boys are pleased ; and many a young fellow has been more industrious and attentive from his hope of one day riding in that golden coach.” — Cobbett.
The Speaker’s State Coach is traditionally said to have been Oliver Cromwell’s ; but it is more probably of the time of William III. It is elaborately carved and heavily gilt. Figures of naval and military prowess, Plenty, &c., support the body ; the box is held by two larger figures of Plenty ; the hammercloth is of crimson velvet, trimmed with silver fringe ; and the footboard is borne by two lions, and surmounted with a large grotesque mask. The hind-standard is richly carved with figures and devices of antique and modern design. The framework of the panels is finely carved ; and the roof has a pierced parapet or gallery. The upper, side, and front panels are filled with splendid Vauxhall plates of glass. The lower panels are painted with emblematic subjects : the door-panel has a seated figure of Britannia, to whom female figures are bringing fruits, the horn of plenty, &c. The opposite door has also a seated figure, and another presenting the Bill of Rights, with Liberty, Fame, and Justice.
Beneath each door and panel are sculptured maces, surmounted with a cap, emblematic of the Speaker’s authority. In the four side panels are emblematic figures of Literature, Architecture, Science, and Plenty. The back panel has a better composition of Britannia, wearing a mural crown ; St. Paul’s Cathedral, shipping, &c, in the distance. The front panel also hears several allegorical figures. In the lower part of the pictures in the principal panels are emblazoned the Speaker’s arms, and in the side-panel pictures his crest. The coach is lined and trimmed with dark crimson velvet – it has two seats, and a centre one : on the latter sit the Speaker’s Mace-hearer and Sword-bearer j and his Chaplain and Train-bearer sit facing the Speaker. This coach is used by the Speaker on opening Parliament, presenting addresses to the sovereign, attending levees, &c, when it is drawn by a pair of horses in state harness. The coach is kept at the Speaker’s stables, Millbank.
STATUES.
The following are the principal out-door Statues in the Metropolis:
(List removed)
STOCK EXCHANGE, fully described at pp. 331-333.
STRAND (THE)
EXTENDS from Charing Cross to Temple Bar (1369 yards, or £ of a mile 49 yards), now built on was gained by raising the ground” (Hatton), which is in some places 20 feet deep. In early ages this was the great thoroughfare between the Court and City, and the Inns of Court and Westminster. The site of St. Clement’s Danes is recognised in tradition as “the Danes’ churchyard,” the burial-place of the son of Canute the Great, Harold Harefoot. Here, close by the Thames, and outside the City walls, dwelt together as fellow-countrymen the Danish merchants and mariners ; and
their church, like that at Aarhuus in Jutland, and Trondjeun in Norway, was dedicated to St. Clement, the seaman’s patron-saint. (J. J. A. Worsaae, For. F.S.A.) Another early building was the Hermitage of St. Catherine at Charing, and adjoining or opposite, the Hospital of St. Mary Rounceval (temp. Henry III.) ; also, the palace of the Savoy, and the first church of St. Mary, were built before the 14th century. A petition to Edward II. (1315) describes the footway interrupted by thickets and bushes; and in 1383 tolls were granted for paving the Strand from the Savoy to Temple Bar.
The south side was occupied by the mansions of the nobility and prelates, with gardens, terraces, and water-stairs down to the Thames ; but the spaces between the mansions showed the river : whilst on the north side were the gardens of the Convent of Westminster, bounded by lanes and open ground ; the village of St. Giles, and the church of St. Martin in the fields; and Charing Cross, without a house near it. One of Canaletto’s pictures shows Charing Cross, Northumberland House, and the Strand, with the signs in front of the houses. Van der Wyngrerde’s View, 1543, shows
straggling lines of houses from the bar (now Temple Bar) to the Savoy, and beyond it on the south side ; but the north is open to Convent Garden ; and in the roadway are St. Clement’s and St. Mary’s churches, and the Maypole, near upon the site of the Strand Cross, where “the justices itinerants sate without London” (Stow). Of the Thames-bank palaces are shown Somerset-place, the Savoy, and Durham House. At this time the Strand was crossed by three water-courses running from the north to the Thames, over which were bridges ; the sites of two are denoted by Ivy-bridge-lane
and Strand-bridge-lane ; and the remains of a third bridge were unearthed in 1802, a
The Ivy-bridge stream formed the boundary
er, and the City of Westminster.
<—• “”” (By a Correspondent.) ’ tend Mouse is described at page 554. Next Mien, some twenty years ago, the . London 1 ” * he ° fficial residence of the Secretary of iinty Council effected their great demolition^’ “I* VT ^iat fi^” oiy ,„ t ,, ,,. “”enants’ Lodgings:” here Nelson lodged. for the Kingsway and Aldwych rnc ., aw .. he ^ with his mother and step- ?rovements they left a few buildings stand-.hen he went to “a private school in St. the loosestrife and coltsfoot, in a semi-nster School, under Camden, then junior nous condition. There was Matcham’s Hotel,r. Benjamin Franklin, in 1771. At No. 27 proscenium of a theatre (the Olympic, I authors of the Rejected Addresses. At e) a section of New Inn, and so on. All Mathews, the comedian : his father was a dually disappeared, with a solitary excep- Dr. Adam Clarke, Rowland Hill, and other l. Ihis was the stark, untidy-looking struc- L’I h f C, f0r ?’ earS haS S £° T 0n ^Strand Soteh described at pp. 442-3 ement almost opposite St. Mary’s Church. upper floors have been hidden behind adver”- ment hoardings. The ground-floor shop has n used as a fountain-pen depot. It stands lbout 100 yards cast of the site of Charing-cross, the lay on land which is to be used in the set- ’ d uction .* ^ y S. dw ^- 1 i , ^ arry ’ AlE – A -’ “”R 8canty • nr> n t tv.„ -R.^i r> -ii- ^ u ” l “’« »«k . Pennant, in the British Museum ; a second drawing tne tfusli Building western exten- of the Society of Antiquaries. The height to the top I his week it is coming down, and with it surmounted is about 70 feet; the materials Portland vanish the very last of a ” auarter ” which sculptor, Thomas Earp. In the upper story are eight A nn a *t *>4o «* T~ j u n- “, u >g her as queen, with royal insignia, and the other n a great aiea of .London, breathing the the feet of the statues are eight figures of kneeling ory of the seventeenth and earlv eighteenth B axe copied from those existing on the crosses of consist of three varieties. The first displays three ms of England by King Henry II. in 1154, and which, n Victoria. The second is that of Ponthieu, which oly consists of three bendlets within a bordure. The , arranged quarterly ; and the representation of the stile are a castle, triple towered; and those of Leons accords with the arrangement at Northampton, tracery in the lowest stage of the monument is comjnting alternately the castle of Castile and the lion r have a similar design. The carving generally of the asrees with the best remains of English thirteenth-effectively engraved in the Illustrated London Newt,
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STOCK EXCHANGE, fullj
STRAND
, HE most exc< opportunities e^ is provided by during the lasl policy of this Houe all Summer merchandise ra to the Autumn. In many down to figures which an REMARKABLE AVAILABLE DICKINS & JONES Sale las which time greater bargains t ber that even at Sale time it JONES in absolute comfort j always delightfully cool. T ground floor, and D1CK1JNS* knowledged to be one of the J COME EARL1 Early buying is essential to obta personal inspection and comparison only in this way can the excef. WHY NOT PAY AN E IARGAINSin EXTENDS from Charing Cross to Tempi and was ” probably so called as being i now built on was gained by raising the g 20 feet deep. In early ages this was the £ City, and the Inns of Court and Westmins recognised in tradition as “the Danes’ ch Canute the Great, Harold Harefoot. Here, walls, dwelt together as fellow-countrymen their church, like that at Aarhuus in Jutland to St. Clement, the seaman’s patron-saint early building was the Hermitage of St. Cat site, the Hospital of St. Mary Rounceval (t Savoy, and the first church of St. Mary, we tion to Edward II. (1315) describes the foe and in 1383 tolls were granted for paving thl The south side was occupied by the mansions of the nobility and prelates, with garder terraces, and water-stairs down to the Thames ; but the spaces between the mansions showed the river : whilst on the north side were the gardens of the Convent of West- minster, bounded by lanes and open ground ; the village of St. Giles, and the church of St. Martin in the fields; and Charing Cross, without a house near it. One of Canaletto’s pictures shows Charing Cross, Northumberland House, and the Strand, with the signs in front of the houses. Van der Wyngrerde’s View, 1543, shows straggling lines of houses from the bar (now Temple Bar) to the Savoy, and beyond it on the south side ; but the north is open to Convent Garden ; and in the roadway are St. Clement’s and St. Mary’s churches, and the Maypole, near upon the site of the Strand Cross, where ” the justices itinerants sate without London ” (Stow). Of the Thames-bank palaces are shown Somerset-place, the Savoy, and Durham House. At this time the Strand was crossed by three water-courses running from the north to the Thames, over which were bridges ; the sites of two are denoted by Ivy-bridge-lane and Strand-bridge-lane ; and the remains of a third bridge were unearthed in 1802, a ILLUSTRATED BELOW 103 K. An Inexpensive and practical WOOL CARDIGAN in Lace stitch anJ with a broa 1 rib Colours: White, Klack. Saxe, Grey, Tabac, Natural, ill STRAND. 761 little eastward of St. Clement’s church. The Ivy-bridge stream formed the boundary between the Liberty and Duchy of Lancaster, and the City of Westminster. Steand : South Side. — Northumberland House is described at page 554. Next door, upon the site of No. 1, Strand, was the official residence of the Secretary of State, where Sir Harry Vane the elder lived, in the reign of Charles I. Northumber- land-court was once known as ” Lieutenants’ Lodgings :” here Nelson lodged. Northumberland-street, formerly Hartshorne-lane : here, with his mother and step- father, a bricklayer, lived Ben Jonson when he went to ” a private school in St. Martin’s Church ;” and next to Westminster School, under Camden, then junior master. Craven-street : at No. 7 lived Dr. Benjamin Franklin, in 1771. At No. 27 died, in 1839, James Smith, one of the authors of the Rejected Addresses. At No. 18, Strand, was born, 1776, Charles Mathews, the comedian : his father was a bookseller ; and his shop was the resort of Dr. Adam Clarke, Rowland Hill, and other Dissenting ministers. Charing Cross Railway Terminus and Hotel, described at pp. 442-3. The early history of this spot is glanced at in pp. 559-560 : it was part of the Hungerford estate : it was long a site of sorry speculations and costly failure. The beautiful Gothic cross in the court-yard is about 100 yards east of the site of Charing-cross, the Eleanor memorial, of which the Dew cross is a reproduction, by Edward M. Barry, A.B.A., from scanty authorities, namely, a rough drawing in the Crowle Pennant, in the British Museum ; a second drawing in the Bodleian Library ; and a third in the library of the Society of Antiquaries. The height to the top of the gilt copper cross by which the memorial is surmounted is about 70 feet; the materials Portland stone, red Mansfield stone, and Aberdeen granite; sculptor, Thomas Earp. In the upper story are eight crowned statues of Queen Eleanor, four representing her as queen, with royal insignia, and the other four with the attributes of a Christian woman. At the feet of the statues are eight figures of kneeling angels in prayer. The shields in the lower stage are copied from those existing on the crosses of Waltham and Northampton, and on the tomb, and consist of three varieties. The first displays three lions passant gardant, first assumed as the Boyal arms of England by King Henry II. in 1154, and which still forms part of the Boyal arms as borne by Queen Victoria. The second is that of Ponthieu, which Queen Eleanor bore in right of her mother, and simply consists of three bendlets within a bordure. The third shield represents the arms of Castile and Leon, arranged quarterly; and the representation of the earliest known quartering of arms. The arms of Castile are a castle, triple towered ; and those of Leon represents a lion rampant. The order of the shields accords with the arrangement at Northampton, Waltham, and Westminster. The diaper above the tracery in the lowest stage of the monument is com- posed of octagonal panels, richly undercut, representing alternately the castle of Castile and the lion rampant of Leon: the pillow and couch of the effigy have a similar design. The carving generally of the crockets, capitals, canopies, diapers, gargoyles, &c., agrees with the best remains of English thirteenth- century art. The cost has not exceeded 1800J. It is effectively engraved in the Illustrated London News, Dec. 9, 1865. No. 31, Strand, occupies part of the site of York House, originally the inn of the Bishop of Norwich ; and being obtained in exchange for Suffolk House, Southwark, by Heath, Archbishop of York, temp. Queen Mary, the name was changed to York House. It was let to the Lord Keepers of the Great Seal : here lived Sir Nicholas Bacon ; and here was born his son, Lord Chancellor Bacon, 22nd January, 1560-1. At York House he kept his 60th birthday. Here the Great Seal was taken from him : when importuned by the Duke of Lennox to part with the mansion. Bacon replied, ” For this you will pardon me : York House is the House where my father died, and where I first breathed ; and there will I yield my last breath, if so please God and the king.” He did not, however, return to York House after his release from the Tower, being forbidden to come within the verge of the court. The house was next lent to Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who, in 1624, obtained the estate by grant from James I. The mansion was then taken down, and a temporary house built for State receptions, and sumptuously fitted with ” huge panes of glass ” (mirrors), of the manufacture of which in England Buckingham was an early patron. Near the middle of a long embattled wall, fronting the Thames, he caused to be erected, in 1626, a rustic Water-gate. After the Duke’s death, in 1628, York House was leased to the Earl of Northumberland. Here was a fine collection of pictures, among which is supposed to have been the lost portrait of Prince Charles, by Velasquez. Here also was the collection of sculptures which belonged to Rubens ; and in the garden was John de Bologna’s Cain and Abel. The ” superstitious pictures ” were sold by order of Parliament in 1645 ; and the house was given by Cromwell to General Fairfax, by the marriage of whose daughter and heiress with George, second Duke of Buckingham, it was reconveyed to the Villiers family. /The Duke resided here subsequent to the Restoration : but in 1672 762 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON. sold the estate for 30,000?., when the mansion was pulled down, and upon the grounds and gardens were erected houses named from the last possessor of the mansion : George-street (now York-buildings), Villiers-street, Duke-street, Of-aMey, Bucking- ham-street. The whole estate was also called York-buildings. The York Buildings Waterworks Company, for supplying the West-end of London with water, was one of the bubbles of 1720. For this purpose, however, a veritable steam-engine was constructed, which is thus described in the Foreigner’s Guide to London, 1720 : ” Here you see a high wooden tower and a water-engine of a new invention, that draws out of the Thames above three tons of water in one minute, by means of the steam arising from water boiling In a great copper, a continual fire being kept to that purpose ; the steam being compressed and condensed, moves, by its evaporation, and strikes a counterpoise, which counterpoise striking another, at last moves a great beam, which, by its motion of going up and down, draws the water from the river, which mounts “through great iron pipes to the height of the tower, discharging itself there into a deep leaden cistern ; and thence falling through other large iron pipes, fills them that are laid along the streets, and so con- tinuing to run through wooden pipes as far as Mar-bone fields, falls there into a large pond or reservoir, from whence the new buildings near Hanover-square and many thousand houses, are supplied with water. This machine is certainly a great curiosity ; and though it be not so large as that of Marly in France, yet, considering its smallness in comparison with that, and the little charge it was built and is kept with, and the quantity of water it draws, its use and benefit is much beyond that.” The Company ceased to work this “fire-engine” in 1731; but it was shown for several years as a curiosity. In All Alive and Merry, or the London Daily Post, April 18, 1741, it is stated that the charge of working the machine, ” and some other reasons concurring, made its proprietors, the York Buildings Company, lay aside the design ; and no doubt but the inhabitants in this neighbourhood are very glad of it ; for its working, which was by sea-coal, was attended with so much smoke, that it not only must pollute the air thereabouts, but spoil the furniture.” The failure is the subject of an amusing jeu d’esprit, entitled ” The York Buildings Dragons,” reprinted in Wright’s England under the Souse of Hanover, vol. i. Appendix. Many of the wooden water-pipes have been taken up in excavations in Brook-street, Grosvenor- square, and in other places along the line. In Buckingham-street, in 1818, were “the Sea-water Baths,” which were supplied by a vessel with water from below Southend. See James’s View on the Thames, in the Hampton Court Picture Gallery. Evelyn notes : ” 17th Nov. 16S3. — I tooke a house in Villiers-streete, York-buildings, for the winter, having many important concerns to dispatch, and for the education of my daughters.” — Diary. Buckingham-street : at the last house on the west side (since rebuilt) lived Samuel Pepys from 1684 to 1700 ; and No. 15, on the east side opposite, was hired for Peter the Great in 1698 : the house has some noble rooms facing the river : here the Institution of Civil Engineers once met. At No. 14, in the top chambers, lived William Etty, B.A., the painter, from 1826 to 1849. At the south end of Buckingham-street remains the Water-gate built for York House, which stood a short distance westward. The Gate is of Portland-stone : on the northern or street side are three arches, flanked with pilasters, supporting an entablature and four balls; above the keystones of the arches are shields, those at the sides sculptured with anchors, and that in the centre with the arms of Villiers impaling those of the family of Manners. Upon the frieze is the Villiers motto : pidei coticdxa crux (the Cross is the Touchstone of Faith). The southern or river front has a large archway, opening upon steps to the water; on each side is an aperture, divided by a small column, and partly closed by balustrades. Four rusticated columns support an entablature, ornamented with scallops, and crowned with an arched pediment, and two couchant lions holding shields, on which are sculptured anchors. In the pediment, within a scroll, are the arms of Villiers, viz, on a cross, five escallops, encircled by a garter, and sur- mounted by a ducal coronet; at the sides are pendent festoons. This Gate has been ascribed to Inigo Jones ; but in the library of the Soane Museum, in an ” Account Book of Workes done by Nicholas Stone, sen. Master-mason to King James I. and King Charles,” the ninth article in the list is, ” The Water-gate at Yorke House hee deesined and built, and ye right hand Lion hee did fronting ye Thames. Mr. Kearne, a Jarman, his brother by marrying bis sister, did ye Shce Lion.” The Gate is approached by an inclosed terrace-walk, planted with lime-trees. The Adelphi, east of York-buildings, is described at page 1. John-street occupies the site of Durham House, which extended from the river to the Strand. It was built by Thomas Hatfield, Bishop of Durham, 1345-1381, and continued to be inhabited by the see until Bishop Tunstall exchanged the house for Coldharborough, in Thames-street. Durham Place was used as a mint by the Seymours. Edward VI. granted the place to his sister Elizabeth. It next became the residence of Dudley, Earl of Northumber- land; and here was celebrated his son’s marriage with Lady Jane Grey, who, on assuming the crown, was lodged in Durham Place, and thence escorted to the Tower. The estate was restored by Queen Mary to Bishop Tunstall ; but Elizabeth, on her STRAND. 763 accession, claimed Durham Place as one of the royal palaces, and granted it to Sir Walter Raleigh, who possessed it for twenty years, but surrendered it in 1603 to the then Bishop of Durham. Aubrey well remembered Raleigh’s ” study, which was on a little turret that looked into and over the Thames, and had the prospect, which is as pleasant, perhaps, as any in the world.” The stables fronting the Strand were next taken down, and upon the ground was built the New Exchange (see pp. 330-331), demolished in 1737 : the site is now occupied by the houses Nos. 54 to 64 inclusive, the banking-house of Coutts and Co. being the centre : the name survives in Durham- street. At Coutts’s (No. 59), formerly in St. Martin’s-lane, the sovereign and the royal family have banked (kept cash), commencing with Queen Anne : the series of accounts is preserved entire. Beaufort-buildings occupy the site of a mansion named from its successive owners, Carlisle House (Bishops of Carlisle) ; Bedford and Russell House (Earls of Bedford) ; Worcester House, from its next occupant, the Marquis of Worcester, who wrote the Century of Inventions ; and from the Marquis’s eldest son, created Duke of Beaufort, Beaufort House. Lord Clarendon lived here while his house was building at the top of St. James’s-street ; and here, in 1660, was married Anne Hyde, the Chancellor’s daughter, to the Duke of York, according to the Protestant rites. The mansion was taken down, and a smaller house built ; which being burnt down, with some others, in 1695, upon the ground were erected the present Beaufort-buildings. In a house on the site was born Aaron Hill, the dramatist, 1685. At the east corner, upon the site of No. 96, Strand, lived Charles Lillie, who sold snuffs, perfumes, &c. ; and took in letters for the Tatler, Spectator, &c, directed to him at the desire of Steele. Mr.Rimmel has published a clever book on Perfumery, in which he mentions, besides Lillie, “one Perry, residing also in the Strand, at the corner of Burleigh-street. He was, however, reduced to ’ blow his own trumpet ;’ and in a paper called the Weekly Packet, bearing the date of 28th December, 1718, he vaunts, besides his perfumes, an oil drawn from mustard-seed, which, at the moderate price of 6d. per ounce, is warranted to cure all diseases under the sun.” Nos. 101 and 102, Strand, Bies’s Divan, a large decorated room for cigars, chess, and coffee, occupies the site of the Fountain Tavern, noted for its political club, and described by Strype ; of a drawing academy, at which Conway and Wheatley were pupils; and of the lecture-room of John Thelwall, the political elocutionist. At No. 101, lived Rudolph Ackermann, the printseller, who introduced lithography and ” the Annuals ” from Germany : here he illuminated his gallery with Cannel coal, when gas-lighting was a novelty. Adam-street presents a handsome specimen of the embellished street-architecture introduced by the Brothers Adam. Salisbury-street and Cecil-street are built upon the site of Salisbury House, erected in 1602 by Sir Robert Cecil, Lord High Treasurer to James L, and created Earl of Salis- bury in 1605. His successor divided the mansion into Great Salisbury House and Little Salisbury House : part of the latter was taken down, and upon the site was erected Salisbury-street, rebuilt as we now see it by Paine the architect ; another portion was converted into the Middle Exchange, with shops and stalls, and a flight of steps to the river ; the latter was taken down in 1696, with Great Salisbury House, and upon their site was erected Cecil-street. In Little Salisbury House lived the third Earl of Devonshire, the pupil and patron of Hobbes, who, when standing at the gate a few days after Restoration-day, was kindly recognised by Charles II. as he was passing in his coach through the Strand. In Cecil-street, and at the Globe in Salis- bury-street, lived Partridge, cobbler, astrologer, and almanack-maker, whom Swift humorously killed in 1708, though he actually lived till 1715 ; but Partridge’s Alma- nack (Merlinus Liberatus) continued to be published ; and in 1723 advertised ” Dr. Partridge’s night-drops, night-pills, &c., sold as before, by his widow, at the Blue Ball in Salisbury-street.” Opposite Southampton-street lived the Vaillants, foreign book- sellers, from 1686 until late in the last century. Fountain-court is named from the above tavern ; at No. 3 in this court died, August 27, 1827, Blake, the epic painter, whose love of religion supported him through a life of uniform poverty, and cheered his death-bed. Savoy-steps and Savoy-street, see Savoy, pp. 142-144, 722. 764 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON. At No. 132, Strand (site of Wellington-street) was established in 1740 the first circulating library in London, by Wright, who had for his rivals Samuel Batlioe and John Bell. Upon the site of No. 141 lived Jacob Tonson, the bookseller, ” at Shak- speare’s head, over against Catherine-street, in the Strand.” The house was successively occupied by the publishers, Andrew Millar, Alderman Thomas Cadell, and Cadell and Davies : Millar, being a Scotchman, adopted the sign of Buchanan’s Head, a painting of which continued in one of the window-panes to our day. No. 142 occupies the site of the Turk’s Head Coffee-house, which Dr. Johnson encouraged ; “for the mistress of it is a good civil woman, and has not much business.” No. 143 (now Southgate’s Fine Arts Auction gallery), site of the first office of the Morning Chronicle (see Newspapers, p. 616). At No. 147 was published the Sphinx; and Jan. 2, 1828, No. 1 of the Athentzum, edited by James Silk Buckingham, the traveller in the East. At No. 149, long known to the collectors of shells, minerals and fossils, John Mawe kept shop : here have been sold shells at 51., 101., and 201. each, now to be bought for a few shillings. Mr. Mawe published his Travels in the Diamond District of Brazil, 1812; A Treatise on Diamonds; and several elementary works on Mineralogy, Conchology, &c. His widow was succeeded by James Tennant, F.G.S., Professor of Mineralogy and Geology in King’s College, London. Somerset Hottse (see pp. 735, 6). King’s College Gateway (see p. 276). No. 162, Strand, Somerset Hotel : at the bar letters were left for the author of Junius. No. 165, Inglis’s Warehouse for Scots Pills until 1865 : ” Dr. Anderson’s pills, sold by J. Inglis, now living at the Golden Unicorn, over against the Maypole in the Strand.” — Advertisement 1699. Strand-lane, leading to the Roman Bath (see pp. 37 and 716), is the site of Strand Bridge, ” and under is a lane or way down to the landing-place on the bank of the Thames ” (Stow). Eastward were Chester’s Inn, Strand Inn, and the Inn of the Bishop of Llandaff. No. 169, Strand Theatre, previously Barker’s Panorama (see Theatres). Arundel Souse, eastward, originally the town-house of the Bishops of Bath, was wrested from them in the reign of Edward VI. by Lord Thomas Seymour, High Admiral. After his execution, the house, with messuages, tenements, and lands adjoin- ing, was purchased by Henry Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel, according to Strype, for 411. 6s. 8d.; t -hence it was called Arundel Palace. Here died, 25 Feb., 1603, the Countess of Nottingham, after her interview with Queen Elizabeth to implore forgive- ness for having withheld from her Essex’s ring. Here Thomas Earl of Arundel began to assemble the celebrated Arundelian Marbles : the statues and busts in the gallery of the mansion ; the inscribed marbles inserted in the garden-walls ; and the statues placed in the garden : altogether, 37 statues, 128 busts, and 250 inscribed marbles ; besides sarcophagi, altars, and fragments, and the inestimable gems. The sculpture and picture galleries are seen in the backgrounds of Van Somer’s portraits of the Earl and his Countess. To the Earl’s ” liberal charges and magnificence this angle of the world oweth the first sight of Greek and Roman statues, with whose admired presence he began to honour the gardens and galleries of Arundel House, and hath ever since continued to transplant old Greece into England.” — Compleat Gentleman. ” March 1, 1664. — I went to Arundel House, where I saw a great number of old Roman and Grecian statues, many as big again as the life, and divers Greek inscriptions upon stones in the gardens March 2. — I went to Mr. Foxe’s chamber in Arundel House, where I saw a great many pretty pictures and things cast in brasse, some limnings, divers pretious stones, and one diamond valued at eleven hundred pound.”— Journal of Mr. E. Browne: MS. Sloan. 1906. To Arundel House the Earl brought Hollar, who here engraved some of his finest plates. Thomas Parr (” Old Parr “) was conveyed here from Shropshire by the Earl, to be shown to Charles I. : becoming domesticated in the family of the Earl of Arundel, his mode of living was changed ; he fed high, drank wine, and died Nov. 14, 1635, after he had outlived nine sovereigns, and during the reign of the tenth, at the age of 152 years and nine months : his body, by the king’s command, was dissected by Harvey, who attributed Parr’s death to peripneumony, brought on by the impurity of a London atmosphere and sudden change in diet. — Philosophical Transactions, 1669. The evidence of Parr’s extreme age is not, however, documentary ; and the birth dates back to a period before Parish Registers were instituted by Cromwell. — Census Report, 1851. Arundel House and Marbles were given back at the Restoration, in 1660, to the STRAND. 765 grandson of the earl, Mr. Henry Howard, who, at the recommendation of Selden and Evelyn, gave the inscribed marbles to the University of Oxford ; and the library to the Royal Society, who met at Arundel House 9 Jan., 1666-7. Evelyn records ” how exceedingly the corrosive air of London impaired” the marbles. The mansion was taken down, 1678 ; and upon its site were erected Arundel, Surrey, Howard, and Norfolk streets. Hollar’s print* shows the courtyard of Arundel House, with the great hall, and gabled buildings with dormer windows, but mostly low and mean. Sully was lodged here at the accession of James I. Surrey-street : here, on the east side, in a large garden-house fronting the Thames, lived the Hon. Charles Howard, the eminent chemist, who discovered the sugar-refining process in vacuo. In Surrey-street died William Congreve, the dramatist, Jan. 19, l728-9. Norfolk-street : here, in a house near the water-side, lodged Peter the Great in 1698, and was visited by King William ; and thence he went in a hackney-coach to dine with his majesty at Kensington Palace. At the south-west corner lived William Penn, the quaker; and subsequently, in the same house, Dr. Birch, the historian of the Royal Society. At No. 8, Samuel Ireland, originally a Spitalfields silk-merchant, whose son, William Henry Ireland, then eighteen, forged the Shakspeare Papers in 1795 : here Dr. Parr and Dr. Warton fell upon their knees and kissed the Mss.,— ” great and impudent forgery,” as Parr subsequently called it. In Norfolk-street also lived Mountfort, the player ; and in Howard-street lodged Mrs. Bracegirdle, the fasci- nating actress, out of an attempt to carry oif whom arose a bloody duel between Mountfort and Lord Mohun, when the former was killed. Between Arundel and Norfolk streets, in 1698, lived Sir Thomas Lyttleton, Speaker of the House of Commons ; and next door, the father of Bishop Burnet j and the house within memory was Burnet’s, the bookseller, a collateral descendant of the bishop. Arundel-street, ” a pleasant and considerable street ” (Jlatton, 1708) : ” Behold that narrow street which steep descends, Wjiose building to the shining shore extends ; Here Arundel’s fara’d structure rear’d its frame, — The street alone retains an empty name : Where Titian’s glowing paint the canvas warm’d, And Raphael’s fair design thejudgmentcharm’d, Now hangs the bellman’s song, and pasted here, The coloured prints of Overton appear ; Where statues breath’ d, the work of Phidias’ hands, A wooden pump or lonely watch-house stands.” — Gay’s Trivia. On the east side was the Crown and Anchor Tavern, now the Whittington Clttb (see p. 260) ; the sign was, probably, in part taken from the anchor of St. Clement’s, opposite. Strypc mentions it as ” a large and curious house.” Here was instituted the Academy of Ancient Music, in 1710. The great room was 84 ft. by 35 ft. 6 in. : here, on Fox’s* birthday, in 1798, took place a banquet to 2000 guests. Dr. Johnson and Boswell occasionally supped hore ; and the Royal Society dinners were held here. The very handsome Italian-fronted houses at the east and west corners of Arundel- street were designed by H. R. Abraham. No. 191 , Strand, was the shop of William Godwin, bookseller, and author of Caleb Williams, the Life of Chaucer, &c. : he removed here from Snow-hill. Milford-lane is named from -a ford over the Thames at the extremity, and a wind- mill in the Strand, near the site of St. Mary’s Church, and shown in a print temp. James I. (See Chron. London Bridge, p. 395) : there is also a token of ” the Wind- mill, withovt Temple Bar.” Sir Richard Baker, the chronicler, lived in Milford-lane, 1632-9. (Cunningham’s Handbook, p. 337.) The picturesque tenements on the east side, Strand end of the lane, principally of wood, with bay-windows, are described in a deed, date 1694 : they were taken down in 1852, and the site is now occupied by ” Milford House,” the office of The Illustrated London News. The site of the Infants’ Schools lower down in the lane was that of the old Rectory -house. * Hollar’s View of London from the roof of Arundel House is very rare : an impression at Sir Mark Masterman Sykes’s sale, in 1824, sold for 111. In a Household Hook of Lord William Howard (Belted Will) are ” his expenses whilst living at Arundel House; and amongst them a payment to Mr. ’ Shak- speare,’ the parish scavenger.” — Athenaeum, No. 1403. 766 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON. In Milford-lanc is the Printing-office of H. D. Woodfall, whose grandfather, in Paternoster-row, first printed Junius’* Letters. The business was first established about the year 1720, in Grocers’ Hall-court and in Angel-court, Skinner-street, George Woodfall printed his edition of Junius’ ’s Letters, 3 vols. 8vo., the first book printed there. The latter office was taken down in 1866. Essex-street and Devereux-court, formerly the Outer Temple, are named from Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth’s last favourite. The ground was leased by the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem to the Bishops of Exeter, who built here a town- house, in which they lived till the Reformation, when it passed to William Lord Paget ; next to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, son of the poetic Earl of Surrey; to Dudley, Earl of Leicester ; and then to his step-son, the Earl of Essex : hence it was successively called Exeter House, Paget House, Norfolk House, Leicester House, and Essex House. But the chief memory of the place is associated with Essex and his abortive project for the overthrow of Elizabeth’s government : he fortified the house, but was hemmed in on all sides, artillery being planted against the mansion, and a gun mounted upon the tower of St. Clement’s, when Essex and his followers surrendered. Here was born and married his luckless son, whose infamous countess was implicated in the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury. Pepys describes Essex House as ” large but ugly :” it was tenanted by persons of rank till after the Restoration, when it was subdivided and let. The Cottonian Library was kept here from 1712 to 1730, in the portion of the house upon the site of the present Essex-street Chapel (see p. 220). At the Essex Head Tavern, now No. 40, Dr. Johnson established, the year before he died, a club called ” Sam’s,” from the landlord, Samuel Greaves, who had been servant to Mr. Thrale. In this street also was held the Robin Hood Society, a debating club, the scene of Burke’s earnest eloquence ; Goldsmith was also a member. At the bottom of the street is the archway of the water-gate of Essex House. In a view of the Thames, showing the Frost Fair, in the reign of Charles II., the King, Queen, and others of the court, are seen coming down the Temple Garden stairs, to witness the sports on the ice ; and in part of the background is the archway, and beyond the archway are the gables and other parts of Essex House. A garden, with terraces, is between the arch and the river. No. 213, Strand, was George’s Coffee-house (see p. 264). Devereux-court : here was the Grecian Coffee-house (see p. 264). No. 217, Strand, was the house of Snow, the wealthy goldsmith : “Disdain not, Snow, my humble verse to hear; Stick thy black pen awhile behind thy ear. ****** thou, whose penetrative wisdom found The South-sea rocks and shelves, where thousands drown’d ! When credit sunk, and commerce gasping lay, Thou stood’st, nor sent one bill unpaid away. When not a guinea chink’d on Martin’s boards, And Atwell’s self was drain’d of all his hoards, Thou stood’st (an Indian king in size and hue) : Thy unexhausted shop was our Peru.” — Gay. The firm, originally Snow and Walton, was one of the oldest banking-houses in London, second only to Child and Co., who date from 1640. At the period of the Commonwealth, Snow and Co. carried on the business of pawnbrokers, under the sign of the ” Golden Anchor.” The firm possessed a book, dated 1672, showing that the mode of keeping accounts was then in decimals. The banking-firm, subsequently Strahan (Sir John Dean), Paul, and Bates suspended payment in 1855. Palsgrave-place was the site of Palsgrave Head Tavern, set up in compliment to the Palsgrave Frederic, afterwards King of Bohemia, affianced to the Princess Elizabeth in the old banqueting-house at Whitehall, Dec. 27, 1612. Hard by was Heycock’s Or- dinary, much frequented by ParUament-men and gallants. Temple Bar will be described hereafter. The west side, until numbered witb the Strand, was called on tokens, ” Without Temple Barr.” Strand : Noeth Side. — No. 238 was the last of the ” Bulk shops,” and was kept by Crockford, the fishmonger ; removed in 1846 (see a sketch of him, at p. 247). Ship-yard was the site of the Ship Inn, mentioned in a grant to Sir Christopher Hatton in 1551. There is a token of the tavern, date 1649 ; and it was standing in 1756. John Reynolds, a cook, issued a token (a fox stealing a goose) in Ship-yard in 1666. An old house, engraved in Wilkinson’s Londina Illustrata, is stated to have STRAND. 767 been the residence of Elias Ashmole, the antiquary. Faithorne published his Art of Graving and Etching ” at his shop next to y e signe of the Drake, without Temple barr, 1662.” In the Strand, besides the Ship, were the Swan, the Crown, the Robin Hood, the White Hart, the Hear and Harrow, the Holy Lamb, and the Angel. Sir John Denham, the poet, when a student at Lincoln’s Inn, in 1635, in a drunken frolic, with a pot of ink and a plasterer’s brush, blotted out all the signs between Temple Bar and Charing Cross, which cost Denham and his comrades ” some monies.” — J. H. Burn. From opposite Ship-yard extended an obtuse-angled triangle of buildings, the eastern line formed by the vestry-room and almshouses of St. Clement’s, and the sides by shops; the whole called Butcher-row, from a flesh market granted here 21 Edward I., at first shambles, but subsequently houses of wood and plaster; one of these, a five-storied house, temp. James L, was inhabited by Count Beaumont, the French court ambassador: bere the Duke de Sully was lodged for one night in 1603, until ” the palace of Arundel” could be prepared for him. Beaumont’s house-front bore roses and crowns and fleurs-de- lis, and the date 1581. From a Bear and Harrow orgy, Nat Lee, the dramatic poet, was returning to Duke-street, when he fell, ” overtaken with wine,” in Clare-market, and died. Here also was Clifton’s eatinghouse, a dining-place of Dr. Johnson. But- cher-row was removed in 1802, when were built the opposite crescent-like houses, named Picket-street from the projector of the improvement, Alderman Picket. During the sewers’ works, eastward of the church, at several feet depth, was discovered an ancient stone bridge of one arch. The almshouses were removed in 1790 ; here is a well 190 feet deep. In a house in Butcher-row, east of Clement’s Inn, by the confession of Winter, he, with Catesby, Wright, and Guy Fawkes, met, and there administered the oath of secresy to the conspirators, and after- wards received the sacrament in the next room. — The Gunpowder Treason, reprinted 1679. The Foregate led to Clement’s Inn and Clemenfs-lane, where lived Sir John Trevor, cousin to Lord Chancellor Jeffreys, and twice Speaker of the House of Commons. Bos- well-court occupied the site of a mansion of a Mr. Boswell ; here lived Lady Raleigh, the widow of Sir Walter ; Lord Chief Justice Ly ttleton, and Sir Richard and Lady Fanshawe. In New-court was the Independents’ chapel of Burgess, Bradbury, and Winter. The houses from Temple Bar to beyond Clement’s Inn were taken down in 1867 for the site of the New Law Courts (see p. 510). St. Clemenfs Vestry-hall, Picket-street, contains the altar-piece (St. Cecilia) painted by Kent for St. Clement’s Church, whence it was removed, in 1725, by order of Bishop Gibson, on the supposition that the picture contained portraits of the Pretender’s wife and children : it was first removed to the Crown and Anchor tavern, and next to the old vestry room (see St. Clement’s Danes, p. 158.) Wych-street, leading to Drury-lane (see p. 315) : the south side retains some pic- turesque house-fronts. Opposite is New Inn (p. 473). Holywell-street is named from one of the holy springs which Fitzstephen described as ” sweete, wholesome, and cleere ; and much frequented by schollars and youth of the citie in summer evenings, when they walk forth to take the aire.” The ” holy well” is stated to be that under the Old Dog tavern, No. 24. Here was the old entrance to Lyon’s Inn. Holywell-street was, in Strype’s time, inhabited by ” divers salesmen and piece-brokers,” who have nearly deserted it : two of their signs long remained ; the Indian queen, said to have been painted by Catton, R.A. ; and a boldly-carved and gilt crescent moon. The street is now tenanted by dealers in old clothes, keepers of book-stalls, and publishers and vendors of cheap and low books : a few lofty gabled and bayed house- fronts remain. Newcastle-street (formerly Magpye-alley) was named from the ground- landlord, John Holies, Duke of Newcastle. No. 313 Strand, was formerly the One Bell livery-stables. The Tatler, March 9, 1710, announced a stage-coach ” twice a week from the One Bell in the Strand to Dorchester, the proper time for writing pas- torals now drawing near.” No. 317, corner of«Drury-court, is thought to be the locality of ” the Forge in St. Clement’s Danes,” referred to in the account of the Shrievalty Tenure custom, at pp. 508-509 ; namely, the site of the forge of a farrier, the father of Nan Clarges, afterwards Duchess of Albemarle. Aubrey (Life of Monk, 1680), says : ” The shop is still of that trade ; the corner-shop, the first turning on ye right hand as you come out 768 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON. of the Strand into Drury-lsme : the house is now built of brick.” To this Mr. Bray- ley, in his Londiniana, 1829, adds a conjectural MS. note : ” the house alluded to is, probably, that at the right hand corner of Little Drury-lane, now a butcher’s, and whitened over.” Curiously enough, the house in the court, next the corner house, No. 317, has been for very many years that of a whitesmith, with its forge. “Where Drury-lane descends into the Strand” “the Maypole in the Strand,” was raised by the farrier to commemorate his daughter’s good fortune. The Maypole set up at the Restoration was conveyed to this spot, April 14, 1661, with great ceremony, a streamer flourishing before it, and drums and trumpets, and the acclamations of the people. This Maypole, 134 feet high, was in two pieces, which being joined together and hooped with iron, the crown and vane, and the king’s arms, richly gilded, were placed on the head of it; and a large top, like a balcony, about the middle of it. It was raised by twelve seamen, ” by cables, pullies, and other tacklins, with six great anchors ;” and ” in four hours’ space it was advanced upright, as near hand as they could guess where the former one stood ; but far more glorious, bigger, and higher than ever any one that stood before it.” It was, however, broken by a high wind about 1672; and the remaining portion, being grown old and decayed, was taken down in 1713. Several traders’ and tavern tokens bear on the reverse this Maypole, with a small building at the foot. Where St. Mary’s Church now is, was the first stand for hackney- coaches, erected in 1634 ; after the church was built, the stand was removed a short distance westward, and lasted until March, 1853. No. 332, Morning Chronicle Office, was formerly the White Swan tavern. Here, in a lodging, to be near his patron, the Earl of Clarendon, in Somerset House, lived Dr. William King, who wrote the Art of Cookery, a poem, &c. He was the friend of Swift. King was luxurious and improvident, and died in poverty in 1712, in the above house. There is a token of the White Swan in the Beaufoy collection, and the sign post, with its swinging sign-board, with a decorated iron frame, is shown in June’s ludicrous, but scarce, print of the Lady’s Disaster, 1746. At No. 340, Strand, July 15, 1845, died John Augustine Wade, the popular lyric poet and musical composer. Catherine-street: on the west was New Exeter ’Change, designed by Sydney Smirke, with house-fronts temp. James I. {see p. 20) ; now the site of the Strand Mtrsic Hail (see p. 608). Brydges-street, Drury-lane Theatre. No. 346 Strand, Doily’s Warehouse, rebuilt in fanciful Italian style, by Beazley, in 1838, occupies the site of Wimbledon House, built by Sir Edward Cecil, and burnt down in 1628. Dry- den names ” Doily petticoats;” Steele had “a Doily suit” (Guardian, No. 102); and Gay a ” Doily habit” (Trivia, book i.) ; and Doily introduced the small wine-glass napkin which still bears his name. Wellington-street North: on the west side is the Lyceum Theatre, rebuilt by Beazley.
In Exeter-street, at a staymaker’s, was the first London lodging of Dr. Johnson (1737), where he lived upon 4″ target=”_top”>d. per day. When Dr. Johnson first came to London with his pupil Garrick, they borrowed five pounds, on their joint note, of Mr. Wilcocks, the bookseller, Strand* ” Near the Savoy in the Strand,” east of Exeter ’Change, was the Canary House, probably also Cary House, noted for its sack ” with abricot flavour” (Dryden’s Wild Gallant, 1669); and Pepys mentions “Cary House, a house of entertainment.” At No. 352 Strand was born, Jan. 29, 1798, Henry Neele, the poet, the son of the able map and heraldic engraver. At No. 355, John Liinbird commenced publishing the Mirror, No. 1, Nov. 2, 1822. Westward was Exeter ’Change, described at p. 335.
” On the demolition of the building in 1830, the writer saw, cut in the stone architrave above the window at the east end, ’ Exkteb Change. 1670,’ a date much earlier in its adaptation than is generally supposed.” — J. 3. Burn.
In one of the offices abutting on the ’Change was published the Literary Gazette, No. 1, Jan. 25, 1817. Exeter-street and Burleigh-street are named from their being * The following were Dr. Johnson’s places of residence in and near London : 1. Exeter-street, off Catherine-street, Strand (1737). 2. Greenwich (1737). 3. Woodstock-street, near Hanover-square (1737). 4. Castle-street, Cavendish-square, No. 6 (1738). 5. Strand. 6. Boswell-court. 7. Strand again. 8. Bow-street. 9. Holborn. 10. Fetter- lane. 11. Holborn a^ain (at the Golden Anchor, Holbora liars, 1748). 12. Gouerh-square, No. I7’(1748). 13. Staple Inn (1758). 14. Gray’s Inn. 15. Inner-Temple-lane, No. 1 (1760). 16. Johnson’s-court, Fleet-street, No. 7 (1765). 17. Bolt-court, Fleet-street, No. 8
(1776).— See Boswell’s Life.
parts of the site of Burleigh and Exeter House. No. 372, Strand, Exeter Hail, is described at p. 334.
Southampton-street was named in compliment to Lady Rachel, daughter of Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, and wife of William Lord Russell. Near the foot of the street stood Bedford House, the town mansion of the Earl of Bedford : it was principally built of wood, and remained till 1704 ; the garden extended northward, its wall bounding Covent Garden Market. In Southampton-street is a bar-gate ; the Duke of Bedford having power to erect walls and gates at the end of every thoroughfare on his estate. Bedford-street occupies part of the site. Between these streets, east and west, is Maiden-lane, where, in a second floor, lodged Andrew Marvell, M.P. for Hull, when he refused a treasury-order for 1000Z. brought to him by Lord Danby from the King. At a perruquier’s, with the sign of the White Peruke, lodged Voltaire during part of his three years’ residence in England. Some of his correspondence with Swift is dated from this house.
At No. 26, Maiden-lane, corner of Hand-court, was born, in 1773, J. M. W. Turner, B.A., the landscape-painter. His lather was a hair-dresser ; and the painter, when a boy, coloured prints lor John K. Smith, of Maiden-lane, a mezzotinto engraver. Turner removed to apartments in Hand-court, in the Lune, and during his residence here he exhibited at the Royal Academy fifty-nine pictures.
Opposite was the Cyder Cellar, opened about 1730 : a curious tract, Adventures Underground, 1750, contains strange notices of this ” midnight concert-room” (Notes and Queries, No. 28) : it was a haunt of Professor Porson’s. At No. 367, Strand, lived Deville, the lamp-manufacturer, and student of phrenology : when young he was employed by Nollekens, the sculptor, to make for him casts from moulds ; which shows the phrenologist to have early developed his abilities in this direction. At No. 485, the Queen’s Head public-house, lodged Thomas Parr, when he was brought to London to be shown to Charles I. ; as stated to J. T. Smith, in 1814, by a person then aged 90, to whom the house was pointed out by his grandfather, then 88.
No. 411, Strand, the Adelphi Theatre, Beazley architect (see Theatres). No. 429, built for the Westminster Fire and Life Insurance Office, by Cockerell, R.A., had a facade of great originality : the figures (aquarii) over the principal windows beautifully characteristic. No. 430, West Strand commences : King~ William-street denotes the reign in which the improvements were made (see Chabing Cboss Hospital, p. 436). No. 437, Lowther Abcade (see p. 20).
No. 448, Electric Telegraph Office. Upon the roof is the Electric Time Signal Ball, completed in June, 1S52, when the following were its details : —
The signal consists of a zinc ball, 6 feet in diameter, supported by a rod, which passes down the centre of the column, and carries at its base a piston, which, in its descent, plunges into a cast-iron air-cylinder; the escape of the air being regulated so as at pleasure to check the momentum of the ball, and prevent concussion. The raising of the ball half-mast high takes place daily at 10 minutes to 1 ; at 6 minutes to 1 it is raised to its full height ; and at 1 precisely, and simultaneously with the fall of the ball at Greenwich, it is liberated by the galvanic current sent from the Observatory through a wire laid for that purpose. The same galvanic current which liberates the ball in the Strand, moves a needle upon the transit-clock at the Observatory : the time occupied by the transmission being about l-3000th part of a second ; and by the unloosing of the machinery which supports the ball, less than one-fifth part of a second. The true moment of 1 o’clock is, therefore, indicated by the first appearance of the line of light between the dark cross over the ball and the body of the ball itself. In the event of accidental failure at 1 o’clock, the ball is raised half-mast high, and dropped at 2 o’clock. When fully raised the ball is 129 feet above the level of the Thames, and falls 10 feet.
No. 452, the Golden Cross Hotel : the old coaching inn stood further west. ” I often,” says Lamb, “shed tears in the motley Strand, for fulness of joy at so much life.” (Letters, vol. i.)