This picturesque little ale-house had absolutely no history as far as the writer could discover, but it must have dated from the latter part of the seventeenth century. It was rebuilt about 1889. Stow says:—"On the left-hand side of St. John Street lieth a lane called Cow Cross, of a cross some time standing there, which lane turneth to another lane called Turnmill Street."
(1114 × 578) D. 51-1896.
60. Chimney-piece in the Baptist's Head Public-house, St. John's Lane, Clerkenwell, 1889 (Black and white).
On the eastern side of St. John's Lane, Clerkenwell, near the old Priory Gate, a stuccoed public-house with the above sign stood until about the year 1895. Though outwardly modern and commonplace, a fragment of it had once formed part of a mansion which, early in the sixteenth century, belonged to Sir Thomas Forster, a judge of the Common Pleas, who died in 1612. The chimney-piece, here portrayed, was in the taproom. It is of fine Reigate stone, the frieze being ornamented with fruit and flowers. In the centre are arms, and on each side a crest, thus heraldically described by Cromwell in his History of Clerkenwell:—"The arms are quarterly; first and fourth argent; a chevron vert between three bugle-horns sable, for the family of Radclyffe with which that of Forster intermarried, the crescent being introduced as the filial distinction of a second house. The Buck at one end was the original crest of the Forsters; the Talbot's head at the other, with the crescent, might be that of this branch of the Radclyffe's." The frieze was supported by pilasters in the same style, and one side of the room had panelling of the linen pattern. This was apparently all that remained of the original house, which, in the days of its splendour, must have covered a good deal of ground, for it had another frontage in St. John Street; it was then ornamented by grotesque carvings, and had bay windows with painted glass. The sign may have been selected out of compliment to Sir Baptist Hicks, afterwards Lord Campden, who built a Sessions-house hard by. In the 18th century the Baptist's Head was doubtless resorted to by some of the literary men who worked for Cave; it also afforded solace to a very different class, as we learn from a print in the "Malefactor's Register," which represents prisoners, on their way to Newgate, halting here for refreshment; the view of the old house is interesting. For further information on the subject of this chimney-piece and of the Forster family, see Archer's "Vestiges of Old London (1851)," where it is also figured. It has now found its way into an upper room of St. John's Gate, which is occupied by the St. John's Ambulance Association.
(614 × 8316) D. 52-1896.
61. Old Bell Inn, Holborn, 1890.
This old galleried inn on the north side of Holborn was of great interest and picturesqueness. The earliest notice of it which has come to the writer's knowledge was on the 14th of March, 1538 (30 Hen. VIII.), when William Barde sold a messuage and garden called the Bell, in the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, to Richard Hunt, citizen and girdler. Richard Hunt, who died in 1569, gave thirty sacks of charcoal yearly for ever, as a charge on the property, to be distributed on St. Thomas's Day to thirty poor persons of the parish, one half below and the other above Bars: now represented by an annual payment of £2 5s. from the ground landlords to St. Andrew's parish.
On February 20th, 1605, by deed poll, Thomas Hunt, citizen and vintner of London, son and heir of Richard Hunt, releases to John Corder, citizen and vintner, all his right in that messuage "called the Bell with the appurtenances in the parish of St. Andrew, Holborne, in the suburbes of the cittie of London, between the tenement sometime of John Davye on the east, and a tenement heretofore of the Prior and convent of the late dissolved Pryorie or Hospitall of our Ladie without Bishopsgate" (which must have been the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem, sometimes called Bedlam) "on the west; one head thereof extending upon the Kinge's high waye of Holborne, and the other head thereof upon the garden of Elie place." After various changes of ownership the property in 1679-80 passed into the hands of Ralph Gregge, whose family came from Bradley in Cheshire. His grandson, Joseph, finally parted with it, May 3rd, 1725, to Christ's Hospital, for £2,113 15s. In the deed of sale three houses are mentioned, so the various parts were let separately. They are described as "formerly one great mansion-house or inn, commonly known by the name of the Bell or Blue Bell Inn." A very short time, probably two years, before this sale the front of the premises facing Holborn had been rebuilt, a small part to the west being turned into a shop, latterly occupied by a silversmith. The sculptured arms, not as sometimes has been asserted, of the Fowlers of Islington (who had never been connected with the house), but of the Gregges, then owners, were built into the wall. These arms are now in the Guildhall Museum.
The inn is mentioned by John Taylor (1637) as a place of call for carriers. It eventually became a coaching house of considerable reputation, this part of its business being, about the year 1836, in the hands of Messrs. B. W. and H. Horne, the most famous coach proprietors in London, except William Chaplin. For many years until finally closed, September 25th, 1897, the inn was occupied by the Bunyer family. Architecturally the Bell was interesting, because, with one possible exception, it was the last galleried inn in London on the Middlesex side of the river, though until the advent of railways such houses were common. The galleries were perhaps as old as the reign of Charles II. A still older portion was a cellar immediately to the left of the entrance, which was built of stone with well laid masonry and might have been mediæval. All the rest of the buildings seem to have dated from the earlier part of the eighteenth century. There is a sympathetic reference to the old Bell Inn by William Black in his "Strange Adventures of a Phaeton."
(1014 × 71116) D. 53-1896.