MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS, DATES, AND INSCRIPTIONS, ETC.
‘Many things of worthy memory.’
SHAKESPEARE: _Taming of the Shrew_.
I SHALL close my account with a few miscellaneous signs and
inscriptions which I could not appropriately fit in elsewhere. Several
eminent banking firms carefully preserve the signs which were used by
them before their houses were numbered; but they have been so ably
described by Mr. Hilton Price and others, that little more need be
said. The Marygold is in the front shop of Messrs. Child and Co.’s
premises, Fleet Street; it is of oak, the ground stained green, with a
sun and a gilt border: the motto underneath is, ‘Ainsi mon âme.’ The
Three Squirrels of Messrs. Gosling are worked in iron and attached to
the bars which protect their central window, and the original sign of
copper is preserved in the front office. From Mr. Price I learn that
as early as the year 1684, and perhaps earlier, James Chambers kept
a goldsmith’s shop at the Three Squirrels over against St. Dunstan’s
Church, Fleet Street; and it is a curious fact that one family of
Chambers bears the three squirrels in its arms. Hoare’s Golden Bottle
hangs over the doorway of their banking-house. Sir Richard Colt Hoare
thought it was a barrel sign adopted by James Hore, of Cheapside,
because his father, Ralph, was a member of the Coopers’ Company. More
likely, however, it was a sign of the same description as the Black
Jack and the Leathern Bottle, of which a genuine specimen from the
corner of Charles Street, Leather Lane, has lately found its way into
the Guildhall Museum. Unfortunately, the Grasshopper--the old sign of
Messrs. Martin and Co., in Lombard Street--has not been preserved.
It was the crest of Sir Thomas Gresham, who is believed to have here
carried on his business. A most interesting history of the house has
lately been written by Mr. J. B. Martin, one of the partners. A quaint
and charming sign is the little carved figure of a naval officer taking
an observation--the Wooden Midshipman of Dombey and Son. He may still
be seen in the Minories, having migrated from Leadenhall Street some
years ago. Not long since the owners sent him for change of air to the
Naval Exhibition. The figure and its associations form the subject of
a capital paper by Mr. J. Ashby-Sterry in _All the Year Round_ for
October 29, 1881.
At the corner of Charlotte Street and the Blackfriars Road there is a
figure of a dog overturning a three-legged iron pot, in its eagerness
to get at the contents; this is the sign of a wholesale ironmonger’s
establishment said to date from 1783. The Dog’s Head in the Pot, as
it is called, seems, of late years at any rate, to have been usually
adopted by members of this trade, because the vessel represented is of
iron. The sign is said to indicate a dirty, slovenly housewife. Larwood
and Hotten mention a coarse woodcut of the beginning of last century
(to judge from the costumes, copied from an older original) which
represents two old women in a disorderly room or kitchen. One of them
wipes a plate with the bushy tail of a large dog whose head is buried
in a pot. Under it are the lines:
‘All sluts behold, take view of me,
Your own good husbandry to see.’
A Dutch saying, to anyone late for dinner, is that he will find the dog
in the pot; in other words, that the remains of the dinner have been
handed over to the dog to finish.
The Dog’s Head in the Pot is a very old London sign, being mentioned
in a tract from the press of Wynkyn de Worde called ‘Cocke Lorell’s
Bote.’ The person who dwelt at this sign was therein described as
‘Annys Angry with the croked buttock--by her crafte a breche maker.’
A later notice occurs in the will (dated September 3, 1563) of Thomas
Johnson, citizen and haberdasher, of London, who gave £13 4s. annually
to the highways between Barkway and Dog’s Head in the Pot, otherwise
called ‘Horemayd,’ probably a house of entertainment in the parish of
Great or Little Hormead, in Hertfordshire, by the side of the road
from Barkway to London. At a house in Westgate Street, Gloucester,
some beautifully carved Tudor panels have lately come to light. One
of them has on it a dog or leopard eating out of a three-legged pot.
A seventeenth-century trade-token, issued from Red Cross Street, and
another from Old Street, St. Luke’s, have the device of the Dog’s Head
in the Pot.
A medallion in plaster or terra-cotta, which looked as if it might
have been copied from a classical coin, was till lately to be seen on
the gable of a little fishmonger’s shop in Cheyne Walk. This, though
a humble specimen of its class, belonged to a style of decoration
once common. I have before me a view, dated 1792, of a house on Tower
Hill with similar medallions. Sometimes the heads of Roman Emperors
were thus placed, sometimes the cardinal virtues or other emblematic
figures. In the third edition of Stow, by Anthony Munday, occurs the
following passage, descriptive of Aldgate: ‘The old ruinous Gate being
taken downe, and order provided for a new foundation, divers very
ancient peeces of Romane coyne were found among the stones and rubbish,
which, as Mr. Martin Bond (a Worshipful Citizen, and one of the
Surveyors of the worke) told me, two of them (according to their true
forme and figure) he caused to be carved on stone, and fixed on eyther
side of the Gates Arch without, eastward.’ These coins were of the
Emperors Trajan and Diocletian. Martin Bond laid the foundation-stone
of the new gate in 1607. The little house in Cheyne Walk was formerly a
freehold with the right of pasturage on Chelsea Common; it was pulled
down in October, 1892. I have drawn it for the frontispiece of this
volume; the lower part appears in a delightful etching by Whistler,
called ‘The Fish-shop.’
One of the most interesting signs in existence belongs to my friend
Mr. F. Manley Sims. It does not, however, strictly belong to London,
having been brought from Poole some years ago; its earlier history
has yet to be discovered. This is a doctor’s signboard, excellently
carved, with figures in high relief. It is divided into compartments:
in the centre--more important than the rest--is the doctor himself, in
Jacobean costume, his potions ranged on shelves behind him; around, in
seven compartments, are represented various operations of surgery; and
below, in relief, appear the words from Ecclesiasticus, ‘Altissimus
creavit de terra medicynam et vir prudens non abhorebit illam.’ Anno
Domini 1623. There are traces of paint and gilding; the whole is
enclosed within an ornamental border, and has a highly decorative
effect.
Somewhat akin to the sculptured street signs are the tablets on which
are inscribed the names of the streets, and often the dates of their
building or completion. They have historical value where, as is not
unfrequently the case, they record a name now in danger of being
forgotten, and some of them are designed with a good deal of taste. So
many of these tablets remain that I shall not attempt a list, but shall
only mention a few good examples. One of the oldest is in Great Chapel
Street, Westminster, and is inscribed: ‘This is Chappeil Street, 1656.’
The following are instances of the inscriptions, which may help us to
make out the history of the streets. On a corner house at the east
side of Dering Street (late Union Street), Oxford Street, is a stone
inscribed, ‘Sheffield Street, 1721.’ Curiously enough, in Horwood’s
Map of 1799, and in another issued in 1800, the name is given as
Shepherd Street, so that here we have four changes in 170 years. On a
modern house at the south-east corner of Danvers Street, Cheyne Walk,
much of which is now cleared away, there is a stone, supported by
brackets, with a pediment which tells us that ‘This is Danvers Street,
begun in y^e year 1696 by Benjamin Stallwood.’ Danvers House, hard by,
was not pulled down till 1716. May’s Buildings, on the east side of
St. Martin’s Lane, have the name, and date 1739. Mr. J. T. Smith, in
‘Nollekens and his Times,’ tells us that they were built by Mr. May,
who ornamented the front of No. 43, St. Martin’s Lane, a few doors off,
where he resided. His house is still there; it has pretty cut brick
pilasters, and a cornice, and is now used as a restaurant. The archway
which leads into Sardinia Street, under one of the old houses on the
west side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, is inscribed above the keystone
on each side, ‘Duke Streete, 1648.’ This street was renamed in 1878,
after the chapel there, once belonging to the Sardinian minister, which
was demolished in the riots of June 2, 1780, but shortly afterwards
rebuilt, and is now known as the chapel of SS. Anselm and Cecilia. Here
Fanny Burney was married, in 1793, to General D’Arblay. A stone tablet,
which has on it ‘Nassau Street in Whettens Buildings, 1734,’ is still
to be seen at the south-west corner of Nassau Street. In Strype’s Map
of 1720 the ground here, facing Gerrard Street, is occupied by a large
mansion with a garden at the back, Nassau Street not being yet made.
Some of these tablets are well designed; a very nice example, though
not an early one, is placed above the first-floor of No. 16, Great
James Street, Bedford Row. It is an irregular convex shield, surrounded
by elaborate scroll-work of a style not uncommon about the time of its
erection, namely, in 1721. As a typical specimen it has been drawn for
this work. James Street, Haymarket, is also marked by a stone with
ornamental border, above a first-floor window of what is left of the
old Tennis Court, which is said to have been connected with the noted
Gaming House and Shaver’s Hall.
[Illustration]
The date on it--namely, 1673, indicates, I suppose, the year in which
the street was built or finished; Shaver’s Hall existed some time
previously. The Tennis Court ceased to be used in 1866, to the regret
of many. In the year 1887 the upper part was rebuilt; but from the
tablet downwards the original walls, though stuccoed over, remain. Mr.
Julian Marshall says that in this court Charles and the Duke of York
used frequently to play their favourite game, and that the house, No.
17, at the south-western corner of James’s Street and the Haymarket, is
said to have been that through which the royal brothers used to pass,
on their way to the Tennis Court.[77] It does not, however, appear that
there was any contemporary evidence connecting them with it.
[Illustration: From Mount Pleasant]
In the region called Mount Pleasant, Gray’s Inn Lane, not far from the
new thoroughfare Rosebery Avenue, there are two or three tablets of a
different kind. Near the west end, between Nos. 55 and 56, is a plain
square stone, with ‘DORRINGTON STREET 1720’ incised in Roman capitals.
This stone is in a brick frame, with moulded hood, and projects from
the frame about an inch and a half. Further east, on No. 41, nearly
opposite the site of the prison, are two more tablets; one, similar
to that just described, has ‘BAYNES STREET, 1737.’ Over this is a far
more elaborate example of cut or moulded brick, with a pediment. It
has the inscription ‘IN GOD IS ALL OUR TRUST,’ and below some marks or
signs in relief (one of which appears to be a T-square), with the date
1737. The motto is similar to that of the Brewers’ Company, and of the
Tylers’ and Bricklayers’ Company; with the latter I should think that
the builder or first possessor may have had some connection.
[Illustration]
This last, being a house and not a street tablet, reminds me that there
are scattered about here and there on the fronts of houses, initials
and dates which by judicious treatment are made quite decorative. One
of the prettiest was a little cut brick tablet on an old house--No.
164, Union Street, Southwark--lately destroyed, which had on it
beneath a pediment the initials W. H. in monogram, and the date 1701.
Again, in Walbrook, on the west side, is a tablet merely dated 1668,
with well-designed brackets and cornice. On a modern house--No. 4,
Tothill Street, Westminster--called in 1885 the Cock, now the Aquarium
Tavern, there is a stone on which are cut the date 1671, a heart-shaped
mark, and the initials E. T. A.
[Illustration: N^o 12 walbrook]
In 1850, when Peter Cunningham wrote his handbook, the old house was
yet standing; in it Thomas Southerne, the poet, had lodged, as pointed
out by Mr. Hutton in his ‘Literary Landmarks of London.’ The heart has
puzzled me; a similar mark was formerly on a house in Peter Street,
Westminster. Can it have been a parish mark? An undoubted device of
this kind appears on a house at the corner of West Street and Upper
St. Martin’s Lane, and consists of two ragged staves crossed, with the
date 1691, and the initials S. G. F., which indicate the parish of St.
Giles’s in the Fields. A mark of the parish of St. Bride’s, dated 1670,
is in Robin Hood Court, Shoe Lane. At the corner of Artillery Street,
Bishopsgate Without, and Sandys Row, soon to be improved away, there
is a flat stone having fastened on it a piece of iron, shaped like a
broad arrow, and below the date 1682. Is this a parish mark, or can
it have been connected in any way with the old artillery ground--the
Tassel Close of an earlier time, when crossbow-makers used here to
shoot at the popinjay? In Strype’s time ‘divers worthy citizens’ still
frequented it for martial exercise. Of greater historic interest are
the monogram of Henry VIII., the Tudor portcullis, and other devices
carved on the spandrels of the arches which are under the gatehouse of
St. James’s Palace.
A general description of the painted signboards of London has formed no
part of the scheme of this book, because much has already been written
on the subject, and it would be too extensive to treat satisfactorily
in the limited space at my command. It may, however, be useful to note
a few signs of this kind still _in situ_. The Running Footman, of which
there are two specimens in Hays Mews, Charles Street, Berkeley Square,
is particularly interesting on account of the costume, and because it
is a record of the days when carriages moved at little more than a
foot’s pace,[78] and there were no police to regulate the traffic. It
is supposed to date from about 1770. Such a servant as this would be
singularly out of place in modern London; but in the East, retainers of
the same kind, who run in front and clear the way, still naturally form
part of a great man’s equipage. The Goat in Boots is to be seen in the
Fulham Road in front of a public-house lately rebuilt. To Le Blond--a
Flemish painter, who lived at Chelsea--was attributed the original
design, which seems to have been painted or repainted by Morland. Since
then, however, it has been daubed over again and again. Some ingenious
person has conjectured that the sign originated from a corruption of
the Dutch words: ‘der Goden Bode’ (the messenger of the Gods), said to
have been applied to Mercury, and to have been formerly used on houses
in Holland, to denote that post-horses were to be obtained; but this
seems improbable, as the house in old deeds is called the Goat. At the
Ben Jonson tavern in Shoe Lane a curious old wooden panel is preserved,
which bears on its two sides what are supposed to be portraits of ‘rare
Ben’; as it is nailed against the wall, one side only is now visible.
The person portrayed is a lean hungry-looking man, the very reverse
of the poet; it seems likely, nevertheless, that this was the old
signboard. A more ambitious effort is the full-length portrait of the
Duke of Cumberland--the hero of Culloden--which is on a public-house
at the corner of Bryanston Street and Great Cumberland Place, built
about 1774. It is affixed to the wall in accordance with the law
passed a short time previously. One is reminded of a letter by Horace
Walpole to Conway, dated April 16, 1747, in which he thus moralizes:
‘I observed how the Duke of Cumberland’s head had succeeded, almost
universally, to Admiral Vernon’s, as his head had left few traces of
the Duke of Ormonde’s. I pondered these things in my heart, and said
unto myself all glory is but a sign.’ Now that Hatchett’s Hotel in
Piccadilly has passed away, it is worth while to record that over the
bar of the Restaurant on this site (rebuilt 1886) was to be seen the
old painted signboard of a white horse with flowing mane and tail, and
the inscription, ‘The New White Horse Cellars, Abraham Hatchett.’ Last
year, owing to further alterations, this was removed.
The signs I have referred to are comparatively well known, but that
of the Coach and Horses--No. 49, St. John’s Square, Clerkenwell--has,
I think, hitherto escaped observation. This is a large picture
representing a lioness attacking one of the leaders of a mail-coach; a
yokel with a pitchfork, and a dog, advance intrepidly to the rescue. In
the background is a wayside inn, in front a pond. The event depicted
actually took place on October 20, 1816, and is described in ‘Cassell’s
Popular Natural History,’ vol. ii., p. 119. It seems that the Exeter
mail-coach was on its way to London, and the driver had pulled up at
Winter’s-Low-Hut, seven miles from Salisbury, to deliver the bags, when
one of his leaders was suddenly attacked by a ferocious animal, which
proved to be a lioness. A large mastiff came to the rescue, but when
she charged him he fled, and was pursued and killed about forty yards
from where the coach was standing. It turned out that the lioness had
escaped from a menagerie which was on its way to Salisbury Fair. She
was eventually driven into a granary, carrying the dead mastiff in her
teeth, and there secured by her keepers. A picture of this strange
attack was long exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly; of this
picture I imagine the sign to be a copy, it seems too well done to have
been painted expressly for the public-house to which it belongs. In
the course of 1889 a curious sign, the Whistling Oyster, disappeared
from No. 13, Vinegar Yard, on the south side of Drury Lane Theatre.
Here were formerly oyster and refreshment rooms, and it seems that
about 1840 Mr. Pearkes, the then proprietor, discovered among his stock
an eccentric bivalve, which actually did produce a sort of whistling
sound; much custom for a time and many jokes resulting therefrom. In
an early volume of _Punch_ there is a fancy portrait of the whistling
oyster.
In the course of this work I have several times alluded to the
Guildhall Museum, beneath the Guildhall Library, which is not known as
it deserves. It contains not only sculptured signs, but a very valuable
collection of objects of artistic and antiquarian interest, most of
them from various parts of the city. The only drawbacks are that the
crypt or room in which they are placed, being half underground, is
very imperfectly lighted, and that the collection has not hitherto
been catalogued. This latter defect will, however, I understand, be
shortly remedied. Before descending let us glance at the statues
which flank the entrance to the Guildhall Library and Museum from
King Street. They are from the old College of Physicians in Warwick
Lane--one of Wren’s buildings--some remains of which still exist,
incorporated in the premises at the back of No. 1, Newgate Street.
These statues represent King Charles II. and Sir John Cutler, a
rich merchant whose avarice, handed down by Pope[79] and others, has
become immortal. It seems that in 1675 Sir John--a near relation of
Dr. Whistler, the president--expressed a wish to subscribe towards
the rebuilding of the College of Physicians, which had been destroyed
in the Great Fire, having previously stood at Amen Corner. When a
deputation attended to thank him, he renewed his promise, and specified
the part of the building for which he intended to pay. The theatre
accordingly bore on its front towards Warwick Lane the inscription,
‘Theatrum Cutlerianum.’ In the year 1680 statues in honour of the
king and the knight were voted by members of the college. A certain
amount of money must have been furnished, and some years afterwards
Cutler advanced them more; but after his death his executors, in 1699,
claimed the whole with interest, the money pretended to be given, and
that actually given, being alike set down as a loan in Cutler’s books.
The demand was compromised for £2,000. The statue remained, but the
college wisely obliterated the inscription which, in the warmth of its
gratitude, it had placed beneath the figure: ‘Omnis Cutleri cedat
labor amphitheatro.’ Pennant[80] is responsible for the above account,
perhaps overcoloured, which he gave on the authority of Dr. Richard
Warren. Strype speaks of Sir John as a great benefactor to the college;
he had no doubt given largely to the Grocers’ Company, of which he was
warden, and a portrait of him is in their possession.
I will now ask my readers to come with me to the Museum, which well
repays a visit. I understand that the nucleus of it was formed in
1829, when various antiquities, discovered in digging the foundations
of the then new Post Office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, the new London
Bridge, and in the destruction of the Guildhall Chapel, were brought
together; but it has only of late years become important. I have
already described the sculptured signs which here find a home; let
me now briefly call attention to other objects which seem to me
especially interesting. There is an article on them in the _City
Press_ for September 5, 1891, to which I am indebted for several
useful hints. The accumulation of earth and débris in the City is so
great, that the present town is raised many feet above Roman London.
Now that excavations for new buildings are carried down much deeper
than formerly, valuable objects are not unfrequently brought to light.
The Roman antiquities in the Museum are many and important; of these
perhaps the most striking is a large piece of tessellated pavement
from Bucklersbury, in almost perfect condition. It was found no less
than 19 feet below the level of the roadway, on which account it is
thought to be an early relic of the Roman occupation. One of the good
deeds of the much-abused Metropolitan Board of Works was the gift of
this piece of pavement to the Corporation. In the course of excavations
in the City no less than three bastions of the original wall have
been discovered. The foundations of these were formed by masses of
statuary, inscriptions, and other débris of earlier Roman buildings. A
fine specimen is the statue of a Roman soldier, found at the bastion
in Camomile Street a few years since. Then there is a sculptured lion
fiercely attacking another animal, and many similar remains of equal or
greater interest; to describe them all in the briefest way would fill
a chapter. About one other relic of the Roman occupation I shall say
a few words, because it appears to be an almost unique instance of a
joke, written by a Roman with his own hand. This is a tile found in the
Roman wall during the excavations for Cutler’s Hall in Warwick Square.
On it are the following words, evidently incised when it was still
soft: ‘Austalis, Dibusu vagatur sib cotidem,’ which was thus translated
by the late Mr. Charles Roach Smith: ‘Austalis wanders off (from his
work) by himself to the Gods every day.’ The sentence is thought to
apply to a workman who was in the habit of absenting himself at odd
intervals, for purposes of prayer maybe--or more likely of refreshment,
and to have been written by a fellow workman.
Of later objects, the various specimens of mediæval skates are worth
mentioning. Each one is fashioned out of the tibia of a horse. They
have been found from time to time in the neighbourhood of Moorfields,
and well exemplify the description written by Fitzstephen in the
twelfth century, wherein he tells us that ‘when the fen or moor which
watereth the walls of the City on the north side, is frozen, many
young men play upon the ice--some tie bones to their feet, and shoving
themselves by a little picked staff, do slide as quickly as a bird
flieth through the air, or an arrow out of a crossbow.’ Interesting
also are the flat caps of burgesses, considered to be of the time of
Henry VII., which were found in Finsbury, May, 1887, and exhibited
to the members of the British Archæological Association by Mr. J.
W. Bailey. They resemble the flatter kind of Scotch caps, or the
Basque caps, and have a peculiar little flap behind. Gold coins were
discovered in the double rims of these caps, kept there for safety, no
doubt; one of them an angel, of the time of Richard II. Then there
is a fine collection of Elizabethan graybeard jugs or bellarmines,
the grotesque heads on them being caricatured from the cardinal of
that name, who so strongly opposed the reformed religion. Among larger
objects, a splendid fireplace from the old mansion in Lime Street which
belonged to the Fishmongers’ Company, and on which Messrs. G. H. Birch
and R. Phené Spiers drew up such a valuable monograph at the time of
its destruction. An old stone conduit from South Molton Street is
worth a glance. It has on it the City arms and the date 1627, and was
found six feet below the pavement. There is interest of a kind, too,
in the inscription from Pudding Lane, affixed in 1681 by overzealous
Protestants to the house of Farryner, the King’s baker, where the
Great Fire of London first began. This inscription was taken down in
the reign of James II., replaced in that of William III., and finally
removed about the middle of last century. It was found in the cellar
and brought here when the house (latterly numbered 25) was pulled down
in 1876.
A few signs not sculptured are, I think, worth alluding to. One of the
quaintest is composed of blue and yellow Dutch tiles, and was doubtless
once fixed near the entrance of a coffee-house, but unfortunately no
record of it has been preserved. It is about twenty inches high, and
represents a boy with long hair, in seventeenth-century costume,
somewhat like that of the modern Bluecoat boys. He is standing, and
pouring out coffee; by his side is a table, with appliances for
drinking, and tobacco pipes, and above, on a scroll, the words ‘DISH
OF COFFEE BOY.’ A sign of this kind in remarkable preservation, and
finely executed, is the Cock and Bottle--three to four feet high, and
worked in blue and white Dutch tiles with an ornamental border--which
came from Cannon Street. The date of this sign is said to be about
1700; the house to which it belonged formerly stood on the south
side, and was pulled down in 1853, at the time of the Cannon Street
alterations. A public-house (Nos. 94 and 96), still called the Cock
and Bottle, occupies the site. A sign of a Dolphin which belongs to
the earlier part of the eighteenth century was in 1890 presented by
Messrs. Burrup, so long pleasantly connected with the Surrey Cricket
Club. It is painted on copper, and comes from a shop on the south side
of the old Royal Exchange, where an ancestor of the Burrup family was
first established in 1730. A unique relic is the little plate of metal,
inscribed as follows:
‘Abraham Bartlett, who makes ye boulting mills and cloathes, dwells
at the sign of the boulting mill at Thames Street, near Queenhith,
London, 1678.’
It is surmounted by a grotesque head, and fixed on a thin piece of
wood with a ring for hanging it up. The boulting-mill was used for
sifting meal by shaking it backwards and forwards, boulting-cloth being
a material of loose texture for the meal to pass through. Of doubtful
origin is a classically designed figure of a boy in low relief, with
foliated border, and the date 1633; the material of this is cast iron.
Another curious relic is a wooden statuette of Time, with scythe and
hour-glass, which formerly belonged to the clock in the church of St.
Giles, Cripplegate. The inscription tells us that it was presented by
the churchwardens, who in my opinion ought never to have removed it
from the church for which it had been carved, where it was far more
appropriately placed than it can possibly be here; though of course one
is glad that it is preserved.
Last, not least, a very interesting stone bas-relief of doubtful
origin, which purports to represent Whittington and his cat, was
bequeathed by the Rev. Canon Lysons. The figure in question is
doubtless that of a boy carrying a little quadruped in his arms. The
tablet to which it belongs seems to have been broken off on the side
to the spectator’s left, and therefore probably formed part of a
larger piece of sculpture. This relic, which at a first glance seems
to resemble a sculptured house-sign, was exhibited some years ago
at a meeting of the Archæological Institute. Mr. Lysons stated on
that occasion that it was dug up in Westgate Street, Gloucester. From
a rent-roll of 1460, he had learned that in the said year Richard
‘Whitynton,’ lord of the manor of Staunton, possessed a house or
houses, called ‘Rotten Row, or Asschowellys-place’; and from a lease
it appeared that the house, in the foundations of which the stone
was found, stands exactly on the site of Asschowellys (in modern
orthography Ashwell’s) Place. The Richard Whittington here alluded
to was great-nephew of the renowned Lord Mayor of London, living
contemporaneously with his famous namesake, the rent-roll above named
having been made within thirty-seven years of Sir Richard’s death. This
is certainly a very singular coincidence, and if it could be proved
that the tablet in question represented Whittington and his cat, we
might consider that the tradition about him, which has delighted the
childhood of so many thousands, was really founded on fact. Mr. Lysons
was strongly of that opinion; he stated, however, that the house in
Westgate Street, under which the tablet was found, besides being on the
site of Ashwell’s Place, is also on the site of a Roman temple--and
perhaps most impartial observers will be inclined to think that the
costume of the figure, and the general style of the tablet in question,
point rather to indifferent Roman than to fifteenth-century work.
[Illustration]