Continuing the occasional posts on London Topography.
Unfortunately the nature of using this blog format means that the resolution of the images is reduced and whilst still useful I do try and provide links to my original source.
169 Bishopsgate Street Without constructed c. 1580 - 1620.
Sir Paul Pindar (1565 - 1650).
Sir Paul Pindar’s house was situated on the west side of Bishopsgate Street Without beyond the City wall next to the Priory of St Mary Bethlehem.
Bishopsgate, was a relatively spacious and fashionable street in the 17th Century and as many City of London town houses, it was much deeper than it was wide, with stables and
a garden extending behind.
The house served as the residence of Pietro Contarini, the Venetian
ambassador, in 1617–18.
The building was converted into a public house and smaller lodgings later in the 17th century, having survived the Great Fire of London in 1666, but its impressive three storey oak façade remained intact despite the growing pressures of population and business in the area. When its structure was threatened in 1890 with the expansion of Liverpool Street Station, a preservation campaign was launched and the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings was closely involved.
A keen
supporter’s letter to the Standard newspaper was published on 4th September
1890:
The house itself survived until 1871 leaving just the facade which was removed in 1890 when the Great Eastern Railway expanded the station at Liverpool Street which is now itself under threat of a massive redevelopement.
The front was donated to the V and A by the Great Eastern Railway Company it is preserved and displayed in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The Ceiling (from the Second Floor?
Sections are preserved at the V and A. but currently no photographs are available.
Size of whole (when parts assembled) estimated at 1006 x 578cm (depth c. 60-80cm).
Dimensions of parts when acquired: 53-1902: 10' 6" x 4' 6 1/2".
53A-1902: 10' 4 1/2" x 4' 3" 53B-1902: 10' 4
3/4" x 4' 5".
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1514355/ceiling/
The ceiling of this room consisted of a design executed in
narrow ribs, indicating that the room was of lower status than the great
chamber below it. The rib design is identical with that in the great chamber at
the Charterhouse of c1570, where circles and small squares are linked by
straight ribs and ogee curves that divide the circles in a manner reminiscent
of medieval tracery. Small bosses and leaves cover many of the intersections
and rosettes are dotted within the circles. The rest of the decoration within
the fields consists of cast motifs, all with stylised floral or foliate
features:
1. a square of oak leaves and acorns in the centre of the
small squares;
2. a rectangular panel in each of the half-fields of the
circles. A strapwork cartouche contains paired birds flanking a bunch of
grapes, with four rosettes in the border;
3. the sprigs that branch from each corner of the small
squares have grotesque beaked bird heads among foliage. This motif was still
being used at Forty Hall, Enfield, c1630.
They say - Acquisition description: Three portions of a ceiling, of moulded plaster. From a house which formerly stood in Bishopsgate Without, and was built by Sir Paul Pindar, a wealthy London merchant. Each portion is divided by straight and curved moulded bands into various shaped compartments enclosing repetitions of the following designs: 1) A scrolled cartouche enriched with floral stems and bearing two birds pecking at grapes 2) Four oak stems radiating from a central leafy device 3) A group of lillies and other flowers amid which are grotesque birds' heads. The whole is enriched with pendant bosses. Portions of the rafters are attached.
Dimensions 53-1902: 10' 6" x 4' 6 1/2" 53A-1902: 10' 4 1/2" x 4' 3" 53B-1902: 10' 4 3/4" x 4' 5" "All damaged" [1902]
A note in the dept file
states that it came from the second floor of the house, but the source for this
information is not given.
.............................
Paul Pindars House.
Anonymous Etching.
Presumably Mid 18th Century.
Height: 101 millimetres -Width: 56 millimetres (trimmed).
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_G-12-176
Sir Paul Pindar's Lodge or Garden House, Half-Moon Alley,
Bishopsgate Street. 1791
Nathaniel Smith (at May's Buildings).
H 224 mm, W 169 mm (paper size).
...............................
Sir Paul Pindar's House, Bishopsgate, 1812
George Sidney Shepherd (1784 -1862).
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1880-1113-3926
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Sir Paul Pindar's Lodge or Garden House, Half-Moon Alley, at the rear of Bishopsgate Street.
"Londina Illustrata. Graphic and Historic Memorials of
Monasteries, Churches, Chapels, Schools, Charitable Foundations, Palaces,
Halls, Courts, Procefsions, Places Of Early Amusement and Modern & Present
Theatres, In the Cities And Suburbs of London & Westminister." edited
by Robert Wilkinson
Robert Blemmel Schnebbelie (1781 - 1847).
H 318 mm, W 414 mm (paper size).
.........................
Ludgate Prison... from Londina Illustrata 1819.
View of the front of the prison and adjoining buildings, a
large cart in foreground; below a plan of prison and a small map of the area,
showing the London Workhouse and Sir Paul Pindar's house 1819
Etching and engraving by John William Cook After: Robert Bremmel Schnebbelie
Published by: Robert Wilkinson
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1880-1113-3929
Poor resolution but a very useful ground plan of 1819.
View of the Front of Sir Paul Pindar's House on the West Side of Bishopgate Street Without. 1812.
Richard Sawyer.
With vignette showing decoration of part of the first floor ceiling. After Richard Shepherd.
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Paul Pindar's House - Wood engraving 1837.
Note the lack of Gothic cresting on the Barge Boards
They say after Archer - I say treat this image with caution
Scratched at bottom left of image "JWA", and in pen at bottom of sheet "Cost one farthing Feb 18 1837".
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1873-0712-1172
British Museum.
 |
...............................
Paul Pindar's House c.1829 - 31.
Thomas Hosmer Shepperd (1793 - 1864).
The 18th Century Classical doorcase on the left of the shopfront has been removed and the shopfront with windows either side of central double doors has been inserted.
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1880-0911-953
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Long view of the houses on the north and south side of Bishopsgate Street, London, with the names of the shops or buildings of interest printed above or below, showing the streets intersecting or leading off; to the left a view of the façade of Paul Pindar's house; and to the right a map of the area;
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1919-0201-2
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1978-U-3642
.................................
The Original Watercolour Drawing of 1843 by the prolific John Wykeham Archer (1804 -64).
British Museum.
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1874-0314-454
One of a large series of drawings and watercolours of
buildings and antiquities in London by John Wykeham Archer, in 17 portfolios
(mostly stored offsite).
Inscribed on mount: "Sir Paul Pindar's House,
Bishopsgate Street. Drawn 1843.
The Engraving by John Wykeham Archer of 1851.
Archer produced a series of etchings of monuments and
architecture of London: "Vestiges of Old London", published by D.
Bogue, London 1851.
H 380 mm, W 283 mm (paper size).
https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/v/object-98707/house-of-sir-paul-pindar/
It was a noted tavern throughout the 18th and 19th Centuries.
Here the proprieter 'H. Bromley'. Paul Pindar was sent to London from Northampton as a boy and apprenticed to a merchant who made him his factor in Italy where he made his fortune. He returned to London in the 1620s and built this fine mansion. It was demolished by the Great Eastern Railway in 1890 after having been used as a notable tavern
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View on Bishopsgate Street; street trader illustration in Doré's 'London: A Pilgrimage' (London; Grant & Co, 1872).
the wood-engraving by: Alfred Louis Sargent after Gustave Doré,
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1979-0407-16-29
................................
Architectural Etching by Ernest George (1839 - 1922).
Probably 1880's fro Etchings of Old London pub. Fine Artds Society1884
His art was a private side-line to his main occupation as
one of the most successful architects of his period. His long practice is
famous as having been the training ground of many successful architects of the
following generations (most notably Edwin Lutyens) and George was president of
RIBA from 1908-1910.
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1919-1124-1
...................................
https://www.spab.org.uk/news/archive-sir-paul-pindars-house-bishopsgate
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William Strudwick (1834 - 1910).
William Strudwick, was born in London in 1834 and lived in Lambeth and West Dulwich. He worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum, but also as a draftsman, architect and artist.
He was admitted to Croydon Union
Workhouse in 1910, where he died the same year.
Photograph V and A.
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The Sir Paul Pindar, Bishopsgate Street, ca.1878.
Photograph by A.& J. Bool.
Published by Society
for Photographing Relics of Old London.
Printed by Henry
Dixon & Son.
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/the-sir-paul-pindar-bishopsgate-street
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/search/works-of-art?works_associated_with=C17009
"Since the photograph was taken, the house on the spectator's left, marked as the site of a new hospital, has been destroyed. It contained a superb ceiling, which, on representations made by this Society, was secured by the South Kensington Museum. The style of this ceiling, exactly corresponding with one in the public house next door, seems to leave no doubt - though the question has been raised - that this house also formed part of the magnificent mansion erected in the reign of James I. by Sir Paul Pindar, one of the greatest and wealthiest merchant princes of his day. One of his achievements was the introduction into this country of the method of making allum, or allom as it was then spelt, which had before his time been imported from abroad.
It is impossible in our limits to give either any account of his career, or to describe his splendid house. Those who wish for information on these heads are referred to Wilkinson's Londina Illustrata; Smith's (J.T.) Ancient Topography of London; European Magazine for 1787, and Gentleman's Magazine for the same year; Archer's Vestiges of Old London ; and lastly, an admirable paper by the Rev. Thomas Hugo, in the Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archælogical Society for 1857.
The "Sir Paul Pindar" will
not long survive the fate of the house formerly adjoining it on the south, as
it has also been purchased for the Metropolitan Free Hospital."
The above description, by Alfred Marks, was taken from the
letterpress which accompanies the photographs. By the late eighteenth century,
the building shown in A&J Bool's photograph had become a public house which
was demolished in 1890, not to make way for the Metropolitan Free Hospital but
as part of the expansion of Liverpool Street Station. After the Great Fire,
wooden facades were considered to be fire hazards, so it is fortunate that a
section of the 'Sir Paul Pindar' facade has survived and is now in the
collection of the Victorian and Albert Museum having been presented to the
Museum by The Great Eastern Railway Company".
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Paul Pindar's House 1879.
https://www.londonpicturearchive.org.uk/view-item?i=26964&WINID=1781104967456
Paul Pindar's House - Nearing the end 1890.
J. Appleton
Image here courtesy Bishopsgate Institute via -
https://spitalfieldslife.com/2023/05/24/sebastian-harding-at-paul-pindars-house/
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The following adapted from the V and A website.
Sir Paul Pindar was born in 1566 at Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. A town I know very well having been brought up and educated at Wellingborough Technical Grammar School - I left in 1969.
Although educated with a view to a university career, he soon decided to enter the trading profession. He was therefore apprenticed to an Italian merchant in London, Mr. John Powish, who sent him after a while to Venice.
Over the next fifteen years or so, he amassed a fortune in Italy and
southern Europe before returning to England. By then renowned for his expertise
as a merchant, he was sent as ambassador to the Sultan of Turkey in 1611 for
nine years, at the instigation of the Turkey Company. Upon his return, he took
up a lucrative appointment as a farmer of the customs.
Throughout his long life, he remained a staunch Royalist, as
demonstrated by the following entries in parish archives:
'1585. Paid for bread and drinke for the ringers, when
Anthony Babington and the rest of the traytors were taken, xxd.
1586 Paid for bread and drinke for the ringers, when they
range for the deathe of the quen of skots.'
Pindar also emerges from historical accounts as a bounteous
benefactor:
'Sir Paul Pindar gave to the parish of St. Botolph, plate
and money to the amount of eight hundred pounds and upwards, together with
plenty of venison for their feasts, yet they made him pay two pounds for eating
of flesh for three years on fish days.'
He was also responsibly for 'richly adorning and exquisitely
beautifying the choir of St. Paul's Church' in 1632.
At the ripe old age of 84, he died and was buried in the
chancel of St. Botolph's Bishopsgate in 1650.
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Bibliography - Courtesy V and A website.
Goss, C.W.F., F.S.A., Sir Paul Pindar and his Bishopsgate
Mansion, (Cambridge, 1930).
John Schofield, Medieval London Houses (New Haven, London
1994).
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), entry for
Sir Paul Pindar by Robert Ashton.
ESK Miller, 'Evolution in profane window design and glass
use in England between the dissolution of the monasteries and the civil war and
its probable influences'; Architectural Association Diploma Thesis, May 2005.
Walter Thornbury, Old and new London; a narrative of its
history, its people and its places (London, 1873-8), vol.II, pp.152-3.
Robert Wilkinson, Londina Illustrata (London, 1819-25),
pp.99-100.
John Thomas Smith, Ancient Topography of London... (London,
1815), pp.50-1.
J.Alfred Gotch, The Growth of the English House (1909)
pp.157-9.
A Dictionary of London (1918).
Hugo, T. (1866), An Illustrated Itinerary of the Ward of
Bishopsgate in the City of London.
From: H. Clifford Smith, Catalogue of English Furniture
& Woodwork (London 1930), 672, and illus. frontispiece.
John Schofield, The Building of London: from the Conquest to
the Great Fire (London, 1984), p.165.
Carola Schueller, 'Loss compensation at the first floor
interior panelling: Sir Paul Pindar's house front', in V&A Conservation
Journal no. 58 (Autumn/Winter 2009), pp.30-1.
John Kidd and Matthew Nation, 'Sir Paul Pindar's house on
the move again', in V&A Conservation Journal no. 58 (Autumn/Winter 2009),
pp.26-7.
Anna Somers Cocks, The Victoria and Albert Museum, the
making of the collection (London 1980), p.77 'The second half of the
nineteenth-century was also the great period for the redevelopment of the
business heart of the empire, and the old City of London was being rebuilt as
fast as Manhattan in the 1930s. That is how the museum came to own the
twenty-two feet high front of Sir Paul Pindar's house, erected about 1600 in
Bishopsgate Without, and demolished in 1870 to make way for a bigger Liverpool
Street Station. The Chairman and Directors of the Great Eastern Railway Company
stored it away in their warehouse for twenty years without being able to think
about what do with it, and then donated it in 1890.'
On the proper left side another circular metal mark with traces of gilding or yellow paint, showing a lion and Union flag shield, inscribed below 'BRITISH', apparently being the mark of the British Fire Office (1799-1843). See Roy Addis, British Fire Marks in Miniature:
http://web.archive.org/web/20230117104508/http://www.firemarks.co.uk/History.htm
For a general account of English plaster ceilings in London
houses c.1600, see
https://web.archive.org/web/20230502151639/https://clairegapper.info/the-london-evidence.html
with ref. to no 43, figs. 84, 102 (With additional personal communication from
Claire Gapper, 2020)
