ONE or two of the signs to be dealt with under this heading are purely heraldic; others are allied to nature, and have, as far I am aware, no connection with heraldry. The stone carving of an ape seated on its haunches and eating an apple belonged to this class; it had on it the initials b m with date 1670, and some years ago was to be seen built into a wall on the west side of Philip Lane, exactly opposite the Ward School of Cripplegate Within. The space at the back was occupied by a court, the whole being now swallowed up in the premises of Messrs. Rylands and Sons. This marked the site of an ancient galleried inn of which it had been the sign. A similar piece of sculpture is or was lately in a street called the Sporrengasse at Basle. A little further east in Philip Lane a modern sculptured cock commemorates Cock Court, now destroyed, where another ancient inn had once stood. Drawings of both are preserved in the British Museum.
Not far from Philip Lane, at 17a, Addle Street, there is a fine bas-relief of a bear with collar and chain; it is above the first-floor window of a house rebuilt about twelve years ago, and has on it the initials n t e and date 1670—not 1610, as we are told by Archer. Munday and Dyson, in the fourth edition of Stow’s ‘Survey’ (1633), assert that Addle Street derived its name from Athlestane or Adlestane, whose house was supposed to have been hard by, in Wood Street, with a door into Addle Street.
An interesting sculptured sign of a Bear was dug up in 1882, when the house numbered 47, on the south side of Cheapside, was being rebuilt. It was found in a damaged state 7 or 8 feet below the surface, and is now let into the wall inside the shop of Messrs. Cow and Co., india-rubber manufacturers. An old arched cellar or undercroft of considerable height still exists in the basement, and extends to a distance of some 30 feet below the street. This sign, which represents a bear chained and muzzled,[26] and in heraldic language contourné, or facing to the right instead of the left, has neither date nor initials. A suggestion has been made that this is the White Bear, the sign of Robert Hicks, a mercer at Soper’s Lane end, and father of Sir Baptist Hicks, born there in 1551, who built Hicks Hall[27] and who, says Strype, was one of the first citizens that after knighthood kept their shops (eventually he became Lord Campden). This, however, is by no means probable; the sign resembles others put up after the Great Fire; moreover, Soper’s Lane, now Queen Street, is some distance east of St. Mary-le-Bow Church, while No. 47 is to the west, near Bread Street. On the opposite side of the way was a house with a similar sign, as appears from the following advertisement in the London Gazette of October 5, 1693:
‘Lost from the Brown Bear, next door to Mercers’ Chapel, in Cheapside, a large broken silver candlestick, having on the bottom James Morris engraven; also two double silver scroles of sconces, and a small scrole of a silver sconce, &c.’
Yet another sculptured sign of a chained bear exists in the City, more or less in its former position. It has on it the initials M E with date 1670, and is to be found let into a modern wall at the entrance to Messrs. Cox and Hammond’s quays, between Nos. 5 and 6, Lower Thames Street, having fortunately escaped a fire which in part destroyed the premises some years since. A far more terrible fire occurred in the neighbourhood in January, 1714-15, when above 120 houses were said to have been either burnt or blown up, and many persons perished. It was caused by an explosion in a little gunpowder shop near Bear Quay, and burned eastward as far as Mark Lane. The sign belonged perhaps originally to this Bear Quay, the site of which is now covered by the Custom House, and which in the eighteenth century was chiefly appropriated to the landing and shipment of wheat.
A Great Bear Quay and a Little Bear Quay are marked close together in Strype’s map of the Tower Ward. Beer Lane, further east, leading from Great Tower Street to Lower Thames Street, was in Stow’s time called Beare Lane. From a writ dated at Windsor, October 30, in the thirtieth year of Henry III., it appears that the Sheriffs of London were commanded to provide a muzzle, an iron chain, and a cord, for the King’s white bear in the Tower of London, and to use him to catch fish in the water of the Thames; and six years afterwards, namely in 1252, the Sheriffs were commanded to supply fourpence per diem for the maintenance of the King’s white bear and his keeper in the Tower. Burnet tells us that on May 29, 1542, the French Ambassadors, after they had supped with the Duke of Somerset, went to the Thames, and saw the bear hunted in the river. Anne, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, and consort of Richard III., adopted the white bear as a badge. In 1539 a ‘Manual of Prayers’ was printed by John Mayler, at the sign of the White Bear in Botolph Lane. A seventeenth-century trade token was issued by a grocer from the sign of the White Bear, Thames Street. Another trade token, ascribed by Boyne and others to Southwark, is far more likely to have been issued from here; it reads thus:
O. philip stower.at = a bear.
R. the.beare.at.bare.key = p.s.s.
A curious stone bas-relief of Bel and the Dragon is preserved by Messrs. Corbyn and Co., the eminent chemists, at No. 7, Poultry, being let into the wall of a back room; the idol is represented by an actual bell. Larwood and Hotten say that the sign was not uncommon, especially among apothecaries; it is alluded to in the Spectator, No. 28. At Messrs. Corbyn’s there is also a very handsome mortar of bell-metal, said to have been used by the firm in early days, with an inscription in Flemish or old German, and the date 1536. Messrs. Corbyn have had a copy of the above sign inserted in the wall of their new establishment, at the corner of Bond Street and Oxford Street; it came originally from their old house of business in Holborn.
