Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
9
strange, claustrophobic lair of subterranean shops selling every kind of silverware -
mostly antique, mostly English and often quite tasteless.
Gray's Inn
South Square • Mon-Fri 10am-4pm; gardens open to the public weekday lunchtimes • Free •
T
020 7458 7800,
W
graysinn.info •
!
Chancery Lane
The last of the four Inns of Court,
Gray's Inn
lies hidden away off High Holborn,
at the top of Chancery Lane; access is next to the venerable
Cittie of Yorke
pub.
Established in the fourteenth century, the Inn took its name from the de Grey
family, who owned the original mansion used as student lodgings; most of what you
see today, however, was rebuilt after the Blitz. The
Hall
(by appointment only), with
its fabulous Tudor screen and stained glass, witnessed the premiere of Shakespeare's
Comedy of Errors
in 1594. The north side of the Inn, taken up by the wide green
expanse of
Gray's Inn Gardens
, is entirely and impressively visible through its
wrought-iron railings from Theobald's Road.
Holborn
Confusingly,
Holborn
is also the name of a street - an eastern continuation of High
Holborn - with two remarkable buildings, one on either side of the road. The first, on
the south side, is
Staple Inn
, a former Inn of Chancery (a less prestigious version of the
Inns of Court). Its overhanging half-timbered facade and gables date from the sixteenth
century and are the most extensive in the whole of London; they survived the Fire, but
had to be extensively rebuilt after the Blitz. More or less opposite stands the palatial,
terracotta-red
Prudential Assurance Building
,
begun in 1879 by Alfred Waterhouse.
This fortress of Victorian capitalism has its very own Bridge of Sighs, harbours a
dramatic memorial to the Prudential men who fell in World War I (plus a more sober
one for World War II) and retains much of its original Doulton-tiled interior. At the
eastern end of Holborn lies
Holborn Circus
, a vast tra
c intersection centred on
London's politest statue, in which a cheerful Prince Albert doffs his hat to passers-by.
Ely Place
Just off Charterhouse Street, which runs northeast from Holborn Circus, is the
cul-de-sac of
Ely Place
, named after the Bishop of Ely, whose London residence used to
stand here from 1290 to 1772. John of Gaunt lived in the bishop's palace for a while
after his own house on the Strand was burnt down in the 1381 Peasants' Revolt. It's
from Ely Place that Shakespeare has John of Gaunt say his “this sceptre'd isle” speech in
Richard II
, and the strawberries produced by the palace gardens get a positive
recommendation in
Richard III -
a strawberry fair is held each June in honour of this.
The street remained technically part of Cambridgeshire until the 1930s, and even today
it is gated and guarded by a beadle, lodge and wrought-iron gates.
St Etheldreda's Church
14 Ely Place • Mon-Sat 8am-5pm, Sun till 12.30pm • Free •
T
020 7405 1061,
W
stetheldreda.com •
!
Chancery Lane
All that remains of the bishop's palace now is
St Etheldreda's Church
, the bishop's
former private chapel, halfway down the street on the left. Built in the thirteenth
century, the chapel was bought by the Roman Catholic Rosminian Order in 1874.
The Upper Church, though much restored, retains much of its medieval masonry,
and features two spectacularly huge postwar stained-glass windows; the west window
depicts several English Catholic martyrs, including the Carthusian Prior John
Haughton, whose statue also occupies the first niche on the south wall. The
atmospherically gloomy medieval crypt contains a model of the pre-Reformation
church complex.
