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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 May 2016
This article offers a case-study of an early preservation campaign to save the remains of the fifteenth-century Crosby Hall in Bishopsgate, London, threatened with demolition in 1830, in a period before the emergence of national bodies dedicated to the preservation of historic monuments. It is an unusual and early example of a successful campaign to save a secular building. The reasons why the Hall's fate attracted the interest of antiquaries, architects, and campaigners are analysed in the context of the emergence of historical awareness of the domestic architecture of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as wider recognition of the importance of this period for Britain's urban and commercial development. The Hall's associations with Richard III and other historic figures, including Thomas More and Thomas Gresham, are shown to have been particularly important in generating wider public interest, thereby allowing the campaigners to articulate the importance of the Hall in national terms. The history of Crosby Hall illuminates how a discourse of national heritage emerged from the inherited tradition of eighteenth-century antiquarianism and highlights the importance of the social, professional, and familial networks that sustained proactive attempts to preserve the nation's monuments and antiquities.
Research for this article was carried out during a period of study leave granted by the University of Leicester. I am very grateful to the staff of the London Metropolitan Archives for their assistance and to Special Collections, David Wilson Library, University of Leicester for permission to reproduce Figures 1, 2, 3, and 5. I am also grateful to Phillip Lindley and Elaine Chalus and to participants of the Centre for Urban History (Leicester) seminar for comments on an earlier version of this article, and to the anonymous referees of this journal for their constructive suggestions.
1 Simon Thurley, ‘Crosby Hall’, Country Life, 2 Oct. 2003, p. 73.
2 The best history of Crosby Hall is to be found in Philip Norman and W. D. Caroe, Crosby Place, Survey of London Monographs, 9 (London, 1908).
3 Rosemary Sweet, Antiquaries: the discovery of the past in eighteenth-century Britain (London, 2004), pp. 277–307.
4 Ibid., p. 300.
5 Françoise Choay, The invention of the historic monument, trans. Lauren M. O'Connell (Cambridge, 2001); Astrid Swenson, The rise of heritage: preserving the past in France, Germany and England, 1789–1914 (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 25–65.
6 John Britton, ‘The Guardian of Antiquities’, Gentleman's Magazine (Aug. 1832), p. 104. See also E. J. Carlos writing in Gentleman's Magazine (Dec. 1831), p. 498.
7 Archaeological Journal, 1 (1844), p. 2; Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 1 (1846), p. i.
8 Chris Miele, ‘Heritage and its communities: reflections on the English experience in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’, in Melanie Hall, ed., Towards world heritage: international origins of the preservation movement, 1870–1930 (Aldershot, 2011), pp. 157–77; Melanie Hall, ‘Conservation and the enemies of progress’, in Chris Miele, ed., From William Morris: building conservation and the Arts and Crafts cult of authenticity, 1877–1939 (New Haven, CT, 2005), pp. 1–29; Swenson, The rise of heritage.
9 Chris Miele in ‘Conservation and the enemies of progress’. Important studies of early nineteenth-century attitudes to restoration, such as Simon Bradley, ‘The gothic revival and the Church of England, 1790–1840’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, Courtauld Institute of Art, 1996), focus purely on religious buildings. The gothic revival itself tends to be conceptualized primarily as a phenomenon pertaining to religious architecture, with secular manifestations taking second place. See Philip Aspin, ‘Architecture and identity in the English gothic revival, 1800–1850’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 2013), on the importance of, and scholarly lacuna surrounding, non-ecclesiastical and collegiate gothic architecture.
10 The relevant literature is extensive, but on the eighteenth-century context, see Noah Heringman, Sciences of antiquity: romantic antiquarianism, natural history and knowledge work (Oxford, 2013); Sweet, Antiquaries; Woolf, D. R., ‘The dawn of the artifact: the antiquarian impulse in England, 1500–1730’, Studies in Medievalism, 4 (1992), pp. 5–35 Google Scholar. On nineteenth-century developments, see Stephen Bann, The clothing of Clio: a study in the representation of history in nineteenth-century Britain and France (Cambridge, 1984); Rosemary Hill, God's architect: Pugin and the building of romantic Britain (London, 2007), and eadem, ‘Antiquaries in the age of romanticism: 1789–1851' (Ph.D. thesis, University College London, 2011).
11 Charles Dellheim, The face of the past: the preservation of the medieval inheritance in Victorian England (Cambridge, 1982), similarly explores the interweaving of themes of local and national identity through exploration of the urban past.
12 John Stow, Survey of London, ed. C. L. Kingsford (2 vols., Oxford, 1908), i, p. 172.
13 Michael Harris, ‘London guidebooks before 1800’, in Robin Myers and Michael Harris, eds., Maps and prints: aspects of the English booktrade (Oxford, 1984), pp. 31–66.
14 Norman and Caroe, Crosby Place, p. 30.
15 William Maitland, The history of London from its foundation by the Romans, to the present time (London, 1739), p. 419; Anon., London and its environs described (6 vols., London, 1766), ii, pp. 202–3.
16 Charles Mackenzie, Crosby Place described in a lecture on its antiquities and reminiscences (London, 1842), pp. 47–8.
17 Nathan Bailey, The antiquities of London and Westminster (London, 1722), p. 132; see also R. B., A new view and observations on the ancient and present state of London and Westminster (London, 1730), p. 156.
18 Sweet, Antiquaries, pp. 298–307. On the context of illustrated antiquarian representations of London, see Peltz, Lucy, ‘Aestheticizing the ancestral city: antiquarianism, topography and the representation of London in the long eighteenth century’, Art History, 22 (1999), pp. 472–94CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
19 Thomas Pennant, Of London (London, 1790), p. 413. On the background to Of London's publication, see Jenkins, Ralph E., ‘The creation and reception of Thomas Pennant's “Of London”’, National Library of Wales Journal (1992), pp. 325–36Google Scholar.
20 Hamper, William, ‘Disquisition on the member in architecture called the oriel’, Archaeologia, 23 (1830), pp. 105–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21 On extra-illustrated editions of Pennant, see Maude, Anna, ‘The changing image of London: a comparison of the Crace collection and the Crowle Pennant in the British Museum print room’, London Journal, 38 (2013), pp. 110–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 J. P. Malcolm, Londinium redivivum (4 vols. London, 1802–7), iii, pp. 562–4; interestingly, Crosby Hall did not feature in J. T. Smith's near contemporaneous Antient topography of London (London, 1815) despite Smith's inclusion of a section on ‘domestic architecture’.
23 A summary list of the illustrations of Crosby Hall can be found in the appendix of Bernard Adams, London illustrated, 1604–1851 (London, 1983), p. 534.
24 Malcolm, Londinium redivivum, iii, p. 564.
25 James Storer and John Grieg, Select views of London and its environs (2 vols., London, 1804), i, unpaginated.
26 A. C. Pugin, Examples of gothic architecture (2 vols., 3rd edn, London, 1825), i, pp. 28–31. See also ‘Crosby Hall’ in Arnold's Magazine of the Fine Arts and Journal of Literature and Science (Nov. 1833), pp. 4–5.
27 Robert Wilkinson, Londina illustrata: graphic and historic memorials of monasteries, churches, chapels, schools, charitable foundations, palaces, halls, courts, processions, places of early amusement and modern and present theatres in the cities and suburbs of London and Westminster (London, 1819), pp. 45–6; Thomas Allen, The history and antiquities of London, Westminster, and Southwark, and parts adjacent (4 vols., London, 1827–9), iii, pp. 153–7.
28 As Charles Eastlake noted in A history of the gothic revival (London, 1872) details of Crosby Hall were adapted for ‘many a country mansion’ (pp. 89–90), notably the library at Arundel Castle. William Wilkins also modelled the roof of the new hall at King's College Cambridge upon the roof of Crosby Hall in 1824.
29 Allen, History and antiquities of London, Westminster, and Southwark, iii, p. 156. See ‘Preservation of Crosby Hall’ (1832), p. 1, in London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) 10189/5.
30 The introduction of the second floor in line with the point from which the spandrels of the roof sprang made it all too easy for theft and mutilation of the corbels and other ornaments to take place. On the popularity of such antiquities in private collections, see Clive Wainwright, The romantic interior: the British collector at home, 1750–1850 (New Haven, CT, 1989).
31 Catalogue of the Museum of Medieval Art, collected by the late L. N. Cottingham FSA architect (London, 1851), p. iv.
32 E. J. Carlos, ‘On the threatened destruction of Crosby Hall’, Gentleman's Magazine (Dec. 1831), pp. 498–9.
33 On Hackett, see William J. Gatens, ‘Hackett, Maria (1783–1874)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (ODNB); Garrett, K. I., ‘Miss Hackett of Crosby Square’, Guildhall Studies in London History, 1 (1974), pp. 150–62Google Scholar; eadem, ‘Maria Hackett, Crosby Hall and Gresham College’, Guildhall Studies in London History, 3 (1977), pp. 42–54 Google Scholar; LMA 10925 typescript biography of Maria Hackett by K. I. Garrett.
34 On women's engagement with the past, see, for example, the essays in Lynette Felber, ed., Clio's daughters: British women making history, 1790–1899 (Cranbury, NJ, 2007); Krueger, Christine, ‘Why she lived at the PRO: Mary Anne Everett Green and the profession of history’, Journal of British Studies, 41 (2003), pp. 65–90 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anne Laurence, ‘Women historians and documentary research: Lucy Aikin, Agnes Strickland, Mary Anne Everett Green and Lucy Toulmin Smith’, in Joan Bellamy, Anne Laurence, and Gill Perry, eds., Women, scholarship and criticism: gender and knowledge, c. 1790–1900 (Manchester, 2000), pp. 125–41.
35 Letter addressed to Mr Urban, signed MH of Crosby Square, Gentleman's Magazine (Feb. 1826), pp. 111–12; John Rickman to Hackett, 13 May 1830, LMA 10189/3 pt 1, fo. 144. In later life (1858), she expressed her frustration that there was still no satisfactory history of London: the themes she identified as in need of particular attention reflected her interest in the Roman and Saxon city, but also her particular concern for the agency of women in the past including ‘the worthy ladies who kept schools within its walls’ and ‘the women of the days of chivalry, and the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Englishmen who flourished in the reign of Elizabeth’ followed by the women of the Commonwealth and Restoration: Maria Hackett to Thomas Hugo, 14 July 1858, British Library (BL) Add MS 30297, fos. 261, 263v. Her own notes on the history of Crosby Hall and its inhabitants, and of St Helen's and the Bishopsgate area, are in LMA 10189/5.
36 Gatens, ‘Hackett, Maria’.
37 See her Correspondence and evidences respecting the ancient collegiate school attached to St Paul's Cathedral (London, 1811–32) and her A brief account of cathedral and collegiate schools: with an abstract of their statutes and endowments (London, 1827). She put the knowledge acquired thereby to use in her Popular account of St Pauls’ Cathedral (London, 1816) published by John Nichols which reached its twenty-first edition by 1833.
38 Hackett, Brief account of cathedral and collegiate schools, pp. v–vi.
39 E. J. Carlos, Historical and antiquarian notices of Crosby Hall, London (London, 1832), pp. 57–60, lists the sixty members of the Preservation Committee. The minute books indicate that committee meetings seldom attracted more than ten members (five were required for quoracy).
40 (Undated) letter from E. J. Carlos inviting attendance at a public meeting to report on proceedings of the restoration of the Lady Chapel, LMA 10189/2 pt 1, fo. 75. Blore had been responsible for drawing up the designs for the restoration of Peterborough Cathedral.
41 Maria Hackett to Thomas Hugo, 18 Mar. 1857, BL Add 30297, fo. 35.
42 LMA 10179/7, p. 9.
43 Gentleman's Magazine (June 1832), p. 505; the suggestion came from A. J. Kempe, who, with Charles Roach Smith, was one of the foremost antiquaries of Roman London. He and Roach Smith were long-standing advocates for the better representation of British antiquities in the British Museum.
44 LMA 10189/7, p. 15.
45 LMA 10189/7, pp. 19–27.
46 M. H. Port, ‘Blore, Edward (1787–1879)’, ODNB.
47 LMA 10189/7, pp. 49–50.
48 LMA 10189/7, p. 53, 4 Jan. 1834. By 1836, nineteen individuals had subscribed the cost for armorial bearings at £3 16s for a coat of arms or 5 g. to include crest, coronet, and supporter: printed notice in MS 10189/5.
49 The preservation of Crosby Hall (1832) lists subscribers and their contributions. At this point, £615 had been raised from 159 donors of whom fourteen were women. Four years later, the number of subscribers had risen to 258 but the amount subscribed was only just over £850 (list of subscribers in LMA 10189/5). By contrast, in 1832, £2,100 had been raised for the restoration of the Lady Chapel at St Saviour's (admittedly a longer-standing campaign): Gentleman's Magazine (June 1832), p. 501. The Gentleman's Magazine reported that £5,000 had been raised for Peterborough Cathedral through a subscription from the city and surrounding areas (Mar. 1832), p. 248; the Penny Magazine put the sum raised at £6,000 by 1833, see no. 71 (May 1833), p. 178, and for York Minster following the 1829 fire at £5,000 in two months (Penny Magazine, 53 (1833), p. 35). Geoffrey Curr, ‘Who saved York walls? The roles of William Etty and the corporation of York’, York Historian, 5 (1984), pp. 29–31, notes that a subscription for the repair and preservation of York City Walls was opened in 1829 and by 1831, 3,000 donations had been received (despite competition from York Minster) and by 1836, a total of £3,185 had been spent.
50 See Sweet, Antiquaries, pp. 287–98. John Britton's series of Cathedral antiquities in particular had confirmed the national importance of cathedrals as part of the nation's architectural heritage.
51 Curr, ‘Who saved York walls?’, pp. 25–38.
52 William Herbert, The history of the twelve great Livery Companies of London (2 vols., London 1833), i, p. ii.
53 LMA 10189/7, p. 51.
54 LMA 10189/7, pp. 55–6, 75, 78–9.
55 LMA 10189/7, p. 75.
56 Robert Routledge to Maria Hackett, 14 Aug. 1832, LMA 10189/2/2, fo. 165.
57 Maria Hackett to Thomas Hugo, 18 Mar. 1857, BL Add MS 30297, fo. 35v.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 C. W. F. Goss, Crosby Hall: a chapter in the history of London (London, 1908), p. 114.
61 Maria Hackett to Thomas Hugo, 18 Mar. 1857, BL Add MS 30297, fo. 36v.
62 See, for example, the letter to her step-brother S. J. Capper reproduced in Notes and Queries, 1 Apr. 1911, pp. 241–2, in which she analysed the available square footage of space offered by Crosby Hall and a rival location at the rebuilt Royal Exchange, 26 May 1840.
63 Maria Hackett to Thomas Hugo, 18 Mar. 1857, BL Add MS 30297, fo. 36.
64 The proprietors listed by Hammon were: Thomas Bell, New Broad St; Thomas Bax, Bishopsgate Street; Dennis Chandler, Mark Lane; F. B. Garty, Chepstow Place, Camberwell; Miss Hackett, Clapham Rise; Robert Hanbury, Stamford Hill; Joseph Hodgson, Norton Folgate; Walter Hawkins, Tower Street; Metcalf Hopgood, Bishopsgate Street; George Hall, Bishopsgate Street; Thomas Hall, Bishopsgate Street; W. Herring, Sun Street; Richard Lillwall, Lime Street; William Lyall, St Helen's Place; Charles Mackenzie vicar of St Helen's; Henry Oldham, Devonshire Square; Thomas Owden Scrambler, Bishopsgate Street; Samuel Read, London Wall; Robert Smith, Lombard Street; Benjamin Smith, London Wall; Henry Sterry, Bermondsey; Samuel Tompsett, Billiter Street; William Williams, Rood Lane. See Henry J. Hammon, The architectural antiquities and present state of Crosby Place, as lately restored by John Davies Esq Architect (London, 1844), pp. 5–7.
65 Maria Hackett to Thomas Hugo, 18 Mar. 1857, BL Add MS 30297, fo. 36. In the same letter, she estimated the total costs of the purchase of the lease and the restoration by both the Preservation Committee and the Committee of the Metropolitan Institution at £7,000.
66 Hammon, Architectural antiquities and present state of Crosby Place, p. 6.
67 For an analysis of how much of the original building was left intact, see Walter Godfrey, ‘Crosby Hall (re-erected)’, Survey of London, iv: Chelsea, pt II (London, 1913), pp. 15–17.
68 Mackenzie, Crosby Place described, p. 11.
69 Summarized in Hammon, Architectural antiquities and present state of Crosby Place; the architect John Davies oversaw the final stages, but most of the rebuilding was completed according to designs drawn up by Blackburn.
70 Richard Clark to Maria Hackett, 29 Aug. 1838, LMA 10189/2/1, fo. 73; see also Richard Clark to Maria Hackett, 9 Aug. 1838, LMA 10189/2/2, fo. 274.
71 Goss, Crosby Hall, p. 117. The interior view of the Hall, complete with organ, was depicted in the account of the 1842 ceremony published in the Illustrated London News, 27 Aug. 1842, p. 249.
72 Billie Melman, The culture of history: English uses of the past, 1800–1953 (Oxford, 2006).
73 Gentleman's Magazine (May 1832), p. 424.
74 Gentleman's Magazine (June 1832), p. 507.
75 Carlos, Historical and antiquarian notices, p. 15.
76 Saturday Magazine, 8 Sept. 1832, pp. 89–90; Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction, 5 Jan. 1833, pp. 14–15. See Patricia Anderson, The printed image and the transformation of popular culture, 1790–1860 (Oxford, 1991), and Rosemary Mitchell, Picturing the past: English history in text and image, 1830–1870 (Oxford, 2000), especially pp. 111–39 on the publishing background and readership of these periodicals.
77 Penny Magazine, 48 (Dec. 1832), p. 385.
78 The suggested themes, reflecting Hackett's own interests, included: the Empress Helena and London in the time of Constantine; English nunneries of the Benedictine Order; the history of St Helen's priory prior to dissolution; Sir John Crosby and the commercial and literary history of London in the reigns of Edward IV and Henry VI; the personal history of Richard III and an inquiry into the truth of charges brought against him in the following reign; and memoirs of Sir Bartholomew Rede, Margaret Roper, and Sir Thomas More. For full details of the competition, see Gentleman's Magazine (Feb. 1836), pp. 192–3. The prize was eventually awarded to J. W. Burgon for an essay on Thomas Gresham, later published as The life and times of Sir Thomas Gresham (London, 1839).
79 Flier entitled ‘Illustrations of Crosby Hall’, 1 Feb. 1839, in LMA 10189/5. Crowden Clarke was to speak on the poets of the Elizabethan era (and particularly Edmund Spenser) and Britton on the ‘Old mansions of England’ (particularly the most distinguished baronial halls).
80 John Britton, The architectural antiquities of Great Britain (5 vols., 1807–26), iv, p. 359.
81 This is not to say that there was no antiquarian interest in historic houses: they were widely illustrated in county histories and in series such as Francis Grose's Antiquities of England and Wales (1773–6) but the category of ‘domestic architecture’ or even ‘domestic antiquities’ was not explicitly used. Edward King anticipated some of the subject matter of ‘domestic architecture’ and the interests of the nineteenth-century antiquaries in his ‘Sequel to the observations on ancient castles’, Archaeologia, 6 (1782), pp. 231–375 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, see in particular the discussion of Eltham Hall, pp. 365–74.
82 Storer and Grieg, Select views, i, unpaginated; J. P. Malcolm, Anecdotes of the manners and customs of London in the eighteenth century (2 vols., 2nd edn., London, 1810), ii, pp. 363–4.
83 See, for example, the discussion of the importance of illustrating the ‘domestic economy’ of the Romans in William Gell's Pompeiana in Sweet, Rosemary, ‘William Gell and Pompeiana (1817–19 and 1832)’, Papers of the British School at Rome, 83 (2015), pp. 245–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
84 On ‘olden time’ and ‘merrie England’, see Peter Mandler, ‘“In the olden time”: romantic history and English national identity’, in Laurence Brockliss and David Eastwood, eds., A union of multiple identities: the British Isles, c. 1750–1850 (Manchester, 1997), pp. 78–92; idem, The fall and rise of the stately home (New Haven, CT, 1997), especially pp. 21–51; idem, ‘Revisiting the olden time: popular Tudorism in the time of Victoria’, in Tatiana C. String and Marcus Bull, eds., Tudorism: historical imagination and the appropriation of the sixteenth century (Oxford, 2011), pp. 13–35. See also Rebecca Jeffrey Easy, ‘The myth of merrie England in Victorian painting’, in Florence S. Boos, ed., History and community: essays in Victorian medievalism (New York, NY, and London, 1992), pp. 59–80; Andrew Sanders, In the olden time: Victorians and the British past (New Haven, CT, 2013), pp. 21–32.
85 Anthony Salvin, William Tite, and the historian of domestic architecture, William Twopeny, as well as Edward Blore, were subscribers and members of the Preservation Committee. Sir Jeffrey Wyatville subscribed, but declined to join the Committee.
86 T. H. Clarke, The domestic architecture of the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James the First (London, 1833); Edward Buckton Lamb, Studies of ancient domestic architecture (London, 1846); Francis Dollman, Examples of ancient domestic architecture (London, 1858); M. Habershon, The ancient half-timbered houses of England (London, 1836); Thomas F. Hunt, Exemplars of Tudor architecture adapted to modern habitations with illustrative details selected from ancient edifices (London, 1841); Thomas Hudson Turner, Some account of domestic architecture in England from the conquest to the end of the thirteenth century (London, 1851); Henry Parker, Some account of domestic architecture in England from Richard II to Henry VIII (London, 1859); William Twopeny, Some observations on the domestic architecture of the middle ages (London, 1843).
87 Anon., ‘Preservation of Crosby Hall’ (1832), p. 2, in LMA 10189/5.
88 Edward Lushington Blackburn, An architectural and historical account of Crosby Place, London (London, 1834); see also John Woody Papworth, ‘Memoir of Crosby Place’ (1841), Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Pa Fam/1/3. Papworth drew on new evidence deriving from the subsequent discovery of additional vaults in a rather more fanciful reconstruction of the original building. On the relationship between the two texts, see Norman and Caroe, ‘The records of the buildings’, in Crosby Place, pp. 33–54.
89 Carlos, Historical and antiquarian notices, p. 35; Clarke, Domestic architecture, p. xi; Mackenzie, Crosby Place described, p. 9.
90 Anon., ‘Preservation of Crosby Hall’ (1832), p. 2, in LMA 10189/5.
91 Papworth ‘Memoir of Crosby Place’, RIBA Pa/Fa/1/3.
92 Mirror, 19 May 1829, p. 234.
93 LMA 10189/5 pamphlet inviting subscriptions (no date).
94 Thomas Hugo, ‘A memoir of Crosby Place’, Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, 1 (1856), p. 41. See also Charles Knight, London (6 vols., London, 1841), i, p. 319: ‘This passage is of great importance; for the preservation of Crosby Hall, through all the vicissitudes of its fortunes, is attributable to the popularity it derived from it. What its own intrinsic beauty and historical character might not have accomplished for it, has been done by a mere incidental notice in the great poet's writings.’
95 Carlos, Historical and antiquarian notices, p. 14.
96 Penny Magazine, 48 (31 Dec. 1832), p. 386.
97 J. W. Archer, Vestiges of old London: a series of etchings form original drawings, illustrative of the monuments and architecture of London in the first, fourth, twelfth and six succeeding centuries, with descriptions and historical notices (London, 1851), p. 2.
98 Hammon, Architectural antiquities and present state of Crosby Hall, p. 9, quoting Joseph Hunter, New illustrations of the life, studies and writings of Shakespeare (2 vols., London, 1845).
99 Norman and Caroe, Crosby Place, pp. 21–2, pointed out that there is no evidence that More ever dwelt at Crosby Hall as he sold the lease to Bonvisi only six months later.
100 Alexander Andrews, ‘Relics of London no VI Crosby Hall’, Mirror, 21 Jan. 1843, pp. 34–5; Hugo, ‘A memoir of Crosby Place’, p. 44. See also Anon., ‘Sir Thomas More and his residences’, Saturday Magazine, 7 (June 1834), p. 222.
101 Account in Gentleman's Magazine (Sept. 1836), p. 243; the scene was reproduced in a plate in Hammon's, Architectural antiquities and present state of Crosby Hall.
102 Mackenzie, Crosby Hall described, p. 11. The other scenes depicted Richard III affecting to refuse the crown and Sir John Crosby himself in consultation with an architect. The association with Thomas More was made even more emphatically in the twentieth century (evidence that More had only owned the lease for six months notwithstanding) not least because of the new connection with Thomas More forged by the removal of the building to Chelsea under the auspices of Patrick Geddes, who was planning a visionary new ‘More's College’ on the Thames embankment: Andrew Saint, ‘Ashby, Geddes, Lethaby and the rebuilding of Crosby Hall’, Architectural History, 34 (1991), pp. 206–23. See below, pp. 00.
103 Mackenzie, Crosby Place described, p. 35.
104 Hugo, ‘A memoir of Crosby Place’, p. 46.
105 Ibid., p. 43. Hackett, who had herself compiled extensive notes on the history of Crosby Hall and its owners (see LMA 10189/5), pointed out the possible connection in a letter to Mackenzie and Hugo; the connection was presumed on the basis that the Spencers leased the Hall to Mary Sidney's kinsman William Russell from 1615 to 1636, and was confidently asserted in the promotional literature of the 1830s LMA 10189/5 collection of fliers. The link with the countess of Spencer and Jonson was given even more prominence in the 1868 account of Crosby Hall, the frontispiece of which included portraits of Richard III, Thomas More, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson. Jonson did not command the same regard as Shakespeare, but was nonetheless widely admired as a leading Jacobean poet and dramatist: Knight, London, i, p. 365, for example, included a section devoted to ‘Ben Jonson's London’ (rather than Shakespeare's).
106 Mackenzie, Crosby Place described, pp. 35–7.
107 J. W. Burrow, A Liberal descent: Victorian historians and the English past (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 155–92, and Dellheim, Face of the past.
108 Mackenzie, Crosby Place described, p. 15.
109 Papworth, ‘Memoir of Crosby Place’, p. iv, RIBA Pa Fam/1/3.
110 Penny Magazine, 48 (31 Dec. 1832), p. 35; see also Carlos, Historical and antiquarian notices, p. 35, where he drew attention to the distinctive pattern of the Hall's paving, which he suggested had been designed specifically to facilitate the positioning of tables when preparing for great feasts.
111 Anon., Crosby Hall: the ancient city palace, Bishopsgate (London, 1868), p. 5, and Anon., Crosby Hall: the ancient palace and great banqueting hall, its history and restoration (London, 1879).
112 Alderman Vezey Strong led a campaign for the corporation to purchase the Hall for the use of the smaller London Companies which did not have their own halls. The king's letter to Mr Gomme of London County Council was reported in the Manchester Guardian, 15 Aug. 1907, p. 6.
113 Godfrey, ‘Crosby Hall (re-erected)’; see also Times, 13 Apr. 1908, p. 3; 13 Apr. 1910, p. 4; 26 May 1910, p. 6; 30 Jan. 1911, p. 12. The fate of Crosby Hall was covered in great detail and on a regular basis in the pages of the City Press (which strongly opposed the proposed demolition on the grounds of the importance of the building to the history of the City of London): see the collection of newspaper cuttings made by John Bumpus in LMA 10189/6. On Geddes's plans for Crosby Hall, see Saint, ‘Ashbee, Geddes and Lethaby and the rebuilding of Crosby Hall’. See also Godfrey, W. Emil, ‘Crosby Hall and its re-erection’, Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, 26 (1982), pp. 227–43Google Scholar: W. Emil Godfrey was the son of Walter Godfrey the architect (who had worked on Crosby Hall for the Survey of London with Norman and Caroe) and who was commissioned by Patrick Geddes in 1908 to ‘rebuild’ Crosby Hall.
114 Thurley, ‘Crosby Hall’, pp. 72–5.
115 The facade was preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum following demolition of the house in 1890. A reproduction of some of the internal plasterwork can be seen in the former library of Leeds Castle, Kent.
116 Robert Ashton, ‘Pindar, Sir Paul (1565/6–1650)’, ODNB.
117 Smith, Antient topography, pp. 50–1; Archer, Vestiges of old London, pp. 1–4; Hugo, Thomas, ‘Walks in the City. No 1 Bishopsgate Ward’, Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, 1 (1856–8), pp. 149–82Google Scholar.
118 Mirror, 20 May 1843, ‘Relics of London no. XIII old houses’, p. 310. The house was also of particular interest for the quality of the internal plasterwork.
119 Morning Post, 10 Feb. 1845, p. 3. The campaign did not raise as much as was hoped for: the Morning Post, 6 Oct. 1846, p. 5, reported that only £200 of the £500–£600 needed had been donated, but the building was stabilized and repaired. Maria Hackett herself donated £1: Gentleman's Magazine (Oct. 1845), p. 330.
120 Unsigned letter addressed to Charles Roach Smith, 13 Aug. 1846, Society of Antiquaries of London MS 877/1.
121 Thomas Wright, The archaeological album; or, Museum of National Antiquities (London, 1845), p. 57.
122 For a discussion of the congruence between London's history and the national past in popular histories and novels of the nineteenth century, see Melman, Billie, ‘Claiming the nation's past: the invention of an Anglo-Saxon tradition’, Journal of Contemporary History, 26 (1991), pp. 575–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
123 ‘The passing of Crosby Hall’, Journal of the Society of Architects (Dec. 1907), pp. 75–9.
124 See, for example, Manchester Guardian, 1 June 1907, p. 7; Observer, 24 Nov. 1907, p. 7; Journal of the Society of Architects (Dec. 1907), p. 79. The City Livery Companies, despite the leadership of Alderman Strong, remained reluctant to contribute to the costs of preserving the Hall: see ‘The Crosby Hall impasse’, The Saturday Review, 7 Dec. 1907, p. 690.
