Bell Yard
Names
- Bell Yard
Street/Area/District
- Bell Yard
Maps & Views
- 1677 A Large and Accurate Map of the City of London (Ogilby & Morgan): Bell Yard
- 1720 London (Strype): Bell Yard
- 1746 London, Westminster & Southwark (Rocque): Bell Yard
Descriptions
from A Dictionary of London, by Henry Harben (1918)
Bell Yard
North out of Fleet Street to Carey Street (P.O. Directory) at Temple Bar.
The northern portion is within the City boundary, the southern end in the City of Westminster.
Mentioned 1659 (L.C.C. Deeds, Harben Bequest, 1600–1700, No. 39).
Name derived from the tenement called "le Belle," mentioned 36 H. VIII. (L. and P. R. VIII. XIX. (1), p. 636).
The western side is now occupied by the railings of the Law Courts, and the eastern side has been rebuilt in recent years. Apollo Court formerly occupied a portion of the site.
from A New View of London, by Edward Hatton (1708)
Bell Yard, on the N. side of Fleet-str., by Temple Barr.
from A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, by John Strype (1720)
Bell Yard, near adjoining [Shear lane, or Shire lane], except some small part on the East side, against Crown Court, in Chancery lane; which may be rather termed a Street, for its fairness and good Buildings: But there being but a little within the City Liberty, I shall not speak of it here, but in the Rolls Liberty, in which is the greatest Part.
Bell-Yard, a place of a good Thorowfare from Lincolns Inn into Fleetstreet, and chiefly consisting of Publick Houses.
from London and Its Environs Described, by Robert and James Dodsley (1761)
Bell yard. Fleet street. ✽
from Lockie's Topography of London, by John Lockie (1810)
Bell-Yard, Fleet-Street,—at 204, by Temple-bar, leading to Carey-street.
from A Topographical Dictionary of London and Its Environs, by James Elmes (1831)
Bell-Yard—is in Fleet-street, the second turning on the east from Temple-bar, leading northward into to Carey-street.
from London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions, by Henry Benjamin Wheatley and Peter Cunningham (1891)
Bell Yard, Temple Bar. Pope has several letters addressed to his friend, William Fortescue, "his counsel learned in the law," ... "at his house at the upper end of Bell Yard, near unto Lincoln's Inn."
It is not five days ago that they [Fortescue's family] were in London, at that filthy old place Bell Yard, which you know I want them and you to quit.—Pope to Fortescue, March 26, 1736 (Works, ed. Roscoe, vol. ix. p. 407).
There are in all 68 letters addressed to Fortescue by Pope. Fortescue was the intimate friend of Gay as well as of Pope. He was Master of the Rolls, 1741–1759. Hogarth engraved a tobacco paper for "John Harrison, Bell Yard, Temple Bar," who kept a small snuff shop there. The site of an ancient capital messuage, belonging at the dissolution of Monasteries, 32 and 34 Henry VIII., to the Hospitallers or Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, is described in various deeds and records shortly after that time as that messuage and tenement called the Bell, in the parish of St. Dunstan in Fleet Street, lately belonging to the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem, situate between a tenement called the Lamb on the east and a house called the Dolphin on the west, the open fields and pasture called Fickett's Field on the north, and the King's highway on the south. [See Fickett's Field.] The west side of Bell Yard is now occupied by the railing of the Law Courts, and the east side is almost entirely rebuilt.