66. Hare Court, Temple, 1891 (Black and white).
Passing out of Fleet Street through the Inner Temple Gateway, under the old room acquired some years ago by the London County Council, the first opening on the right leads us into Hare Court, which "Elia" has described with less than his usual sympathy as "a gloomy churchyard-like place, with trees and a pump in it." At this pump he had often drunk when a child, and the contents later in life he recommends as "excellent cold with brandy." The back of Dick's coffee-house is here to be seen, nestling against a fine old block of chambers, and overshadowed on the right by a high modern structure which seems to have got in there by mistake. Dick's, sometimes called Richard's, stood on the site of the printing office of Richard Tottel, law stationer in the reign of Henry VIII.; it got its name, however, from Richard Torner or Turner, who was landlord in 1680. From the days of Steele and Addison many eminent men frequented it. As is well known, coffee-houses for half a century or more had a great influence on the sale of books; every new poem or pamphlet of any importance was to be seen in them. Peter Cunningham records that he had several in his possession bearing in large letters on their title-page "Dick's Coffee-house." This picturesque old place of entertainment, like the Rainbow and other houses of a similar description, was approached from Fleet Street by a long passage. In front it was a wooden structure; the back was really half-timbered, the timbering concealed by plaster; inside the original staircase remained. It disappeared in 1899; the rest of the seventeenth century buildings in Hare Court had been swept away some years previously.
67. Sion College and the City of London School, Victoria Embankment, 1893 (Black and white).
Sion College, near the north end of Blackfriars Bridge, and next on the west to the City of London School, was founded in 1623, as a College and Almshouse, according to the will of Dr. Thomas White, who was Vicar of St. Dunstan's in the West, and held other clerical appointments. A library was added by the munificence of Dr. John Simson, rector of St. Olave's, Hart Street, and an executor of the will. Until of late years, the home of the College was in London Wall, between Aldermanbury on the east and Philip Lane on the west, the former site of Elsing Spittal. The old library was built along the east side of Philip Lane, the hall stood back in the College garden. Mr. W. Niven, in his volume on London City churches, gives a good etching of the picturesque gateway. New Sion College, here shown, was formally opened by their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, December 15, 1886.