Some of the charitable gifts recorded by Stow are: A messuage, leased at £28 per annum, the gift of Thomas Berry; 40s. per annum, the gift of Justice Randall; £3 : 18s. per annum, the gift of the Company of Wax Chandlers.
In St. Gregory’s Parish, in the Ward of Castle Baynard, there was a school purchased at the cost of Alderman Barber, where thirty boys and twenty girls were educated. There was one almshouse upon Lambeth Hill.
John Hewitt was rector here; he was tried by Cromwell’s High Court of Justice in 1658 and beheaded. Also William Crowe (d. 1743), Chaplain in Ordinary to George II.
Sermon Lane.—According to Stow this was originally Sheremonier’s Lane. The name is found as “Sarmoneres,” “Sarmoners,” “Sarmouneris,” and “Seremoneres” Lane. The most interesting mention of the Street is contained in the Hist. MSS. Comm. Rept. IX., Part I. 26b. (A.D. 1315):
“Whereas a house belonging to the Chapter of St. Paul’s, at the north-east corner of ‘Sarmouneris’ Lane, has been assigned to Sir Nicholas Housebonde, minor canon of St. Paul’s, for his residence, the said Sir Nicholas has complained that it is inconvenient for the purpose on account of the grievous perils which are to be feared by reason of its distance from the cathedral and the crossing of dangerous roads by night, and the attacks of robbers, and other ill-disposed persons, which he had already suffered, and also on account of the ruinous condition of the building and the crowd of loose women who live around it. The Chapter, therefore, assigns to him a piece of ground at the end of the schools upon which to make a house.”
In Sermon Lane is the charity school. It was built in the beginning of the eighteenth century. Two quaint figures of charity children, each perhaps a couple of feet high, project from the first floor. The boy dressed in the long lapelled coat, the girl in panniers, apron, and cap. The house is of brick. The two lower floors have ordinary wide arched windows, but the two upper ones have each a unique display of no less than nine narrow, circular headed windows in a row extending across all the front. These give a curious cloistral aspect to the place. Over the doorway and two ground-floor windows are scrolls fixed up, but on one only is there an inscription, which is clearly readable, as follows:
To the Glory of God and for the benefit of the poor children of this parish of Castle Baynard Ward this house was purchased at the sole cost of John Barber, Esq., Alderman of this ward, in the year of our Lord 1722.
And on an immense plaster slab running all across the story above is “Castle Baynard Ward School, supported by voluntary contributions.”
St. Bennet’s Hill.—Strype: “Upon Paul’s Wharf Hill, within a great Gate, and belonging to that gate next to the Doctors’ Commons are many fair Tenements, which in their Leases made from the Dean and Chapter go by the name of Camera Dianæ, or Diana’s Chamber. So denominated from a spacious building that in the time of Henry II. stood where they now are standing. In this Camera, an arched and vaulted structure, this Henry II. kept, or was supposed to have kept, that jewel of his heart, fair Rosamund, whom there he called Rosa Mundi; and hereby the name of Diana. To this day are remains and some evident testifications of turnings tedious and windings as also of a passage underground from this House to Castle Baynard, which was, no doubt, the king’s way from thence to his Camera Dianæ.”
In 1452 (Hist. Comm. IX.) the “Inn called Camera Dianæ,” alias Segrave, in the parish of St. Benet is assigned by the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s to a Canon Residentiary of the Cathedral. And in 1480 we find the Camera described as a messuage with a garden let at eight marks a year to Sir John Clay; it was formerly occupied by Lord Berners, “but probably belonging to Richard Lichefield, Canon Residentiary, who pays to the Chapter 26s. a year for the obit of Richard Juvenis.