Another carving of a mitre surmounts a tablet, with initials t f and the date 1786, which is built into the front of that well-known tavern, the Goose and Gridiron, and indicates that this property is or was attached to the See of London, or that near this site stood the residence of the Bishops of London, before the Great Fire, which destroyed it. This mitre, by a coincidence, also suggests the supposed former sign. Within the memory of man, the Goose and Gridiron was a celebrated house-of-call for coaches to Hammersmith, and the villages west of London. Its sign, a sculptured goose standing by a veritable gridiron, still appears on a lamp in front. Before the Great Fire, there was a house with the sign of the Mitre hereabouts, perhaps on this very spot, where in the year 1642 were to be seen, among other curiosities, ‘a choyce Egyptian with hieroglyphicks, a Rémora, a Torpedo, the Huge Thighbone of a Giant,’ etc., as advertised in the News; and again, in 1644, Robert Hubert, alias Forges, ‘Gent., and sworn servant to his Majesty,’ exhibited a museum of natural rarities. The catalogue describes them as ‘collected by him with great industrie; and thirty years’ travel into foreign countries; daily to be seen at the place called the Musick-house at the Mitre, near the west end of St. Paul’s Church.’
Concerts were, no doubt, among the attractions the house afforded, till the Great Fire in September, 1666, destroyed all. It has been suggested that on the rebuilding of the premises, the new tenant, to ridicule the character of the former business, chose as his sign a goose stroking the bars of a gridiron with her foot, and wrote below, ‘The Swan and Harp.’ Larwood and Hotten think that it was a homely rendering of a charge in the coat of arms of the Musicians’ Company. That the Swan and Harp was an actual sign, I learn from the Little London Directory of 1677, where one is mentioned in Cheapside.
At the Goose and Gridiron, Sir Christopher Wren presided over the St. Paul’s Lodge of Freemasons for upwards of eighteen years.[51] It is said that he presented the Lodge with three carved mahogany candlesticks, and the trowel and mallet which had been used in laying the first stone of the Cathedral. In the ‘Vade Mecum for Malt-worms,’ there is a rude drawing of the sign, and we are told in doggerel as rude that,
‘Dutch carvers from St. Paul’s adjacent dome,
Hither to whet their whistles daily come.’
Also that ‘the rarities of the house are; 1, the odd sign; 2, the pillar which supports the chimney; 3, the skittle ground upon the top of the house; 4, the watercourse running through the chimney; 5, the handsome maid, Hannah.’ Foote mentions the Goose and Gridiron in his ‘Comedy of Taste.’
Yet another Mitre sign exists in London, probably far older than any of those I have described. In Mitre Court, a narrow passage between Hatton Garden and Ely Place, stands a comparatively modern public-house, let into the front wall of which is a Mitre carved in bold relief; on it is cut or scratched the date 1546, which, however, appears to be a modern addition. This is said to have formed part of the town residence of the Bishops of Ely, the remains of which, with the ground attached to it, were conveyed to the Crown in 1772. The site was afterwards sold to an architect named Cole, who levelled everything except the chapel. This last building stands hard by, and is dedicated to St. Etheldreda. The Rev. W. J. Loftie considers that it is the most complete relic of the fourteenth century in London. Since he wrote, however, the restorer has, alas! been busy. In 1772 it stood in an open space of about an acre, planted with trees and surrounded by a wall; at that time the hall, seventy-two feet long, and a quadrangular cloister existed. Over the chief entrance the sculptured arms of the see, surmounted by a mitre, were still visible, and it is likely that this mitre was afterwards converted into the sign I am considering. The rural character of the neighbourhood in early days may be judged by the records of it which have come down to us. In 1327 Bishop Hotham purchased a house and lands, including vineyard, kitchen-garden and orchard contiguous to his manor of Holborn, which, with other properties, he settled on the church of Ely, dividing them between his successors the Bishops, and the convent. Again, as late as 1576, when Sir Christopher Hatton, Queen Elizabeth’s handsome Lord Chancellor, became tenant of part of the house and garden, the rent was a red rose, ten loads of hay and £10 a year; Bishop Cox, on whom the bargain was forced by the Queen, reserving to himself and his successors the right of walking in the gardens and gathering twenty bushels of roses annually. Shakespeare, too, praises the quality of the strawberries in Ely Garden, though little more than sixty years afterwards we have John Evelyn complaining in his ‘Fumifugium’ that smoke is ‘suffering nothing in our gardens to bud, display themselves, or ripen; so as our anemones and many other choycest flowers, will by no industry be made to blow in London or the precincts of it.’ Ely Place seems to have been let by the see to John of Gaunt, ‘time-honoured Lancaster,’ and here in 1399 he breathed his last. The present town residence of the Bishops of Ely, No. 37, Dover Street, has been occupied by them since 1772. It has a mitre carved over one of the first-floor windows; Sir Robert Taylor, R.A., was the architect.
At No. 10, Bow Churchyard a square brick house was lately standing, which dated from immediately after the Great Fire. The office windows on the ground-floor, with their shutters to match, had an air of old-fashioned quaintness. The pediment of the doorway contained the Royal Arms and supporters carved in wood; the quarterings showed that they were put up in the time of the early Georges; let into the western part of the house, which from the arrangement of the windows seemed to have been originally divided into two, was a sign of spherical form, projecting from a square stone, at the corners of which one could with difficulty decipher the figures 1669. In the kitchen there was a leaden tank with initials and date, t. s. 1670, supplied by water from the New River. This house was pulled down two years ago; the sign came into the hands of the City authorities, and is now in the Guildhall Museum, where it has been christened the Pill.
No. 10, Bow Churchyard was at the time of its destruction occupied by Messrs. Sutton and Co., who there carried on a very old-established business for the sale of patent medicines, among others that which has been known for more than two hundred years as Elixir Salutis, or Daffey’s Elixir. It was stated that the house had formerly been known by the sign of the Boar’s Head, which, together with the Royal Arms, appeared on the bill-heads of the firm. If so, there must have been frequent changes here, for in the early part of the eighteenth century it seems to have been called the Maidenhead, to judge from various advertisements in my possession: for instance, the following from a London journal of 1728, which is adorned by a portrait of a typical maiden, appropriately framed:
‘At the Maidenhead, behind
Bow Church, in Cheapside, is sold for
Two shillings the Bottle, that admirable
Cordial, Daffey’s Elixir Salutis,
It has been in great Use these 50 years.’