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Fickett's Field or Croft, the old name for LITTLE LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS, now Lincoln's Inn New Square. A plot of ground of about ro acres, extending from what was the Bell (the site of Bell Yard, Temple Bar) to Portugal Street, lying in the parishes of St. Dunstan'sin-the-West and St. Clement's Danes (but chiefly in the latter), including Carey Street and the courts behind, Old and New Boswell Court, Portugal Street, Cook's Court, Serle Street, and part of Lincoln's Inn, New Square, down to the Chancery Lane end of Carey Street, formerly called Jackanapes' Lane. This field, also called the Templars' Field, is described in the earliest extant grant as "Terram sive Campum pro Saltationibus, Turnamentis, aliisque Exercitiis Equitum Militumque Regni nostri Angliæ, presertim vero Equitum Sancti Johannis Hierosolimitan';" and in the Priory of Saint John of Jerusalem it remained until the dissolution of the monastereis, when it was granted by Henry VIII. to Anthony Stringer, to hold in capite, under the description of "Totum ill' Campum, terram, et pasturam vocat' Fickett's Field adjacen' messuag' vocat' Le Bell," etc. From Stringer it came to John Hornby, 35 Henry VIII., who dying 5 and 6 Philip and Mary, it passed to his son Richard, who died 5 Eliz., leaving Alice his daughter and heir, married to Edward Clifton, who had a son, Horneby Clifton, by whom (in 3 Jac. I.) it was conveyed to John Harborne, of Taskley, Com. Oxon., Esquire. The description of this property in the Inquis' post mortem, on the decease of John Horneby, is as follows: "All that messuage and Tenement called the Bell, with all its appurtenances, lying and being in the parish of St. Dunstan, in Fleet Street, London, lately belonging to the Priory of Saint John of Jerusalem, etc. And a certain field and pasture, called Fickett's Field, near adjoining, together with ingress and egress, with horses and carriages, by two gates at the East End of the said field, that is to say, through one gate leading from the Lane called Chancery Lane towards the aforesaid Field, and through the other gate at the West end of the same way, abutting upon the aforesaid field." [ See Boswell Court, Serle Street.]

Acton. There from London issue out of masters, servants, strangers, 'prentices,
forty odd thousand into Ficket Field, where we appoint our special rendezvous.
Murley. Phew ! paltry, paltry, in and out, to and fro.
Lord have mercy upon

us, what a world is this! Where's that Ficket Field, Sir Roger ?
Acton. Behind St. Giles-in-the-Field, near Holborn.
Murley. Newgate up Holbourn,

St. Giles-in-the-Field, and to Tyburn, an old saw.

Sir John Oldcastle, pt. i. vol. ii. p. 2.

Field Lane, a lane or passage "commonly called Jack-an-Apes Lane," which stood between Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields, where is now Carey Street.1

Jackanape's Lane, lately a bad as well as frequent passage for coaches and carts into Lincoln's Inn Fields and those parts; being very troublesome by reason of its

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narrowness, that two could not pass by one another. But now by a late Act of Parliament this lane is widened. On the south side about the middle, there is a passage into Pope's Head Court, which is a pretty square place with a freestone pavement. Strype's Stow, B. iv. p. 72.

Field Lane, HOLBORN, a narrow street running from the foot of Holborn Hill to Saffron Hill, was one of the most disreputable thoroughfares in London, inhabited largely by thieves and receivers of stolen property. Its appearance and character were sketched with singular vigour and accuracy by Charles Dickens in 1838.

Near to the spot on which Snow Hill and Holborn Hill meet, there opens, upon the right hand as you come out of the City, a narrow and dismal alley leading to Saffron Hill. In its filthy shops are exposed for sale huge bunches of second-hand silk handkerchiefs of all sizes and patterns; for here reside the traders who purchase them from pickpockets. Hundreds of these handkerchiefs hang dangling from pegs outside the windows, or flaunting from the door posts; and the shelves within are piled with them. Confined as the limits of Field Lane are, it has its barber, its coffee shop, its beer shop, and its fried fish warehouse. It is a commercial colony of itself: the emporium of petty larceny: visited at early morning and setting in of dusk, by silent merchants, who traffic in dark back parlours, and who go as strangely as they come. Here the clothesman, the shoe vamper, and the rag merchant, display their goods as sign boards to the petty thief: here stores of old iron and bones, and heaps of mildewy fragments of woollen stuff and linen rust and rot in the grimy cellars.-Oliver Twist, chap. xxvi.

By the formation of the Holborn Viaduct and its approaches Field Lane has been swept away.

Field Lane was the theatre of some of the most memorable of the Earl of Shaftesbury's and Mr. W. C. Bevan's philanthropic labours. Here was established in 1842 the Field Lane Institution, comprising the great central or Field Lane Ragged School; the Field Lane Industrial School for the maintenance and training of sixty entirely destitute boys under fourteen years of age, with a branch for a similar number of girls at Hampstead; the Field Lane Home for Female Servants and girls training for domestic service; and the Field Lane Night Refuge, established in 1851 to afford lodging, fire, and food to thirty penniless men, and a similar refuge for a like number of women, both of which in very inclement seasons have extended their assistance to a much larger number. "The building materials of the Field Lane Ragged Schools and appurtenant buildings " were sold by auction by order of the Metropolitan Board of Works, October 10, 1877, in order to make way for the Board's Improvements in that neighbourhood; but more suitable premises have been erected on Little Saffron Hall and Vine Street, Clerkenwell Road, close by, and all branches of the institution are continued under the old name, with such modifications in the management as time and circumstances have suggested. As a part of the general scheme, a ragged church and Sunday school, mothers' classes, a clothing society, penny bank, etc., have also been established, and are in full operation.

Field of Forty Footsteps (called also Long Fields and Southampton Fields). [See Montague House.]

Fife House, WHITEHALL YARD, next door to the United Service Museum, so called after James Duff, second Earl of Fife (died 1809), by whom it was built in 1772. The Earl of Liverpool leased it of Lord Fife's executors, and lived and died there (1828) when Prime Minister. The house was pulled down in May 1869.

Fig Tree Court, INNER TEMPLE, east side of Inner Temple Lane, so called from fig-trees growing there.

Figs have ripened very well in the Rolls garden in Chancery Lane.-The City Gardener, by Thomas Fairchild, Gardener at Hoxton, 8vo., 1722, p. 19.

The fig grows very well in some close places about Bridewell.-Ibid., p. 52. The names of this and four other Temple courts are embalmed in a single line of the Rolliad :

Admiring barristers in crowds resort

From Fig-Tree, Brick, Hare, Pump, and Garden Court.

The first buildings were erected in 15 James I. (1617), and additional buildings in 4 and 5 Charles I. (1628-1629). Lord Thurlow was living in this court in 1758. John Singleton Copley (afterwards Lord Lyndhurst) at No. 10 in 1809. The will of James Macpherson contains a bequest of "one thousand pounds to Mr. John Mackenzie of Fig Tree Court, in the Temple, to defray the expense of printing and publishing Ossian in the original." If the legatee were not as mythical as the MSS., Mr. John Mackenzie obtained one thousand pounds on very easy terms.

Figg's, a "boarded house," or amphitheatre in MARYLEBONE, by the Oxford Road, built by James Figg, or Fig, the celebrated prizefighter, or master of defence," a native of Thame in Oxfordshire. He died in 1734, and was buried (December 11) in Marylebone churchyard. Bear-baiting, tiger-baiting, and female fighting were among the occasional attractions of the house, known by the sign of the City of Oxford. A Mrs. Stokes was the famous female champion.

At the Boarded House in Marybone Fields, on Wednesday next, March 16 [1720] will be performed a Trial of Skill between John Parkes from Coventry and James Figg from Thame in Oxfordshire, master of the whole science of defence, at the usual weapons fought on the stage.

N.B. They never thought to have fought any more; but being desired by a great number of gentlemen which were present when they fought six scholars of each master's at the Fountain Tavern in the Strand; and the two Masters fought three bouts and gave great satisfaction.- Weekly Journal, March 10, 1720.

The fight with Sutton, the pipe-maker of Gravesend, has been sung by Dr. Byrom :

Long liv'd the great Figg, by the prize-fighting swains
Sole monarch acknowledg'd of Marybone plains,

To the towns far and near did his valour extend

And swam down the river from Thame to Gravesend.

See! where the British youth, engag'd no more,
At Figg's, at White's.

Pope, Satires of Dr. Donne Versified, Sat. iv.

From Figg's new Theatre he'll miss a night,
Though cocks and bulls and Irish women fight.

Bramston, The Art of Politicks, 1731.

My evenings all I could with sharpers spend
And the thief-catcher make my bosom friend;
In Figg the prize-fighter by day delight
And sup with Colley Cibber every night.

Bramston, The Man of Taste, 1733.

To Figg and Broughton he commits his breast

To steel it to the fashionable test.

Soame Jenyns, The Modern Fine Gentleman, 1746.

There is a mezzotint of Figg by Faber, and Hogarth has perpetuated his portrait in the second plate of the Rake's Progress, as also in Southwark Fair, where he appears on horseback. Figg's successor in reputation was Broughton. [See Broughton's.]

Finch Lane, CORNHILL, Opposite Birchin Lane to Threadneedle Street, properly FINKE LANE.

Finke's Lane, so called of Robert Finke, and Robert Finke his son, James Finke, and Rosamond Finke. Robert Finke the elder newbuilt the parish church of St. Benet, commonly called Finke of the founder.-Stow, p. 69.

In a presentment of 21 Edward I. (1295) an earthen wall is declared to be "a nuisance to the King's highway in Fynkislane;" and in another of 1 Edward II. (1307-1308) the name again occurs as Fynkislane. In July 1755 James Watt, then nineteen, articled himself for a year to "Mr. John Morgan, a mathematical instrument maker in Finch Lane." He was to pay twenty guineas for instruction in the business, and to give his labour during the time. He worked ten hours a day and made rapid progress, but, he wrote to his father, his living cost him eight shillings a week, and he could not reduce without pinching his belly; and he lived in mortal fear of being pressed for sea. His health failed, and when the twelve months had expired he returned to Glasgow. "Joe's" in this lane was long famous for its muttonchops. Finch Lane is largely inhabited by stock and insurance brokers, and there are also several offices of public companies. It may serve to illustrate the value of house property in this the busiest part of the City to mention that on April 25, 1872, the Freehold of the Cock and Woolpack Tavern (No. 6), on the east side of Finch Lane, was sold at Garraway's for the enormous sum of £20,800. It has a frontage of 18

feet, and a depth of 55 feet.

Finch's Grotto, SOUTHWARK, a place of entertainment in vogue at the end of the last century. The "Grotto Gardens," as they were sometimes called, were situated partly in Winchester Park, or the Clink, and partly in the parish of St. George, Southwark. A public-house called the Goldsmiths' Arms took its place, and about 1778 the gardens were turned into a burying-ground, and now the station of the London Fire Brigade occupies the site.2

1 Riley, Memorials, p. 30; Liber Albus, P. 595.

2 Rendle and Norman's Inns of Old Southwark, pp. 360-364.

Finchley New Road.

Thomas Hood died at Devonshire Lodge in this road, May 3, 1845. He was buried at Kensal Green.

1

Finsbury, properly FENSBURY, from the fenny or moorish nature of the ground. In early City documents it is called the Moor, whence Moorfields. Finsbury is a lordship without the posterns of Cripplegate and Moorgate. In the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I. it was a favourite walk with the citizens of London on a Sunday, hence Hotspur's allusion to Lady Percy:

And giv'st such sarcenet surety for thy oaths,

As if thou ne'er walk'dst further than Finsbury.

Shakespeare, First part of Henry IV., Act iii. Sc. 1.

The name survives in "Finsbury Square," "Finsbury Pavement," "Finsbury Place," and "Finsbury Circus." [See Moorfields.]

Finsbury Circus, north of London Wall, was built about 1814, on the site of the second Bethlehem Hospital, and in what were called the Quarters of Moorfields. The houses were intended for residences for merchants and professional men, but are now mostly let out as business offices and chambers. They form an oval with an enclosed garden in the midst. On the north side is the London Institution; at the east end facing each other on opposite sides of East Street, the eastern entrance to Finsbury Circus, are the Roman Catholic Church of St. Mary, and Finsbury Congregational Chapel, one of the largest in London. In the vaults under the Roman Catholic Church, Carl Maria von Weber was buried, 1826. His body was removed to Dresden in 1844. [See London Institution.]

Opposite Finsbury Circus, at the depth of 19 feet, a well-turned Roman arch was discovered, at the entrance of which, on the Finsbury side, were iron bars placed, apparently to restrain the sedge and weeds from making the passage.—Archæol. Journal, vol. i. p. 11.

The Metropolitan Railway is carried in a tunnel, east and west, directly under the centre of the gardens.

Finsbury Fields, the open tract north of Moorfields. Popularly the name was given to the fields "which stretch along the north part of Cripplegate through Moorfields and reach to some parts of Shoreditch parish," 2 to Hoxton, and as far north as Islington Common. These fields were kept open and undivided for the practice of the citizens in archery ; and when the bow fell into disuse for military purposes, Finsbury Fields were maintained intact for the muster and exercise of the trained bands and the Artillery Company. [See Artillery Ground.] When enclosures or encroachments were made they were sturdily resisted and sometimes violently swept away. Under Finsbury a Civic Ordinance of 1478 has been cited "for the removal of gardens, herbs, hedges, and rubbish in the Moor," these things being a serious obstacle to bowmen's roving practice, and the fields were then again "made a plain field for archers to shoot in.” Hall gives a lively description of

1 Ordinance for the removal of gardens, herbs, hedges, and rubbish in the Moor.-Liber Albus, p. 501; see also pp. 475, 480. 2 Strype's Stow, B. iv. p. 60.

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