Part 8

The most interesting part of the work of rebuilding was not the roof but the little vault over the oriel. No one who had not seen it would believe the wonderful precision and delicacy with which each of its numerous parts fitted into their places. The joints of each rib of Reigate stone were so beautifully cut and had required so little cement to join them together that the original lines drawn upon them by the fifteenth century builders, in setting out, were still plainly visible. Only one temporary support was required beneath the central boss, which is richly carved with Sir John Crosby’s helm and crest. This and one of the similar bosses, which bears an almost obliterated coat of arms, are the only evidences left of the builder of the Hall, since all the stained glass with its heraldic shields has perished. The present glass, the best pieces of which were designed by Willement, is all subsequent to the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Finally Sir John Crosby’s armorial bearings have been used as a basis for the design on the back of the fireplace.

—W. H. G.

THE PALACES OF HERTFORD AND HAVERING

IX.

THE PALACES OF HERTFORD AND HAVERING.

The two palaces which are the subject of the present article differ from most of those in the neighbourhood of London in being of very early origin, their history in each case stretching back to Saxon times. They differ also from each other, one, Hertford Castle, being a fortress of no mean strength, and the other, Havering Bower, a country retreat entirely without means of defence; while together they present examples of early domestic planning on a large scale such as are, perhaps, available in no other quarter.

The Castle of Hertford was one of a ring of strongholds, of early Norman date, forming an advanced and outer line of defence to the capital. This series began at Windsor and passed via Berkhampstead, Hertford, Stortford, and Ongar to Rayleigh, and in most instances, save for massive earthworks, has left comparatively little trace of its existence.

The remains at Hertford consist at present of the red brick Tudor gatehouse, the ruins of a small tower, and a long line of curtain wall, enclosing broad lawns and gardens, by the side of the River Lea. Hitherto there has been no available information with regard to the internal arrangements of the castle, but amongst the State Papers of Edward VI. is preserved a large scale plan of an important and extensive building arranged for the accommodation of the courts of law. During Tudor and later times the courts were housed at Westminster Palace, and consequently the plan was assumed to represent some portion of that building. I have been able to identify it, however, as a part of the palace of Hertford Castle, to which the courts were temporarily removed in 1582, and again in 1592, owing to the prevalence of the Plague in London.

The plan, unfortunately mutilated, is the work of H. Hawthorne, who was also employed upon the alterations to Windsor in the early part of Elizabeth’s reign.

Hertford Castle in its early days was evidently a place of considerable strength and importance, for when besieged in 1216 by the forces of Louis of France it held out for twenty-four days, while the neighbouring castle of Berkhampstead (the elaborate earthworks of which remain) was reduced by the same army in a fortnight.

Hertford was the occasional residence of the later Plantagenet and Tudor kings, and was successively held in dower by the consorts of the three Lancastrian sovereigns. Later it was found to be a convenient residence for the children of Henry VIII.—Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth having all resided there at various times during their father’s life.

Five documents in the nature of surveys of the castle exist at the Record Office, dated respectively 1327, 1523, 1559, 1589 and 1610. The first of these is the most interesting. The castle then consisted of a great inner ward surrounded by a double moat with a circular shell keep at the north-east angle, and a massive curtain wall. The narrow space between the inner and outer moats was defended by a wooden palisade, and at the western end broadened out into a large outer ward.

Henry VIII.’s survey describes “a fair river running along by the north side of the said castle and arear a very little garden ground, but there is a fair courtyard and large, which is almost finished round about with fair houses.”

By 1610 most of the buildings had been destroyed, and mention is only made of “one fair gatehouse of brick, one tower of brick, and the old walls of the said castle.”

This represents fairly accurately the present condition of the castle. The brick gatehouse, though somewhat altered, is still entire, the outer archway being obscured by a modern porch, while the inner one is converted into a window. Above the former is a sunk panel with the royal arms of the Tudors surmounted by a crown. The “tower of brick” is the great angle bastion shown on the plan. It formed the segment of a circle externally about 60 ft. in diameter, the chord of which is a brick wall which is the only portion of the structure now standing. On the outer face at the southern end are the remains of the circular stair, including a ramped portion of the brick handrail sunk in the wall.

The most noticeable feature of the plan is the extreme thinness of the walls. This can hardly be ascribed to faulty draughtsmanship, as the curtain and bastion walls, together with the fireplace backs, are all shown of reasonable thickness. One is bound to conclude that the whole structure was timber-framed on dwarf walls, the remains of which have from time to time come to light under the present lawn. This would largely account for the continual state of disrepair in which the buildings are found on every occasion on which there is evidence of their condition.

On the east side of the great courtyard, opposite the gatehouse, stood the hall, a comparatively small building of very early type. The aisled hall is now to be found only in comparatively few instances (as at Oakham and Winchester Castle) and is almost certainly a survival of the Saxon type of wooden structure whose form has been preserved in use almost to our own times in the great timber barns, of which there are numerous examples. The contemporary Norman type is preserved at Richmond, Wolvesley, and Christchurch, and in a number of monastic frater-houses, and was a plain rectangular structure of quite a different character. (_Vide ante_ p. 70.)

The hall at Hertford was only three bays long, with screens and two porches at the northern and a square oriel at the southern end. One large fireplace appears at the back of the dais, and a small lantern in the centre of the roof is shown on Speed’s bird’s-eye view of the town (probably taken just before its destruction, 1610).

The lesser court on the south side was probably of early Tudor date, and evidently had galleries on the first floor with projecting bays, an arrangement similar to that of the second quadrangle of Queen’s College, Cambridge. At the south-eastern angle was a small building projecting into the court and clearly a chapel or oratory.

The arrangement of the kitchen and offices at the north end of the great hall is by no means clear. The only apartment with a fireplace of sufficient dimensions for the kitchen is that marked “Court of Requests,” but the lack of direct communication with the hall itself renders this identification doubtful. In spite of its lack of completeness and the difficulty surrounding it, the plan is of considerable interest both on account of its early form and the importance of the building which it delineates.

The Manor, Palace, or Bower of Havering was, like Hertford, of Saxon origin, but its early history is of far greater interest. It was undoubtedly a retreat of King Edward the Confessor, and some of the best-known legends of the Saxon saint are connected with the Bower House. You may read in Caxton’s _Golden Legend_ of how St. John the Divine appeared in the form of a beggar at the consecration of his chapel here, and of how he received the celebrated ring as alms from the king. It was here, again, at the prayer of the Confessor the nightingales were banished without the pales of the park, lest they should interrupt the royal devotions.

In later times it was a favourite hunting seat for the forest of Hainault, and a long line of Chief Foresters of Essex—Mountfitchets, de Clares, and de Veres—held the office of keeper of the park of Havering.

The place is also closely connected with the history of Richard II.’s treacherous seizure of his uncle Gloucester at Pleshy. It was from Havering he set out to decoy the doomed man from the midst of his family to hurry him to Calais and his death.

During Tudor times the palace, with the neighbouring house of Pyrgo, fell gradually into disuse and disrepair, and a visit of Charles I. in 1637 is the last recorded occasion on which Havering received a royal guest. In the time of the Commonwealth, some twelve years later, we find it described as “being a confused heape of old, ruinous and decayed buildings” of value only as materials. Since that time the destruction has gone on till now no fragment of the old building survives.

The situation of Havering Palace is amongst the most beautiful round London. Some three miles north of Romford, it once crowned a rounded hill about 300 ft. high commanding an extensive view, and was surrounded by a park of 1,311 acres, many of the noble trees of which yet line the lanes and hedgerows of the country-side. The quiet village, with its broad green and ancient stocks, has the unusual merit of being not only entirely unspoiled but almost untouched by the modern builder. The royal demesnes of the Bower and Pyrgo are still represented by the great parks and seats which hem the village in on every side.

The plan of the ancient palace is preserved in its entirety in two drawings here reproduced—one showing the kitchen court and offices and published as long ago as 1814 in Ogborne’s “History of Essex,” and the second, from the Hatfield MSS., now printed for the first time, showing the main block of the palace buildings. The old royal manor-house was chiefly remarkable for its extreme irregularity, and it is difficult to determine its original form.

It is obviously a building of many dates and the subject of many additions and alterations. The windows of the smaller or private chapel with the bold buttresses appear to be indicative of a thirteenth-century building, while the wooden galleries and stairs are no doubt of Tudor date.

Most of the buildings shown are on the first-floor level. “The Presence Chamber” (40 ft. by 22 ft.) may be taken to represent the original hall with the screens at the west end. Running south from the dais end is “The Great Chamber,” a large apartment (originally 61 ft. by 24 ft.) communicating on the south with the Great Chapel (45 ft. by 16½ ft.) used by the parish and dedicated, in reference to King Edward’s adventure, to St. John the Evangelist.

This building was claimed by the tenants, at the time of the Commonwealth, as the parish church, on the grounds that they had used it time out of mind and, furthermore, that there was another chapel within the palace. They apparently gained their point, and the old edifice remained in part until the erection of the present building.

The plan shows a rectangular structure of three bays, the western one being occupied by the Royal Pew approached by a wooden staircase.

A view of this building, much altered, is given in Ogborne’s “Essex,” from which it appears to have been of fifteenth-century date and to have retained the timber annexe at the western end shown upon the plan.

The modern church which has now replaced it contains a square twelfth-century font and some leger-stones said to have come from the chapel of Pyrgo Palace long ago destroyed. It stands approximately on the site of its predecessor, and is consequently of value in determining the precise site of the palace buildings, which extended to the north-west, the Privy Garden adjoining Havering Green upon the west.

The Second or Private Chapel adjoins the south-west corner of the hall, and is shown in considerable detail. It was lit by four or five windows in the south wall and a trio of lancets with detached shafts at the west end, the whole building being only 32½ ft. by 14 ft.

The large block of buildings lying to the north of the Great Hall formed the private apartments of the sovereign and are called “the Queen’s Lodging.” They consist of a privy chamber, withdrawing chamber, bedchamber, closet, and two other apartments, with a private stair leading to the garden.

To the west of this range lay the courts and offices shown upon the second plan. (The original is said to be in the Lansdowne MSS. in the British Museum.) They include the privy kitchen and larder with a small court adjoining, with a long range of timber lodgings stretching southwards, and some of the ground-floor apartments of the main block being also indicated. The whole group forms an example of a large domestic plan of distinctively early type, uninfluenced by any considerations of military defence, and can only be paralleled by the buildings of old Westminster Palace.

The two plans are by the same hand, although the scales differ, for both are signed J. S., presumably standing for John Symonds, the well-known Elizabethan draughtsman, and the second is furthermore named and dated 1578 in Lord Burghley’s hand.

—A. W. C.

THE NEW EXCHANGE IN THE STRAND

X.

THE NEW EXCHANGE IN THE STRAND.

In reopening what to many readers may be a long-forgotten chapter in London’s commercial history, I wish to call attention to a beautiful little drawing from the Smithson Collection which has already been published[22] but has not been identified with any known building. It is apparently the original plan and half elevation (to a larger scale) of the New Exchange which the first Earl of Salisbury built in the Strand in 1608 as a rival to the Royal Exchange in the City. The fine drawing and delicate detail of the design will speak for themselves as an illustration of the work of the period, and its value is increased in that the later drawings of the Exchange bear out its general accuracy. The presence of the Cecil arms reminds us of that indefatigable builder Sir Robert or “Mr. Secretary” Cecil, whose activities were not exhausted by his work at Chelsea, Hatfield, and at his neighbouring house in the Strand.

[22] The drawing appeared in a paper by Mr. J. A. Gotch in the Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects for Nov. 21, 1908. I am indebted to the author and to the Institute for their kind permission to use the block.

I shall not pretend to bring any new information, beyond the plan, to the wonderfully interesting history of this building, for a most exhaustive paper from the pen of Dr. T. N. Brushfield appeared as recently as 1903, and was published in the Journal of the British Archæological Association under the title of “Britain’s Burse or the New Exchange,” wherein the reader will find a very large amount of entertainment and instruction. It may, however, be of interest to recall one or two of the historical facts regarding the site and its surroundings, and to examine the available topographical material.

Sir Robert Cecil, who built his new house in the Strand in 1602 (where now stands the hotel named after him), was naturally interested in the adjoining property to the west—that occupied by the ancient courtyards of Durham House. The Bishops of Durham had lived in this house for many centuries until they were dispossessed by Henry VIII. Stow says that the house was built by Thomas Hatfield, Bishop of Durham (from 1345 to 1381); but we know that Otho, the papal legate, lived here in 1238, and in the following passage the topographer Norden traces it back to the famous thirteenth-century bishop who built and fortified the manor-house of Eltham, afterwards the royal palace: “This howse, called Durham or Dunelme House ... was buylded in the time of Henry 3 by one Anthony Becke, Bishop of Durham. It is a howse of 300 years antiquitie, the hall whereof is stately and high, supported with lofty marble pillars. It standeth upon the Thamese veriye pleasantly.” Norden wrote in 1593, and he thus places the date of the aisled hall as the latter part of the thirteenth-century, a period which would agree with his reference to Purbeck marble shafts, and with the character of the windows indicated on a sketch-plan of 1626, which we shall consider later on.

The Bishops of Durham returned to the house for a brief period under Mary, and were finally reinstated by James I., after which they continued there until 1640. From 1584 to 1603, however, the house was tenanted by Sir Walter Raleigh, who, says Aubrey, “lived there after he came to his greatness.” He adds, “I well remember his 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.” During this period, in 1600, the buildings of the outer courtyard facing the Strand were destroyed by fire, and it was these ruins which Cecil replaced by his New Exchange when he purchased the frontage in the first years of the reign of King James.

The principal apartments of Durham House lay right on the river bank and occupied the position of the present Adelphi Terrace. The relative position of this Gothic building and Salisbury House is well shown in one of Hollar’s charming little riverside views, a facsimile of which we reproduce here with the kind permission of the Trustees of the Pepysian Library, Cambridge. The drawing shows the gables of the New Exchange appearing over the top of the older buildings. Another drawing of Hollar’s—that beautifully executed map of the west-central part of London—gives us in its extreme south-west corner a good idea of Salisbury House, and the three buildings are shown with less care in Faithorne’s valuable panoramic map of London. A plan in Strype’s Stow (ed. 1720) gives miniature drawings of the buildings of the Exchange and Cecil’s house, and shows also the tower-shaped river gateway which stood in the garden of the latter, and of which particulars are preserved in the Record Office under date 1610, being a “Specification of a plan by a Mr. Osborne, for making a portico at the south end of the Earl of Salisbury’s garden in the Strand.”[23]

[23] _Vide_ Wheatley and Cunningham, _London Past and Present_.

Much, however, as we are helped by the skill of Hollar and Faithorne to feel some little of the atmosphere of this historic site on the river bank, we were fain to have some more detailed knowledge of the homes of Sir Robert Cecil and Sir Walter Raleigh. Some fortunate chance may perhaps yet bring more information in the course of further research. Dr. Brushfield indeed has been able to take us one step in this direction in his discovery of a curious sketch-plan of Durham House and the New Exchange, made in 1626, and preserved in the State Paper Office. “It was apparently made,” he says, “to assist the enquiry into some tumultuary proceedings that took place on February 26th of that year at Durham House, then the residence of the French Ambassador, incident to the attempted arrest of some English Roman Catholics who had attended service in the Ambassador’s private chapel there.” As will be seen by the simplified tracing which is reproduced with this article, it is of the rather tantalising form which combines elevations with the plan, and which scarcely gives us accurate details of the arrangements. We can see, however, that it was once a noble house with two large courtyards and imposing gateways. Its great hall and lofty range of apartments towards the east are clearly indicated, and the position of the chapel is well shown, a building which we are just able to distinguish in Norden’s well-known view of Westminster. This plan of 1626, moreover, in giving us an idea of the fine thirteenth or fourteenth-century windows of the great hall, enables us to understand Hollar’s sketch of the river front more clearly. The arches, which Wilkinson, in his interpretation of Hollar in _Londina Illustrata_, took to be corbelled supports for the battlements, are clearly the windows of the hall which appear over the low curtain wall against the water’s edge. Wyngaerde’s view of London shows the river front[24] and also the Great Gatehouse.

[24] Wyngaerde’s view of Durham House has been sometimes described in error as the Hospital of St. Mary Rouncevall. The hospital is, however, more probably the small building which he shows to the west.

Nor are the suggestions regarding the way in which the rest of the site had been disposed less interesting. “Britain’s Burse” or the New Exchange fills that part of the frontage to the Strand which lies between “the Great Street Gate” and the boundary of the York House property on the west, while the “Common Passage from the Water’s Side” which passed along the rear of the Exchange and down the boundary to the Thames is plainly if not accurately indicated. This passage, shown also on the Smithson plan, led to the river stairs which Hollar places beneath the western tower of Durham House.