Strype calls Ducksfoot Lane Duxford. The name is, perhaps, a corruption of Duke’s Footmen’s Lane, tradition asserting that this lane contained the servants’ entrance to the Duke of Suffolk’s house, the Manor of the Rose. In that case “footmen” is equivalent to retainers, or men-at-arms, whose quarters would probably be at the back of the mansion. Wilson (History of St. Lawrence Poultney) thinks it was once called Duke’s-foot-lane, meaning a narrow way to the mansion.
The only old house in the Lane is No. 2, which possesses a very interesting interior. The building is now used for offices, but was originally a merchant’s residence. The old dining-room is a fine chamber, having panelled walls profusely decorated with florid designs in raised composition. The panel over the chimney-piece is particularly good. The entablature of the handsome mantel is supported by fluted Ionic pilasters, the frieze filled with flowers and fruit, and the keystone embellished with a curious rural scene. There are several other quaint mantels in the house, one being of coloured marbles exquisitely painted with figures and scenes. The great staircase with its wainscotted walls and fine balusters is a good piece of work. The cellars are very extensive, and there are traces of a subterranean passage which formerly led to the Thames. The staircase and the old dining-room were copied by Mr. John Hare, and staged at the Garrick Theatre for Mr. Pinero’s play The Profligate, first performed in 1889.
Laurence Pountney Hill.—Stow calls this hill St. Laurence Hill. The part from Cannon Street to Suffolk Lane was formerly Green Lettice Lane, but was renamed under the present title only, on the widening of Cannon Street, 1853-54. The two houses at the corner of Suffolk Lane are splendid specimens of early eighteenth-century architecture. Both are finished with a handsome cornice. The doorways of both are side by side and have lintels and architraves of such rich carving as to be unsurpassed in the City by any doorways of similar size and style. The lintels are both concave: that on the southern house contains garlands of flowers, a cherub’s head, and the date 1703, that on the northern consists of a large scallop shell having in it two naked children. The staircase in the northern house, with its fine twisted balusters, is one of the best original staircases left in the City. The southern house has been modernised for business premises and spoiled. Next below is a plot recently bared, where was the vault alluded to under Suffolk Lane.
At the north-east corner of Ducksfoot Lane is an old house, a good specimen of the domestic architecture after the Fire. Next to it eastwards is the southern half of St. Lawrence Pountney Churchyard now disused. It contains three trees and several tombs. In summer a large-leafed plant covers almost the whole area. Across the enclosure is another fine old house, now used for offices, containing handsome rooms and a fine balustered well-staircase.
Dr. William Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, came to live with his brother Eliab opposite St. Lawrence Pountney Church, after the surrender of Oxford. Both Eliab and another brother Daniel were rich and distinguished merchants on the hill. Richard Glover, the author of Leonidas, was also an eminent merchant on this hill.
The character of Laurence Pountney Lane on both sides (except the modern warehouses on the east side at the corner of Upper Thames Street) is that of the rebuilding after the Fire. Perhaps as a whole this lane preserves this character better than any other thoroughfare in the ward. At the Upper Thames Street end, on the west side, is a house which, though rebuilt on the Upper Thames Street front, retains the old side wall. This is still pierced with narrow windows filled with little squares of glass in lead-work. On the same side of the lane are several carved lintels, and well-panelled deeply recessed doorways. Near the lower end is an old house beneath which is an archway leading to a courtyard, cellars, and offices. The house is partly tenanted by Messrs. Cooper, Box & Co., who first made beaver hats here in 1830 or thereabouts. The back part at the end of the yard, and the front windows were added about 1855. The cellars at the rear of the yard used to contain the vats in which the beaver hats were dyed. The lease of the house dating from shortly after the Fire is still in existence. In the yard is an arched doorway of stone, and solid arches of the same material support the walls of the house in the basement cellars. The stone no doubt came out of the ruins of buildings destroyed in the Fire; possibly some of it from the Manor of the Rose.
At the beginning of 1543 Master Arundel kept a house of entertainment in this lane, much resorted to by the gay young men of that time. Henry, Earl of Surrey, the poet, was summoned before the Privy Council to answer certain charges, when Mistress Arundel, being examined, said that the Earl of Surrey and other young noblemen frequented her house. They ate meat in Lent and committed other improprieties. At Candlemas they went out at 9 o’clock at night, with stone bows, and did not return till past midnight; and next day there was a great clamour of breaking of windows, both of houses and churches, and shouting at men in the street, and the voice was that those hurts were done by my lord and his company. Again at night, rowing on the Thames, they used these stone bows to shoot, as she was told, “at the queens on the Bankside” (MS. quoted by Froude, vol. iv. p. 253).
St. Lawrence Poultney or Pountney was situated on the west side of Laurence Pountney Lane, between Cannon Street and Thames Street in the Ward of Candlewick Street. Thomas Cole added to it a chapel of Jesus, for a master and a chaplain, and this together with the parish church was made into a college by John Poultney and confirmed by Edward III. At the suppression of the religious houses it was valued at £97 : 17 : 11 and surrendered in the reign of Edward VI. The church was burnt down by the Great Fire and its parish annexed to that of St. Mary Abchurch. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1318.
The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The chaplains of this college; Henry VIII., who seized it and so continued in the Crown till Queen Elizabeth granted it to Edward Dorening and Roger Rant as an appendage of the manor of East Greenwich.
Houseling people in 1548 were 270.