Holborn and Bloomsbury | Page 9

in Great Queen Street. The first Lord Herbert of Cherbury had a house on the south side at the corner of Great Wild Street; here he died in 1648. Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Parliamentary General, lived here; also Sir Heneage Finch, created Earl of Nottingham; Sir Godfrey Kneller, when he moved from Covent Garden; Thomas Worlidge, the portrait-painter, and afterwards, in the same house, Hoole, the translator of Dante and Ariosto; Sir Robert Strange, the engraver; John Opie, the artist; Wolcott, better known as Peter Pindar, who was buried at St. Paul's, Covent Garden. Sheridan is also said to have lived here, and it would be conveniently near Drury Lane Theatre, which was under his management from 1776.
[Illustration: KINGSWAY.]
On the south side of the street are the Freemasons' Hall, built originally in 1775, and the Freemasons' Tavern, erected subsequently. Both have been rebuilt, and the hall, having been recently repainted, looks at the time of writing startlingly new. Near it are two of the original old houses, all that are left with the pilasters and carved capitals which are so sure a sign of Inigo Jones's influence.
On the north side of the street is the Novelty Theatre.
Great and Little Wild Streets are called respectively Old and New Weld Streets by Strype. Weld House stood on the site of the present Wild Court, and was during the reign of James II. occupied by the Spanish Embassy. In Great Wild Street Benjamin Franklin worked as a journeyman printer.
Kemble and Sardinia were formerly Prince's and Duke's Streets. The latter contains some very old houses, and a chapel used by the Roman Catholics. This is said to be the oldest foundation now in the hands of the Roman Catholics in London. It was built in 1648, and was the object of virulent attack during the Gordon Riots; the exterior is singularly plain. Sardinia Street communicates with Lincoln's Inn Fields by a heavy and quaint archway.
Even in Strype's time Little Queen Street was "a place pestered with coaches," a reputation which, curiously enough, it still retains, the heavy traffic of the King's Cross omnibuses passing through it. Trinity Church is in a late decorative style, with ornamental pinnacles, flying buttresses, and two deeply-recessed porches. Within it is a very plain, roomlike structure. The church is on the site of a house in which lived the Lambs, and where Mary Lamb in a fit of insanity murdered her mother. The Holborn Restaurant forms part of the side of this street; this is a very gorgeous building, and within is a very palace of modern luxury. It stands on the site formerly occupied by the Holborn Casino or Dancing Saloon.
Little Queen Street will be wiped out by the broad new thoroughfare from the Strand to Holborn to be called Kingsway (see plan).
Gate Street was formerly Little Princes Street. The present name is derived from the gate or carriage-entrance to Lincoln's Inn Fields.
In Strype's map half of Whetstone Park is called by its present title, and the western half is Phillips Rents. He mentions it as "once famous for its infamous and vicious inhabitants."
Great and Little Turnstile were so named from the turning stiles which in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries stood at their north ends to prevent the cattle straying from Lincoln's Inn Fields. The Holborn Music-hall in Little Turnstile was originally a Nonconformist chapel. After 1840 it served as a hall, lectures, etc., being given by free-thinkers, and in 1857 was adapted to its present purpose.
LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.--All the ground on which the present square is built formed part of Fickett's Field, which was anciently the jousting-place of the Knights Templars. A curious petition of the reign of Edward III. shows us that then it was a favourite recreation-ground or promenade for clerks, apprentices, students, as well as the citizens. In this petition a complaint is made that one Roger Leget had laid caltrappes or engines of iron in a trench, to the danger of those who walked in the fields. Inigo Jones was entrusted by King James I. to form a square of houses which should be worthy of so fine a situation. Before this time it appears that there had been one or two irregular buildings. Inigo Jones conceived the curious idea of giving his square the exact size of the Great Pyramid of Egypt, and it is accordingly the largest square in London. But when he had completed the west side only, the unsettled state of the country hindered further progress, and for many years the land lay waste, and was unenclosed save by wooden posts and rails; during this period it was the daily and nightly haunt of all the beggars, rogues, pickpockets, wrestlers, and vile vagrants in London. Gay thus speaks of it:
"Where Lincoln's Inn, wide space, is rail'd around, Cross