200 



THE HOUSE AND ITS EQUIPMENT. 



STATUES ON BUILDINGS. 



The Filling of Empty Niches An Old Statue in a New Niche Christ s Hospital, Hertfora- 

 Samucl Taylor Coleridge on Pudding Charles Lamb s Silence In Praise of Modern Statues. 



THERE are so many empty niches on houses of the eighteenth century, and on modern 

 designed in the same spirit, that it is worth while to consider how such voids may be filled. 

 Christ s Hospital, Hertford, supplies examples, the more interesting because one of them 

 shows an old statue occupying a new niche. They have ripe associations, for both of those 

 illustrated adorn that branch of the Hospital which is now wholly devoted to the girls of the 

 Foundation, though a part of the buildings has a larger history. When the great school was founded, 1 he 



beneficiaries of the City of London s 

 charity were not only &quot; children under 

 education,&quot; but &quot; children out at 

 nurse.&quot; By the seventeenth century 

 it had become the practice t:&amp;gt; send, 

 the little children to Hocklcsdon, 

 \Yare and Hertford, to houses which 

 were in charge of matrons. In 1697 

 most of the Ware and Hoddesdon, 

 children were moved to Hertford, 

 where the hospital buildings had been, 

 reconstructed and greatly enlarged a 

 few years earlier : but the Ware 

 premises continued in partial use for a 

 considerable period. Over the Wan; 

 front gates was originally placed the 

 figure of a Bluecoat Boy, now fixed in 

 the niche on the front ol the School- 

 Hall at Hertford. In the old days 

 of the Foundation practically all the 

 Bluecoat children were first sent to 

 Hertford. Every year in March the 

 Treasurer and two or more of the- 

 Governors would go there and pick 

 out about fifty boys and twenty girls 

 to be moved to London, and this con 

 tinued in a modified form as late as 

 i8gi. After the removal of Christ s 

 Hospital to its country home at 

 Horsham, the Hertford buildings were- 

 wholly given over to the girls branch. 

 The buildings have been lately recon 

 structed, leaving practically nothing, 

 of the old work except the delightful 

 gatepiers and that part of the original 

 girls school which faces the street. 

 Here, standing in plain brick niches,, 

 are two most attractive figures of 

 Bluecoat Girls, which date from about 

 1780. The very notable feature of 

 these and of the boy on the School 

 Hall is their material oak. The 

 figuies on the gatepiers (illustrated 

 226. AN OLD STATUE IN A NEW NICHE. in the last chapter) are of lead, which. 



