The passage from Great St. Helen’s into Bishopsgate Street passes under old gabled buildings which date from before the time of the Great Fire. On the left is the northern front of Crosby Hall, part of a Gothic mansion unrivalled in its day, though little of the original structure remains. This side was almost entirely rebuilt more than fifty years ago. The oriel window, weathered by London atmosphere, has a very picturesque effect; it is surmounted by the arms of Sir John Crosby, the eminent citizen who built and first possessed the mansion, and who lies buried in the adjoining church, where there is a rich altar-tomb to his memory, with the recumbent figures of him and his first wife, Anneys. On this tomb also are the Crosby arms, namely: sable, a chevron ermine between three rams trippant argent, armed and hoofed or. Sir John, a keen supporter of the House of York, was knighted by Edward IV. in the year 1471; he served as Sheriff of London in 1470, and held the important post of Mayor of the Staple of Calais.
Opposite to Crosby Hall, on the northern side of Great St. Helen’s Passage, there stood till September, 1892, a structure which, though unpretentious, had an air of quaintness, with its iron railings in front and broad white window-frames. The inscription on a tablet above the door of this building ran as follows: ‘These alms-houses were founded by Sir Andrew Judd, Kt., Citizen & Skinner and Lord Mayor of London, Anno Dom. 1551. For six poor men of ye said Company. Rebuilt by ye said Company Anno Dom. 1729.’ The original alms-houses are supposed to have been further east.
Sir Andrew Judd was a native of Tunbridge in Kent, near which town he inherited considerable estates. Having entered commercial life, he made a large fortune by trading in furs, and, as Stow tells us, he kept his mayoralty in a ‘fair house’ in Bishopsgate Street, which had been before used for a similar purpose by Sir William Holles, the ancestor of the Earls of Clare. It was during Judd’s mayoralty, in 1550, that the City of London obtained from the King by charter lands in Southwark, forming now so important a property, and to which I alluded in my account of the Dog and Duck, St. George’s Fields. Sir Andrew was also buried in the church of Great St. Helen’s, which has been a sort of Westminster Abbey for great citizens. A quaint Elizabethan monument marks his resting-place. The inscription gives quite a little biography of him; as was remarked by one of our Transatlantic cousins, ‘it states all the facts, and rhymes in some places.’ In the ‘Historical Collections of the Noble Families of Cavendish, Holles, Vere, Harley and Ogle,’ ed. Lond. 1752, compiled by Arthur Collins, it is asserted that, in building the alms-houses, Judd was only acting as executor to his cousin ‘Elizabeth, widow of Sir William Holles of St. Helen’s, Alderman,’ and this seems to be shown by her will, which was proved March 28, 1544. Stow, however, does not mention her name in connection with the charity. It was augmented by Sir Andrew Judd’s daughter, Alice Smyth, of Westenhanger, Kent. Sir Andrew had also been executor to the Holles family. His original alms-houses were nearer the church than those the site of which the Skinners’ Company has now, I believe, disposed of. He also founded and endowed Tunbridge Grammar School.
Great St. Helen’s is being so rapidly ‘improved’ that it will soon become quite commonplace and uninteresting. A piece was shorn off the churchyard some years ago, no one exactly knew why, and several picturesque plastered houses, immediately west of Nos. 8 and 9, have been pulled down within my memory. At the corner, opposite to the pretty south porch of the church, attributed by the Rev. Thomas Hugo to Inigo Jones, a quaint and very old building still remains, which actually touched the house of the Lawrences. No. 10 is constructed of wood and plaster, with projecting upper stories and massive timbering; it dates from long before the Great Fire; the inside, however, has been modernized. Tradition boldly asserts that Anne Boleyn’s father, Sir Thomas, afterwards Viscount Rochford and Earl of Wiltshire, at one time lived here. It is an undoubted fact that one of the name was intimately connected with St. Helen’s, for ‘on the 24th December, 26th Hen. VIII., 1534, the Prioress and Convent appointed Sir James Bolleyne, knt., to be steward of their lands and tenements in London and elsewhere, the duties to be performed either by himself or a sufficient deputy, during the life of the said James, at a stipend of forty shillings a year, payable at Christmas. If in arrear for six weeks the said James might enter and distrain.’ Query: was this Sir Thomas Boleyn’s elder brother? There was a right of way hereabout from very early times, for Dugdale tells us that in the Hundred Roll of 3rd Edward I. several entries occur relating to an attempt which the nuns made to stop up the lane or passage through the court of their nunnery from Bishopsgate Street to St. Mary Axe, sometimes called St. Helen’s Lane. If, as is possible, the house dates from before the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when it first saw the light there must have been few buildings near the even then venerable Church of St. Helen and the adjoining priory. Crosby Place, indeed, stood hard by, on land leased from the nuns for a term of ninety-nine years, but much open space yet remained. Even as late as the end of last century there was a considerable field or garden immediately to the east of the church, as shown in a view by Malcolm dated 1799.
The buildings and grounds of Crosby Place seem to have extended at first almost to Leadenhall Street. The houses[102] in Crosby Square are said to have been built about the year 1678, on the site of some of the offices which had been destroyed by fire. I cannot say how it happened that in the early part of the seventeenth century a house of considerable size had already been erected on part of Crosby Place, or could it have been just outside the precincts? This was latterly known as No. 25, Bishopsgate Street Within, or Crosby Hall Chambers. It succumbed to the pickaxe of the builder as nearly as possible at the same time as Adam Lawrence’s old residence in Great St. Helen’s. The part facing Bishopsgate Street had no sign of antiquity except two carved festoons of flowers, much blocked up with paint, between the first-floor windows. Up a passage,[103] however, one could see something of the north side or front, which showed architectural features of merit. It rested on round arches composed of rustic work, and above were pilasters furnished with capitals. On the first-floor, looking out on this passage, there was a room adorned by a very beautiful chimney-piece, with the initials g b and the date 1633 in the centre panel. The lower part is of stone, the over-mantel of oak, in very fine condition, all the delicacy of the carving having been preserved by thick layers of paint, which have just been removed. On the ceiling of the same room there was also a fragment of original plaster decoration, which has been presented to the South Kensington Museum. The site of Crosby Hall Chambers will be occupied by the Bank of Scotland. It is proposed to put up the chimney-piece in their new premises.
In 1857 the Rev. Thomas Hugo, F.S.A., wrote an interesting itinerary of the Ward of Bishopsgate for the journal of the London and Middlesex Archæological Society. His paper was republished in book form five years later; it contains valuable illustrations of Nos. 8 and 9, Great St. Helen’s and of Crosby Hall Chambers, besides other houses which have passed away. The letterpress is inspired by a fine enthusiasm; but his architectural judgment is, I think, not altogether to be relied on. He considers that both the above-named buildings were designed by Inigo Jones.
Austin Friars, another region in the heart of the City perhaps as interesting as that which I have just described, is, like it, rapidly being transformed. Not long ago it still maintained a distinctive character. Something of monastic calm seemed to linger about the old home and grounds of the begging friars, crowned by part of their church, which since Edward VI.’s time has been handed over to the Dutch congregation of London. Outside, in Broad Street, there was the roar and confusion of a mighty traffic; within the sacred precinct there was peace: wheeled vehicles seldom entered the very foot passengers, I have thought, used to slacken their pace, and relax for a moment the grim, determined look which, as a rule, characterizes the man whose mind is bent on business.
Passing round what remains of the old church, one may still see a house—No. 10—which is an excellent example of the real Queen Anne style; to judge from the date on a rainpipe, it was probably completed in the year 1704. The porch has a flight of steps; ascending this, one finds before one a spacious staircase panelled throughout, and especially noticeable on account of its fine painted ceiling, one of the last to be met with in a City mansion. No. 11 forms part of the same block of buildings.
Retracing our steps, we see standing back somewhat from the main roadway, to the right of a new passage just opened into what is called, in mockery, Drapers’ Gardens, a tall new structure occupying the site of another old brick mansion the associations of which were very remarkable. The house in question, No. 21, Austin Friars, had been built during the latter part of the seventeenth century, possibly even before the Great Fire, which did not extend so far north; it seems to be marked in Ogilby’s map of 1677. About the early possessors, Richard Young and others, nothing is known of any special interest. In the year 1705 it came into the hands of Herman Olmius, merchant, whose name occurs in the ‘Little London Directory’ for 1677, where he is described as of Angel Alley, Bishopsgate Street Without. He was descended from an ancient family of Arlon, in the duchy of Luxemburg, and was naturalized by Act of Parliament, 29th Charles II. Here he lived and carried on his business, and here, having made and inherited a large fortune, he died in the year 1718. His will shows that he was a member, not of the Dutch congregation of the neighbouring church in Austin Friars, but of the French Church in Threadneedle Street, to which he left £150 for the benefit of the poor. At the time of his death he possessed four other houses in Austin Friars, ‘with yards, gardens, and appurtenances,’ a shop called the Crane in the Poultry, and another with the sign of the Plough in Bucklersbury. He also had much real property in Essex and elsewhere. Herman was the son of Johannes Ludovicus or John Lewis Olmius, and of his wife Margareta Gerverdine. He married Judith, daughter and heiress of John Drigue, who also appears to have been living in Angel Court or Alley in 1677, and who had also married an heiress, the daughter of John Billers. Herman Olmius and his wife Judith had no less than ten children, but only two of them left offspring. These were his younger daughter Margaret, wife of Adrian Lernoult, who had predeceased him, and to whose descendants the City property was bequeathed; and John Olmius,[104] born in 1670. This gentleman became High Sheriff of Essex in 1707, a justice of the peace, and Deputy-Lieutenant of the county. He died December 20, 1731, being then Deputy-Governor of the Bank of England. His wife was Elizabeth, daughter and sole heiress of Thomas Clarke, a descendant of the Clarkes of St. Ives, Huntingdon, and probably her husband’s cousin. Their son, also named John, was many years member of Parliament, and received an Irish peerage under the title of Lord Waltham. He married Anne, daughter of Sir William Billers, Lord Mayor in 1733, and left a son and a daughter. The former died without issue in 1787, when the family became extinct in the male line; the latter having married John Luttrell, who was brother of the Duchess of Cumberland,[105] and who became third Earl of Carhampton, had a daughter, Frances Maria, from whom is descended Sir Simeon Henry Stuart, Bart. The Olmius family possessed much land in Essex, and a large country seat at Boreham, now used as a convent. At the Saracen’s Head Hotel, Chelmsford, their fleeting dignity is still represented by two fine hall-chairs emblazoned with the Olmius crest, namely a demi-Moor in armour between laurel branches, surmounted by a baron’s coronet. My friend Mr. Francis Galton would doubtless tell us that the failure of the family in the male line resulted naturally from marriage with heiresses and from intermarriage. Its rapid rise had also, no doubt, been in part owing to the former cause.