3-095-304 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London"/Heritage Images

Barnard's Inn, the Inner Courtyard, 1878-1879. Inn of Chancery in Holborn, London, which dates back at least to the mid-thirteenth century. Now the home of Gresham College. "To those who know the quiet retirement and old-world air of Barnard's Inn, it will seem somewhat in accordance with the fitness of things that the last of the alchemists should have pursued here his search for the elixir. This was Peter Woulfe, a Fellow of the Royal Society, who died in 1805. "Sir Humphrey Davy tells us," says Mr Timbs in his Century of Anecdotes, "that he used to hang up written prayers and inscriptions of recommendations of his processes to Providence. His chambers were so filled with furnaces and apparatus, that it was difficult to reach the fireside." He breakfasted at four in the morning; friends were admitted only upon giving a secret signal. We must not forget that here Pip, of Great Expectations, at one time had his quarters in what Dickens rather harshly calls "the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a rank corner as a club for tom-cats"." Description by Alfred Marks. Today, although there has been much re-development of Barnard's Inn and the garden no longer exists, the hall with its stained glass can still be seen.