Southampton Buildings

Southampton buildings, see Old. Southampton court, on the E. side of Chancery lane, near Holbourn.

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Old Southampton buildings, (like a T) a considerable str. betn Chancery lane (against Lincolns inn) Wly, and Holbourn Nly. L. 170 Yds, and from P C. near W. 1100 Yds.

Southampton Buildings, or Old Southampton Buildings, to distinguish it from New Southampton Buildings in St. Giles's Parish; a good large Place, composed of two Streets, the one having a passage out of Chancery lane, and runneth Eastward to the dead Wall of Staple Inn Garden; and about the middle of this Street the other begins, and falls into Holbourn, against Gray's Inn: And both are handsome Streets, with good Houses, well inhabited.

Southampton buildings, Chancery Lane.

Southampton-Buildings, Holborn,—at 318, on the W. side of Middle-row, it leads to 53, Chancery-lane.

Southampton Buildings, Holborn to Chancery Lane, a row of tenements so called after the Wriothesleys, Earls of Southampton, and entitled "Old" to distinguish them from the "New" buildings in High Holborn, erected by Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton (d. 1667), son of Shakespeare's patron, and father of Lady Rachel Russell. [See Southampton House, Holborn.] On August 16, 1673, the Holborn property of the Southampton family was assigned, in trust, to Arthur, Earl of Essex, and others, for and on behoof of Elizabeth, Countess-Dowager of Northumberland, on her marriage with the Honourable Ralph Montague, eldest son and heir of Edward, Lord Montague. On July 17, 1690, it was assigned in mortgage by Ralph, Earl of Montague, and Elizabeth, Countess of Montague, to Edward Rudge and Edward Littleton. In 1723 it was granted by John, Duke of Montague, as a portion to his eldest daughter, Lady Isabella, on her marriage to William, Duke of Manchester. On March 22, 1727, it was sold and assigned in fee by William and Isabella, Duke and Duchess of Manchester; John, Duke of Montague; Scroop, Duke of Bridgewater; Robert, Earl of Sunderland; and Francis, Earl of Godolphin, to Jacob de Bouverie, Esq., and Sir Edward de Bouverie, Bart., ancestors of the present proprietor, the Earl of Radnor. On March 3, 1740, Sir Jacob de Bouverie, Bart., granted a lease to Edward Bootle, for a term of 230 years, of those premises. After that the present buildings were erected by Edward Bootle, who left them by will to Robert Bootle; who left them by will to trustees; and by divers assignments they became vested in Edward Smith Bigg, Esq., who granted them on lease to the trustees of the London Mechanics' Institute, for the whole of his term of 146 years, from September 1, 1824, at a rent of £229 per annum, with liberty to purchase down to £29 per annum, at any time, for the sum of £350.¹ They are now held by the Birkbeck Bank. The Birkbeck Institution, a reconstitution of the London Mechanics' Institution, and so named in honour of Dr. Birkbeck, the original founder, has been removed to a new house in Bream's Buildings.

This yeare [1650] Jacob, a Jew, opened a Coffey house at the Angel, in the Parish of S. Peter in the East Oxon, and there it was by some, who delighted in Noveltie, drank. When he left Oxon, he sold it in Old Southampton buildings in Holborne near London, and was living there in 1671.—Autobiography of Antony à Wood, vol. ii. p. 65.

Here, in the house of a relative, Edmund Ludlow, the Parliamentary general, lay concealed at the time of the Restoration till he succeeded in escaping to the Continent. In 1696, when Sir George Barclay was arranging the plot for the murder of William III., he took lodgings under the name of Brown in Southampton Buildings, "over against the arch" which led to Staple Inn, the meeting-place of the conspirators being the Griffin Tavern close by.² Thomas Holcroft, the dramatist, about 1780 kept a lodging-house in this street. Charles Lamb was living at No. 34 in 1809, after he left Mitre Court Buildings and before he went to Inner Temple Lane. Twenty-one years afterwards, in 1830, when he made a last attempt to reside in London, he once more took up his abode in the same No. 34. In March 1811, when Coleridge was lecturing, he resided in Southampton Buildings, and, as he was in daily intercourse with the Lambs, very probably in No. 34, to which they themselves twice resorted. Here, in the Southampton Coffeehouse, at the Chancery Lane end, Hazlitt has laid the scene of his Essay on Coffee-house Politicians; and here he occasionally held a kind of evening levee.¹

For several years Mr. Hazlitt was a very regular visitor to the Southampton Coffee House. . . . He always came in the evening, occupied a particular place reserved for him as scrupulously as his seat at Covent Garden, called for what he wanted, and settled the score whenever it happened to be convenient.—W. C. Hazlitt, Memoirs of William Hazlitt, vol. i. p. 292.

In the year 1820 Hazlitt took apartments at No. 9, at the house of a tailor named Walker. Here, on August 16, he "first saw the sweet apparition" of Miss Sarah, the landlord's daughter, bringing up the tea-tray, and at once fell in love with her. She would not listen to his advances; and after a while he made a journey to Edinburgh to procure a divorce, but the young lady remained unmoved. The great writer then "threw out his clamorous anguish to the clouds and to the winds and to the air" in his Liber Amoris, or the New Pygmalion (12mo, 1823), and returned no more to Southampton Buildings.

At Nos. 25 and 26 are the Patent Office, the Registries of Design and Trade Marks Offices, and the Patent Library and Reading Room. At No. 10 is the Office of the Commissioners for Affidavits in the Irish Law Courts, and Registry of Deeds in Ireland. [See Patent Office.]

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¹ Mechanics' Register, vol. ii. pp. 179, 180.
² Blackmore, pp. 135, 136.