Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/190

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [a* s. IL B*P*. 3, t

Ivory,



in Lincolnshire, which is "Ivar's . The Isle of Ely is A.-S. Elig, the " isle of eels," in which rents were formerly paid, the city being called Eligburh or Elyborough.

There are two notable exceptions to the general rule which prevails among names on the Thames. These are Chelsea and Stepney, which are both corruptions of hithe, Chelsea being the "chalk wharf" and Stepney the "timber wharf." Sometimes the suffix of the dative has been retained, taking a form similar to the foregoing. Thus Hornsea, in Holderness, appears in Domesday as Hornesse and Hornessei, forms which point to nesi, the dative singular of the O.N. nes, a "nose" or " promontory." Hornsea would thus be the place "at the ness," which here juts into Hornsea Mere. So Kilnsea, near Spurn Head, is Chilnesse in Domesday; and Withernsea, near Hornsea, appears in Domesday as Widfornessei, which may be explained as ivithforan-nesi, " in front of the ness."

ISAAC TAYLOK.

IMPROVEMENTS IN HIGH HOLBORN. THE impending demolition of the houses on the south side of High Holborn and at the rear of that thoroughfare, which have been acquired for an extension of the Birkbeck Bank, should prove more than usually inter- esting to students of London's domestic his- tory. The buildings to be removed are not, it is true, possessed of much beauty, nor are they of extreme antiquity; but they cover ground which was seven hundred years ago a great centre of warlike and ecclesiastical activity, and on which was situated the early home of the heroine of one of the most pathetic passages in English political history. As the Daily News points out and this paper, I may parenthetically remark, is to be highly commended by antiquaries for the attention it gives in its columns to vanish- ing London in this improvement are included the houses on the west side oj Staple Inn, which, together with a portion oi the inn itself, were, until about thirty-five years ago, when the obstruction succumbec to modern progress, overshadowed by the block of buildings occupying the centre oi High Holborn, and known as Middle Kow :

" Go down the covered alley known as Middle Row Place into the courtyard beyond, with the back offices of Knowledge and the London am County Bank on either hand, and you stand on tin actual site of the Templars' first church in London.

Stow (' Survey of London,' ed. 1603) give an account of this early settlement of th

Templars, so meagre as only to whet our appetite for more :

' ' Beyon d the bars [Holborn Bars] had ye in old time a temple built by the Templars, whose order first >egan in the yearof Christ 1118, in the 19th of Henry I. This temple was left and fell to ruin since the year 184, Avhen the Templars had built them a new ,emple in Fleet Street, near to the river of Thames. A great part of this old temple was pulled down jut of late in the year 1595. Adjoining to this old wherein he lodged when he repaired to this city. Robert de Curars, Bishop of Lincoln, built it about
 * emple was sometime the Bishop of Lincoln's Inn,
 * he year 1147. John Russell,* Bishop of Lincoln,

Chancellor of England in the reign of Richard III. , was lodged there. It hath of late years belonged bo the Earls of Southampton, and therefore called Southampton House. Master Ropar hath of late built much there; by means whereof part of the ruins of the old temple were seen to remain, built of Caen stone, round in form as the new temple by Temple Bar, and other temples in England."

Of course, no relics of this early church are now visible above ground ; but it is possible that the excavations for the new offices, if they reach so far, may reveal some portion of the foundations of the building removed in 1595, as well as of the subsequent structure.

A more modern association of this locality is with old Southampton House the home of Shakespeare's mysterious friend "Mr. W. H.," and afterwards of Lady Rachel Wriothesley, the devoted wife of Lord William Russell, who was executed in Lincoln's Inn Fields under the second Charles, for an assumed, and unproved, share in the Rye House Plot. Southampton House extended westward from Staple Inn to the street now known as South- ampton Buildings, and must have been an edifice of an importance befitting the rank of its possessor. With the subsequent removal of the Southampton family to the other or north side of Holborn, where its name is now commemorated by Southampton Row and Southampton Street, it is not my purpose now to deal. The house was removed about 1657, but according to Peter Cunningham fragments were to be seen so late as 1849. As is well known, Lord Russell's fate excited the liveliest indignation not only in London, but all over England, and Tillotson's power- ful description of his judicial murder renders it unnecessary to give any other account of it. Lord Russell was led to the block by way of Little Queen Street, entering the fields by their western side, and must therefore have had an opportunity, just before his death, of gazing upon the new house of the Earls of

with this site, though only accidental, is a very interesting coincidence. We shall see directly how the name subsequently immortalized the locality.
 * The early association of the name of Russell