Various small subjects, ca.1886

From: Henry Dixon & Son

RA Collection: Art

"The Chained Bear, with a monogram and the date 1670 is built into the front of a modern house, no.6 Lower Thames Street, and the owner deserves thanks for preserving this interesting relic.

London stone, reduced to a small fragment, was rescued from final destruction in 1798, by Mr Thomas Maiden, a printer of Sherbourne Lane. It was in Stow's days "a great stone... fixed in the ground very deep, fastened with bars of iron, and otherwise so strongly set that if carts do run against it through negligence, the wheels be broken, and the stone itself unshaken" (pp.84-85). An inscription above the stone states that it is "commonly believed to be a Roman work," this being a conjecture of Camden, who regarded it as a milliarium, from which distances were computed in Britain. A recent theory as to the stone is set out in the Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archæological Society (Vol. v. p.283) making it to be a fragment of "London Stone," an imaginary name of the house of Fitz Aylwin, the first Lord Mayor of London. But London Stone was known by this name long before Fitz Aylwin (Stow, p.85), and neither this nor the older supposition accounts for the veneration in which the stone has been held from time immemorial. Its existence in the time of Æthelstan (Stow, p.85), suggests that it was originally a Saxon Coronation Stone. The ceremony by which Cade proclaimed himself Lord of London is told in Fabyan, Hall, Holinshed, Stow (Annales), and with amplification, or perhaps only fuller detail, in Shakespeare's Second Part of King Henry VI.," and the older drama, "The First Part of the Contention, &c." Fabyan says, "He" (Cade) "rode thorough the dyuers stretes of the Cytie, and as he came by London Stone he strake it with his sworde, and sayd, "Nowe is Mortymer lord of this Cytie.'" It cannot be supposed that this performance had no historical foundation or precedent. It is much easier to believe that, as suggested long ago by Strype (ii. 194), from London Stone "Proclamations and publick notices of Things were given to the Citizens." Till printing and reading became common, proclamations would necessarily be made in this manner . It seems on the whole probable that London Stone, originally a regal monument, came in a second stage of its history to be used for civic functions, fulfilling the same purposes as the Pietra del Bando and the Gobbo di Rialto, the proclamation stones of Venice.

The Hour-glass in St Alban's, Wood Street, is a rare, almost unique example of the Hour-glasses introduced in puritan days to regulate the length of the sermon. I have even read, but have made no note of the passage, of a preacher in those fervid times who, when the sand had run out, held the glass aloft, and to the delight of his congregation, turned it and continued his discourse. The stand, which is of a later date, was presented to the church in 1685. (Allen's History, iii. 470.) A wood-cut of this Hour-glass is given, with notes on the subject, in the Gentleman's Magazine, XCII., Pt.ii. p.200, and the cut was afterwards used in Allen's History of Lambeth, pp.66, 67.

The Boy at Pie Corner was put up in memory of the staying here of the Great Fire, which began at Pudding Lane. An inscription, almost erased in Pennant's day and not now visible, ascribed the Fire to the "sin of gluttony" and the Boy appears to have been made prodigiously fat with the object of enforcing the moral. The figure is built into the front of a public house in Giltspur Street, Smithfield, at the corner of Cock Lane. The house, named "The Fortune of War," is otherwise of interest as having been in the days of body snatching the chief house of call on the north side of the river for resurrectionists. Many years ago the landlord showed me a room, on benches running round which the bodies, duly labelled with the body-snatchers' names, were placed till the surgeons at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, hard by, could run over and appraise them.

The Figures striking the hours and quarters at St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, set up in 1671, were long one of the most popular minor sights of London, "more admired" (says rather sourly the admirable, but too little known, "New Remarks of London , &c., collected by the Company of Parish Clerks 1732) - "more admired by many of the Populace on Sundays, than the most elegant Preacher from the Pulpit within." A good view of the figures is given in West and Tom's Perspective Views (1736-9). The Marquis of Hertford, when a child, was taken by his nurse to see these figures, and used to say that when he grew to be a man he would buy them. On the demolition of the old church, the giants were put up for sale, and the Marquis, true to his word, bought them and carried them to St. Dunstan's, erected for him by Decimus Burton, in the Outer Circle, Regent's Park. (Cunningham's London, Arts. St. Dunstan; Regent's Park.) The figures, which may be seen from the Park, still do their duty every quarter of an hour. It is owing to the courtesy of Mr Henry Hucks Gibbs, the present owner of St. Dunstan's, that they have been photographed for this series.

The above description, by Alfred Marks, was taken from the letterpress which accompanies the photographs. According to Sean Coughlan, author of London's heart of stone, BBC online News Magazine, Monday, 22 May 2006, the stone is currently part of the facade of a shop in Cannon Street. Visible at pavement level, it looks very similar to how it appears in Dixon's photograph. As the shop is part of a site about to be re-developed, there are plans for the stone to moved to the Museum of London.

The church of St Alban's in Wood Street, London EC2, was destroyed in World War II with the exception of its tower which still remains.

The Boy at Pie Corner (Giltspur street at the corner of Cock Lane) still exists although today the figure is gilded, the The Fortune of War public house, however, has been demolished.

The church of St Dunstan's-in-the-West in Fleet Street was re-built in 1831 and it is probably at this time "the giants" were sold. The clock and the figures were eventually restored to the church in 1935 where they can be seen today.