The following are instances of the inscriptions, which may help us to make out the history of the streets. On a corner house at the east side of Dering Street (late Union Street), Oxford Street, is a stone inscribed, ‘Sheffield Street, 1721.’ Curiously enough, in Horwood’s Map of 1799, and in another issued in 1800, the name is given as Shepherd Street, so that here we have four changes in 170 years. On a modern house at the south-east corner of Danvers Street, Cheyne Walk, much of which is now cleared away, there is a stone, supported by brackets, with a pediment which tells us that ‘This is Danvers Street, begun in ye year 1696 by Benjamin Stallwood.’ Danvers House, hard by, was not pulled down till 1716. May’s Buildings, on the east side of St. Martin’s Lane, have the name, and date 1739. Mr. J. T. Smith, in ‘Nollekens and his Times,’ tells us that they were built by Mr. May, who ornamented the front of No. 43, St. Martin’s Lane, a few doors off, where he resided. His house is still there; it has pretty cut brick pilasters, and a cornice, and is now used as a restaurant. The archway which leads into Sardinia Street, under one of the old houses on the west side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, is inscribed above the keystone on each side, ‘Duke Streete, 1648.’ This street was renamed in 1878, after the chapel there, once belonging to the Sardinian minister, which was demolished in the riots of June 2, 1780, but shortly afterwards rebuilt, and is now known as the chapel of SS. Anselm and Cecilia. Here Fanny Burney was married, in 1793, to General D’Arblay. A stone tablet, which has on it ‘Nassau Street in Whettens Buildings, 1734,’ is still to be seen at the south-west corner of Nassau Street. In Strype’s Map of 1720 the ground here, facing Gerrard Street, is occupied by a large mansion with a garden at the back, Nassau Street not being yet made.
Some of these tablets are well designed; a very nice example, though not an early one, is placed above the first-floor of No. 16, Great James Street, Bedford Row. It is an irregular convex shield, surrounded by elaborate scroll-work of a style not uncommon about the time of its erection, namely, in 1721. As a typical specimen it has been drawn for this work. James Street, Haymarket, is also marked by a stone with ornamental border, above a first-floor window of what is left of the old Tennis Court, which is said to have been connected with the noted Gaming House and Shaver’s Hall.
The date on it—namely, 1673, indicates, I suppose, the year in which the street was built or finished; Shaver’s Hall existed some time previously. The Tennis Court ceased to be used in 1866, to the regret of many. In the year 1887 the upper part was rebuilt; but from the tablet downwards the original walls, though stuccoed over, remain. Mr. Julian Marshall says that in this court Charles and the Duke of York used frequently to play their favourite game, and that the house, No. 17, at the south-western corner of James’s Street and the Haymarket, is said to have been that through which the royal brothers used to pass, on their way to the Tennis Court.[77] It does not, however, appear that there was any contemporary evidence connecting them with it.
In the region called Mount Pleasant, Gray’s Inn Lane, not far from the new thoroughfare Rosebery Avenue, there are two or three tablets of a different kind. Near the west end, between Nos. 55 and 56, is a plain square stone, with ‘dorrington street 1720’ incised in Roman capitals. This stone is in a brick frame, with moulded hood, and projects from the frame about an inch and a half. Further east, on No. 41, nearly opposite the site of the prison, are two more tablets; one, similar to that just described, has ‘baynes street, 1737.’ Over this is a far more elaborate example of cut or moulded brick, with a pediment. It has the inscription ‘in god is all our trust,’ and below some marks or signs in relief (one of which appears to be a T-square), with the date 1737. The motto is similar to that of the Brewers’ Company, and of the Tylers’ and Bricklayers’ Company; with the latter I should think that the builder or first possessor may have had some connection.
This last, being a house and not a street tablet, reminds me that there are scattered about here and there on the fronts of houses, initials and dates which by judicious treatment are made quite decorative. One of the prettiest was a little cut brick tablet on an old house—No. 164, Union Street, Southwark—lately destroyed, which had on it beneath a pediment the initials w. h. in monogram, and the date 1701. Again, in Walbrook, on the west side, is a tablet merely dated 1668, with well-designed brackets and cornice. On a modern house—No. 4, Tothill Street, Westminster—called in 1885 the Cock, now the Aquarium Tavern, there is a stone on which are cut the date 1671, a heart-shaped mark, and the initials e. t. a.
In 1850, when Peter Cunningham wrote his handbook, the old house was yet standing; in it Thomas Southerne, the poet, had lodged, as pointed out by Mr. Hutton in his ‘Literary Landmarks of London.’ The heart has puzzled me; a similar mark was formerly on a house in Peter Street, Westminster. Can it have been a parish mark? An undoubted device of this kind appears on a house at the corner of West Street and Upper St. Martin’s Lane, and consists of two ragged staves crossed, with the date 1691, and the initials s. g. f., which indicate the parish of St. Giles’s in the Fields. A mark of the parish of St. Bride’s, dated 1670, is in Robin Hood Court, Shoe Lane. At the corner of Artillery Street, Bishopsgate Without, and Sandys Row, soon to be improved away, there is a flat stone having fastened on it a piece of iron, shaped like a broad arrow, and below the date 1682. Is this a parish mark, or can it have been connected in any way with the old artillery ground—the Tassel Close of an earlier time, when crossbow-makers used here to shoot at the popinjay? In Strype’s time ‘divers worthy citizens’ still frequented it for martial exercise. Of greater historic interest are the monogram of Henry VIII., the Tudor portcullis, and other devices carved on the spandrels of the arches which are under the gatehouse of St. James’s Palace.