Tonson moved from the Gray’s Inn Gateway in 1712 to his more celebrated bookshop in the Strand that stood on part of the present site of Somerset House. I hear that another old landmark connected with this prince of publishers is doomed to disappear, for the Upper Flask, in Heath Street, Hampstead, that was known in Tonson’s day as the “Upper Bowling Green House,” used as the summer quarters of the Kit-Cat Club, may have to give way to the new buildings of some philanthropic institution.
Gray’s Inn takes its name from the Grays of Wilton. There is a document registering the transferring in 1505 of the “Manor of Portpoole, otherwise called Gray’s Inn” from Edmund Lord Gray of Wilton to a Mr. Denny. The public, alas, are never admitted to the Gardens, but any visitor may see the Hall on a week-day between the hours of 10 and 12.15.
Hatton Garden
“My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn,
I saw good strawberries in your garden there.”
Richard III.
Staple Inn and Gray’s Inn are not the only old-world souvenirs to be found in prosaic Holborn. A little further east, on the left-hand side as one strolls towards the City, lies another sordid street whose name is redolent of Elizabethan romance.
Hatton Garden, named after the queen’s handsome chancellor and now the haunt of the diamond and pearl merchant, and also of organgrinders and ice-cream vendors, is built on the site of the gardens of Ely Palace, the town house of the Bishops of Ely whose story is noted on another page. Round the corner is Ely Place, the most astonishing little square in London.
If you pass this spot on the stroke of the hour after ten o’clock on a summer’s evening, you may well rub your eyes and wonder if time has been rolled back and you are suddenly living in the London of two centuries ago. For the iron gates of the little place are closed, and out of the tiny porter’s lodge in the middle comes an important person with a gold-laced hat, who solemnly makes the tour of the square, crying five or six times, “Past ten o’clock and all’s well!”
The crying of the hours by the night watchman is not the only custom of this old-world corner, so carefully guarded by the commissioners in whose hands the rights of Ely Place are vested. The little square, now given over to law offices and business premises, was once a “sanctuary,” a place where law-breakers could take refuge and where the civil authorities had no right of arrest. To this day the caretakers who form the bulk of the resident population of Ely Place are inordinately proud of the fact that they are independent of police protection, having their own standing army of three porters, who take eight-hour turns in guarding the tranquillity of their self-contained domain.
They even have a public-house of their very own, for in the tiny passage that connects Ely Place with Hatton Garden is a dim little inn of dubious antiquity, that takes its name of the “Mitre” from the carved stone mitre set in the façade which once formed part of the old palace of the bishops of Ely. The innkeeper is very proud of the remains of a Methuselah of a cherry-tree now incorporated in one corner of the house. You can see the whitewashed remains of the tree that may have shaded good Queen Bess if you peer through the left-hand corner window.
At ten of the clock the iron gate leading into Hatton Garden is duly fastened, and the “Mitre” is closed to the outside world.