し name it retained as long as house or grounds lasted. In 1825 Cremorne House passed into the possession of Granville Penn, who was related to Lady Cremorne. Sold by him, the grounds were converted into a Stadium. This not succeeding, the gardens were laid out as a sort of Vauxhall, and opened for musical entertainments, dancing, fireworks, and various exhibitions, and during many years acquired great notoriety. After repeated complaints by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood the Middlesex magistrates refused to renew the licence, and in the summer of 1877 the gardens were closed. Shortly after the house was pulled down and the ground disposed of for building purposes. Cripplegate, one of the City gates towards the north. It stood about 1030 feet west of Moorgate. The next is the postern of Cripplegate, so called long before the Conquest. A place, saith mine author (Abbo Floriacensis), so called of cripples begging there. More I read that Alfune built the parish church of St. Giles, nigh a gate of the City, called Porta Contractorum, or Cripplegate, about the year 1099.—Stow, p. 13. Ben Jonson, in Every Man Out of his humour, points to another traditional origin of the name -that the founder was a cripple. "As lame as Vulcan, or the founder of Cripplegate." Both of these etymologies are equally absurd, but a good one was proposed by the Rev. W. Denton in his Records of St. Giles's, Cripplegate (1883): Cripplegate was a postern-gate leading to the Barbican while this watch-tower in advance of the City walls was fortified. The road between the postern and the burghkenning ran necessarily between two low walls-most likely of earth-which formed what in fortification would be described as a covered way. The name in Anglo-Saxon would be crepel, cryfele, or crypele, a den or passage under ground, a burrow (meatus subterraneus), and geat, a gate, street, or way (O. Sax. gat, a hole; German gasse, a thoroughfare, narrow road). This is confirmed by the occurrence of the name in Domesday, where in the Wiltshire portion we read, "To Wansdyke, thence forth by the dyke to Crypelgeat." This place, a correspondent tells me, is now called Rainscomb, and "is in a hollow or combe surrounded by hills" (see Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus Evi Saxonici, vol. v. p. 21), a hollow way, or what, if artificial, would be known as a covered way. 1 From Heywood we may gather that the postern-gate creaked on its hinges: "It must ope with far less noise than Cripplegate, or your plot's dashed." The dwelling-house over the gate was granted in 1375 to John Wallington, common crier.-Riley's Memorials, p. 387. Cripplegate was sold, July 1760, before the Committee of Lands, to Mr. Blagden, carpenter, of Coleman Street, for £91, "the purchaser to begin to pull it down on the first day of September, and to clear away all the rubbish, etc., in two months from that day." Cripplegate Church. [See St. Giles's, Cripplegate.] Cripplegate Ward, one of the twenty-six wards of London, and so called from the gate in the City wall of the same name. extends east and west from Jewin Crescent to Finsbury Pavement, and 1 Heywood's Woman Killed with Kindness, 1607 (Shakespeare Society ed. p. 142). し north and south from Cheapside to some way north of Barbican; and is divided into two portions, Cripplegate Within and Cripplegate Without-that is, within and without the City wall. The following churches are in this ward:-St. Alban, Wood Street; St. Alphage, London Wall; St. Giles, Cripplegate; St. Mary, Aldermanbury; and St. Michael, Wood Street. The Church of St. Mary Magdalen, in Milk Street, in this ward, was destroyed in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt. But elbows still were wanting; these, some say, An Alderman of Cripplegate contrived.-Cowper, The Sofa. Crocker's Lane, WHITEFRIARS. King Edward I. gave to the prior and brethren of that house [White Friars] a plot of ground in Fleete Street, whereupon to build their house, which was since re-edified or new built by Hugh Courtney, Earl of Devonshire about the year 1350, the 24th of Edward III., John Lutken, Mayor of London, and the commonalty of the city, granted a lane called Croker's Lane, reaching from Fleet Street to the Thames, to build in the west of that church.-Stow's Survey of London, 1598 (Thoms's ed. 1842, p. 148). Crockford's, or, CROCKFORD'S CLUB HOUSE, a private club and gaming house, Nos. 50 to 53, on the west side of St. James's Street, composed of the chief aristocracy of England, and so called from a person of that name, who died enormously rich, in May 1844. began life by keeping a fish-stall next door to Temple Bar Without. The house was designed, 1827, by Benj. and Philip Wyatt, architects, and the decorations are said to have cost £94,000. It was shut up after Crockford's death, and was taken successively for three or four new clubs, all of which failed; for the Wellington Restaurant and for an auction mart. Eventually it was remodelled, and from 1877 the house has been occupied by the Devonshire Club. In 1873 the stucco of the front was cleared off, and a stone facing, with handsome stone columns, was added. Criterion (The), PICCADILLY, a large restaurant built for Messrs. Spiers and Pond by Thomas Verity, architect, in 1873. Several houses were cleared away for its erection, one of these being the old White Bear Inn. The erection of the Criterion dealt the first blow to the symmetry of the Regent Circus, Piccadilly, which has since been entirely destroyed by the opening made for the entrance to Shaftesbury Avenue. In connection with the restaurant is the Criterion Theatre, which was opened in March 1874. This theatre is built below ground, and the visitor enters from the street to the upper portion of the house and descends to the boxes and pit. Cromwell House, OLD BROMPTON, an old mansion in the 17th century called Hale House, but which in the 18th century had somehow come to be known as Cromwell House, and popularly believed to have been the residence of the Protector. This, as Lysons has shown, it could not have been, but he thinks "it may be that Henry Cromwell occupied it before he went to Ireland the second time. It is certain that he was married at Kensington in 1653." In 1668 Hale House was held by the Lawrences of Shurdington, and in 1682 by Francis, Lord Howard of Effingham; Thomas, sixth Lord Howard, was born here. Later the house was divided into two and passed through many hands. In the final illness of Richard Burke Cromwell House was taken for him, and his father, Edmund Burke, remained here with him till his death, August 2, 1794. In the neighbourhood was, in the last century, a noted place of resort called Cromwell Gardens,1 where for some time Hughes, who built the original Surrey Theatre, exhibited feats of horsemanship. All traces of Cromwell House and Cromwell Gardens have been swept away to make room for the South Kensington Museum, but the memory of the popular myth is preserved in sundry Cromwell Roads, Cromwell Mansions, and Terraces. In 1344 of; and down as Crooked Lane, CANNON STREET, CITY, "so called of the crooked windings thereof."2 Mr. Riley finds Crooked Lane in the guise Venella Torta in a record of 1303, and as La Crokedelane in 1310. a tenement called the "Welhous in Crokedelan" is spoken in 1414 "the east corner of the lane of Crokedlane" is set one of the boundaries of the Butchers' Market in Eastchepp. Part of the lane was taken down to make the approach to new London Bridge. It has long been,3 and is still, famous for its bird-cage and fishing-tackle shops. One the most ancient house in this lane is called the Leaden Porch, and belonged some time to Sir John Merston, knight, the 1st of Edward IV. It is now called the Swan in Crooked Lane, possessed of strangers, and selling of Rhenish wine.— Stow, p. 82. At one Mr. Packer's in Crooked Lane, next the Dolphin, are very good lodgings to be let, where there is freedom from Noise and a pretty Garden.-Advertisement, May 25, 1694. When Hood punned about "Straight down Crooked Lane," he was only repeating an obvious play on the name as old as the days of Ben Jonson : Last, Baby-cake, that an end doth make Is Child Rowlan, and a straight young man, Ben Jonson, Masque of Christmas. First Clown. Double bells, Crooked Lane-ye shall have 'em straight in Crooked Lane.-Ford's Witch of Edmonton. Crosby Hall, BISHOPSGATE STREET, the great hall of Crosby Place, built by Sir John Crosby, who obtained a lease of the ground in 1466, and died in 1475. From the discovery in the course of excavations for additions to the building made in 1871 and 1873 of two tesselated pavements, Crosby Place appears to have been erected on the site of an 1 The old pewter admission ticket to these gardens is in great request among certain collectors. 2 Stow, p. 81. 3 See the letter of Thomas Markham to Thomas, Earl of Shrewsbury, February 17, 1589 (Lodge's Illust., 8vo ed., vol. ii. p. 392). ancient Roman villa. The portions remaining of Crosby Place consist of the hall, 69 feet long, 27 feet wide and 38 high, having a fine open timber roof; a "throne room" on the ground-floor, 42 feet long, 22 feet wide and 16 feet high ; a "withdrawing" or "council-room " over, of the same size but 20 feet high, having a very richly carved ceiling. Many of the fine brick cellars exist, and are used by the adjoining houses. The oriel window of the hall is uncommonly beautiful, and altogether the hall is the most interesting example we possess in London of the domestic architecture of the 15th century. Then have you one great house called Crosby Place, because the same was built by Sir John Crosby, grocer and woolman, in place of certain tenements, with their appurtenances, letten to him by Alice Ashfield, prioress of St. Helen's, and the convent, for ninety-nine years, from the year 1466 to the year 1565, for the annual rent of £11:6:8. This house he built of stone and timber, very large and beautiful, and the highest at that time in London. He was one of the sheriffs, and an alderman in the year 1470; knighted by Edward IV. in the year 1471, and deceased in the year 1475; so short a time enjoyed he that his large and sumptuous building; he was buried in St. Helen's, the parish church; a fair monument to him and his lady is raised there. Richard Duke of Gloucester and Lord Protector, afterward King by the name of Richard III., was lodged in this house.-Stow, p. 65. 1483. He [Buckingham] soon brought many of his friends into the same design, and with the Protector constituted a Council, which sat at Crosby's Place, the Protector's mansion house.-Sir Thomas More, p. 217. Gloucester. Are you now going to despatch this thing? 1st Murderer. We are, my lord; and come to have the warrant, Gloucester. Well thought upon, I have it here about me. [Gives the Warrant. Richard III., Act i. Sc. 3. Gloucester. At Crosby Place there shall you find us both. Sir Thomas More, about 1518, held Crosby Place, and, according to Mr. Hugo, some have supposed that he wrote his Utopia and Richard III. here; but the Utopia was published in 1516. In 1523 he sold Crosby Place to his friend Antonio Bonvici, who some years later leased it to Wm. Roper the husband of More's favourite daughter Margaret. Crosby Place was seized, with Bonvici's other property, by Henry VIII. in 1553, but restored by Mary shortly after her accession. In 1560 it came into the possession of Germayne Cioll, who with his wife resided there till May 1566, when the property passed by purchase for the sum of £1500 to Alderman William Bond (d. 1576), a merchant adventurer, and, according to the inscription on his tomb in the neighbouring church of St Helen's, "the most famous in his age." At this time and later it seems to have been the custom to lodge ambassadors here. Whilst held by the Bonds the Spanish and the Danish ambassadors were sumptuously lodged in Crosby Place; the Duc de Sully was here in 1594; the Duc de Boron in 1601, and the Russian ambassador in 1618. It was bought, 1594, for £2560, by Sir John Spencer, knight, father-in-law of the first Earl of Northampton, and ancestor of the present Marquis, who made great reparations, added a ware house, and kept his mayoralty (1594) in it. Shakespeare, whose references to Crosby Place we have cited, was living close by in 1598, and was rated in the parish books at £5:13: 4.1 The Dowager Countess of Pembroke, "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother," was living here in 1609, and a few years later it was the residence of Spencer, Earl of Northampton. In 1638 it was "held by the East India Company and valued at £100 per annum." 2 During the Great Rebellion it was occupied by Sir John Langham, and for a while Royalist prisoners were kept here in custody, Sir Kenelm Digby being one of these. The fire of 1666 destroyed the greater part of Crosby Place, and six years later another fire destroyed nearly all that had been left of the house, but happily the hall escaped on both occasions without material injury. In 1672 it was converted into a nonconformist meeting-house, and continued to be so used for nearly a century, the last sermon being preached here, October 1, 1769, when the congregation migrated to Maze Pond, Southwark. "The grand office of the Penny Post" was held in Crosby Hall, 1678-1687;3 and in 1700 the East India Company occupied part of the hall, but removed to a building of their own a year or two later. From Its later history may be summed up in few words. 1810 to 1831 it was leased by a firm of packers, who divided it into floors and greatly damaged the building. On the lease running out public attention was called to the historical interest and architectural value of the hall, a fund was raised, and the interior was carefully restored, the portion fronting Great St. Helen's rebuilt of stone from the designs of E. L. Blackburn, architect, and subsequently of John Davies, architect. The entrance from Bishopsgate Street forms no part of the ancient buildings of Crosby Place, although it has been composed in the style of the timber houses of the period. The first stone of the new works was laid June 27, 1836, and the hall reopened by the Lord Mayor, Alderman W. T. Copeland, M.P., July 27, 1842, with a public dinner "served in the old English style," the floor of the hall being strewed with rushes. In the interval it was used occasionally for Thus Bunsen notes: benevolent purposes. March 1, 1839.-Fetched by Lady Raffles and Ella to Crosby Hall, in Bishopsgate Street, to see Mrs. Fry, who was presiding over a bazaar of work and books, to be sold for the benefit of female prisoners and convicts.—Memoirs of Baron Bunsen, vol. i. p. 510. In 1842 the hall was leased to the Crosby Hall Literary Institute; but this came to an end in 1860, and for seven years the old Hall served as a wine merchant's warehouse. Since 1868 it has been a restaurant. Alterations have been made and a good deal of money has been spent on its embellishment, not, as may be supposed, without injury to its character; but on the whole it has been handled tenderly, and it well deserves the term bestowed upon it by Bunsen of "glorious 1 Hunter, New Illustrations, vol. i. p. 78. 2 MS. Lambeth, p. 272. 3 Chamberlaine. |