The house in Austin Friars continued for several generations to belong to the descendants of the younger daughter of Herman Olmius. In 1783 Hughes Minet came to live here, and in 1802 he bought a sixth share from three brothers named Clarke, great-grandsons of Margaret Lernoult. He was a merchant and banker, of Huguenot descent, and his family had long carried on a prosperous business at Dover. His descendant, Mr. William Minet, has just written a very interesting account of them. The Minets lived in Austin Friars for many years, though they never owned more than a sixth of the property. In 1838 Mr. Isaac Minet, the then representative of the family, sold his share of the freehold, and we find Messrs. Thomas, Son, and Lefevre established here, the last-named being a brother of the late Lord Eversley. The final owner was Mr. John Fleming, by whose courtesy I had the privilege of visiting the house on almost the last day that it remained intact.
In point of fact, No. 21, Austin Friars was by no means a striking specimen of architecture, but having remained from the beginning practically unchanged, there were points about it worthy of record. Externally it was a plain four-storied brick structure, the only piece of decoration being a carved hood to the doorway which formed the chief entrance from Austin Friars. Passing through this, the visitor found himself in a hall, looking up a broad winding staircase with twisted balusters. To the right was the counting-house, panelled throughout with South Carolina pine. It had an old Purbeck marble mantelpiece, on the upper line of which appeared in white marble the Olmius arms,[106] quartered with those of the foreign families of Gerverdine, Cappré, Drigue, and Reynstein. The double panes above was worthy of remark as characteristic of the time of Wren. Under an arch at the end of the counting-house was a strong-room lined throughout with Dutch tiles. Mounting the staircase, one came upon the dining-room, with its ingeniously contrived cupboard, and the drawing-room, which looked out on what was, till within the last few years, the pleasant and ample garden of the Drapers’ Company, now covered, all but a fragment, with bricks and mortar. A view of this garden is given in Cassell’s ‘Old and New London,’ vol. i., p. 517, with No. 21, Austin Friars showing itself beyond the trees in the middle distance; but no reference to it is made in the letterpress. On the first-floor also, above the chief office, was a small warehouse or sample-room, an indispensable adjunct to the old merchant’s dwelling,[107] Above were capital bedrooms, while a narrow staircase gave access to the tiled roof, surrounded by a stone parapet. Retracing one’s steps to the hall, one found, flanking a passage on the side opposite to the counting-house, a lofty kitchen still furnished with smoke-jack, spit-racks, and iron caldron-holders, and adjoining the range an oven lined with blue and white Dutch tiles, no doubt a legacy of the Olmius family. Formerly, also, most of the chimneypieces in the house were fitted up with Dutch tiles, blue and white or red and white; but these in course of time had disappeared. In the basement were cellars, and close to them an old surface well, which still contained water, analyzed at the time of its destruction and found to be little better than sewage. A door in the passage was prettily carved. Through this one passed to the outer offices, a brewery, wash-house, coach-house and stables; and thence again there was access by the side-entrance into the garden,[108] a quiet spot some half acre in extent, which no doubt had originally formed part of the friars’ grounds. It was connected by steps with a narrow terrace running along the back of the house. Here in the summer of 1888 I saw fig-trees still flourishing while the work of destruction had already begun.
The boundary at the end of this garden was formed by another interesting house, No. 23, Great Winchester Street, which has also lately been improved out of existence. It occupied a good deal of ground, being approached through a paved yard with a lodge on each side of the entrance. Externally its chief characteristics were a somewhat high-pitched roof and wings projecting forward. Inside the chief reception-room was finely proportioned, with capital mouldings and cornices, and there was an old kitchen range of portentous size.
Close to this house, and also adjoining Drapers’ Garden, was formerly the garden attached to the Carpenters’ Hall, so that a few years ago this neighbourhood was a paradise of open spaces. At the dissolution the house and gardens of the Augustine Friars had been bestowed by Henry VIII. on William Paulet, first Marquis of Winchester, who there built his town residence, traces of which existed as late as the year 1844: after this mansion Winchester Street was named. From a date carved on a grotesque bracket formerly to be seen at the north-east corner, it appears that the street was constructed, partly at least, in the year 1656, during Cromwell’s government. Strype says that here was ‘a great messuage called the Spanish Ambassador’s House, of late inhabited by Sir James Houblon, Knight and Alderman, and other fair houses.’ Even down to our time it was a remarkably picturesque specimen of a London street. Now nothing but the name is left, to mark its connection with antiquity.
It may here be noted that even till comparatively recent times almost every house in the City had a garden, or at any rate some open space, belonging to it, as may be proved by reference to old maps and views. Horwood’s map, published in 1799, shows how much garden ground still remained at the end of last century. Besides this, before the days of lifts, high pressure of water, and gas or electric light laid on, the inconvenience of very high houses prevented their being built to any great extent. The comparative sparseness of the population should undoubtedly have given our ancestors a great advantage over us with regard to health, but it was more than counterbalanced by drawbacks resulting from ignorance—for example, the use of impure water, and the inability to grapple with diseases which are now comparatively innocuous.
The disappearance of these open spaces, and the erection of enormously high buildings on every available spot, is, I believe, a great evil, not only from the picturesque, but from the sanitary point of view. Writers on sanitary subjects are agreed that, of dangers to health, overcrowding is one of the greatest, and that, other things being equal, the death-rate regularly increases in proportion to the density of the population. Dr. G. V. Poore[109] has recently pointed out that every new set of offices adds its quota to the sewage in the river; while ‘the absence of green plants entails a great loss of nascent oxygen or ozone which gives to air its peculiar quality of freshness.’ In his opinion, it is hardly conceivable that a high level of health can be maintained in a spot where vegetable life languishes, animal and vegetable life being complementary to each other.
Some will no doubt console themselves with the notion that, the City being now to a great extent merely a place of business, those who spend the day there (considerably more than a million, according to the last calculation) can throw off the ill effects while they are away. To this I reply that, if one includes the outlying parts, many thousands still make it their home, and that, in any case, to spend a quarter of one’s existence under most unhealthy conditions must tend to cause illness and to shorten life. In these times of popular government, the great City Guilds are more or less on their probation. If I am right, the Drapers’ Company, whatever the temptation may have been, committed a fatal mistake when they covered their garden with huge blocks of offices, a mistake which can never be atoned for by any amount of charitable donation. Their example has been quickly followed, and soon, I fear, hardly one breathing-space will remain in the City except the ground about St. Paul’s and the Tower, and here and there a bit of a disused graveyard hemmed in by lofty offices and warehouses.
