Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
side, there is the pedestrian entrance to Middle Temple Lane leading down to two of the
Inns of Court, self-regulating societies of barristers.
Prince Henry's Room above Inner Temple Gateway in 1807 with the
advertisement for Mrs Salmon's Waxworks.
The gatehouse should be open Monday to Friday and a diversion into Middle and Inner
Temple reveals ancient buildings and some lovely gardens.
Staying on Fleet Street we come to the Inner Temple Gateway. This is a genuine survivor
of the Great Fire and was built in 1610 (restored 1900). It contains Prince Henry's Room,
a panelled chamber with the Prince of Wales feathers in the plasterwork ceiling. In Jane
Austen's day it was the home of Mrs Salmon's Waxworks.
Looking west along Fleet Street in 1812. Temple Bar is still in position
and the old St Dunstan's Church is squashed in behind shops on the
right.
This collection, created in 1711, moved here in 1795. The displays included the execu-
tion of Charles I and a weird assortment of grotesque tableaux, some models even anim-
ated by clockwork. They included, 'Margaret Countess of Heningbergh, Lying on a Bed of
State, with her three hundred and Sixty-Five Children, all born at one Birth.'
A little further along, John Murray had his office at No. 32 on the corner of Falcon Court
from 1762 until the move to Albemarle Street in 1812, a few years before he became Jane's
publisher.
When you reach St Dunstan's Church, cross the road to look back the way you have
come and compare the view with the print showing Temple Bar as it was in 1812. The old
church was rebuilt in 1834 but the 1671 clock remains.
Continuing on the same side of the road we pass small courts and alleys, many of them
named after long-vanished inns. Turn into Johnson's Court and continue up to Gough
Square and Doctor Johnson's House.
