A short distance further on, we enter the Hammersmith Road, opposite a tavern called “The Bell and Anchor,” which stands beside the turnpike, and passing about twenty shops on the left towards Hammersmith, we notice in the fore-court of a house called “The Cedars,” two noble cedar trees of immense girth, one of which is represented in the accompanying cut. This was formerly the residence of Sir James Branscomb, who, according to Faulkner, “in his early days had been a servant to the Earl of Gainsborough,
and afterwards, for upwards of forty years, carried on a lottery office in Holborn. He was a common-councilman of the Ward of Farringdon Without, and received the honour of knighthood during his shrievalty.” The house has been a ladies’ boarding-school for many years. From the Kensington Road we can return direct to London, having in this chapter departed from our even course on the Fulham Road for the purpose of visiting the North End district.
CHAPTER VII.
the pryor’s bank, fulham.
Nestling in trees beneath the old tower of Fulham Church, which has been judiciously restored by Mr. George Godwin, there may be seen from Putney Bridge a remarkable group of houses, the most conspicuous of which will be conjectured from a passing glance to belong to the Gothic tribe. This house, which has been a pet kind of place of the Strawberry Hill class, is called the Pryor’s Bank, and its history can be told in much less than one hundredth part of the space that a mere catalogue of the objects of interest which it has contained would occupy. In fact, the whole edifice, from the kitchen to the bedrooms, was a few years since a museum, arranged with a view to pictorial effect; and if it had been called “The Museum of British Antiquities” it would have been found worthy of the name.
In a print, published about forty years since, by J. Edington, 64 Gracechurch Street, of Fulham Church, as seen from the river, the ancient aspect of the modern Pryor’s Bank is preserved.
By them a luxurious vine which covered the exterior was cut down, and the cottage, named after it, replaced by a modern antique house. Mr. Baylis being a zealous antiquary, his good taste induced him to respect neglected things, when remarkable as works of art, and inspired him and his friend Mr. Whitmore with the wish to collect and preserve some of the many fine specimens of ancient manufacture that had found their way into this country from the Continent, as well as to rescue from destruction relics of Old England. In the monuments and carvings which had been removed from dilapidated churches, and in the furniture which had been turned out of the noble mansions of England—the “Halls” and “old Places”—Mr. Baylis saw the tangible records of the history of his country; and, desirous of upholding such memorials, he gleaned a rich harvest from the lumber of brokers’ shops, and saved from oblivion articles illustrative of various tastes and periods, that were daily in the course of macadamisation or of being consumed for firewood.