Elm Court Buildings, as they now are, date from 1880. They are built of good red brick and stone, but marred by feeble Renaissance ornament. They boast a sundial, facing the Lane, which proclaims that the years pass and are reckoned—pereunt et imputantur. The Middle Temple Lane ends in the atrocities of the nineteenth century: between the walls of the feeble Harcourt Buildings, the stock-brick ugliness of Plowden Buildings, which have rather less architectural charm than a soap-factory, and in the dreadful Temple Gardens and the Gateway which opens upon the Embankment, a gross abomination of florid ugliness.
On the right, below Brick Court, beneath a gas-lamp raised upon a graceful iron arch, some steps
FOUNTAIN COURT AND MIDDLE TEMPLE HALL
lead us to a raised pavement, dotted with a few plane-trees, beyond which lies the Fountain. This pavement is the forecourt of the Middle Temple Hall, a building which, in spite of restorations and recasings and counter-restorations, remains of unique and unsurpassed interest. For now that Crosby Hall is to be translated, it is the only building left in situ in London which can be directly and certainly connected with William Shakespeare. The Middle Temples had an ancient Hall between Pump Court and Elm Court, the west end of which abutted upon Middle Temple Lane. This was superseded in 1572 by the present famous building.
‘Gray’s Inn for walks,
Lincoln’s Inn for a wall,
The Inner Temple for a garden,
And the Middle for a Hall.’
The old doggerel lines fairly sum up the features of the Inns. And this lovely Hall of the Middle Temple, whose proportions are so fair—it is 100 feet by 42 feet by 47 feet high—produces a delightful impression of space and lightness. A magnificent timber roof with Elizabethan hammer-beams harmonizes with the rich panelling, on which are painted the arms of ‘Readers,’ and the gorgeous carving of the Renaissance Screen, which was erected in 1574, some fourteen years before the date of the Spanish Armada, from the spoils of which fond tradition says it was constructed.
The Hall is very rich in heraldry, and has some interesting portraits, chiefly of royal personages. Above the Bench Table hangs Van Dyck’s portrait of Charles I. The windows illustrate the survival of Gothic detail long after other details had passed into the Italian style. The points are very slight, but contrast sharply enough with the Renaissance curves and pendent roof. There is some modern stained glass, tolerable in colour, but incongruous in style.
Parliament Chamber and the Benchers’ rooms are approached through old carved oak doors, relics of the old Hall in Pump Court.