LONDON CITY HALLS AND CHURCHES 185 



interesting, yet where the same plain treatment was applied to 

 long- straight streets, the effect became dull and monotonous. 



o 



Most of these houses had interesting detail within them, many of 

 them were actually sumptuous, and of a richness suitable to the 

 merchant princes who dwelt there. They had fine staircases 

 and ceilings like those in a house in Botolph Lane (Figs. 1 19, 120), 

 and good doorways and panelling like that in a house in College 

 Hill (Fig. 121). 



A fine example of the treatment, prevalent at this period, 

 of a staircase and hall was to be seen, before its destruction, at 

 the Great House at Leyton, in Essex, not far from London 

 (Fig. 122). It is designed in a broad, simple, yet monumental 

 manner, which, however, has led to the dividing of the lower part 

 of the staircase into two separate flights, which merge into a 

 single flight of the same width at the half-landing. The treat- 

 ment is not quite logical, but which was held to be more 

 important it is symmetrical. The Great House was built by 

 Sir Fisher Tenche, Bart, whose father was an Alderman of 

 London, and it is a good example of the houses built by wealthy 

 citizens out in the country, but within reach of the city. 1 



Although, strictly speaking, rather outside the subject of 

 domestic architecture, the city halls and churches should not be 

 overlooked, as they contain splendid specimens of decoration in 

 wood and plaster of the same kind as those to be found in 

 houses. At the period under consideration, as in former times, 

 the same sort of embellishment was applied to churches as to 

 houses ; it is quite a modern idea, born of revivals and restora- 

 tions, to consider it necessary that a church should be Gothic in 

 style; to think of Gothic as essentially ecclesiastic and of Classic 

 as secular. Accordingly in Wren's churches there are admirable 

 bits of woodwork, which illustrate the methods of design then in 

 vogue in houses. So, too, in the halls of the great city com- 

 panies. All this work was the consequence of the destruction 

 of the older buildings by the great fire. The new church of St 

 Lawrence, Jewry, was begun in 1671, Wren being the architect, 

 and it was opened in 1677. The woodwork of the interior is as 

 fine as anything that this age of fine woodwork produced, and that 

 of the vestry^ is designed after the same fashion as the panelling 

 and doorways of a large house (Fig. 124); it is, if anything, more 



1 See "The Great House, Leyton," by Edwin Gunn, published by the 

 Committee for the Survey of the Memorials of Greater London, 1903. 



