TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
LONDON SIGNS AND INSCRIPTIONS.
[Illustration]
The Camden Library.
EDITED BY
G. LAURENCE GOMME, F.S.A.
AND
T. FAIRMAN ORDISH, F.S.A.
[Illustration: FISH SHOP IN CHEYNE WALK.]
THE CAMDEN LIBRARY.
LONDON
SIGNS AND INSCRIPTIONS.
BY
PHILIP NORMAN, F.S.A.
_ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR AND OTHERS._
_WITH AN INTRODUCTION_
BY
HENRY B. WHEATLEY, F.S.A.
AUTHOR OF ‘LONDON PAST AND PRESENT,’ ETC.
LONDON:
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1893.
UNIFORM WITH THE PRESENT VOLUME.
_In handsome post 8vo. size; tastefully printed in antique style.
On fine paper with rough edges, and bound in cloth, at 6s. per
volume; bound in roxburgh, with gilt top, price 7s. 6d.;
roxburgh binding, 10s. 6d. net. Large-paper copies,
21s. net._
THE FIRST VOLUME of THE CAMDEN LIBRARY, recently
published, is entitled
THE ANTIQUITIES AND CURIOSITIES
OF THE EXCHEQUER.
By HUBERT HALL, F.S.A., of H.M.’s Public
Record Office.
_With illustrations by RALPH NEVILL, F.S.A., and
an Introduction by Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, Bart., F.R.S., F.S.A._
‘This, the first volume of a valuable series, is perhaps one of the
most interesting works of its kind. The facts and anecdotes which
are woven into the pages are curious, and no doubt will be perfectly
new to many readers.’--_Public Opinion._
‘Will be immensely superior to the ordinary kind of serial handbooks,
if Mr. Hubert Hall’s scholarly and well-written book is a fair
sample.... His account of the origins of our national finance is
full of valuable information which cannot be easily found elsewhere.’
--_St. James’s Gazette._
‘It does great credit to the persevering industry, discrimination,
and literary skill of its author.’--_Daily Telegraph._
LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW.
[Illustration]
_INTRODUCTION._
I HAVE been asked to write a short introduction to this volume of the
Camden Library, and I do so with great pleasure.
The subject of sculptured signs is one of considerable interest, to
which too little attention has hitherto been devoted, and the treatment
of this important section of London antiquities could not have fallen
into better hands than into those of Mr. Philip Norman, who has devoted
many years of patient labour to the search for these signs, which are
often found in very out-of-the-way localities. Mr. Norman possesses one
most important qualification for the task he has undertaken, in that he
is an accomplished artist. He is thus doubly well equipped both as an
antiquary and as an artist.
It will, I think, surprise many readers to learn that so much is still
left to us, and I hope that the attention drawn to some of the signs
which have disappeared of late years may result in the discovery
of their present hiding-places. Some years ago there was a curious
sculptured sign over the entrance to Bull Head Court, Newgate Street.
This represented William Evans, Charles I.’s gigantic porter, and
Jeffrey Hudson, the Queen’s dwarf. When King Edward Street was widened
this sign disappeared. If it be still in existence, we may hope that,
in course of time, it may find a home in the Guildhall Museum, where so
many interesting relics of old London are preserved.
Painted signs, which were once almost universal, were suddenly cleared
away by the Act of Parliament of 1762, but these sculptured signs
remained because they were a part of the houses to which they were
attached, and they only pass away when the houses are rebuilt.
As the reader casually turns over the pages of this book, he cannot
fail to be struck by the variety of objects which have been represented
on the signs. Many of these may be considered as marks of ownership,
and the crests and coats of arms of the City Companies are frequently
found as signs.
In connection with the æsthetic revival there has been a considerable
reappearance of signs in different parts of London, mostly of artistic
ironwork; but although this helps to relieve the dull monotony of
many streets it is not a custom that would be popular if it became
universal. There can, however, be no objection to the more general
adoption of artistic sculpture on the fronts of houses. When an old
house is rebuilt, its story (if it have a story) may with advantage be
graphically represented on the front of the new one. This has been done
in some cases, and an extension of the custom would add to the beauty
of the streets, and increase the interest of the passer-by in the
almost forgotten history of his own town.
It is a satisfactory thing that the relics of former fashions of
decoration should be registered for the information of those who desire
to keep themselves in touch with the history of the past. Even in this
materialistic age there are many who love to live in imagination in a
former age, and a sculptured sign or inscription on an old house will
often help them to do this.
For centuries London was remarkable for its gardens, but this has
been changed at the end of the nineteenth century. Considering the
great value of land in ‘the City,’ I suppose it cannot be a matter of
surprise that almost every bit of garden or green place has been swept
out of existence, but I think every lover of London will sympathize
with the protest against this tendency which concludes Mr. Norman’s
book.
I do not, however, wish to keep the reader longer from learning what
the author has to say, and I will only add that this volume will form
a most useful and agreeable addition to the extensive literature which
is gradually growing up in connection with the ever-increasing world of
houses and men which is known as London.
HENRY B. WHEATLEY.
OPPIDANS ROAD, N.W.,
_March_, 1893.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_AUTHOR’S PREFACE._
UNTIL the beginning of this century, I may almost say till the
development of our railway system some fifty years ago, though
London was continually spreading in all directions, its heart--the
City--remained very much as Wren had left it. Here many a well-to-do
trader was content to dwell in the substantial house in which his
business was carried on, and to pray in the neighbouring parish church
where his father had prayed before him. Now the church has, likely
enough, disappeared, the monuments of his ancestors are bundled
off no one knows where; perhaps the very street in which he lived
is changed out of all power of recognition. In short, to meet our
modern requirements, the City has become a mere mass of offices,
warehouses, and gigantic railway-stations, whence issue each morning
myriads of human beings who spend the day in struggling for wealth
or a livelihood, and at night return to their homes, which are spread
over an area some sixty miles in diameter, leaving the centre to be
protected by a few porters and caretakers. The decrease in the resident
population has now extended a considerable distance west.
To the observing eye, however, traces of a former state of things
are still to be seen, not only in important buildings such as the
City halls, the parish churches and the old merchants’ houses still
existing; but in objects less conspicuous, for instance, the sculptured
house and street signs which came into fashion after the Great Fire.
These have no little artistic merit, and almost all are interesting
from their associations. The greater part of my book is devoted to a
careful description of such signs; not only the existing ones, but
all of which I can find any mention. This description I have tried to
make as complete as possible, and I have allowed myself some latitude,
recording not only facts which appeared to me of interest concerning
the particular house, court, or alley to which the sign belonged,
but also its probable origin, and any story or legend that might be
connected with it.
Sculptured signs are often heraldic, and from them the transition is
natural to still existing crests and coats of arms carved on buildings
in various parts of the town. A cognate subject is that of old dates
and inscriptions, suggestive as they are of the former ownership of
property, of changes in the names of streets, sometimes even giving us
glimpses of family history; as in the inscription to Denzil Lord Holles.
My researches naturally led me into the Guildhall Museum, where the
need of a suitable catalogue (soon, I hear, to be supplied), induced me
to put together a few suggestive notes on the curiosities relating to
London which there find a home. I have added a short account of some
half dozen of the painted signs still existing in the Metropolis which
seemed to have more than common interest.
I have already referred to the extraordinary decrease of City
inhabitants. On the other hand, in outlying districts the converse
process has taken place. The little towns and villages of three hundred
years ago, then some distance from London, and numbering among their
inhabitants people of high birth unconnected with trade, became by
degrees half rural suburbs, where well-to-do citizens sought amusement
and repose. Folks of this class have now gone further afield, and for
many years the speculative builder has been at work, providing for a
humbler and far more numerous population. The space is covered with
miles upon miles of dull monotonous streets; pleasant gardens have
disappeared, hills are levelled, valleys filled up, wells choked, the
clear streams turned into sewers, nothing remaining to remind us of
what has gone before except the names, and here and there an old house,
a carving or inscription. The existence of a few of these mementoes has
attracted me to Islington and Clerkenwell, and must be my excuse for
describing in detail several of the spas and places of entertainment
with which in the eighteenth century this region abounded. Thence I
make my way back to the City, and while exploring the picturesque
districts of Great St. Helen’s and Austin Friars, I give an account of
two remarkable old City mansions lately destroyed, which may fairly
claim a place; for one was distinguished by an elaborate coat of arms,
and the other by an interesting date and initials. This latter was of
no small architectural merit, while both were the homes of eminent
citizens.
Perhaps I should add that the subject of sculptured signs has been
briefly treated by me in the pages of the _Antiquary_, and that for
the _English Illustrated Magazine_, of Christmas, 1891, I wrote and
illustrated an article on old City mansions, including those which are
here more completely described.
In the course of the text I have indicated sources of information, and
have acknowledged help from several good friends. I wish here in an
especial manner to thank Mr. Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A. As I am indebted
to him for an introduction to this volume, it would perhaps not be
becoming to dwell over-much on the merits of his great work, ‘London
Past and Present,’ based on Peter Cunningham’s Handbook; I find myself
constantly referring to it, and always with advantage. Lord Tennyson
has kindly allowed me to quote four lines dictated by his illustrious
father, which have not before appeared in print.
The illustrations I venture to commend, for few of them are the work of
my hand. They have at least one great merit, that of being scrupulously
accurate.
Allusion is made in the text to Mr. Tarbolton’s valuable contribution.
There is a fine drawing by Mr. F. E. Cox; while Mr. E. M. Cox
contributes a whole series, the merits of which speak for themselves.
The Three Kings, the Bell, and the Boar’s Head may be named as
specimens. Mr. Fletcher did the charming little sketch of an
inscription formerly over the entrance to Bagnigge Wells, with its
grotesque head; and the editors of the _Strand Magazine_ and the
_Builder_ have allowed me the use of blocks from their respective
publications.
In conclusion, let me express a hope that the kind reader will not
class this volume in the category of ‘books which are no books,’ as
Charles Lamb puts it, or even as one ‘which no gentleman’s library
should be without,’ but that he will find here some useful and curious
information, put together in a form sufficiently agreeable to make him
wish for more.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
HUMAN SIGNS 1
CHAPTER II.
THREE KINGS--ASTRONOMICAL SIGNS 26
CHAPTER III.
ANIMALS REAL AND IMAGINARY 46
CHAPTER IV.
ANIMALS REAL AND IMAGINARY (_continued_) 67
CHAPTER V.
BIRDS AND OTHER SCULPTURED SIGNS 89
CHAPTER VI.
VARIOUS CRESTS AND COATS OF ARMS 121
CHAPTER VII.
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS, DATES, AND INSCRIPTIONS, ETC. 156
CHAPTER VIII.
A FEW SUBURBAN SPAS 180
CHAPTER IX.
TWO OLD CITY MANSIONS 200
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
FISH SHOP IN CHEYNE WALK _frontispiece_
BOY AND PANYER, PANYER ALLEY 4
NAKED BOY, PIE CORNER 8
THREE KINGS, LAMBETH HILL 27
HALF MOON, HIGH STREET, SOUTHWARK 41
HALF MOON, HOLYWELL STREET 45
BOAR’S HEAD, EASTCHEAP 51
DOG AND DUCK, ST. GEORGE’S FIELDS, SOUTHWARK 67
MARKS FOUND ON OLD LONDON BRIDGE 73
HARE AND SUN, HIGH STREET, SOUTHWARK 78
COCK AND SNAKES, CHURCH STREET, CHELSEA 89
COCK, FLEET STREET 103
BELL, KNIGHTRIDER STREET 108
FEATHERS, ST. PAUL’S CHURCHYARD 111
MITRE, HATTON GARDEN 116
LEOPARD, BUDGE ROW 125
ROYAL ARMS, NEWCOMEN STREET, SOUTHWARK 136
INSCRIPTION, DENZELL STREET 150
TABLET, GREAT JAMES STREET 163
TABLET, MOUNT PLEASANT 164
TABLET, UNION STREET, SOUTHWARK 165
TABLET, WALBROOK 166
INSCRIPTION, KING’S CROSS ROAD 195
NOS. 8 AND 9 GREAT ST. HELEN’S 201
PART OF THE OLD HOUSE IN GREAT ST. HELEN’S,
FROM A MEASURED DRAWING 204
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_SIGNS AND INSCRIPTIONS OF HISTORIC LONDON._
CHAPTER I.
HUMAN SIGNS.
‘Be sure observe the signs, for signs remain
Like faithful landmarks to the walking train.’
GAY: _Trivia_.
UNTIL the early part of the eighteenth century, when the plan of
numbering came into vogue, not only inns and taverns, but shops and
other houses, were distinguished by signs. The wholesale traders,
indeed, were as a rule sufficiently well known not to require this
distinctive mark. In the ‘Little London Directory’ for the year
1677--the oldest printed list of the kind--hardly any of the merchants
have signs. The reverse is the case with the bankers, who, as
‘goldsmiths that keep running cashes,’ had then hardly emerged from
the shopkeeper class. Nevertheless, signs were exceedingly common; on
the rebuilding of the city, immediately after the Great Fire, many of
them, instead of being painted and hung out--though this continued to
be the more usual method--were carved in stone and built into the plain
brick fronts of the new houses, generally above or below a first-floor
window. In some cases also, the name of a court or alley was thus
indicated--a useful method when a large number of the population could
neither read nor write. It is curious that signs of a very similar
description were used by the Romans; for instance, the well-known
terra-cotta bas-relief of two men carrying an amphora, and a figure
of a goat, both found at Pompeii; the former almost identical in
design with our conventional representation of the Two Brewers. These,
however, were cast in a mould which was probably used again and again.
They therefore, perhaps, indicated a trade rather than a particular
house; like our modern pawnbrokers’, tobacconists’, and gold-beaters’
signs. I shall presently call attention to a London seventeenth-century
sign repeated in the same way.
Our plan seems to have been adopted from the Continent, where many
stone signs are still to be found. They are commonest in Holland and
the Low Countries. Here, perhaps ever since the Roman occupation,
certainly since the days of Charlemagne, brick has been the usual
building material, for it must have been that which was most easily
available. Fortunately many of the old Dutch houses still survive; they
hang together with wonderful pertinacity in spite of bad foundations,
and beautiful specimens of picturesque architecture they are, with
their step gables and stone ornamentation. The Dutch signs are often
spirited and elaborate in design; they are to be found of all ages from
about the year 1550 till near the end of the eighteenth century, but
as might be expected, the earlier ones, which are often historical,
are the best. They were placed like those in London, and generally had
an ornamental border. Sometimes in place of a sign there was a pious
distich or inscription, sometimes merely a date. A capital book on
Dutch signs by J. Van Lennep and J. Ter Gouw has lately been published.
Many of these signs from buildings now destroyed are to be seen in an
annexe of the fine modern picture-gallery in Amsterdam. I am glad to
say that our City authorities have shown a like respect for similar
relics of old London, and some interesting specimens have found a home
in the Guildhall Museum. Others have disappeared, and a certain number
are still more or less in their original positions.
[Illustration]
In the following pages I shall try to describe all the London
sculptured signs of which we have any record; for convenience I have
classified them, and naturally begin with those in which human beings
are represented. One of the most interesting and best known is the sign
of the Boy and Panyer, which is still to be seen, its base resting on
the ground, and let into the wall between two houses on the eastern
side of Panyer Alley, a narrow passage leading from Paternoster Row
to Newgate Street. It represents a naked boy seated on a pannier or
basket, and holding what, in Strype’s time, appeared to be a bunch of
grapes between his hand and foot, ‘in token perhaps of plenty,’ as he
suggests. Within an ornamental border, apparently on a separate stone
below, is the following inscription:
‘When ye have sought the Citty round,
Yet still this is the highest ground.
_August the_ 27, 1688.’
Height fifty-two inches, breadth in the broadest part twenty-six
inches. It is now much dilapidated, and seems to be in some danger of
destruction, for one of the houses against which it stands is shortly
to be pulled down.[1] However, I am assured that proper steps will be
taken for its preservation. The property belongs by right to the parish
of St. Michael-le-Querne, having been left in 1620 by Sir John Leman
and Cornelius Fishe for parochial uses, but it is now handed over to
the Trustees of City Parochial Charities.
The sign no doubt dates from after the Great Fire; it seems, however,
to represent a previous one. Stow, writing in 1598, says that Panyer
Alley was ‘so called of such a sign,’ and confirming his statement,
a Panyer, Paternoster Row, appears in a list of taverns of about the
year 1430, which Mr. Charles Welch, F.S.A., lately discovered among the
documents of the Brewers’ Company, the landlord, John Ives, having been
a member of that company. From ‘Liber Albus,’ which relates to the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, one learns that in those days the
sale of bread was not allowed to take place in the bakers’ houses, but
only in the King’s markets. It was sold in bread-baskets or ‘panyers,’
and, the coarser kinds at any rate, occasionally in boxes or hutches.
Mr. H. T. Riley in his introduction to ‘Liber Albus’ (p. lxviii.)
stated it as his opinion that the child is handing out a loaf, and
that at a period somewhat later than the date of that volume (1419)
Panyer Alley was noted as a standing place for bakers’ boys with their
panniers. If, as seems not unlikely, this was the case, the sign would
be similar to the Baker and Basket, still existing in Whitechapel and
in Finsbury. Another idea--that the pannier is in point of fact a
fruit-basket--seems to arise from Strype’s statement that the boy has
in his hand a bunch of grapes. Fruit and vegetables were doubtless
landed from the river in the neighbourhood of St. Paul’s. Porters
carrying such produce may have passed through, and rested themselves in
this short passage on their way to Newgate Market, which, originally
for corn and meal, was after the Fire used for poultry, fruit, and
vegetables,[2] before it became exclusively a meat market.
Mr. Kerslake, in a passage since referred to with approval by Professor
Earle in his work on ‘Land Charters and Saxonic Documents’ (1888),
tries to connect the sign with a far more remote antiquity. He argues
that it may have been placed there to transmit the tradition of a
wheatmaund-stone (maund being a basket or pannier), mentioned in a
grant of King Alfred, A.D. 889, which indicated the site of the ancient
corn market, and was, in point of fact, a place where a porter carrying
a load of wheat could rest it, or the base of a market cross.[3] It
seems that the question of a town house for the Bishop of the Mercians
having come before Alfred, he gave to Bishop Werfrith a mansion or
court, ‘æt hwæt mundes stane’--thus it is spelt in the document--and
probably granted him a toll on the neighbouring market. I am not aware
of any further evidence in support of this theory.
The church of St. Michael-le-Querne, ad Bladum, or at the Corne, which
was destroyed in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt, stood close to Panyer
Alley, at the extreme end of Paternoster Row, and Stow says it was so
called ‘because in place thereof was sometime a corn market, stretching
by west to the shambles.’ The Rev. W. J. Loftie tells us that at
present the sign of the Boy and Panyer is not on the highest point in
the City, being fifty-nine feet, while the site of the Standard in
Cornhill is sixty feet above sea-level. Certainly it is not on the
highest point of Panyer Alley. A writer in _Notes and Queries_ has
lately suggested that the highest point in the City was at or near
Leadenhall Market, or the chancel of the primitive St. Peter’s Church
on Cornhill.
[Illustration]
A statuette, also representing a naked boy, not sculptured in stone,
but carved in wood, is placed on a pedestal affixed to the wall of a
public-house, at the corner of Giltspur Street and Cock Lane, called
the Fortune of War. The spot was commonly known as Pie Corner: it is
hardly necessary to add that here ended the Great Fire of London. The
figure in question was put up after that event; an engraving of it in
Pennant’s account of London shows the following inscription on the
breast and arms:
‘This boy is in Memory Put up for the late Fire of London, occasioned
by the Sin of Gluttony, 1666.’
Burn tells us that its propriety was on one occasion thus supported by
a Nonconformist preacher on the anniversary of the Fire. He asserted
that the calamity could not be occasioned by the sin of blasphemy, for
in that case it would have begun in Billingsgate; nor lewdness, for
then Drury Lane would have been first on fire; nor lying, for then the
flames had reached them from Westminster Hall. ‘No, my beloved; it was
occasioned by the sin of gluttony, for it began at Pudding Lane and
ended at Pie Corner.’
The inscription has long been obliterated, and no trace is to be
seen of the little wings with which, in Pennant’s illustration, the
boy is furnished; in 1816, however, they were still conspicuous, and
were painted bright yellow. In that curious work--the ‘Vade-Mecum
for Malt-worms’--which was written about the year 1715, the Fortune
of War is mentioned as a well-known tavern. Within the memory of
man it had the unpleasing reputation of being a house of call for
resurrectionists, who supplied the surgeons of St. Bartholomew’s
Hospital with subjects for dissection. It was here that John Bishop,
the body-snatcher, met his accomplice Williams, before the murder of
the Italian boy Ferrari, for which and similar crimes they were hanged
in 1831.
Our quaint old chronicler, John Stow, says that Pie Corner was ‘a
place so called of such a sign, sometime a fair inn for receipt of
travellers, but now divided into tenements.’ Strype in 1720 describes
it as noted chiefly for ‘Cooks’ Shops and Pigs drest there during
Bartholomew Fair.’ There are several allusions to it in Ben Jonson’s
‘Alchemist’ and other plays. The sign of the Pie probably implied
the bird now usually called a magpie, but it might have been derived
from the Pye,[4] or rules for finding out the service of the day in
the Roman Breviary, or from the good cheer provided in this immediate
neighbourhood. Larwood and Hotten mention a stone sign of a Naked Boy
with the date 1633 at Skipton-in-Craven.
A stone bas-relief of that mythical person, Guy, Earl of Warwick, is
still preserved on a house at the corner of Warwick Lane and Newgate
Street. The figure is represented standing on a pedestal in chain
armour, with a conical helmet, a sword in his right hand, and on his
left arm a shield chequy, or and azure, with a bend sinister ermine.
This seems to be wrongly copied from Guy’s shield in the Rows Roll,
which has a chevron ermine, but one arm of the chevron is, from the
position of the shield, so foreshortened that it can hardly be seen;
hence the mistake. Above is the date 1668, on one side the letters
G. C., standing, I suppose, for GUIDO COMES; on the other a coat of
arms, three mascles on a bend, to whom belonging I cannot say, so many
families have this charge. Below is the inscription: ‘Restored 1817. J.
Deakes, Archt.’
The general design somewhat resembles that of a large figure in the
chapel of St. Mary Magdalen at Guy’s Cliff, near Warwick, which, as we
learn from a modern inscription in Latin, was hewn out of the living
rock by order of Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, in the reign
of Henry VI., to mark the spot where Guy was thought to have ended
his days. This Richard de Beauchamp obtained license to found here
a chantry for two priests, and annexed land thereto to the value of
twenty-four marks per annum. It had before been a hermitage. Stow tells
us that ‘Eldernesse lane, which stretcheth north to the high street
of Newgate market, is now called Warwicke lane, of an ancient house
there, built by an Earl of Warwicke, and since called Warwicke Inn.’
Elsewhere he says: ‘In the 36th of Henry VI. the greater estates of
the realm being called up to London, Richard Nevill Earl of Warwick
came with six hundred men all in jackets embroidered with ragged staves
before and behind, and was lodged in Warwicke Lane, in whose house
there were oftentimes six oxen eaten at breakfast, and every tavern
was full of his meat, for he that had any acquaintance in that house
might have there so much of sodden and roast meat as he could prick and
carry away upon a long dagger.’ At the beginning of this century the
house to which the statuette belonged was occupied by a Mr. Parry; an
inscription over the door stated that it had been a tobacconist’s shop
since 1660, no doubt rebuilt.
A well-modelled bas-relief of a woman’s head, probably intended to
represent Minerva, is on a house belonging to the Leathersellers’
Company, at the corner of Old Jewry and Gresham Street. She has
a helmet or diadem, and on her breast the Gorgon’s head; an ægis
also seems to be suggested. On each side are festoons of fruit and
flowers; the material I believe to be terra-cotta, but it is so thickly
coated with paint that one cannot be sure. Archer, who drew this
sign, thought it was a fragment of sculpture from a building of the
early part of the sixteenth century, and it seems to have something
in common with Italian terra-cotta work of that period; for instance
the medallions[5] executed by Joannes Maiano for Cardinal Wolsey, and
still existing at Hampton Court. Before the house was modernized, on
the brick wall, below the head of Minerva, there was a carving of
the Leathersellers’ Arms; and so, being used as a tavern during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, until 1871 it was known by the
sign of the Leathersellers’ Arms, or latterly the Three Bucks’ Heads.
Of the sculptured head of Minerva no record exists. This property seems
to have belonged to the Leathersellers’ Company ever since the year
1565, when Edward Taylor, who had been its master, left by will to the
company two messuages in St. Olave’s, Jewry, to distribute among the
poorest people in the Poultry Compter a kilderkin of beer and twelve
pennyworth of bread, and the same to Wood Street Compter, Newgate, the
Fleet, King’s Bench, and the Marshalsea. In 1878 all arrears of these
payments to each prison at £1 1s. per quarter, viz. for a kilderkin of
beer £1, and for bread 1s., having been paid to this date, and the full
payment being £25 4s. a year, the company transferred to the official
trustees of charities stock sufficient to produce that amount. The name
of Cateaton Street was in 1845 changed to Gresham Street, no one knows
why. Here, in the days of John Taylor the water-poet, there was an
important inn called the Maidenhead, but this, I imagine, had for its
sign the arms of the Mercers’ Company, whose headquarters were in its
immediate neighbourhood. Later a seventeenth-century trade token was
issued from the Roxalana’s Head in Cateaton Street, the sign no doubt
commemorating Elizabeth Davenport the actress, whose favourite part
was Roxalana in the ‘Siege of Rhodes.’ Her sham marriage with the last
Earl of Oxford of the de Vere family, who deceived her by disguising a
trumpeter of his troop as a priest, is told in ‘Gramont,’ and in the
‘Countess Dunois’ Memoirs.’ Pepys saw her in 166⅔, in the chief box at
the Duke’s theatre, ‘in a velvet gown, as the fashion is, looking very
handsome.’
The Woman’s Head, dated 1671, which was on a house in Paternoster Row,
and has been lately added to the Guildhall Museum, was hardly a sign.
Similar heads are still on the keys of a first and second floor window
belonging to the old-fashioned house of Messrs. W. and R. Chambers,
47, Paternoster Row. Another bas-relief in the Guildhall Museum
represents a gardener holding a spade in his right hand, with the date
1670; it is rudely designed. This is a street rather than a house
sign; as late as the year 1856 it was in Gardiner’s Lane, Upper Thames
Street, near Broken Wharf. Mr. J. T. Smith, who drew it, in 1791,
for his ‘Antiquities of London,’ adds this description: ‘Against Mr.
Holyland’s stables, Gardiner’s Lane, the corner of High Timber Street,
is this sculpture, but why put up I cannot learn. Tradition says the
site was once gardens.’ Perhaps it was a rebus on the name of Gardiner.
Two bas-reliefs of St. George and the Dragon were erected as signs
in London soon after the Great Fire, and, on the principle _Detur
digniori_, should be described in this chapter. It was only natural
that the figure of St. George should become one of our most popular inn
signs; for he was regarded as the patron saint and special protector of
this our realm of England. Shakespeare speaks of
‘St. George that swindg’d the Dragon, and e’er since
Sits on his horseback at mine hostess’ door.’
‘King John,’ Act i., Scene I.
A capital specimen of such a sign, though unfortunately in bad
condition, is at the Guildhall Museum--presented by Mr. W. Hayward,
C.E. It came from a house--81, Snow Hill--which had formed part of
a famous old galleried inn. Snow Hill was the thoroughfare between
Holborn and the City, till in 1802 it was superseded by Skinner Street,
named after Alderman Skinner, which has now in its turn ceased to
exist. Snow Hill is called in Stow’s ‘Survey’ Snor or Snore Hill, and
by Howell Sore Hill, perhaps from the steepness and difficulty of the
ascent. Strype, in 1720, speaks of the George Inn as ‘very large and of
a considerable trade, the passage to the yard being through Cow Lane.’
In Sampson’s ‘History of Advertising,’ an advertisement is given from
the _British Chronicle_ of January 18 to 20, 1762, which informs us that
THE READING MACHINE
Is removed from the Three Kings, Piccadilly, to the George
Inn, Snow Hill, London; sets out from the Broad Face,[6]
Reading, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, at seven
o’clock in the morning, and from the George Inn,
Snow Hill, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday,
at seven o’clock in the morning; carries passengers to
And from Reading, at 6s. each; children in lap
and outside passengers at 3s.
Performed by {Thomas Moore and
{Richard Mapleton.
N.B.--Takes no charge of Writings, Money, Watches, or Jewels, unless
entered and paid for as such.
A second representation of the subject of the George and Dragon was
formerly to be seen on Bennet Hill, opposite the Heralds’ College, and
stood over the entrance to a small court, to which it gave a name. On
it were the initials P R M, and date 1667. In ‘Remarks on London,’ by
W. Stow, 1722, mention is made of ‘George Court, against the Heralds’
Office at Paul’s Chain.’ The ‘Constitutions of the Order of the
Garter’ (c. iii.) ordain that ‘the Sovereign shall put upon his (the
knight elect’s) neck a collar, or little chain or lace, having pendant
therefrom a massive golden image of an armed knight (_i.e._, St.
George) sitting on horseback.’
A relic of a most interesting old building is the figure of Gerard the
Giant,[7] ‘carved from a twisted block of timber, distorted and ill
at ease,’ which stood in the niche between the first-floor windows of
Gerard’s Hall Hotel, on the south side of Basing Lane. It is about 6
feet high, and painted more or less to imitate life. Gerard’s Hall is
described by Stow as ‘one great house, of old time built upon arched
vaults, with gates of stone from Caen in Normandy. The same is now a
common hostrey for receipt of travellers, commonly and corruptly called
Gerrardes Hall, of a giant said to have dwelt there. In the high-roofed
hall of this house sometime stood a large fir pole, which reached to
the roof thereof, and was said to be one of the staves that Gerrarde
the giant used in the wars to run withal.--John Gisors, mayor of London
in the year 1245, was owner thereof, and Sir John Gisors, mayor and
constable of the Tower 1311, and divers others of that name and family
since that time, owned it.--So it appeareth that this Gisor’s Hall,
of late time by corruption, hath been called Gerrard’s Hall.’ The
upper part of the building was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666,
but the crypt remained,[8] and on this was built a brick house, with
no remarkable feature except the above-named grotesque wooden figure,
by way of sign. This house was destroyed in April, 1852, when the
new Cannon Street was being formed. For some months the crypt--a fine
specimen of thirteenth-century Gothic--continued in existence; but as
the crown of the arched roof stood 2 feet or more above the roadway,
it was also pulled down. Mr. Wheatley tells us that the stones were
carefully numbered, and presented to the Crystal Palace Company, with
a view to its re-erection. After a time, however, they were used in
making the foundations for a new engine-house. Some of the stones are
even said to have found their way to Kensington, to be broken up for
mending the roads. There is a good view of the crypt of Gerard’s Hall
in Burn’s ‘Catalogue to the Beaufoy Trade Tokens,’ and a descriptive
article in the _Builder_ for April 10, 1852, which also gives drawings
of several devices of the nature of merchants’ marks, and an unfinished
inscription, cut on the wall of the entrance.
A curious sculptured sign, representing King Charles I.’s gigantic
porter and dwarf, used to stand over the entrance to Bull Head Court,
Newgate Street, but disappeared some years ago on the widening of King
Edward Street, formerly Butcher Hall Lane. This part of Newgate Street
was in Strype’s time named Blowbladder Street, and before that Stinking
Lane, on account of the smell which arose from slaughter-houses and
poultry-shops there. Pennant has an illustration of the sign, but
wrongly describes it as being over Bagnio Court, farther east, which
was afterwards Bath Street, and has now been ridiculously called Roman
Bath Street, though the ‘Royal Bagnio,’ whence the court derived its
name, was not erected till 1679. The house to which the bas-relief
belonged was No. 80, occupied in 1816 by Mr. Payne, a hatter; at that
time the figures were painted, their coats being red, the King’s
livery, and their waistcoats white. Not unlikely, the sign may still be
in existence.
The two persons represented were William Evans and Jefferey Hudson.
Evans, the porter, a Monmouth man, was 7 feet 6 inches high. On one
occasion, at a Court masque, he drew the dwarf out of his pocket, ‘to
the amazement and amusement of all present.’ There is an allusion to
him in the contemporary ballad of ‘The Little Barleycorn.’ Jefferey
Hudson, the dwarf, was born at Oakham, Rutland, in 1619. His father,
a butcher, kept and baited bulls for George Villiers, first Duke of
Buckingham. At nine years of age he was scarcely 18 inches high, and,
according to Fuller, ‘without any deformity, wholly proportionable.’
Having entered the service of the Duchess of Buckingham, at an
entertainment given by her husband to Charles I. and Henrietta Maria,
he was brought to table concealed in a large pie, from which he
emerged before the company. The Queen took a fancy to him, so he became
her page, and in 1630 was sent to France to fetch a midwife for his
royal mistress, but fell into the hands of a Flemish pirate, and was
taken to Dunkirk. By this misfortune he was said to have lost about
£2,500. Sir William Davenant makes a supposed combat between the dwarf
and a turkey-cock the subject of a burlesque poem called ‘Jeffreidos,’
published in 1638, the scene of which is laid at Dunkirk. How Hudson
bore the insult is not recorded; but we shall see that he was quite
capable of holding his own. During the Civil Wars the dwarf appears to
have been a captain of horse, and he followed the Queen into exile.
One of his adventures in France is referred to by Sir Walter Scott in
‘ Peveril of the Peak.’ This was his duel with Crofts, a young gentleman
of the Court, who had provoked him. The duel was fought on horseback
with pistols. Crofts came on the ground armed with a syringe only; but
a more serious weapon being substituted, he was killed at the first
discharge. It seems to have been later that Hudson was again taken
prisoner at sea, this time by Turkish pirates, and brought to Barbary,
where he was sold as a slave. He asserted that his sufferings in
captivity made him grow taller. After many vicissitudes he found his
way back to England, probably before the year 1658. In 1679, being a
Roman Catholic, he was confined in the Gatehouse at Westminster, for
supposed complicity with the Popish Plot. Mr. Inchbold points out, in
the ‘Dictionary of National Biography,’ that he did not die there,
as Scott and others have affirmed; for, ‘in June, 1680, and April,
1681, “Captain” Jefferey Hudson received respectively £50 and £20 from
Charles II.’s secret service fund.’ He died in 1682. Three portraits of
him were painted by Mytens, and he also figures in a portrait of Queen
Henrietta Maria, by Vandyke, at Petworth. His waistcoat, breeches and
stockings are, it is said, preserved.
The sculptured stone sign of the Three Morris Dancers was formerly
in front of a public-house numbered 36, Old Change, which is said to
have been pulled down about the year 1801. An illustration of the
sign exists: the central figure is a woman. A seventeenth-century
trade-token issued from here reads thus:
_O._ IOHN.LISLE.AT.THE = Three Morris Dancers.
_R._ IN.Y^E OLD.CHANGE = I.A.L.
The word ‘morris’ is derived from the Spanish ‘morisco,’ and is
equivalent to Moorish. The Morris or Moorish pike was a weapon much
used in England in the reign of Henry VIII.; Shakespeare refers to it
in the ‘Comedy of Errors,’ Act iv., Scene 3. Elsewhere he uses the word
in its commoner sense; thus, in ‘All’s Well that Ends Well’ he speaks
of a morris for May Day, and in ‘King Henry V.,’ Act ii., Scene 4, the
Dauphin is made to say:
‘And let us do it with no sign of fear;
No, with no more than if we heard that England
Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance.’
According to Brand, the Spanish morris was danced at puppet shows by
a person habited like a Moor. Strutt, in his ‘Sports and Pastimes
of the English People,’ connects it with the fandango. Some curious
dancing figures carved in wood once formed part of the decorations in
the mediæval town-hall of Munich; the series was known as the Maurscha
tanntz. In England the dance derived from the Moors seems to have
been grafted on to the rustic May games and sports, which perhaps
were falling into disuse. The characters in the English morris-dance
were usually Maid Marian (a boy dressed up in girl’s clothes), Robin
Hood, Friar Tuck, the Fool, Tom the piper with pipe and tabor, and the
hobby-horse. A rare pamphlet[9] of 1609 tells us about a morris-dance
in Herefordshire, where the united ages of the twelve dancers were
supposed to amount to twelve hundred years; but, unfortunately, it
does not give details of the performance. Waldron, in his edition
of the ‘Sad Shepherd,’ 1783, p. 255, mentions seeing a company of
morris-dancers from Abington, at Richmond in Surrey, in the summer of
1783. They appeared to be making a kind of annual circuit. Even so late
as the time of the Queen’s coronation, there was morris-dancing of a
kind in Hyde Park, as recorded by a writer in _Notes and Queries_.
One still sees occasionally on May Day, in the less-frequented streets
of London, a dance performed by two or three sweeps to the sound of
fife and drum. They are dressed fantastically; one of them is, as a
rule, half concealed in a frame covered with leaves and flowers, and
is called a Jack-in-the-green. They are generally accompanied by a
woman. These may be considered to a certain extent descendants of the
morris-dancers, and their black faces happen to carry out the old idea.
Over the doorway of No. 13, Clare Street, at the corner of Vere Street,
Clare Market, is a stone sign carved in low relief, which represents
Two Negroes’ heads facing each other, with the date 1715 and initials
W S M. The house is occupied by a baker; its destruction is imminent,
should Government adopt the plan of the London County Council for
a new street from the Strand to Holborn. The neighbourhood is now
squalid, and many of the buildings have lately been cleared away, but
we know that in the seventeenth century it was well inhabited. I may
remark, as a curious coincidence, that the continuation of Clare Street
towards Drury Lane is called Blackmoor--in old maps Blackamore--Street.
Seventeenth-century trade-tokens with signs of negro heads are in
existence; one was issued from Drury Lane, and is thus described by
Boyne:
_O._ THOMAS.HAYTON.IN.DRVRY = A negro’s head.
_R._ LANE.HIS.HALFE.PENNY = An arched crown.
The following advertisement, which appeared in a _London Gazette_ for
1695, has a distinctly local flavour:
‘A Black boy, an Indian, about thirteen years old, run away the
8th instant from Putney, with a collar about his neck, with this
inscription: “The Lady Bromfield’s black, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.”’
Black attendants were common in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. In more than one celebrated portrait a black boy serves
to enhance the charm of a fair lady’s complexion. Sir John Hawkins,
after his voyage of 1564, which was partly for slave-trading purposes,
was authorized to have as his crest the half-length figure of a negro
prisoner called heraldically a demi-Moor, bound and captive. The Black
Boy was a frequent tobacconists’ sign, still sometimes seen.
[Illustration]