BY PHILIP NORMAN, F.S.A. ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR AND OTHERS. WITH AN INTRODUCTION HENRY B. WHEATLEY, F.S.A. AUTHOR OF ‘LONDON PAST AND PRESENT,’ ETC. LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1893. UNIFORM WITH THE PRESENT VOLUME. In handsome post 8vo. size; tastefully printed in antique style. On fine paper with rough edges, and bound in cloth, at 6s. per volume; bound in roxburgh, with gilt top, price 7s. 6d.; roxburgh binding, 10s. 6d. net. Large-paper copies, 21s. net. THE FIRST VOLUME of

It is a satisfactory thing that the relics of former fashions of decoration should be registered for the information of those who desire to keep themselves in touch with the history of the past. Even in this materialistic age there are many who love to live in imagination in a former age, and a sculptured sign or inscription on an old house will often help them to do this. For centuries London was remarkable for its gardens, but this has been changed at the end of the nineteenth century. Conside

Perhaps I should add that the subject of sculptured signs has been briefly treated by me in the pages of the Antiquary , and that for the English Illustrated Magazine , of Christmas, 1891, I wrote and illustrated an article on old City mansions, including those which are here more completely described. In the course of the text I have indicated sources of information, and have acknowledged help from several good friends. I wish here in an especial manner to thank Mr. Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A. As

UNTIL the early part of the eighteenth century, when the plan of numbering came into vogue, not only inns and taverns, but shops and other houses, were distinguished by signs. The wholesale traders, indeed, were as a rule sufficiently well known not to require this distinctive mark. In the ‘Little London Directory’ for the year 1677—the oldest printed list of the kind—hardly any of the merchants have signs. The reverse is the case with the bankers, who, as ‘goldsmiths that keep running cashes,’

The sign of the Three Kings was an appropriate one for inns, because on account of their journey they were considered the patron saints of travellers: it is also said to have been used in England by mercers, because they imported fine linen from Cologne. Bearing on this is a passage to be found among the Harleian manuscripts, No. 5910, vol. i., fol. 193, which, though already quoted by Larwood and Hotten in their ‘History of Sign-boards,’ is so much to the point that I venture to give it again:

Not far from Philip Lane, at 17a, Addle Street, there is a fine bas-relief of a bear with collar and chain; it is above the first-floor window of a house rebuilt about twelve years ago, and has on it the initials n t e and date 1670—not 1610, as we are told by Archer. Munday and Dyson, in the fourth edition of Stow’s ‘Survey’ (1633), assert that Addle Street derived its name from Athlestane or Adlestane, whose house was supposed to have been hard by, in Wood Street, with a door into Addle Street

It is in two divisions, and is dated 1716; the part to the right represents a spaniel sitting on its haunches with a duck in its mouth, and appears to me a capital specimen of grotesque art. This was the sign of the Dog and Duck public-house. In 1642, when London was threatened by Charles I., the citizens hastily encircled it with a trench and a series of forts. Among these was one with four half bulwarks at the Dog and Duck, in St. George’s Fields. In 1651 a trade-token was issued from the Dog

A sign of the same description was the Four Doves, which, forty years ago, was to be seen in front of a modern house in St. Martin’s le Grand. Archer, who drew it, suggests that it was a rebus on the joint owners of the property. The four doves had the initial letters w. g. i. j. Beneath was the inscription— ‘This 4 dove Ally 1670.’ Four Dove Alley is marked in Horwood’s map a short distance south of Angel Street, King’s Court intervening. It is now covered by the buildings of the General Post O

The Elephant and Castle is the crest of the Cutlers’ Company. A stone bas-relief representing it is to be seen on the east side of Bell Savage Yard, Ludgate Hill, having been placed there nearly thirty years ago, some time after the famous old inn was levelled with the ground. It formerly stood over the gateway below the sign of the Bell. In 1568 John Craythorne gave the reversion of this inn, and after his death the house called the Rose in Fleet Street, to the Cutlers’ Company for ever, on con

At the corner of Charlotte Street and the Blackfriars Road there is a figure of a dog overturning a three-legged iron pot, in its eagerness to get at the contents; this is the sign of a wholesale ironmonger’s establishment said to date from 1783. The Dog’s Head in the Pot, as it is called, seems, of late years at any rate, to have been usually adopted by members of this trade, because the vessel represented is of iron. The sign is said to indicate a dirty, slovenly housewife. Larwood and Hotten

A FEW SUBURBAN SPAS. ‘Of either sex whole droves together To see and to be seen flock thither, To drink and not to drink the water, And here promiscuously to chatter.’ Islington Wells or the Threepenny Academy , 1691. IN connection with sculptured signs, and again when alluding to the arms of the Fowler family, and to Canonbury, I have had occasion to describe houses in Islington. I shall now take up the thread of my discourse, from the White Lion on the west side of the High Street, and ask the

There was a beautiful staircase, quite Elizabethan in style; a blocked-up window with wooden transoms for casements was also discovered; so it seems likely that some years after the building of the house considerable alterations took place. The façade has often been attributed to Inigo Jones, [93] but it had not his classic symmetry, and looked like the work of a less-instructed native genius. Besides, Inigo Jones, a Royalist and Roman Catholic, was taken prisoner in October, 1645, at the stormi