Genealogy Chat

In the 1841 Census found who I think is my relative living at this address in London. I was wondering what type of place this is? Does it still exist? Was it some type of Boarding house as many people seemed to be in the same house? Very intrigued Thanks katrina Australia

Hi I know Hatton Garden and Saffron Hill very well. This is all in EC1 Hatton Garden is where all the Diamond traders are!!!!! Do you know London at all? They are off of Farringdon Road - not sure about white yard and Liberty though. PM me if you need more help. janey

On the north side of Holboourn Hill lies the the Liberty of Saffon Hill and Ely Rents including Ely House, an area of poorly built courts and alleys.......... Google Saffron Hill and Victorian London Saffron Hill is described as a squalid neighbourhood between Holbourn and Clerkenwell....also mentioned in Oliver Twist...... Can find nothing on White's yard other than it is mentioned in some trial at the Old Bailey Liberty is a term used when the area is free from some authority or something like that Wickepedia has a couple of photographs

We would next inquire into the origin and present condition of the district called Saffron Hill. It is very interesting to trace the steps by which any particular district degenerated into a pauper colony, because it shows the gradations by which the hotel of the peer may become the hovel of the pauper; and we may, perhaps, learn at what point to interpose, and when it becomes necessary to declare a house unfit for human habitation. Saffron Hill is now divided and subdivided into innumerable courts and alleys. It is difficult to ascertain the precise period when it became a Rookery, since many of the houses now used as lodging-houses bear the marks of wealth, and were evidently erected with some regard to the comfort of the owners. The streets are narrow, but not more so than many of the lanes and thoroughfares belonging to the Inns of Court, and the alleys in which a large business is carried on in the City; and could you suppose the business of the Courts transferred to Westminster, in thirty years' time many buildings now leased at an extravagant rent might degenerate to the condition of Saffron Hill. The ground on which this Rookery stands, formerly belonged to the Bishops of [-45-] Ely,the names of some of the streets, Vine Street, and others, seem to indicate this. The gardens attached to this mansion, as appears from the curious map published by Ralph Aggas, occupied the present site of this district; they formed an irregular parallelogram, extending northward from Holborn Hill to the present Hatton Wall, and Vine Street, and east and west from Saffron Hill to the present Leather Lane; but except a line or cluster of houses on Holborn Hill (some of which belonged to the See of Ely, and were called Ely Rents), the surrounding grounds were entirely open and unbuilt upon. Ely House, we are informed by Brayley, or Ely Inn, as it was anciently called, stood on the north side of Holborn Hill, and was the town mansion of the Bishops of Ely. Its first occupier was Bishop John de Kirkeby*, [* The modem Kirby Street, near Saffron Hill, is evidently called after him, the 'k' being omitted, a frequent Atticism.] who, dying in 1290, bequeathed a messuage and nine cottages on this spot to his successors in the diocese. William de Luda, the next Bishop, annexed some lands and other dwellings to this residence; and in 1298 devised them to his See, on condition that 1000 marks should be paid by his immediate successor towards the maintenance of three chaplains, for the service of the chapel here. On the west side of Ely Place, are the remains of this very chapel; the present edifice, though well nigh rebuilt, retains still some traces of its ancient glories, the tracery of the east window especially denoting the times of Richard II. Bishop John de Hotham, who died in [-46-] 1386, enlarged the property by annexing to it a vineyard, kitchen garden, and orchard. The good Bishop little thought that the memory of his terrestrial paradise would live in the crumbling streets of a Rookery, where it is unsafe to enter by night, and where day lends its light, only to shock you by its revelations. Shakspeare refers to this mansion, with its pleasure grounds, in his Richard III., in which drama the Duke of Gloucester, at the council in the Tower, thus addresses the Bishop of Ely:- ' My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, I saw good strawberries in your garden there; I do beseech you, send for some of them.' This is but the paraphrase of a passage in Hall, one of the old chroniclers. A great feast was given at Ely House, by the Sergeants-at-Law, in November 1531, when eleven new members were added to their body; they kept open house for five successive days; and on Monday, November 18th, which was the fourth and principal day, King Henry himself, with his Queen, Katharine of Arragon, and the foreign ambassadors, were feasted in different chambers. In the eighteenth year of Queen Elizabeth, an important change took place at her mandatory request. She required the Bishop, who then inhabited Ely House, to resign it to her favourite Hatton: the prelate objected that, as tenant for life, he could not alienate the rights of his successor. On this occasion she is reported to have written the memorable letter :- 'Proud Prelate, I understand you are backward in complying with your [-47-] agreement; but I would have you know that I, who made you what you are, can unmake you; and if you do not forthwith fulfil your engagement, by God I will unfrock you.' Bishop Cox granted to Richard Hatton, after whose family Hatton Garden was called, the gate-house of the palace, (except two rooms, used as prisons for those that were arrested, or delivered in execution to the Bishop's bailiff, and the lower rooms, used for the Porters' Lodge,) the first court-yard within the gate- house to the long gallery dividing it from the second, the stables there, the long gallery with the rooms above and below it, and some other fourteen acres of land, and the keeping of the garden and orchard, for twenty-one years, Hatton paying at Midsummer day a red rose for the gate- house and garden, and for the ground ten loads of hay, and £.10 per annum; the Bishop reserving to himself and his successors free access through the gate-house, walking in the gardens, and gathering twenty bushels of roses yearly. Mr. Hatton undertaking to repair, and make the gate-house a convenient dwelling. Successive Bishops endeavoured to regain the property thus alienated, and suits were entered into by them with this view. During the Protectorate of Cromwell, Ely House, and its attached offices, were appropriated by the ruling powers to the uses both of a prison and a hospital; and the crypt under the chapel became a kind of military canteen. Thus occupied, and during the protracted suit for the redemption of the Hatton estate, which followed, the buildings were greatly dilapi-[-48-]dated, and at length being deemed incapable of repair, the entire premises were purchased by the Crown, under the authority of an Act of Parliament, which received the royal assent, in June 1772. The situation had been considered suitable for the erection of public offices; that design was eventually relinquished, and this estate was in consequence sold to a Mr. Cole, an eminent surveyor and builder. By him all the old edifices, except the chapel, were taken down, and the present Ely Place was built upon the vacant ground, about the year 1775. A few years before this, part of the house was still standing, almost opposite to St. Andrew's Church, its entrance being through a large gateway, or porters' lodge, into a small paved court. To the north-west of the Hall, was then attached a quadrangular cloister; in a field containing about an acre of ground stood the chapel ; the field was planted with trees, and surrounded by a wall ;-a print of the building as it stood before 1772, may be found in the edition of Grose, at the British Museum. It would seem that the money obtained by the sale of the ground still attached to the Hall was applied, with other sums, to the purchase of a house in Dover Street, Piccadilly, which is now attached to the See of Ely, and on which is carved a mitre. Ely Place, then, would seem to have been a comparatively modern erection, yet we may not suppose that any part of the genuine Rookery is of an origin so recent; for, in Aggas's map, made in the reign of Elizabeth, there was a row of houses from Cow Lane to about Ely Place, [-49-] whose backs were opened to the fields. Clerkenwell, which joins this district, had been, long before this, famous for its St. John's Hospital; Smithfield, previously to this, had a melancholy notoriety; the fires of persecution kindled, and the faithful martyrs perishing in the flames, connect its memory with some of the most touching records of our annals. Clerkenwell is not only referred to as a spot generally inhabited at this t

Thanks everyone for your great help, Regards katrina

A great feast was given at Ely House, by the Sergeants-at-Law, in November 1531, when eleven new members were added to their body; they kept open house for five successive days; and on Monday, November 18th, which was the fourth and principal day, King Henry himself, with his Queen, Katharine of Arragon, and the foreign ambassadors, were feasted in different chambers. In the eighteenth year of Queen Elizabeth, an important change took place at her mandatory request. She required the Bishop, who then inhabited Ely House, to resign it to her favourite Hatton: the prelate objected that, as tenant for life, he could not alienate the rights of his successor. On this occasion she is reported to have written the memorable letter :- 'Proud Prelate, I understand you are backward in complying with your [-47-] agreement; but I would have you know that I, who made you what you are, can unmake you; and if you do not forthwith fulfil your engagement, by God I will unfrock you.' Bishop Cox granted to Richard Hatton, after whose family Hatton Garden was called, the gate-house of the palace, (except two rooms, used as prisons for those that were arrested, or delivered in execution to the Bishop's bailiff, and the lower rooms, used for the Porters' Lodge,) the first court-yard within the gate- house to the long gallery dividing it from the second, the stables there, the long gallery with the rooms above and below it, and some other fourteen acres of land, and the keeping of the garden and orchard, for twenty-one years, Hatton paying at Midsummer day a red rose for the gate- house and garden, and for the ground ten loads of hay, and £.10 per annum; the Bishop reserving to himself and his successors free access through the gate-house, walking in the gardens, and gathering twenty bushels of roses yearly. Mr. Hatton undertaking to repair, and make the gate-house a convenient dwelling. Successive Bishops endeavoured to regain the property thus alienated, and suits were entered into by them with this view. During the Protectorate of Cromwell, Ely House, and its attached offices, were appropriated by the ruling powers to the uses both of a prison and a hospital; and the crypt under the chapel became a kind of military canteen. Thus occupied, and during the protracted suit for the redemption of the Hatton estate, which followed, the buildings were greatly dilapi-[-48-]dated, and at length being deemed incapable of repair, the entire premises were purchased by the Crown, under the authority of an Act of Parliament, which received the royal assent, in June 1772. The situation had been considered suitable for the erection of public offices; that design was eventually relinquished, and this estate was in consequence sold to a Mr. Cole, an eminent surveyor and builder. By him all the old edifices, except the chapel, were taken down, and the present Ely Place was built upon the vacant ground, about the year 1775. A few years before this, part of the house was still standing, almost opposite to St. Andrew's Church, its entrance being through a large gateway, or porters' lodge, into a small paved court. To the north-west of the Hall, was then attached a quadrangular cloister; in a field containing about an acre of ground stood the chapel ; the field was planted with trees, and surrounded by a wall ;-a print of the building as it stood before 1772, may be found in the edition of Grose, at the British Museum. It would seem that the money obtained by the sale of the ground still attached to the Hall was applied, with other sums, to the purchase of a house in Dover Street, Piccadilly, which is now attached to the See of Ely, and on which is carved a mitre.

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