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 must 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, 
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