The Inns of Court are a fascinating survivor of London history. There is the Elizabethan drawing room where Shakespeare’stwelfth night was performed for the first time; there are Dickensian stairways and alleys; there is an old church with the effigies of knights and crusaders; and there are beautiful gardens and avenues of tall trees that run down to the Thames. You can go back to the century you want, simply by going through one of the small dark doors that give access to the inns.
The Inns of Court are central to the lives of lawyers working in England; all the lawyers study here and many have their offices here. In Shakespeare’s time, many courtiers obtained their education here: Oxford and Cambridge were for those who wanted to go to church, but men from all over the world attended inns.
There are four inns, all within walking distance of the Royal Courts of Justice: Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, Inner Temple and Middle Temple. And then there’s the Staple Inn, the last survivor of the Inns of Chancery, junior law schools that eventually merged with the Inns of Court and then disappeared (now home to the society of actuaries).
Only one of the Inns (the Middle Temple) is regularly open to the public; these are still workplaces, however serene and quaint they may seem. Even so, the exteriors of the other inns are quaint, with beautiful buildings, fences, and gates (and some offer tours).
You reach the Temples through small gates and alleys off Fleet Street; from the busy traffic and bustle of modern London to a calm and quiet world where you wouldn’t be too surprised to see one of the staff using a quill pen instead of a laptop. The two temples are built, as the name suggests, on the site of a Templar foundation. But the Knights Templar had already left when the Inns of Court were established, leaving only their characteristic round church behind them, which is now the shared chapel of both Temples. Most of the Inner Temple has a classical feel, with Georgian brick, tall narrow windows, and fan lights above the doors, but many of the buildings are Victorian or even later; there was a lot of rebuilding after the war.
The main glory of the Inner Temple is its gardens, open on weekend afternoons from 12:30 to 15:00. Here there was an orchard in the Middle Ages, then a rose garden; according to Shakespeare, this is where the War of the Roses began, with York and Lancaster each choosing a different colored rose as their emblem; it still contains fruit trees including a mulberry and a loquat.
Middle Temple is separated from its neighbor by the narrow Middle Temple Lane. His most prized possession is the beautiful Middle Temple Hall, one of the most splendid timber ceilings in England, a beautiful double-hammered beam dating from 1567. It is a triumph of the carpenter’s art and it was under these beautiful beams that Shakespeare twelfth night was done for the first time.
Lincoln’s Inn is located a little to the north, off Chancery Lane; here’s another link to Shakespeare’s age, as playwright and actor Ben Jonson is said to have laid some of the bricks for the front wall and front door. Behind the impressive façade, the Inn is a jumble of buildings of different ages (and even different owners – the Inn had to pass an Act of Parliament to be able to charge freeholders New Square rates) with an elegant old-fashioned drawing room .
Still further north is Gray’s Inn, where we know Shakespeare performed at least once, and the comedy of errors it was performed as Christmas entertainment. Many of the buildings are replacements for those lost in the Blitz and you can still visit the beautiful gardens planted by Francis Bacon in 1597 (known as The Walks) at weekday lunchtimes.
From Gray’s Inn it’s a five-minute walk to the Staple Inn, the last of the Inns of Chancery and one of my favorite buildings in London: a huge, low, half-timbered building in Holborn, with a door in the middle leading to the little courtyard of the Inn.
I know that if I were to become a lawyer, I would probably be working in a large law firm, in a modern office building somewhere in the City or Canary Wharf. But every time I visit the Inns of Court, I allow myself to daydream about being a lawyer in one of the little chambers at the top of a staircase, overlooking beautiful gardens and ancient roofs…
