Description
Antique print dated 1896.
The page is over 100 years old and in very good condition.
In order to enhance and protect the page we have set in within a bespoke frame and mount.
Frame size 400mm x 370mm. Available also in a brown with gold pencil-line frame, your choice. RL.246.
Entitled – The Temple.
Below the picture an inscription reads:
The Temple. – Here we have a typical court in the Temple – dull, dreary, but eminently respectable, since eminent barristers have their chambers in it.
It may be worthy of mention that the Temple was not finally made over to the lawyers till the time of James I., who declared in one of his speeches, in the Star Chamber, that “there were only three classes of people who had any right to settle in London – the courtiers, the citizens, and the gentlemen of the Inns of Court.”
The division into two halls dates from the time of Henry VI., and though their gateways rise almost side by side in Fleet Street, and their labyrinthian courts and passages join, the utmost distinction exists in the minds of the inmates.
Charles Lamb, in his “Essay” on the old Benchers, praises the antique air of the “now almost effaced sun-dials,” with their moral inscriptions.
Of these dials a few still remain; there is one in Essex Court, one in Temple Lane, and one in Brick Court, on which Goldsmith must often have gazed, and which bears the inscription : “Time and tide tarry for no man.”
In Pump Court and Garden Court are two other sun-dials; and the one in the first-named court – shown on the buildings to the left in the view – bears the motto : “Shadows we are and like shadows depart.”
The dates on the Temple dials are altered every time they are repaired, so are no guide to the time of their first erection.
Probably they belong to the eighteenth century.
The Templars’ device of the Holy Lamb and staff or flag with a red cross is on all the dials.
That eminent counsel, Dr. T. A. Rentoul, Q.C., M.P., has chambers here; so have Sir Hugh Owen, K.C.B., and Sir William N. Geary, Bart.
At No. 2, Pump Court, Sir Richard Webster has his chambers, and here also is the Attorney-General’s office.
If you buy an item and then see it relisted this is because we occasionally have more than one available, each page is original and not a photocopy.
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