GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



write sympathetically on the subject. He supposes that the church 

 of the former monastery, with its twin choirs for monks and nuns, 

 stood on part of the ground now occupied by the present house, 

 which is fundamentally the same as that erected by the Pro- 

 tector Somerset on the actual site of the conventual buildings. 

 The fact that the quadrangular form was retained, and that a fine 

 specimen of fifteenth century architecture, a doorway evidently 

 once belonging to an important portion of those buildings, was 

 incorporated into the hall of the later structure, gives colour to the 

 hypothesis. The identity of the site of the existing house with 

 that of the monastery, is further established by the fact that in 

 Mary Tudor 's reign it was mentioned that two sides of the latter 

 had been pulled down, from which it is inferred that the Protector 

 had only carried out partial alterations in it, and had not entirely 

 rebuilt it. 



The interior of the quadrangle is occupied by a flower-garden 

 about eighty feet square. A radical change in the external appear- 

 ance of the house mus.t have been effected when, somewhere about 

 1800, the walls were faced with Bath stone. The building is three 

 stories high, and the roof has an embattled parapet, at each angle 

 of which is a square embattled tower, and though owing to the 

 excellence of its proportions it has much dignity, it is plain almost 

 to ugliness, save on the east side facing the river, where a colonnade, 

 or arcade, occupying the whole space between the towers, gives 

 variety and some beauty. This arcade, or cloister, according to 

 Colonel Balfour, is, not improbably, the work of Inigo Jones, since 

 it bears much of the character of his designs. 



On the demolition of Northumberland House, Strand, the famous 

 lion that had so long surmounted that mansion, was removed 

 to Sion, where it occupies a conspicuous position on a raised 

 pedestal on the roof, in the very centre of the river front. There 

 is a tradition that when it mounted guard over Charing Cross, it 

 at one time stood with its head towards St. James's Palace and 

 Carlton House but that after some act of discourtesy shown to its 

 noble owner, the loyal animal literally turned tail, and stood with 

 its back to royalty, facing thenceforth the Lord Mayor and Alder- 

 men of London, a position it retains to the present day at Sion. 



With the interior of the house this book has not much to do. 

 It was reconstructed and redecorated by the brothers Adam 



102 



