installed in his home together with hot showers. Such modern thinking and dramatic effects did not always win him friends, one commentator writing in the
Morning Post
:
I presume you haven’t lately passed through Lincoln’s Inn Fields, otherwise I think you would have animadverted on a new-fangled projection now erecting on the Holborn side of that fine square. This ridiculous piece of architecture destroys the uniformity of the row and is a palpable eyesore.
But Soane’s star was in the ascendant, despite his apparent unpopularity and some bad misjudgements. He was appointed Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy, which had decreed that comments or criticisms of living artists were not to be allowed in lectures. Soane couldn’t help himself, and he attacked his young competitor Robert Smirke for the ‘ glaring impropriety’ of his designs for the new Covent Garden Theatre. The audience was shocked, and began to hiss. Soane defended himself: ‘It is extremely painful to me to be obliged to refer to modern works .’ The subsequent fallout led him to suspend his lectures.
Such small matters, however illuminating, were not part of Soane’s grand plan. When his sons disappointed him by not wanting to follow in his footsteps, he conceived the idea to gift his house and collection to the nation; in 1833, he obtained an Act of Parliament to do so. A comprehensive guidebook of the house by John Britton stated, in 1827, that it had not been ‘ adapted for spectacle and display but constructed from the beginning as an architecture of spectacle and display, a theatre of effects’. By leaving his house as a museum ‘ in perpetuity’, Sir John Soane (as he would become) prompted some to ‘wonder what sort of perpetuity he imagined? Was he thinking of a hundred or a thousand, or a hundred thousand years? A hundred would show him a prudent man, a thousand a vain man, and any longer term, a megalomaniac .’ He was probably all three. Sir John Soane’s house is still preserved by that Act of Parliament, and can be visited today.
TEMPLE AND THE INNS OF COURT: LONDON’S SEAT OF LEARNING
The variety of residents in Lincoln’s Inn Fields was an exception in an area of London otherwise dominated by the law. It lies just to the west of Chancery Lane, which is the spine of legal London. At the head is Gray’s Inn, on Holborn. At the base nearest the river sit Middle and Inner Temple, inside the City limits. Outer Temple lay outside the City limits and was gradually phased out. Thus, the Inns of Court straddle the City boundaries, but they are a settlement quite apart from both the City and Westminster.
During the Elizabethan period the Inns flourished, becoming a busy camp of young men all eager to learn the law and to acquire the polish of London life. Law was not only a functioning machine but a web of theory to be moulded in the best way to serve both the people and the state. Each of the Inns had a hall for communal eating, a chapel for worship and a library for reference. Surprisingly, they offered relatively little instruction in the law; boys who wanted to learn it took private tuition. Without a formal structure of education and with no qualifying exam (introduced in 1852), getting called tothe Bar was as much about personal charm and intellect as it was about knowledge of the law and ethical soundness.
During the eighteenth century, two men emerged from the Inns of Court who were utterly different, yet together saw the emergence of the ‘modern’ system of British legal representation. They made important advancements, not only for themselves but for the profession and for the state. They were also both outsiders who made their way up the system through a combination of hard work and intellect.
Thomas Erskine was the youngest son of the Earl of Buchan. Beautiful and clever, he had gone to sea at fourteen after a basic grammar school education in Scotland. The sea wasn’t to his taste, so he
Morning Post
:
I presume you haven’t lately passed through Lincoln’s Inn Fields, otherwise I think you would have animadverted on a new-fangled projection now erecting on the Holborn side of that fine square. This ridiculous piece of architecture destroys the uniformity of the row and is a palpable eyesore.
But Soane’s star was in the ascendant, despite his apparent unpopularity and some bad misjudgements. He was appointed Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy, which had decreed that comments or criticisms of living artists were not to be allowed in lectures. Soane couldn’t help himself, and he attacked his young competitor Robert Smirke for the ‘ glaring impropriety’ of his designs for the new Covent Garden Theatre. The audience was shocked, and began to hiss. Soane defended himself: ‘It is extremely painful to me to be obliged to refer to modern works .’ The subsequent fallout led him to suspend his lectures.
Such small matters, however illuminating, were not part of Soane’s grand plan. When his sons disappointed him by not wanting to follow in his footsteps, he conceived the idea to gift his house and collection to the nation; in 1833, he obtained an Act of Parliament to do so. A comprehensive guidebook of the house by John Britton stated, in 1827, that it had not been ‘ adapted for spectacle and display but constructed from the beginning as an architecture of spectacle and display, a theatre of effects’. By leaving his house as a museum ‘ in perpetuity’, Sir John Soane (as he would become) prompted some to ‘wonder what sort of perpetuity he imagined? Was he thinking of a hundred or a thousand, or a hundred thousand years? A hundred would show him a prudent man, a thousand a vain man, and any longer term, a megalomaniac .’ He was probably all three. Sir John Soane’s house is still preserved by that Act of Parliament, and can be visited today.
TEMPLE AND THE INNS OF COURT: LONDON’S SEAT OF LEARNING
The variety of residents in Lincoln’s Inn Fields was an exception in an area of London otherwise dominated by the law. It lies just to the west of Chancery Lane, which is the spine of legal London. At the head is Gray’s Inn, on Holborn. At the base nearest the river sit Middle and Inner Temple, inside the City limits. Outer Temple lay outside the City limits and was gradually phased out. Thus, the Inns of Court straddle the City boundaries, but they are a settlement quite apart from both the City and Westminster.
During the Elizabethan period the Inns flourished, becoming a busy camp of young men all eager to learn the law and to acquire the polish of London life. Law was not only a functioning machine but a web of theory to be moulded in the best way to serve both the people and the state. Each of the Inns had a hall for communal eating, a chapel for worship and a library for reference. Surprisingly, they offered relatively little instruction in the law; boys who wanted to learn it took private tuition. Without a formal structure of education and with no qualifying exam (introduced in 1852), getting called tothe Bar was as much about personal charm and intellect as it was about knowledge of the law and ethical soundness.
During the eighteenth century, two men emerged from the Inns of Court who were utterly different, yet together saw the emergence of the ‘modern’ system of British legal representation. They made important advancements, not only for themselves but for the profession and for the state. They were also both outsiders who made their way up the system through a combination of hard work and intellect.
Thomas Erskine was the youngest son of the Earl of Buchan. Beautiful and clever, he had gone to sea at fourteen after a basic grammar school education in Scotland. The sea wasn’t to his taste, so he
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