ST. ANDREW BY THE WARDROBE
The church derived its title from its proximity to the King’s Wardrobe above described. It was formerly called St. Andrew-juxta-Baynard’s Castle. After the Great Fire, the church was rebuilt by Wren and completed in 1692, and the parish of St. Anne, Blackfriars, was united with it. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1261.
The patronage of this church was in the hands of: The family of Fitzwalter, Lords of Woodham, 1361, which becoming extinct, it passed to Thomas, Lord Berkeley, then to Richard, Earl Warwick, who married Berkeley’s daughter; the three daughters of the Countess of Warwick, viz. Lady Talbot, afterwards Countess of Shrewsbury; Lady Ross; and Lady Latimer, afterwards Countess of Dorset in 1439; and the Crown, since St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, was annexed to it.
Houseling people in 1548 were 450.
Pictorial Agency.
BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY HOUSE
This church measures 75 feet in length, 59 in breadth, and 38 feet in height, and contains two side aisles divided from the nave by square pillars, encased in wood to the height of the top of the galleries. The ceiling is exceptionally fine, with beautifully moulded wreaths. The exterior is of red brick with stone dressings. The tower, which is square and of four stories, rises at the south-west; the two lower ones contain windows, the third a clock, and the highest has square-headed openings with louvres. A cornice and balustrade complete the tower, which is about 86 feet in height.
Chantries were founded here by: John Parraunt, armiger, for himself and Clemencia his late wife, and for John Loc, alias Foxton, citizen and fishmonger, and Margaret, his wife (licence was granted December 3, 1409; the endowment fetched £12 : 3 : 4 in 1518 when Thomas Mores was priest, “aged 54, meanly learned”); Humphrey Talbot, whose endowment fetched £7 : 6 : 8 in 1548.
There are three pyramidal monuments of white marble to three successive rectors—the Rev. William Romaine, a celebrated preacher; the Rev. William Goode, rector in 1795; and the Rev. Isaac Saunders, who held the living for nearly twenty years.
Some of the donors of charities were: John Lee, of a house and wharf, leased for £30 per annum; Mrs. Paradine, £3 per annum; Mrs. Cleve, thirteen penny loaves to be dealt out every Sunday.
There was a free school founded by a private person for the benefit of the children of poor tailors, where forty boys and thirty girls were taught and clothed. Also three almshouses maintained by the rent of an adjoining house, built partly by charity of the Lady Elizabeth, Viscountess Chomondeley, and partly at the expense of the inhabitants, in 1679.
Among the most notable of the rectors were: Philip Baker (d. 1601), Vice-Chancellor Cambridge University; William Savage (d. 1736), Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge; William Romaine (1714-1795), Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London; William Goode (1762-1816), President of Sion College; John Harding (1805-74), Bishop of Bombay.
A little passage, right-of-way to the public, goes round the north and east sides of the church, and at the corner where this joins St. Andrew’s Hill stands the old Rectory House. This is a charming old building, dating from soon after the Fire. There is, curiously enough, no oak in the woodwork, excepting only in the cross-pieces of the window-frames. The fireplace in the study is of interest, fashioned of marble and tiles set in polished wood; and on the overmantel there is a little slab bearing the words, all in capital letters:
Laus Deo per Jesum Christum. Church Missionary Society, Instituted April 12, 1799, in this room; the committee meetings of the Society were held from June 17, 1799, to January 3, 1812: and here on January 2, 1804, its first missionaries were appointed to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.
The house betrays its age in all its lines, and though there is no other special feature worthy of comment in it, the tiny garden behind is well worth a visit; it contains a plane-tree, and is a curious little oasis in a wilderness of bricks and mortar.
Queen Victoria Street was only begun in 1867-68 as a direct thoroughfare from the embankment to the Mansion House. It was formally opened November 4, 1871.
The headquarters of the British and Foreign Bible Society is solidly designed, with pilasters running up the front between the windows. Over the great door, supported by blocks of polished granite, is a heavy stone balcony, and three smaller balconies project from the windows above. An ornamental cornice runs round the roof. The architect was Mr. Edward l’Anson.
The library contains the Fry collection of English Bibles, the most complete ever made. This was purchased by the Society for £6000. It includes a copy of the earliest edition of Coverdale printed abroad 1535, and one of the earliest editions printed in England two years later. In the cases about the room are many objects of interest—a German Bible printed 1473; Codex Zacynthus, a palimpsest, of which the earlier writing is supposed to date from the fifth or sixth century, the later from the twelfth. The Society was founded in 1804. Its object is simply to “circulate the Bible without note or comment, in all languages and in all lands.”
Since its foundation over 140 million copies of the Bible, whole or in parts, have been issued. The Society now produces the Bible in about 330 languages and dialects. The University Press monopolises the printing of English Bibles, and much of the printing of the Society in foreign languages is done abroad. The only actual printing carried on in Queen Victoria Street is that done by one man, who works with two hand-presses for the blind. But the issue of fresh copies by the Society comes to an average of 13,000 for every working day.
The General Post Office Savings Bank offices, with a frontage of about 250 feet, are next door. The garden belonging to the old Doctors Commons stretched across the roadway at this point, and was only finally cleared away in 1867 at the making of the new street.
The Heralds’ College or College of Arms is a fine old building in deep-coloured brick. The front stands back from the street, and is supported by two wings. The small courtyard resulting is separated from the street front by high iron railings and gates. There are two brick and stone piers at each gateway, with that favourite ornament of the Stuart period—stone balls—on their summits. The back of the eastern wing abuts on Peter’s Hill, and the wide, outside flap shutters of an old-world style give the little hill a quaint aspect. The College was rebuilt after the Fire, and restored at the opening of Queen Victoria Street. It was originally Derby House, built by the first Earl of Derby and presented in 1555 by Queen Mary to the then Garter King-of-Arms; so it has long been devoted to its present use. Returning to Queen Victoria Street we see opposite in enormous gilt letters, each four or five feet long, “Salvation Army International Headquarters” right across the front of a great building.
Addle Hill, like Addle Street, is supposed to be derived from the Saxon Adel, noble. It has been found written Adling Hill. The whole space between Addle Hill and Bell Yard, and between Queen Victoria Street and Carter Lane, with the exception of Knightrider Street, is now occupied by General Post Office Savings Bank Department. Northward, on the south side of St. Paul’s Churchyard, near the west end, was the church of St. Gregory mentioned elsewhere.
Carter Lane was formerly divided into Great and Little Carter Lane. From the Bell Inn, Bell Yard, in Carter Lane, the only letter addressed to Shakespeare that is known to exist was sent to him by Richard Quiney—“To my loveing good friend and country man, Mr. William Shakespeare, deliver these.” Bell Yard led to the Prerogative Will Office, Doctors’ Commons.
Carter Lane, also called Shoemakers’ Row, is mentioned in the Calendar of Wills in the year 1295. The west end still retains that name in Ogilby’s map of 1677. In 1424 the exchequer paid to John Kyllyngham, master of a house called The Bell in Carter Lane, the sum of £17 : 14 : 8 for costs and expenses of Sir Gilbyn de Lauvoy, knight, and John de la Roe, Esq., and their servants and horses for twenty-eight days. The said Sir Gilbyn and John de la Roe had been sent to the Holy Land by Henry V. “upon certain important causes.” Deeds of the fourteenth century speak of tenements in Carter Lane. In this street were several taverns of note such as the White Horse, the Sun, the Bell, and the Saracen’s Head. Here was a famous meeting-house in which many of the most distinguished of Nonconformist ministers preached.
Pictorial Agency.
THE COLLEGE OF ARMS
Here is the school for St. Paul’s choir-boys, with a stencilled frieze. The playground is on the roof.
Creed Lane was formerly called Sporier Row. An inn in Sporier Row is assigned in the fifteenth century by the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s to their canons. After the Fire there were differences as to the sites and boundaries of houses destroyed in Creed Lane. The Lane was widened in 1750 as one of the improvements made at that time.
Dean’s Court has now warehouses erected on the north and east sides. The house over the archway was said to have been occupied by Sir Christopher Wren as his office during the building of St. Paul’s. Within this court were also the vicar general’s, the commissary and the consistory courts, and offices for procuring marriage licences.
St. Peter’s College adjoined Dean’s Court on the west side in St. Paul’s Churchyard (see under the Stationers Company, p. 199).
When Charles V. came to London in 1522, Doctors’ Commons among other places furnished for his suite a hall, a parlour, and three chambers with feather beds. Mention is made of the dining-hall of Doctors’ Commons and of the “entre going into the great canonicale House now naymed the Doctors’ Commons with a chamber over the said entre,” and of other parts of the building.
This ancient College or House of Doctors of Law was swept away in 1861-67 in consequence of alterations in legal procedure. The courts were removed, and the business of the proctors was merged in the ordinary work of the High Courts of Justice and the Bar.
The Deanery itself is on the west side standing back behind a high brick wall, painted yellow. It is attributed to Sir Christopher Wren, and was built soon after the Great Fire. The stone piers of the gates are surmounted by cones. The building itself is tiled with three dormer windows standing out from the roof and heavy projecting eaves. In the interior there is no carving or anything of antiquarian interest calling for remark, but the front door has some rich wood-carving in the style of Grinling Gibbons.
Paul’s Chain and the greater part of St. Bennet’s Hill are now Godliman Street. The origin of the name “Godliman” is unknown. Cunningham says that the earliest mention of the name is 1732. It is not found in Ogilby nor in Strype. It has been spelt “Godalmin.”
A little court named Paul’s Bakehouse seems to have been asleep while the rest of the world passed it by. It is true the house immediately fronting the entry is covered with ugly yellow plaster, but it is by no means obtrusively modern, and if we except an iron railing in the corner over an area in the north-east, and the house above it, the remainder of the court has been touched by time alone since it left the builders’ hands in the seventeenth century. The houses on the north and south sides are of brick; the northern ones bulge forward out of the perpendicular, and they have low wooden doorways. That in the south-west corner is supported by grooved pilasters. The northern building claims a better staircase in the interior—a staircase with spiral balusters and carved woodwork, low and substantial.
Knightrider Street.—Why this street should be named, as Stow says, “after knights riding” more than any other street, it is impossible to explain. One may, however, suppose that it was named after some branch of the Armourers’ or Loriners’ Craft. Dr. Linacre lived here. Knightrider Street now extends to Queen Victoria Street, but formerly the eastern part from Old Change was called Old Fish Street. Do Little Lane, between Carter Lane and Knightrider Street, now Knightrider Court, is found in many ancient documents called “Dolite,” “Do Lyttle,” “Doelittle” in deeds of Edwards I., II., and III.
DOCTORS’ COMMONS, 1808
From a drawing by Rowlandson and Pugin.