“As for the social side of the Row. It once boasted two places of resort where men could meet and dine, or sit and talk. The first of them was Dolly’s Chop House. This house was built in the time of Queen Anne for a certain cook named Dolly. It is said to have stood on the site of an ordinary kept by Tarleton the Elizabethan mime. If this is true, there was probably, according to the conservative habits of our people, a tavern kept up on the spot continuously. It was not the custom, in the early years of the eighteenth century, to create a new tavern, but to carry on an old one. However, Dolly’s remained a place of great resort for more than a hundred years. It seems to have been famous for its beefsteaks.
“The other, a more important place, was the Chapter Coffee House. This place was in the eighteenth century the resort of the booksellers; here they met for the sale, among themselves, of copyrights, and for the sharing of any new enterprise in new books. Here also met many of the wits and writers during the last half of that century—Goldsmith, Johnson, Lloyd, Churchill, and many others came here to sup and to talk. Chatterton found his way here, sitting in a corner and thinking himself already admitted among the acknowledged poets of the day. In the early part of this century the coffee house was frequented by a knot of writers of some importance in their own day. There was Alexander Stevens, Dr. Buchan, the Rev. W. Murray, the Rev. Dr. Berdmore, Walker ‘the rhetorician,’ Dr. Towers, Dr. Fordyce, Johnson, called in his day ‘king of the booksellers,’ Phillips, editor of the Monthly Magazine, Alexander Chalmers, Macfarlane, and others whose names are well-nigh forgotten, who yet thought themselves no mean citizens, and formed a group which came here every night and talked. Sad it is to think that to these circles, as well as to that of the Chapter Coffee House, Time will apply the sponge and efface their names and their sayings from the memory of the world.” (Paper on Paternoster Row.)
PATERNOSTER ROW AS IT IS
Ave Maria Lane was “so called” (Stow) “because of stationers and text writers who wrote and sold there all sorts of books then in use, namely, A.B.C. with the Pater Noster, Ave, Creed, the Graces, etc.”
On the east side of Ave Maria Lane was the “Vicarage” of the Vicars Choral of St. Paul’s, “bounded on the east by the Penitentiarie’s house; on the west by Ave Maria Lane; on the south by the highway leading through St. Paul’s churchyard; and on the north by the Bishop’s Palace.”
The Garden of the Bishop of London’s Palace on the west was divided from Ave Maria Lane by a great brick wall reaching to an old house in Paternoster Row, the Three White Lyons.
The site of the Bishop’s Palace was in London House Yard. The Palace was pulled down in 1650 and tenements built upon its site.
Here has been demolished the old tavern, No. 8, distinguished by its sign of the Goose and the Gridiron. The tavern stood, perhaps, on the site of the Mitre, where, in 1642-44, was exhibited a collection of curiosities which, according to their Catalogue, must have consisted mainly of rarities similar in kind to those of “Tradeskins Ark” at Lambeth, or of the Royal Society when lodged at Gresham College. The Catalogue says they are “daily to be seen at the place called the Music House at the Mitre near the west end of St. Paul’s Church.” The sign may have been designed in burlesque of that of the Swan and Harp in Cheapside, as cited in Little London Directory of 1677. It formed the meeting-place of the St. Paul’s Masonic Lodge, to which Wren belonged for many years. He presented to the sodality of the Lodge, the mallet and trowel that had been used in laying the first stone of St. Paul’s (Midd. and Herts. Notes and Queries, vol. ii. p. 179).
Amen Corner is chiefly modern, but the two brick houses next the gate which shuts in Amen Court are both ancient, one of them being restored. Through great claret-painted wooden gates we pass to Amen Court where there is an unbroken line of old seventeenth-century houses facing the back of Stationers’ Hall. These are all of brick, creeper-covered, with iron lamp-holders arching over the doorways, and link sockets attached. One or two have quaint old iron scrapers. They were built by Sir C. Wren. The court is the ecclesiastical residence for many of the dignitaries connected with St. Paul’s. A gravelled walk leads round the corner by a buttressed wall to the more modern part. Quite a large garden space lies before the houses. The later row, built in 1876, are in a modern Queen Anne style, and the material used is glowing red brick.