80
��NOTES BY THE WAY.
��This narrow escape of the records caused him to be anxious as to fire all through his life, and during his last years at the South Kensington Museum he would frequently go over the building after it was closed, to be sure that the treasures it contained were quite safe.
Bolls Chapel In 1896 the Rolls Chapel was pulled down. It had been pro-
pulled down, posed to incorporate it in the new block of the Record Office, removing only the roof, which, being of wood, could not be per- mitted to remain part of a building which was intended to be fire- proof ; but the scheme had to be abandoned on account of the Maxwell- rotten state of the walls. Sir H. C. Maxwell-Lyte, the Deputy- Lyte's history Keeper of the Records, gives the following interesting history of the of it. chapel :
" It was originally the Chapel of the House of Converts founded by Henry III., for the reception of Jews who had embraced the Christian faith. The keepers of the House of Converts came also to be the keepers of the Rolls of Chancery, and the Chapel of the House of Converts came to be known popularly as the Rolls Chapel. There was a Master of the Rolls with the name of Sir Julius Caesar, who here in 1815 married Mrs. Hungate. The bride was given away by her uncle, Sir Francis Bacon. It is popular error, propagated by Pennant's account of London, that Inigo Jones rebuilt the chapel in 1617. There is no evidence to connect Inigo Jones with the Rolls Chapel, and he was not the ruthless restorer and reconstructor of that building in the seventeenth century. It is supposed to have been injured by the Great Fire of London. The Rolls Chapel was used, not only for Divine worship and for the preservation of the records of Chancery, but also as a meeting-place for creditors and debtors, and more recently as the place at which mortgagees waited for an hour before foreclosure. The attendance in the chapel dwindled down to about five as a maximum, and sometimes to two or even one, before the services finally ceased in 1895."
But it is within the last ten years that the greatest changes round Bream's Buildings have been made, to the considerable benefit of the owners of the freehold, the Ecclesiastical Commis- sioners ; the offices of The, Queen, The Field, and The Law Times, The Athenaeum, and Notes and Queries, the Birkbeck Institution, and large printing establishments now occupy land which a few years ago was a series of courts and narrow passages. Although these in recent times had become squalid and uninviting, they had in the past been full of associations dear to the antiquary and the historian.
Nevill'sCourt. On the 9th of July, 1900, some of the old houses in Nevill's
Court, Fetter Lane, were sold by Messrs. Weatherall & Green. These quaint houses, with their small gardens, are among the oldest in London, being among the relics of the City untouched by the Great Fire. The sale, which comprised some houses in Fetter Lane, realized about 23,OCKM. Nos. 8, 9, and 10, forming a part of the Moravian settlement founded there by Count Zinzendorf
��Newspapers published in
Bream's Buildings.
�� �
