Sir Paul Pindar's House, Bishopsgate

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.

160 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 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:

 ‘Considering the boasted aestheticism of our age, the enormous sums spent in erecting by the thousand monotonous reproductions of Greek ornaments, and the fact that this is the last remaining example of ancient timber architecture in the City - it will be almost a national disgrace if so picturesque a building, with its bold yet delicate carving and graceful outlines, should be allowed to go to the housebreakers.’

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 Cieling (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.

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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).

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Sir Paul Pindar's Lodge or Garden House, Half-Moon Alley, at the rear of Bishopsgate Street.

Schnebbelie 1819.

H 318 mm, W 414 mm (paper size).

https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/v/object-430354/sir-paul-pinders-lodge-in-half-moon-alley/

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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.

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 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.

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O767378/view-of-the-front-of-architectural-engraving-sawyer-richard/?carousel-image=2016JP7666

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Illustration fromTallis's London Street Views, part 67. 1838-1840.

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

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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 

The London Museum also has an etching! of this image by Archer -it is erroneously dated 1796.

it is of lesser quality and therefore not included in this survey.

https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/v/object-98308/sir-paul-pindar/

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https://www.spab.org.uk/news/archive-sir-paul-pindars-house-bishopsgate

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The Sir Paul Pindar, Bishopsgate Street, ca.1878.

From: 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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The following adapted from the V and A website.

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O39115/sir-paul-pindars-house-house-front-and-unknown/#:~:text=Read%20more

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.'

 He was knighted by James I in return for his loyalty, and sent considerable sums to Charles I at Oxford in 1643-4.

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)