A short distance further on, we enter the Hammersmith Road, opposite a tavern called “The Bell and Anchor,” which stands beside the turnpike, and passing about twenty shops on the left towards Hammersmith, we notice in the fore-court of a house called “The Cedars,” two noble cedar trees of immense girth, one of which is represented in the accompanying cut. This was formerly the residence of Sir James Branscomb, who, according to Faulkner, “in his early days had been a servant to the Earl of Gainsborough, and afterwards, for upwards of forty years, carried on a lottery office in Holborn. He was a common-councilman of the Ward of Farringdon Without, and received the honour of knighthood during his shrievalty.” The house has been a ladies’ boarding-school for many years. From the Kensington Road we can return direct to London, having in this chapter departed from our even course on the Fulham Road for the purpose of visiting the North End district. [Picture: Tree in the fore-court of “The Cedars”] CHAPTER VII. THE PRYOR’S BANK, FULHAM. Nestling in trees beneath the old tower of Fulham Church, which has been judiciously restored by Mr. George Godwin, there may be seen from Putney Bridge a remarkable group of houses, the most conspicuous of which will be conjectured from a passing glance to belong to the Gothic tribe. This house, which has been a pet kind of place of the Strawberry Hill class, is called the Pryor’s Bank, and its history can be told in much less than one hundredth part of the space that a mere catalogue of the objects of interest which it has contained would occupy. In fact, the whole edifice, from the kitchen to the bedrooms, was a few years since a museum, arranged with a view to pictorial effect; and if it had been called “The Museum of British Antiquities” it would have been found worthy of the name.