(1114 × 71116) D. 30-1896.
26. Staircase of House in Botolph Lane, 1887 (Black and white).
This house stood in a quiet courtyard opening into Botolph Lane with a second entrance in Love Lane, and had been used since 1859 for the Billingsgate and Tower Ward School. The front, plain but well proportioned, was built of remarkably small bricks with stone facings. It had a projecting cornice and flat lead-covered roof. The doorway was approached by a double flight of steps, beneath which an opening had been left, once used as a dog kennel, to judge from the little hollow for water scooped out in front. Entering a hall which extended right through the house and was paved with alternate chequers of black and white marble, one saw in front a handsome staircase, part of which is shown; the date 1670 appeared on the plaster. Upstairs, the structure had been mutilated, the greater part of the landings on the first and second floors being latterly included in the schoolrooms, but a marble chimney-piece, fine cornices and plaster-work, evinced the taste of former possessors. Perhaps the most interesting part of the house was a small room immediately to the left of the main entrance. It was panelled throughout, and painted from ceiling to floor with strange designs, among which one could dimly discern the figures of Indians, a rhinoceros, antelopes, palm trees, and other signs of tropical life as it represented itself to the imagination or memory of the artist. According to some, the history of the tobacco plant was here depicted, but of this there was no sign. Fortunately we know the name of the painter of this curious series of pictures, one of the panels being signed "R. Robinson, 1696." The other decorations of the room were a carved mantelpiece and a panelled cupboard. The house is charmingly described in the late Mrs. Riddell's novel "Mitre Court," and she made it the home of her heroine. There is, however, no authority for her statement that Sir Christopher Wren was its architect and first inhabitant. This interesting old building was pulled down in 1905-6, although great efforts were made to induce its owners to preserve it.
(11916 × 958) D. 29-1896.
27. Staircase of No. 9, Great St. Helen's, 1891 (Black and white).
During the early part of the year 1892 a large mansion was destroyed on the south side of Great St. Helen's, Bishopsgate Street. Latterly divided into two, being numbered 8 and 9, it was of brick, having engaged pilasters, which were furnished with stone bases and capitals. They also had bands, on two of which appeared in relief the initials LAI and the date 1646. The projecting sills or cornices and the deep keystones on the first floor windows gave a striking appearance to the house. It was also memorable as an early specimen of brickwork in London, and as dating from a period before the formal conclusion of the Civil War, when building operations were almost at a standstill. No. 9 had, in a room on the first floor, a wooden seventeenth century mantelpiece, behind which, on its removal, were found traces of an older mantelpiece of marble, and evidence of the former existence of a large open fireplace. The beautiful staircase, or portion of a staircase, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, of which a slight drawing is here given, may from its style be Elizabethan. A blocked-up window with wooden transoms for casements was also discovered; so it seems likely that, some years after the date of the original building, considerable alterations took place. The façade has been attributed to Inigo Jones, but it had not his classic symmetry, and looked like the work of a less instructed native genius. Besides Inigo Jones, a Royalist and Roman Catholic, was taken prisoner in October, 1645, at the storming of Basing House, having been there during the siege, which had lasted since August, 1643. He was apparently not free to return to his profession until July 2nd, 1646, when, after payment of a heavy fine, his estate, which had been sequestrated, was restored to him, and he received pardon by an ordinance of the House of Commons. It is hard to believe that whilst he was passing through such a crisis, or in the few months succeeding it, he would have been superintending a work in the Puritan City. At the time of his release the great architect was seventy-four years of age, and, as far as we know, he hardly practised his profession afterwards. The division of Nos. 8 and 9, Great St. Helen's, into two, took place in the course of the 18th century; probably about 1750, to judge from the style of the fanlights and projecting hoods to the front doors, and from the staircase of No. 8, the upper portion of which, however, was much more archaic, and might have served as part of the back-staircase to the original building.
The initials on this house have generally been considered to relate to Sir John Lawrence, who was Lord Mayor in the year of the Great Plague, and to Abigail, his wife, but they were really those of his uncle and aunt—Adam and Judith Lawrence, who were of Flemish or Dutch origin. From the former, Sir John inherited this house with other property in the parish. It does not, however, appear that he ever lived there. He kept his mayoralty in a house of totally different appearance, an illustration of which by T. Prattent, published in 1796, forms the frontispiece to Vol. XXIX. of the "European Magazine." As there shown, it had elaborate plaster decorations in front with the City arms and the arms of Lawrence, and last, not least, with the inscription Sr J L—K & A. 1662. That undoubted residence of Sir John Lawrence is marked by name in the map of Bishopsgate Street Ward accompanying Strype's edition of Stow's Survey, where a slight sketch of it is also given. The present Jewish synagogue in Great St. Helen's is rather west of the site.
(678 × 334) D. 34-1896.
