In 1787 the Library was moved to Stone Buildings, and finally to a noble building adjoining the New Hall, which Hardwick had just erected. The fair proportions of this building were unfortunately ruined by Sir Gilbert Scott, who, backed by Lord Grimthorpe, altered them to 130 feet by 40 feet. This new Library and the magnificent Hall adjoining
THE NEW GATEWAY AND HALL OF LINCOLN’S INN
The Hall was built in 1843, and opened by Queen Victoria on the occasion when Prince Albert was created a Bencher.
it were erected in 1843 on the west side of that garden, where Ben Jonson is said to have laboured; and thus, whilst the southern half of the view into Lincoln’s Inn Fields was sacrificed by the Society, a beautiful site, amidst broad green stretches of lawns, shady trees, and flower-beds, was secured for their new blocks. Moreover, the Benchers took great and praiseworthy pains[54] to procure a good design, which should harmonize with the existing buildings ‘in the style of the sixteenth century, before the admixture of Italian architecture.’[55] The result of much deliberation and delay was a singularly successful design by Philip Hardwick, the architect who built the classical portions of Euston Station. Nobly proportioned, constructed of striped brick in the Tudor fashion, with stone dressings, so as to harmonize fitly with the Gatehouse opposite, and decorated with six bays, a projecting window at the north end, and a great south window, fine in detail and fine in its proportions, Lincoln’s Inn Hall is a building as distinguished as it is surprising, when we remember that it is a product of the year 1843.
This Hall was opened with great ceremony by Queen Victoria, and upon that occasion Prince Albert was created a Bencher of the Inn. Within, as without, the Hall is superb; the proportions and the materials are excellent. The roof is elaborately carved, and ornamented with colour and gilt. The windows are rich in stained glass; the royal arms figure in the centre of the beautiful south window, the others are filled with old glass. In some directions, it must be confessed, the decoration is a trifle overdone, especially the heraldic decoration. The arms of the Inn, fifteen fers de moline on a blue ground, with the shield of Lacy ‘or, a lion rampant purpure,’ are repeated with bewildering frequency in every material.
Above the daïs is the great fresco ‘School of Legislation’ (1852). G. F. Watts had proposed to paint the larger hall of Euston Station, gratis, with a series of frescoes illustrating the ‘Progress of Cosmos.’ The Directors of the London and North-Western Railway fought shy of so unbusinesslike a proposal. Nor can it be said that they were not in some degree wise, for London atmosphere is by no means suitable for fresco-work. The work of art, which the Directors rejected, took shape upon the north wall of the Hall of Lincoln’s Inn. For the Benchers accepted a similar offer from Watts, and that generous-minded artist adorned their Hall with the greatest of English fresco-decorations: ‘Justice, a Hemicycle of Law-givers,’ a group of legislators from Moses to Edward I. The painting has suffered sadly from the acids of the smoke-laden compost known as London air.
The Benchers’ rooms, delightful sanctums that remind one of Oxford Common-rooms, contain some very fine portraits of distinguished members of the Inn: Chief Justice Rayner, by Soest; Pitt, by Gainsborough; Lord Erskine, by Sir Thomas Lawrence; and later portraits by Cope, Sargent, Watts and others, of Lord Davey, Lord Russell of Killowen, Sir Frank Lockwood, Lord Macnaghten, etc. The men famous in Law, in Letters, and in Politics, who have been members of Lincoln’s Inn, are too numerous to mention. Of lawyers, besides Lord Brougham, there are Murray, Lord Mansfield, Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Bathurst, and Lord Campbell. Canning, Perceval, Disraeli, Gladstone, Daniel O’Connell, William Penn, and William Prynne stand out among the makers of history who have been members of this Inn; whilst, among men of Letters, the George Colmans (father and son), Horace Walpole, Charles Kingsley, and George Wither, are amongst the most prominent, though the latter produced his best-known poem in the Marshalsea Prison. And another shade, one may fancy, haunts the green fields of Lincoln’s Inn and the busy, muddy thoroughfare of Chancery Lane: it is that of Sir Thomas More, who passed from Oxford and New Inn to enter at Lincoln’s Inn in 1496, and was presently appointed Reader at Furnival’s Inn. Here, in the intervals of his political career, he made a very large income at the Bar.
The south end of the Hall faces the garden, which is enclosed by the old houses of New Square. The fig-tree and the vine, like some stray survivals from the monkish vineyard, flourish against the soot-blackened bricks at the corner of these old houses, which, in pleasing calm and quiet dignity, surround the well-kept lawn and flower-beds. An empty basin in the centre of this garden marks the spot which was once adorned by a sun-dial and fountain, said to have been designed by Inigo Jones. By Inigo Jones were certainly designed the noble houses on the western side of the great green expanse of Lincoln’s Inn Fields—houses with ‘Palladian walls, Venetian doors, grotesque roofs, and stucco floors.’ I believe some of these houses contain beautiful work in the ceilings, mantelpieces, etc.