Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
9
between 1792 and 1824, altering them to serve not only as a home but also as a place
to stash his large collection of art and antiquities. No. 13, the central house with the
stone loggia, is arranged much as it was in his lifetime, with an ingenious ground plan
and an informal, treasure-hunt atmosphere. Few of Soane's projects were actually built,
and his home remains the best example of what he dubbed his “poetry of architecture”,
using mirrors, domes and skylights to create wonderful spatial ambiguities.
The most unusual part of the house is the colonnaded
monument court
, built over
the former stables at the back of the house. All around are antique busts and masonry;
above is the wooden chamber on stilts from which Soane supervised his students. To
your right is the
picture room
,
whose false walls swing back to reveal another wall of
pictures, which itself opens to reveal a window and a balcony looking down onto the
crypt. The star paintings are
Hogarth
's satirical
Election
series and his merciless morality
tale
he Rake's Progress
.
The flagstoned
crypt
features a “monk's parlour”, a Gothic folly dedicated to a
make-believe padre, Giovanni, complete with tomb (containing Soane's wife's dog,
Fanny), cloister and eerie medieval casts and gargoyles. The hushed sepulchral chamber
continues the morbid theme with its wooden mummy case, a model of an Etruscan
tomb (complete with skeleton) and the tombstones of Soane's wife and son. You then
emerge into the colonnaded atrium, home to an Egyptian
sarcophagus
, rejected by the
British Museum and bought by Soane.
Back on the ground floor, make your way to the
breakfast parlour
, which features all
Soane's favourite architectural features: coloured skylights, a canopied dome and ranks
of tiny convex mirrors. A short stroll up the beautiful cantilevered staircase brings you
to the first-floor
drawing rooms
, whose airiness and bright colour scheme come as a
relief after the ancient clutter of the downstairs rooms.
Lincoln's Inn
Lincoln's Inn Fields • Inn Mon-Fri 7am-7pm; Chapel Mon-Fri noon-2.30pm; Gardens Mon-Fri noon-2.30pm • Free • First Fri of month
guided tour 2pm; £5 •
T
020 7405 1393,
W
lincolnsinn.org.uk •
!
Holborn
Lincoln's Inn
, on the east side of Lincoln's Inn Fields,
is in many ways the prettiest of
the Inns of Court - famous alumni include Thomas More, Oliver Cromwell and
Margaret Thatcher. The oldest building is the fifteenth-century Old Hall (by
appointment only), where the lawyers used to live and where Dickens set the case
Jarndyce versus Jarndyce, the opening scene in
Bleak House
.
Beyond the Old Hall is the sixteenth-century
gatehouse
- best viewed from Chancery
Lane - impressive for its age and bulk, not to mention its characteristic diamond-
patterned brickwork. Adjacent is the
chapel
, built in 1620, with its unusual fan-vaulted
open undercroft; on the first floor, the nave, rebuilt in 1880, hit by a Zeppelin in World
War I and much restored since, still boasts its original ornate pews. North of the chapel
lie the Palladian
Stone Buildings
, best appreciated from the manicured lawns of the Inn's
gardens; the strange miniature castle near the garden entrance is the gardeners' tool shed,
a creation of George Gilbert Scott, designer of St Pancras Station.
Chancery Lane
Running along the eastern edge of Lincoln's Inn is legal London's main thoroughfare,
Chancery Lane
, home of the Law Society (the solicitors' regulatory body for England
and Wales) and lined with shops where barristers, solicitors and clerks can buy their
wigs, gowns, legal tomes, stationery and champagne.
London Silver Vaults
Chancery Lane • Mon-Fri 9am-5.30pm, Sat 9am-1pm • Free •
T
020 7242 3844,
W
thesilvervaults.com •
!
Chancery Lane
On the east side of Chancery Lane are the
London Silver Vaults
, which began life in
1876 as the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit for London's wealthy elite, but now house a
