Catalogue of a collection of early drawings and pictures of London: With some contemporary furnitureBurlington Fine Arts Club
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Catalogue of a collection of early drawings and pictures of London: With some contemporary furniture
Burlington Fine Arts Club
Art -- Exhibitions; London (England) -- Pictorial works -- Catalogs
The next building in front is the Tudor Cockpit, with its octagonal
roof still intact. For years it had not served its original purpose,
but gave the name to a group of lodgings in which it was evidently
included. The Earl of Pembroke, as we have pointed out, was living
there at the time of the execution of Charles I, after which Oliver
Cromwell took possession of these lodgings, and it was probably in the
veritable Cockpit that music was performed during his protectorate.
There also plays were acted both in the time of Charles I and after
the Restoration. Just before that event the lodgings were assigned
to George Monck, who became Duke of Albemarle, and in Fisher’s plan
it is marked as part of his lodgings. As mentioned in describing No.
89, between the dates of the two pictures this architectural relic
was obliterated by a brick building, which in turn gave way to Kent’s
Treasury. Until about 1806, the word Cockpit was applied to a famous
but elusive political centre included in the Treasury and more or less
on the site of Henry VIII’s building. Lord Welby thought that the
style “Treasury Chambers Cockpit” was known much later. The passage
from Whitehall to the Treasury is partly lighted on the north side by
a large window with mullions and transom, and on the south there is
a two-light window of similar date. Both are involved externally in
Tudor brickwork. On the ground floor a Tudor doorway survives, and
all these must have been in the casing of the original passage that
led to the Cockpit. As mistakes are frequent on the subject we will
add that “Cockpit Steps” leading from Birdcage Walk into Dartmouth
Street have no historical connection with Whitehall. They adjoined
a later Cockpit surmounted by a cupola, which is marked in a map
belonging to Strype’s Stow 1720, and was taken down in 1816. There
was also a “Royal Cockpit” in Tufton Street, Westminster, described
in the “London Magazine,” November 1822, and in the “Every Night
Book” as late as 1827, which was probably the last in London.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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