origin, but its early history is of far greater interest. It was
undoubtedly a retreat of King Edward the Confessor, and some of the
best-known legends of the Saxon saint are connected with the Bower
House. You may read in Caxton’s _Golden Legend_ of how St. John the
Divine appeared in the form of a beggar at the consecration of his
chapel here, and of how he received the celebrated ring as alms from
the king. It was here, again, at the prayer of the Confessor the
nightingales were banished without the pales of the park, lest they
should interrupt the royal devotions.
In later times it was a favourite hunting seat for the forest of
Hainault, and a long line of Chief Foresters of Essex—Mountfitchets, de
Clares, and de Veres—held the office of keeper of the park of Havering.
The place is also closely connected with the history of Richard II.’s
treacherous seizure of his uncle Gloucester at Pleshy. It was from
Havering he set out to decoy the doomed man from the midst of his
family to hurry him to Calais and his death.
During Tudor times the palace, with the neighbouring house of Pyrgo,
fell gradually into disuse and disrepair, and a visit of Charles I.
in 1637 is the last recorded occasion on which Havering received a
royal guest. In the time of the Commonwealth, some twelve years later,
we find it described as “being a confused heape of old, ruinous and
decayed buildings” of value only as materials. Since that time the
destruction has gone on till now no fragment of the old building
survives.
The situation of Havering Palace is amongst the most beautiful
round London. Some three miles north of Romford, it once crowned a
rounded hill about 300 ft. high commanding an extensive view, and
was surrounded by a park of 1,311 acres, many of the noble trees of
which yet line the lanes and hedgerows of the country-side. The quiet
village, with its broad green and ancient stocks, has the unusual
merit of being not only entirely unspoiled but almost untouched by the
modern builder. The royal demesnes of the Bower and Pyrgo are still
represented by the great parks and seats which hem the village in on
every side.
The plan of the ancient palace is preserved in its entirety in two
drawings here reproduced—one showing the kitchen court and offices and
published as long ago as 1814 in Ogborne’s “History of Essex,” and the
second, from the Hatfield MSS., now printed for the first time, showing
the main block of the palace buildings. The old royal manor-house was
chiefly remarkable for its extreme irregularity, and it is difficult to
determine its original form.
It is obviously a building of many dates and the subject of many
additions and alterations. The windows of the smaller or private
chapel with the bold buttresses appear to be indicative of a
thirteenth-century building, while the wooden galleries and stairs are
no doubt of Tudor date.
Most of the buildings shown are on the first-floor level. “The Presence
Chamber” (40 ft. by 22 ft.) may be taken to represent the original
hall with the screens at the west end. Running south from the dais end
is “The Great Chamber,” a large apartment (originally 61 ft. by 24
ft.) communicating on the south with the Great Chapel (45 ft. by 16½
ft.) used by the parish and dedicated, in reference to King Edward’s
adventure, to St. John the Evangelist.
This building was claimed by the tenants, at the time of the
Commonwealth, as the parish church, on the grounds that they had used
it time out of mind and, furthermore, that there was another chapel
within the palace. They apparently gained their point, and the old
edifice remained in part until the erection of the present building.
The plan shows a rectangular structure of three bays, the western one
being occupied by the Royal Pew approached by a wooden staircase.
A view of this building, much altered, is given in Ogborne’s “Essex,”
from which it appears to have been of fifteenth-century date and to
have retained the timber annexe at the western end shown upon the plan.
The modern church which has now replaced it contains a square
twelfth-century font and some leger-stones said to have come from the
chapel of Pyrgo Palace long ago destroyed. It stands approximately
on the site of its predecessor, and is consequently of value in
determining the precise site of the palace buildings, which extended to
the north-west, the Privy Garden adjoining Havering Green upon the west.
[Illustration: FIG. 61.—HAVERING, GROUND PLAN.
_From the British Museum._]
The Second or Private Chapel adjoins the south-west corner of the
hall, and is shown in considerable detail. It was lit by four or five
windows in the south wall and a trio of lancets with detached shafts at
the west end, the whole building being only 32½ ft. by 14 ft.
[Illustration: FIG. 62.—HAVERING, FIRST FLOOR.
_From the Hatfield MSS._]
The large block of buildings lying to the north of the Great Hall
formed the private apartments of the sovereign and are called “the
Queen’s Lodging.” They consist of a privy chamber, withdrawing chamber,
bedchamber, closet, and two other apartments, with a private stair
leading to the garden.
To the west of this range lay the courts and offices shown upon
the second plan. (The original is said to be in the Lansdowne MSS.
in the British Museum.) They include the privy kitchen and larder
with a small court adjoining, with a long range of timber lodgings
stretching southwards, and some of the ground-floor apartments of the
main block being also indicated. The whole group forms an example of a
large domestic plan of distinctively early type, uninfluenced by any
considerations of military defence, and can only be paralleled by the
buildings of old Westminster Palace.
The two plans are by the same hand, although the scales differ, for
both are signed J. S., presumably standing for John Symonds, the
well-known Elizabethan draughtsman, and the second is furthermore named
and dated 1578 in Lord Burghley’s hand.
—A. W. C.
THE NEW EXCHANGE IN
THE STRAND
[Illustration: FIG. 63.—ELEVATION OF BUILDING (c. 1610).
_Drawn by Smithson._]
X.
THE NEW EXCHANGE IN THE STRAND.
In reopening what to many readers may be a long-forgotten chapter in
London’s commercial history, I wish to call attention to a beautiful
little drawing from the Smithson Collection which has already been
published[22] but has not been identified with any known building.
It is apparently the original plan and half elevation (to a larger
scale) of the New Exchange which the first Earl of Salisbury built
in the Strand in 1608 as a rival to the Royal Exchange in the City.
The fine drawing and delicate detail of the design will speak for
themselves as an illustration of the work of the period, and its value
is increased in that the later drawings of the Exchange bear out its
general accuracy. The presence of the Cecil arms reminds us of that
indefatigable builder Sir Robert or “Mr. Secretary” Cecil, whose
activities were not exhausted by his work at Chelsea, Hatfield, and at
his neighbouring house in the Strand.
[22] The drawing appeared in a paper by Mr. J. A. Gotch in the Journal
of the Royal Institute of British Architects for Nov. 21, 1908. I am
indebted to the author and to the Institute for their kind permission
to use the block.
I shall not pretend to bring any new information, beyond the plan,
to the wonderfully interesting history of this building, for a most
exhaustive paper from the pen of Dr. T. N. Brushfield appeared as
recently as 1903, and was published in the Journal of the British
Archæological Association under the title of “Britain’s Burse or the
New Exchange,” wherein the reader will find a very large amount of
entertainment and instruction. It may, however, be of interest to
recall one or two of the historical facts regarding the site and its
surroundings, and to examine the available topographical material.
Sir Robert Cecil, who built his new house in the Strand in 1602 (where
now stands the hotel named after him), was naturally interested in the
adjoining property to the west—that occupied by the ancient courtyards
of Durham House. The Bishops of Durham had lived in this house for
many centuries until they were dispossessed by Henry VIII. Stow says
that the house was built by Thomas Hatfield, Bishop of Durham (from
1345 to 1381); but we know that Otho, the papal legate, lived here in
1238, and in the following passage the topographer Norden traces it
back to the famous thirteenth-century bishop who built and fortified
the manor-house of Eltham, afterwards the royal palace: “This howse,
called Durham or Dunelme House ... was buylded in the time of Henry
3 by one Anthony Becke, Bishop of Durham. It is a howse of 300 years
antiquitie, the hall whereof is stately and high, supported with lofty
marble pillars. It standeth upon the Thamese veriye pleasantly.” Norden
wrote in 1593, and he thus places the date of the aisled hall as the
latter part of the thirteenth-century, a period which would agree with
his reference to Purbeck marble shafts, and with the character of the
windows indicated on a sketch-plan of 1626, which we shall consider
later on.
The Bishops of Durham returned to the house for a brief period under
Mary, and were finally reinstated by James I., after which they
continued there until 1640. From 1584 to 1603, however, the house was
tenanted by Sir Walter Raleigh, who, says Aubrey, “lived there after he
came to his greatness.” He adds, “I well remember his study, which was
on a little turret that looked into and over the Thames, and had the
prospect which is as pleasant perhaps as any in the world.” During this
period, in 1600, the buildings of the outer courtyard facing the Strand
were destroyed by fire, and it was these ruins which Cecil replaced by
his New Exchange when he purchased the frontage in the first years of
the reign of King James.
[Illustration: FIG. 64.—DURHAM HOUSE AND SALISBURY HOUSE.
_Drawn by Hollar. (Pepysian Library, Cambridge.)_]
[Illustration: FIG. 65.—DURHAM HOUSE.
_Map by Faithorne._]
[Illustration: FIG. 66.—WEST CENTRAL LONDON.
_Map by Hollar._]
The principal apartments of Durham House lay right on the river bank
and occupied the position of the present Adelphi Terrace. The relative
position of this Gothic building and Salisbury House is well shown
in one of Hollar’s charming little riverside views, a facsimile of
which we reproduce here with the kind permission of the Trustees of
the Pepysian Library, Cambridge. The drawing shows the gables of the
New Exchange appearing over the top of the older buildings. Another
drawing of Hollar’s—that beautifully executed map of the west-central
part of London—gives us in its extreme south-west corner a good idea of
Salisbury House, and the three buildings are shown with less care in
Faithorne’s valuable panoramic map of London. A plan in Strype’s Stow
(ed. 1720) gives miniature drawings of the buildings of the Exchange
and Cecil’s house, and shows also the tower-shaped river gateway
which stood in the garden of the latter, and of which particulars are
preserved in the Record Office under date 1610, being a “Specification
of a plan by a Mr. Osborne, for making a portico at the south end of
the Earl of Salisbury’s garden in the Strand.”[23]
[23] _Vide_ Wheatley and Cunningham, _London Past and Present_.
[Illustration: FIG. 67.—MS. PLAN OF DURHAM HOUSE AND THE NEW EXCHANGE
(1626).]
Much, however, as we are helped by the skill of Hollar and Faithorne to
feel some little of the atmosphere of this historic site on the river
bank, we were fain to have some more detailed knowledge of the homes
of Sir Robert Cecil and Sir Walter Raleigh. Some fortunate chance may
perhaps yet bring more information in the course of further research.
Dr. Brushfield indeed has been able to take us one step in this
direction in his discovery of a curious sketch-plan of Durham House
and the New Exchange, made in 1626, and preserved in the State Paper
Office. “It was apparently made,” he says, “to assist the enquiry into
some tumultuary proceedings that took place on February 26th of that
year at Durham House, then the residence of the French Ambassador,
incident to the attempted arrest of some English Roman Catholics who
had attended service in the Ambassador’s private chapel there.” As
will be seen by the simplified tracing which is reproduced with this
article, it is of the rather tantalising form which combines elevations
with the plan, and which scarcely gives us accurate details of the
arrangements. We can see, however, that it was once a noble house with
two large courtyards and imposing gateways. Its great hall and lofty
range of apartments towards the east are clearly indicated, and the
position of the chapel is well shown, a building which we are just
able to distinguish in Norden’s well-known view of Westminster. This
plan of 1626, moreover, in giving us an idea of the fine thirteenth or
fourteenth-century windows of the great hall, enables us to understand
Hollar’s sketch of the river front more clearly. The arches, which
Wilkinson, in his interpretation of Hollar in _Londina Illustrata_,
took to be corbelled supports for the battlements, are clearly the
windows of the hall which appear over the low curtain wall against the
water’s edge. Wyngaerde’s view of London shows the river front[24] and
also the Great Gatehouse.
[24] Wyngaerde’s view of Durham House has been sometimes described in
error as the Hospital of St. Mary Rouncevall. The hospital is, however,
more probably the small building which he shows to the west.
Nor are the suggestions regarding the way in which the rest of the
site had been disposed less interesting. “Britain’s Burse” or the New
Exchange fills that part of the frontage to the Strand which lies
between “the Great Street Gate” and the boundary of the York House
property on the west, while the “Common Passage from the Water’s Side”
which passed along the rear of the Exchange and down the boundary to
the Thames is plainly if not accurately indicated. This passage, shown
also on the Smithson plan, led to the river stairs which Hollar places
beneath the western tower of Durham House.
Sir Robert Cotton’s house presents at first sight a difficulty. It is
shown on the plan of 1626 as lying westward of the boundary within the
York House property, but this appears to be a draughtsman’s error. Dr.
Brushfield cites the lease (1608–9) “to Thomas Wilson of the Strand” of
what is evidently this plot of land “lyeinge and beinge on the south
side of the new buildinge lately erected and new builte by the Lorde
Treasuror where Durham Stables did stande towardes the west ende of
the same new buildinge next to the wall which divideth Yorke garden
from Durham Yarde.” The plot measured 8 yards from the New Exchange
southwards, and 7 yards from the York garden wall eastwards towards
Durham Yard, and Wilson covenants not to build within 6 ft. of any
window of the new building. Wilson built his house on this diminutive
plot, and in 1618 he sold it for £374, the conveyance, as quoted by
Dr. Brushfield, giving further evidence of its exact position, thus:
“All that messuage or tenement with a garden ... together with one
little yard lying upon the west syde of Durham House ... abuttinge on
Brittaine Burse there on the North, the garden of the capital messuage
called York House on the part of the West and on the passage leadinge
from Brittaine’s Burse to the Ryver of Thames on the parte of the East
and South.” The last words show that the passage skirted Wilson’s
garden on two sides, and this is borne out by the break in the wall of
Durham Court shown in the Smithson plan, the site having evidently been
enlarged by purchase since the date of that plan at the expense of the
area of the outer courtyard. In the 1626 plan, Sir Thomas Wilson, who
was in the service of Cecil and was the first manager of the Exchange,
is shown as occupying another house near Durham House Chapel. He seems
to have built it before he disposed of his first house, which, as we
have seen, was occupied in 1626 by Sir Robert Cotton.
[Illustration: FIG. 68.—PLAN OF NEW EXCHANGE (c. 1610).
_Drawn by Smithson._]
[Illustration: FIG. 69.—THE NEW EXCHANGE.
_Drawn by T. Hosmer Shepherd._]
[Illustration: FIG. 70.—PLAN OF SITE OF DURHAM HOUSE (STOW’S SURVEY ED.
1720).]
As regards the fabric of the New Exchange itself, we can see by the
Smithson drawing that it was originally intended to be of two storeys
in height, with elaborate central and end gables (apparently having
false windows) and two small intermediate gables. The elevation to
the Strand was skilfully designed, the building having two open arcades
of six round arches on the ground floor placed between the end and
middle blocks. The front was decorated with two orders of pilasters,
superimposed, and the windows of the first floor were circular-headed
where they appeared over the arches below, but were square below the
gables. Entrances were arranged through the eastern and western arch of
the arcade and through a similar archway in the centre.
That this design was carried out is evident from the careful
water-colour drawing of T. Hosmer Shepherd, which, though drawn many
years after the destruction of the building, must have been based on
an actual view. The Exchange is here shown with an attic storey, and
the Jacobean gables have disappeared in the general remodelling of the
upper part, which, with its long cornice and dormer pediments, suggests
the early part of the eighteenth century. An intermediate stage is
represented in an engraving reproduced by Dr. Brushfield, where the
attic storey is also shown, but the first-floor windows are still with
circular heads, and the little medallions of the Smithson plan still
appear. The pilasters, however, are lacking above the arcade, and it is
possible that these were omitted from the first.
The internal arrangements of the Exchange show an inner and outer walk
which was repeated on both floors, each walk being occupied with small
booths or shops, the space allowed for the latter being 8½ ft. and for
the walk 10 ft. A large number of small traders, such as jewellers
and milliners, took advantage of this method of showing their wares,
which was already in vogue at the Royal Exchange, and James I. followed
Elizabeth’s precedent in regard to the latter building by opening it
in person, naming it at the same time “Britain’s Burse.” At one time,
notably at the Restoration, the place became very fashionable, and the
trade was extremely brisk. A basement (the steps to which are shown at
the back of the building in the 1626 plan, and are marked “the alehouse
where the priest was taken”) was let as a tavern, and here, too, it
seems that Pepys went for his daily glass of whey when that drink was
in fashion. The “taverne underneath” is referred to in a series of
verses entitled “The Burse of Reformation” (1658), written in alternate
praise and depreciation of both the old (Royal) and the New Exchanges.
The slope of the bank towards the river would probably raise this
basement largely above ground and give the Exchange the appearance of
an extra storey towards the south.
The New Exchange undoubtedly proved a great success, and its principle
of including many shops under one roof has been often imitated down
to our own day, although the great Stores are now doing the same
thing more completely under one ownership. We are told that it fell
in popularity after the accession of George I., and in 1737, after an
existence of 128 years, it was taken down. As one of the well-known
resorts of fashion of the seventeenth century it has an important place
in the contemporary dramatic and periodical literature, and several
books bear the imprint of publishers who hung out their signs at
Britain’s Burse. The Smithson drawings are therefore a welcome addition
to our information, and are interesting in giving us the architect’s
own draft of a Jacobean building of somewhat singular requirements.
—W. H. G.
ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM,
CLERKENWELL
[Illustration: FIG. 71.—THE MONASTIC BUILDINGS.
_Drawn by Hollar._]
XI.
ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM, CLERKENWELL.
Of the numerous and varied by-products of the Crusading spirit, none
possess a greater fascination and interest than those extraordinary
associations known as the Military Orders. The combined influences
of fanaticism and military ardour succeeded in uniting in them the
ascetic and the soldier, with so marked a success that their vital
force was not finally extinguished until ages after the whole fabric
of mediævalism had crumbled away and the Knights of Malta were one
of those hoary anachronisms which, like the Holy Roman Empire, were
swept ruthlessly away by the new broom of the Napoleonic wars. Of
the two great orders the Templars, largely, perhaps, owing to their
early and tragic end, have always attracted a greater proportion of
attention, and in London their name and memory are kept green by the
church and precinct which are still with us. The Hospitallers, on the
other hand, are in great measure neglected, as comparatively little is
left of their London house to show the extent and magnificence of the
great dwelling in Clerkenwell of the Grand Prior of England, who took
precedence of all the temporal members of the House of Peers.
The loss that English architecture suffered by the destruction of this
building can only be appreciated when one considers that the Priory
of St. John of Jerusalem stood alone and unique. The requirements of
the order demanded a building equally apart from the usual monastic
plan and from the purely secular establishment, and the direct and
continuous connection of the order with the East would argue the
existence of ideas and arrangements more foreign and less insular than
are observable in contemporary English work.
Up to the present the information available as to the buildings of the
Hospitallers has been practically _nil_, a couple of drawings by the
indefatigable Hollar being the only record of their appearance.
Amongst the MSS. of Loseley Hall, that collection which has already
supplied so much information on London topography, is a short document
giving a complete list of the buildings with their approximate
dimensions. The survey is one of a numerous class taken at the time of
the general suppression in order to arrive at a valuation of the lead
from the roofs of the dissolved monasteries. That the surveyor did his
work with great care and accuracy is evident from the minute nature
of some of the entries, and even the gutters and down-pipes are all
included in the estimate. The survey, of course, fails us in regard to
the arrangement of the various buildings, and so little is known of
structures of this class that it is impossible to argue by analogy.
The buildings of the order at Rhodes have been the subject of a recent
monograph, but here the “auberge” of the English “langue” is amongst
the most fragmentary and ruinous, while the palatial dwellings and
gorgeous church at Malta have little bearing on the subject, as they
are of late construction and the English “language” was then extinct.
Schloss Marienburg in Prussia, the headquarters of the Teutonic order,
is perhaps the best preserved of these structures: and here the main
building follows the ordinary monastic plan, with such modifications as
were necessary to secure also a fortress of no mean strength.
The London church of the Hospitallers has passed through more
vicissitudes than almost any other building in the city. Founded during
the reign of Stephen, the first building had a circular nave 65 ft. in
diameter and a short choir, with a crypt under, probably terminating in
an apse.[25]
[25] The foundations of the “Round” have been partially uncovered, and
it must have been similar in character and dimensions to the Temple
Church. The remains of a third circular church, the first home of the
Templars in London, were discovered, many years ago, on the south side
of Holborn, so that the metropolis once possessed three buildings of
this class.
[Illustration: FIG. 72.—PLANS SHOWING DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHURCH.
1. c. 1150
2. c. 1185
3. c. 1540
_Drawn by A. W. Clapham._]
[Illustration: FIG. 73.—THE CRYPT, LOOKING EAST.
_Photograph by H. W. Fincham._]