During the early part of the year 1892 a large mansion was destroyed on the south side of Great St. Helen's, Bishopsgate Street. Latterly divided into two, being numbered 8 and 9, it was of brick, having engaged pilasters, which were furnished with stone bases and capitals. They also had bands, on two of which appeared in relief the initials L/AI and the date 1646. The projecting sills or cornices and the deep keystones on the first floor windows gave a striking appearance to the house. It was also memorable as an early specimen of brickwork in London, and as dating from a period before the formal conclusion of the Civil War, when building operations were almost at a standstill. No. 9 had, in a room on the first floor, a wooden seventeenth century mantelpiece, behind which, on its removal, were found traces of an older mantelpiece of marble, and evidence of the former existence of a large open fireplace. The beautiful staircase, or portion of a staircase, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, of which a slight drawing is here given, may from its style be Elizabethan. A blocked-up window with wooden transoms for casements was also discovered; so it seems likely that, some years after the date of the original building, considerable alterations took place. The façade has been attributed to Inigo Jones, but it had not his classic symmetry, and looked like the work of a less instructed native genius. Besides Inigo Jones, a Royalist and Roman Catholic, was taken prisoner in October, 1645, at the storming of Basing House, having been there during the siege, which had lasted since August, 1643. He was apparently not free to return to his profession until July 2nd, 1646, when, after payment of a heavy fine, his estate, which had been sequestrated, was restored to him, and he received pardon by an ordinance of the House of Commons. It is hard to believe that whilst he was passing through such a crisis, or in the few months succeeding it, he would have been superintending a work in the Puritan City. At the time of his release the great architect was seventy-four years of age, and, as far as we know, he hardly practised his profession afterwards. The division of Nos. 8 and 9, Great St. Helen's, into two, took place in the course of the 18th century; probably about 1750, to judge from the style of the fanlights and projecting hoods to the front doors, and from the staircase of No. 8, the upper portion of which, however, was much more archaic, and might have served as part of the back-staircase to the original building.