Part 3

In 1890-91 the Great Eastern Railway Company cleared a great space near the Liverpool Street terminus, which involved the removal of the remains of Sir Paul Pindar's house, a beautiful work of art and a unique relic of a great city residence at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The oak front, with its elaborate carved work, is now to be seen in the Museum (West Hall, R. 48). One is thankful that it exists, but of course it was far more interesting while still in its original position. The decorated plaster ceiling from the first floor is also in the Museum. There is a view of the room which contained this ceiling, drawn by J. T. Smith in 1810, which also shows a fine though somewhat grotesque chimney-piece, having on it the date 1600. With other decorative work, it was removed early in the last century, when the room was made what the possessors called "a little comfortable." Doubtless the original mansion included the adjoining house, or its site, and much more besides. This latter house to the left or south, destroyed about the year 1877, contained a good plaster ceiling of more modern style than that already referred to; it is also now in the Museum. There must have been gardens at the back, and a building, with handsome decoration, called "the Lodge," which formerly stood in Half Moon Street, and is figured in Wilkinson's "Londina Illustrata," was said by tradition to have been occupied by the gardener. Sir Paul Pindar was an eminent merchant and diplomatist, who lent great sums of money to Charles I., and gave at least £10,000 for the rebuilding and embellishment of old St. Paul's Cathedral. A tablet to his memory was formerly on the north side of the chancel of St. Botolph's Church, Bishopsgate Street, but of late years it has been banished to an obscure corner in the north vestibule. The inscription runs as follows:—

Sir Paul Pindar Kt Her Majesty's embassador to the Turkish Emperor Anno DM 1611 and 9 years resident Faithful in negotiations foreign and domestick Eminent for piety charity loyalty and prudence An inhabitant 26 years and a bountiful benefactor To this Parish He dyed the 22d August 1650 Aged 84 years.

From 1787 or earlier the main portion of Pindar's house, here depicted, was used as a tavern.

(10-1/4 × 7) D. 36-1896.

35. The One Swan Inn, Bishopsgate Street Without, 1890 (Black and white).

Another house destroyed by the Great Eastern Railway Company, about the same time as that last described, was the One Swan Inn, Bishopsgate Street Without. It had no special history, but was an old place of call for carriers and waggons, and survived its companions, the Two Swans hard by, and the better-known Four Swans, Bishopsgate Street Within, the site of which is now marked by a modern tavern. The yard of the One Swan Inn was of considerable size. A picturesque wool warehouse had stood on the vacant space shown in the sketch, to the left-hand side. This latter building had been destroyed in 1886.

(9-3/8 × 5-3/8) D. 37-1896.

36. Staircase of No. 10, Austin Friars, 1895 (Water-colour).

Early in 1896 the interesting house, No. 10, ceased to be. It was in the precinct of Austin Friars, on the north side of the Old Friars' Church, the nave of which has for centuries been handed over to the Dutch congregation in London. As appeared from a date on a rain-pipe, it had been in existence at least as early as the year 1704. The porch was approached by steps; ascending these, one saw in front a spacious staircase, so typical of the period that it is here portrayed. This staircase was panelled throughout, and was especially noticeable from its ceiling, which was painted on plaster with allegorical figures, in the style of Sir James Thornhill. The house No. 11 formed part of the same block of buildings. While these were in process of destruction a Gothic arch was exposed to view, the upper part of which had been in a room on the ground floor of No. 10, incorporated in the east wall of the house. From the character of the mouldings it appeared to date from the fifteenth century, and had no doubt belonged to the cloisters of the Augustine Friars. Other mediæval remains were found, and a paper on the subject was read by Mr. Allen S. Walker, before the London and Middlesex Archæological Society.

(9-7/8 × 7-3/8) D. 77-1896.

37. Arms of the Olmius Family on Mantelpiece at No. 21, Austin Friars, 1888 (Black and white).

The house to which these arms belonged had been built in the latter part of the seventeenth century, possibly before the great fire, which did not extend so far north. In the year 1705 it came into the hands of Herman Olmius, merchant, descended from an ancient family of Arlon in the Duchy of Luxembourg, and naturalised by Act of Parliament, 29 Charles II. He was a member of the French Protestant Church in Threadneedle Street, and made a large fortune; he died in 1718. His eldest son was a deputy-governor of the Bank of England, and his grandson was raised to the Irish peerage as Lord Waltham, but the title became extinct in the next generation. For many years, beginning in 1783, the well-known Huguenot family of Minet occupied the house, and in 1838 Messrs. Thomas, Son & Lefevre were established here, the last-named being a brother of the late Lord Eversley. This house, a drawing of which the writer hopes at some future time to add to the collection, was remarkable as having come down to us in almost unchanged condition from its earliest time. To the west it formerly overlooked the Drapers' Garden, and it had a garden of its own about half an acre in extent, with brewery, coach-house, and stables. Inside, there was a good staircase, some of the rooms were charmingly panelled, a strong room and parts of the kitchen were lined with Dutch tiles, and in front of a Purbeck marble mantelpiece there was a coat of arms in white marble (No. 37), with various foreign quarterings. It may be described as follows:—

Quarterly: 1. Per fess azure and argent, a fess counter embattled or; in chief a mullet of six points of the second; in base on a mount vert an elm tree proper. OLMIUS.

2. Sable, a dexter hand proper, issuing out of a cloud and grasping five wheat ears or. GERVERDINE.

3. In chief a deer's head couped azure, crowned argent; in base six besants or. REYNSTEIN.

4. Azure, a goat erect argent, hoofed and horned or, browsing on a vine proper. CAPPRÉ.

On an escutcheon of pretence sable, a herring or in bend. DRIGUE.

These are the arms of Herman Olmius, whose name was the Latinised form of the Flemish or Dutch word for elm. The Gerverdine arms are those of his mother Margareta; the arms on the escutcheon of pretence are those of his wife Judith. No. 21, Austin Friars was swept away in 1888. The boundary at the end of its garden had been formed by one side of the premises known as No. 23, Great Winchester Street, to which allusion will next be made.

(4-3/4 × 4-1/4) D. 38-1896.

38. Kitchen Range in No. 23, Great Winchester Street, 1889 (Black and white).

(10 × 12-1/2) D. 40-1896.

39. Chief Reception Room, No. 23, Great Winchester Street, 1889 (Black and white).

The fine old mansion in which these drawings were done stood back from the street, and was approached through a paved yard with a lodge on each side of the entrance. Outside, its chief characteristics were a somewhat high pitched roof, and wings projecting forward. Within, the staircase with its plaster decorations, was handsome. The well-proportioned room of which a drawing is here given (No. 39) was on the first floor. There were other panelled apartments, and the kitchen range (No. 38) was very old-fashioned. After the dissolution, the house and gardens of the Augustine Friars had passed into the hands of William Paulet, first Marquis of Winchester, hence the name Winchester Street. From a date carved on a grotesque bracket, formerly to be seen at the north-east corner, it appears that the street was constructed, partly at least, in the year 1656, during the government of Cromwell. Strype, writing in 1720, says that here was "a great messuage called the Spanish Ambassador's house, of late inhabited by Sir John Houblon, Knight and Alderman, and other fair houses." Even down to our time it was a remarkably picturesque specimen of a London street. No. 23, Great Winchester Street was destroyed in 1890.

(10-1/8 × 12-1/2) D. 39-1896.

40. The City Greenyard, No. 18, Whitecross Street, 1895 (Black and white).

This was formerly the place to which stray horses or cattle found in the City were taken for safe custody. It is stated in an Act of Parliament, May, 1765, that "The Commissioners appointed to remove nuisances may seize the waggon, cart, dray, or other carriage so placed, together with the horse or horses, etc., etc., and to remove the same to the Common Pound of the City, commonly called the Greenyard." Here are now (and have been for many years) the Lord Mayor's stables, his wonderful State coach, and the carriage he uses on ordinary occasions, which is shown in the illustration; the figure of the Lord Mayor's coachman may also be seen standing in a doorway. Between the open space and Whitecross Street were the Gresham almshouses, removed to Brixton in 1883. They had been originally at the back of old Gresham College, between Broad Street and Bishopsgate Street. The almshouses in Whitecross Street were, after 1883, for a time utilised as quarters for married men in the City Police.

(8-1/8 × 11-7/16) D. 78-1896.

41. Bunyan's Monument, Bunhill Fields, 1894 (Black and white).

Bunhill Fields Burial Ground in the City Road, near Finsbury Square, described by Southey as the "Campo Santo" of the Dissenters, was one of the three great fields, namely "Bonhill Field," "Mallow Field," and the "High Field or Meadow Ground, where the three windmills stand, commonly called 'Finsbury Field.'" As early as the year 1315 it seems to have been let to the City authorities, and in 1553 a lease was granted to the Corporation of this with other land, being a part of the church property of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, and the lease was again and again renewed. In 1661 the ground was underlet to a person of the name of Tindal for fifty-one years. In the deed it is described as meadow land, and the citizens are to be allowed to use it for purposes of recreation. Up to that date, therefore, it does not appear to have become a burial ground; but it was probably set apart for the burial of victims of the Great Plague, although not so used. It is a mistake to connect it with "the Great Pit in Finsbury" mentioned by Defoe in his Memoirs of the Plague, which was situated near the upper end of Goswell Street. However, about this time Tindal turned it into a burial ground. For many years called by his name, it was adopted as their place of interment by several Dissenting sects, and from 1665 to 1852, when all City cemeteries were closed, no fewer than 123,000 burials took place here. For some years after this the place was neglected, but in 1867-68 it was put in order and opened to the public October 14th, 1869. In Bunhill Fields there are now about six thousand tombs; a record of them is kept in the Surveyor's Office, Guildhall. Among eminent persons here buried are General Charles Fleetwood (Cromwell's son-in-law), Defoe, Susannah Wesley, mother of John and of Charles, Dr. Isaac Watts, Joseph Ritson, the antiquary, William Blake, painter and poet, Thomas Stothard, R.A. But perhaps the most widely known is John Bunyan, who wrote "The Pilgrim's Progress." He died at the house of his friend, Mr. Strudwick, a grocer at the Star on Snow Hill, and was buried in that friend's vault. The monument was restored by public subscription, under the presidency of the Earl of Shaftesbury in 1862; a drawing of it is here given.

(6-1/2 × 8-1/8) D. 79-1896.

42. Chimneypiece and part of room in No. 4, Coleman Street, 1892 (Water-colour).

Until a few years ago a house was standing on the west side of Coleman Street, near the north end, which, like houses innumerable, was reputed to have been a residence of Oliver Cromwell; at first sight it appeared to date from the earlier part of the eighteenth century. There was in it a good eighteenth century staircase with a skylight above, and one of the rooms had a handsome mantelpiece, also apparently Georgian. Another room, on the first floor, was distinguished by very remarkable features: it was panelled with cedar, and, as will be seen, the style of this panelling and of the handsome carved chimneypiece are distinctly Jacobean. The house, therefore, was much older than appeared at first sight, or else it had been rebuilt early in the eighteenth century, the chimneypiece and panelling being insertions from an older building. The houses at the north end of Coleman Street were not destroyed in the Great Fire. In 1891-92 the cedar room was used as an office by Mr. H. S. Foster, then Sheriff of London. In 1896 the house was pulled down by Messrs. Colls and Son, whose offices adjoined, and in clearing away the foundations the workmen came upon three ancient wells—two of them went down 20 ft. below the pavement level. The following is quoted from an illustrated article in the "City Press" for June 6th, 1896:—"The construction of these wells or elongated water-butts was simplicity itself. Tubs or casks, bound with wooden hoops, were sunk into the ground and banked up with puddled clay to keep them water-tight. The clay remains to this day, as also do the wooden hoops (or did till very recently), but the latter are as soft as touchwood." The description of these casks reminds one of casks somewhat similar which have been found in Roman wells at Silchester, and were exhibited in the rooms of the Society of Antiquaries at Burlington House. In the wells beneath No. 4, Coleman Street, were discovered various pieces of pottery in remarkably good preservation, which are now in the Guildhall. The collection represents types ranging from the beginning of the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century. The soil in which these old wells were sunk was dark and peaty, like that of Moorfields, on the other side of the City Wall.

(12 × 9-13/16) D. 84-1896.

43. Interior of The Two Brewers Public-house, No. 27, London Wall, 1886 (Black and white).

The Two Brewers Public-house, at the entrance to Fox and Goose Yard, London Wall, destroyed a few weeks after the completion of this drawing, was evidently a very old building. The sign was in former days a common one, being usually represented by two brewers' men carrying a barrel of beer slung between them on a pole. It is curious that a sign of a similar description was used by the Romans; one representing two men carrying between them an amphora was found at Pompeii. It is figured in Larwood and Hotten's "History of Signboards," that of the Two Brewers being placed alongside for comparison.

(7 × 9) D. 41-1896.

44. Part of the Chapter Coffee House, from Paul's Alley, 1887 (Black and white).

The Chapter Coffee House in Paternoster Row (No. 50) and also opening into Paul's Alley, a passage from St. Paul's Churchyard, was noted in the 18th century as a house of call for London publishers. In the "Connoisseur," No. 1, January 31st, 1754, is the following notice of it:—"And here my publisher would not forgive me was I to leave the neighbourhood without taking notice of the Chapter Coffee House, which is frequented by those encouragers of literature, and, as they are styled by an eminent critic—'not the worst judges of merit'—the booksellers. The conversation here naturally turns upon the newest publications, but their criticisms are somewhat singular. When they say a _good_ book they do not mean to praise the style or sentiment, but the quick and extensive sale of it." Late in the 18th century and early in the 19th, several clubs met here, of which an account is given in the "Curiosities of London," by John Timbs. Goldsmith appears to have known it well. Chatterton says, in a letter to his mother, "I am quite familiar at the Chapter Coffee House." And here Charlotte and Anne Brontë stayed on their first visit to London in June, 1848. It had been visited by their father, and thus they gained their knowledge of it. The late Mr. George Smith, the famous publisher, remembered calling on them there, and Mrs. Gaskell gives a graphic description of the low ceilings, the wainscotted rooms, and the high narrow windows. After the death of the proprietor, Charles Faithfull, in November, 1853, the house became an ordinary tavern; it was rebuilt before 1890, there are now no rooms over the passage. From the Chapter Coffee House were issued in the seventeenth century two leathern trade tokens, specimens of which are preserved in the Beaufoy Collection at the Guildhall Museum. The larger one, representing a groat, has on it:—

O.—CHAPTER COFFEE HOUSE (4)—In the field, a mitre. R.—Blank.

The leather appears to have been gilded.

(8-3/4 × 4-1/4) D. 44-1896.

45. Royal Mail Tavern, from Fitchett's Court, Noble Street, 1889 (Black and white).

This house, on the south side of Noble Street, from the style of the brickwork must have been built in the early part of the eighteenth century, but little is known of its history. The sign was comparatively modern, suggested, no doubt, by the proximity of the General Post Office, which was moved from Lombard Street to St. Martin's-le-Grand in 1829. The Royal Mail Tavern was destroyed in May, 1897.

(8-3/4 × 5-3/8) D. 42-1896.

46. Reminiscence of the Oxford Arms, Warwick Lane, 1875 (Water-colour).

The structure, of which a small part is here shown, was approached by a passage from Warwick Lane, being bounded on the west by the old wall of the cathedral precinct and touching Amen Corner on the south. It was a fine example of its kind. As was said by a writer in the "Athenæum" of May 20th, 1876:—"Despite the confusion, the dirt, and the decay, he who stands in the yard of this ancient inn may get an excellent idea of what it was like in the days of its prosperity, when not only travellers in coach or saddle rode into or out of the yard, but poor players and mountebanks set up their stage for the entertainment of spectators who hung over the galleries or looked on from their rooms—a name by which the boxes of a theatre were first known." The house must have been rebuilt after the Great Fire, which raged over all this area. That it existed before, is proved by the following odd advertisement from the "London Gazette" for March, 1672-73:—"These are to give notice that Edward Bartlet, Oxford Carrier, hath removed his Inn in London from the Swan at Holborn Bridge to the Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane, where he did Inn before the Fire. His coaches and waggons going forth on their usual days, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He hath also a hearse and all things convenient to carry a corps to any part of England." In the palmy days of coaching, just before the advent of the railways, the Oxford Arms was in the hands of Mr. Edward Sherman, who carried on the chief coaching business at the Bull and Mouth, St. Martin's-le-Grand. After 1868 many of the rooms were let out in tenements, but the inn still did a good carriers' business, carts leaving daily for Oxford and other places. It was closed in 1875 and pulled down in the following year. Views of this house formed the first of a series issued by the Society for Photographing Relics of Old London. The late Mr. Alfred Marks, the accomplished secretary, wrote useful accompanying notes. Another old galleried house, which long lingered on the east side of Warwick Lane, was the Bell Inn, where Archbishop Leighton died in 1684. As Burnet tells us, he had often said that "if he were to choose a place to die in it should be an Inn; it looked like a pilgrim's going-home, to whom this world was all as an Inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion in it." Thus his desire was fulfilled.

(10-9/16 × 7-1/4) D. 43-1896.

47. Deanery of St. Paul's, 1891 (Black and white).

This house was built by Wren, after the Great Fire, on the site of the former Deanery, but shorn of the chief part of its garden stretching down to the river, which was portioned off in building leases to defray the cost of the new structure. In our drawing the high gates almost concealed the porch, which is ornamented with carved festoons of flowers. There is also a handsome staircase. Many years ago rooks used to build in the plane-trees in front. The drawing was taken from the steps of No. 5 Dean's Court, now destroyed, where was the Vicar-General's Office for Marriage Licences.

(8-1/4 × 10-7/8) D. 45-1896.

48. Dean's Court, St. Paul's Churchyard, 1894 (Water-colour).

The Deanery stands in Dean's Court, and the wall enclosing it is here shown on the left, the artist's standpoint being very close to that in No. 47. In 1894 great changes took place at this spot, which had before been singularly quiet and old-fashioned. The entrance from St. Paul's Churchyard was, before, through an archway, under a house dating from immediately after the Great Fire, which was said traditionally to have been used by Wren as an office during the rebuilding of St. Paul's. This house appears in course of demolition, while the ground on the right lies vacant, and we are thus enabled to have a glimpse of the cathedral, soon afterwards again quite concealed. The buildings to the east, facing St. Paul's Churchyard, together with the Vicar-General's office and other houses on the same side of Dean's Court, were cleared away to enable Messrs. Pawson and Co. to extend their warehouses, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners having granted them a building lease for that purpose. Dean's Court did not actually form part of the precincts of Doctors' Commons (finally cleared away in 1867), but was associated with it and in its immediate neighbourhood. Sam Weller, in "Pickwick," thus humourously refers to the entrance:—"St. Paul's Churchyard—low archway on the carriage side, bookseller's at one corner, hotel on the other, and two porters in the middle as touts for licences." It was here that his father was inveigled into matrimony.

(8-3/4 × 6-3/8) D. 74-1896.

49. St. Paul's Churchyard, laid out as a Garden (Black and white).