James Barry, 36, Castle Street, Oxford Street; Edmund Burke, 37, Gerrard Street, Soho; Lord Byron, 16, Holles Street; George Canning, 37, Conduit Street; John Dryden, 43, Gerrard Street; Michael Faraday, 2, Blandford Street, Portman Square; John Flaxman, 7, Buckingham Street, Fitzroy Square; Benjamin Franklin, 7, Craven Street, Strand; David Garrick, 5, Adelphi Terrace; George Frederick Handel, 25, Brook Street; William Hogarth, 30, Leicester Square; Samuel Johnson, 17, Gough Square, Fleet Street; Napoleon III., 3A, King Street, St. James’s; Lord Nelson, 147, New Bond Street; Sir Isaac Newton, 35, St. Martin’s Street; Peter the Great, 15, Buckingham Street, Strand; Sir Joshua Reynolds, 47, Leicester Square; Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 14, Savile Row; Mrs. Siddons, 27, Upper Baker Street; Sir Robert Walpole, 5, Arlington Street.
We find also—Henry Cavendish, Sir Humphrey Davy, Charles Dickens, Thomas Gainsborough, Count Rumford, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Joseph Mallord William Turner, and Josiah Wedgwood. It is hoped that arrangements may, in most of the above cases, soon be completed. This is not so interesting a list as might be made; many more of greater importance might be added. Sterne, for instance, lodged in Old Bond Street, at a cheesemonger’s, as Mr. Cunningham ascertained; James Boswell in Halfmoon Street and Downing Street; William Penn, in Norfolk Street, Strand. The site, at least, of the Turk’s Head Coffee House, where the Literary Club met, might be easily ascertained. Theodore Hook’s and Charles Lamb’s house, in Colebrooke Row, should certainly be noted.
There is another admirable society especially devoted to cherishing the interest in old London buildings, and which has already worked admirably. This is “The Society for Photographing Relics of Old London,” and which has been excellently directed by Mr. Alfred Marks, of Long Ditton. Already no less than eighty-four pictures have been taken, many of which are already the sole and faithful records of what have been swept away. These are very different from the average photograph, being artistic to a high degree, done in low tones with effective shadow, of large size, and mounted on a bluish grey card, so as to throw out the picture. The list includes—the “Oxford Arms” Inn, Warwick Lane; houses in Wych Street and Drury Lane; Lincoln’s Inn; St. Bartholomew the Great, and adjacent houses in Cloth Fair; Temple Bar; houses in Leadenhall Street; Gray’s Inn Lane; Brewer Street, Soho; the “Sir Paul Pindar;” Staple Inn, Holborn Front; Canonbury Tower; Barnard’s Inn; Christ’s Hospital; Churchyard of St. Laurence Pountney; houses in Great Queen Street and Aldersgate Street; twelve views of the Charterhouse; the Southwark Inns; old houses in the Borough and Bermondsey; St. Mary Overy’s Dock; Sion College; Oxford Market; Little Dean’s Yard; Ashburnham House; Banqueting House, Whitehall; Water Gate, York House; Lincoln’s Inn Fields; Lambeth Palace Gate House, Great Hall, and “Lollards’ Tower”; old house, Palace Yard, Lambeth; old houses, Aldgate; “The Golden Axe,” St. Mary Axe; No. 37, Cheapside; No. 73, Cheapside; old house, Great Ormond Street; old house, Queen Square, Bloomsbury; shop, Macclesfield Street, Soho.
Another old mansion whose loss is to be lamented is that of the Tradescants, in South Lambeth. It had fine old grounds attached, and venerable trees. Indeed, in Lambeth, up to a recent date, there was an abundance of picturesque, heavy-eaved houses, often sketched by the artist. This, of the Tradescants, had been visited by Charles I., Pepys, Atterbury, and others. “On this spot, which until the last few weeks (1881) remained a rare pleasaunce amid bricks and mortar and smoke, were grown the first apricots ever seen in England. These, tradition declared, were stolen from the Dey of Algiers’ garden by John Tradescant, who had joined an expedition against the Barbary pirates. ‘Tradeskins’ Ark’ was a favourite show place of the Londoners, and its contents subsequently became the foundation of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. In the gardens grew noble trees, which long relieved the dinginess of the decaying neighbourhood. But the axe has been laid at the root of the tall trees. The shrubs have been torn up, the absurd little temples to Flora have fared roughly at the hodman’s hands, and this winter every trace of the ‘Ark’ itself has disappeared.”
Not long ago the public was invited to take farewell of a great merchant’s mansion, declared positively to be the last-surviving specimen of the kind. Vast crowds came accordingly, and visited every portion of this interesting old place, which however was not so imposing or effective as the old destroyed house in Leadenhall Street. I went with the rest. It was situated in the interesting Austin Friars, where you enter from the street under an arch and find yourself in the grounds and inclosure of the old Augustine monastery, now covered with houses, but still laid out in curious winding passages, and not unpicturesque. On the right is the old Dutch Church. “With difficulty,” says an explorer, “we find the old house, which is like a manor house—No. 21—having its steps and garden—waste enough. It could be traced on maps, and had a regular pedigree, from its first possessor, Olmius, a Dutch merchant, in King William’s time, from whom it passed to the French family of Tierrenoult, from them to the Minets—eminent bankers in the days of the First French Empire—and from them to Thomas Le Marchant, whose descendant held it as representative of the firm of Thomas, Son, and Lefevre. From these last holders the present owner, Mr. John Fleming, acquired the property.” It is described as “a large red-brick structure, lined throughout with quaintly carved panels and wainscoting, and its many rooms are capacious, lofty, and comfortable. Entering the old hall through a fine doorway, the merchant’s counting-house is seen to the right, and his morning room and many remains of ware rooms to the left. Below this are capacious cellars, containing mysterious hiding places, and a remarkable vaulted strong room with an iron door. Here, too, was an old stone well, the water of which was used by the present owner until he discovered that there were some human bones at the bottom of it. In the vaulted kitchen there is a veritable old Dutch oven, faced with fantastic blue tiles, representing courtiers caracoling on fat Flanders mares, and the figures alternate with illustrations of tulips and tiger-lilies. Outside are the old red-tiled stables, and brew-house with gabled roof; and these look on part of the Garden of the Mendicants, still containing a gnarled old fig-tree that has at spasmodic intervals borne fruit, but ends its life next week. Returning to the hall we mount a broad staircase with large twisted balustrades and rails, every step of which is ornamented with intricate floral decoration. The panelling was of a rather meagre kind, with small mouldings up a narrow stair, and getting on to the red-tiled roof, with a stone parapet surrounding it, we can see what may be called the scheme of this extraordinary old property. The house is surrounded by other old buildings—all alike sentenced to destruction next Monday morning—and scraps of gardens, and over the way we see the huge modern buildings that now stand on the site of the Drapers’ Gardens, which existed in many a living person’s memory. There was something pathetic in the forlorn look of the whole, particularly of this abandoned bit of City garden, with its broad flight of riveted Purbeck flag steps and old iron handrails approaching it. Lofty, comfortable, highly respectable, and in its true sense ‘snug’ is the dining-room on the first floor, with its many ingeniously-contrived cupboards and good woodwork. The outside displayed the sad-coloured tint of old and grimed brick.” Coming by a day or two later, I found the hoardings already up, and the “breakers” at their work.
Turning out of High Street, Kensington, close by the station, and descending “Wright’s Lane” for a hundred yards or so, we find ourselves before another of these surviving old mansions—Scarsdale House. There is the venerable brick wall running along the road and enclosing a garden as old, while the mansion, with its tiled roof, turns its shoulder to the road and looks toward its fair garden. A pleasing gateway, with piers surmounted by well-carved vases of graceful pattern. Entering we find ourselves in a spacious garden of the old Manor House pattern, a broad walk, with piers halfway down—remains, probably, of a terrace—and at the bottom a sort of ruined pavilion or summer-house; steps lead down from the old doorway into the garden, and the house, with its tiled roof and dormer windows, forms a pleasing background. There is a pleasant air of repose and abandonment over all, and no one would suppose he was in the heart of a busy quarter of London.
Within we find all in keeping. The spacious reception and drawing-rooms are long and lofty, and “walled” with old panelling, heavily moulded, which have not been disfigured with paint or even varnish. The staircase is in short flights, with broad landings, and has fine substantial balusters of oak, with richly-twisted rails. The doorways are black as ebony, and carved elaborately; and an entrance to one of the bedrooms is deeply embayed, and offers an effective union of arched and square doorway combined, supported on carved pillars. There is an abundance of recesses and shadowy places, and the whole has quite a picturesque air. Long may Scarsdale House be spared! though railway companies and speculative builders have the valuable ground in their eyes, and would be glad—the latter, at least—to erect a showy Scarsdale Terrace, or Mansions, “suitable for noblemen, gentlemen, Members of Parliament, or bachelors of position.”
Another interesting house is to be found in a mean street just out of Leicester Square, next Orange Street Chapel, where the great philosopher Newton lived—a poor, whitened, tumbling-down place, that will not hold together long. It is a melancholy spectacle. Some thirty years ago it was a sort of restaurant, dignified by the name of “Hôtel Newton.” Persons before that date recalled the aspect of the house, which appropriately displayed the actual observatory on the top, used regularly, it was said, by the philosopher. A Frenchman who occupied the house, and who carried on the calling of an optician, professed to have many of the philosopher’s instruments, which he offered for sale to the curious in such matters. After he passed away the observatory was removed, amid much lament over such a heathenish sacrifice. It came out, however, that the whole was an imposture; the observatory had been constructed by the Frenchman himself, and the sale of the instruments was akin to the sale of the bits of bronze which professed to be portions of the adjoining statue of Charles I.!
Flaxman’s house is close to that interesting square—so suggestive of Bath—Fitzroy Square. Canning’s house is in Conduit Street, but has been fashioned into a shop. The name, however, does not excite much interest, as we are too near his time; though this objection would not hold in the case of Lord Beaconsfield, whose house in Curzon Street, Mayfair, might be acceptably distinguished by a tablet.