The northern part of Gray's Inn Road falls within the parish of St. Pancras. The part which lies to the north of Theobald's Road was formerly called Gray's Inn Lane. In 1879-80 the east side was pulled down, and the line of houses set back in the rebuilding. These consists of uninteresting buildings, with small shops on the ground-floor. On the west there are the worn bricks of Gray's Inn. At the corner of Clerkenwell Road is the Holborn Town-Hall, an imposing, well-built edifice of brick and stone, with square clock-tower, surmounted by a smaller octagonal tower and dome. The date is 1878. Gray's Inn Road is familiar to all readers of Dickens and Fielding, from frequent references in their novels. John Hampden took lodgings here in 1640, in order to be near Pym, at a time when the struggle between the King and Parliament in regard to the question of ship money was at its sharpest. James Shirley, the dramatic poet of the seventeenth century, is also said to have lived here, but was probably in Gray's Inn itself. GRAY'S INN. BY W. J. LOFTIE. An archway on the north side of Holborn, nearly opposite Chancery Lane, admits us to Gray's Inn. It is not the original entrance, which was round the corner in Portpool Lane, now called Gray's Inn Road. The Lords Grey of Wilton obtained the Manor of Portpool at some remote period from the Canon of St. Paul's, who held it; we have no direct evidence as to whether the Canon had a house on the spot, but there are some traces of a chapel and a chaplain. In 1315 Lord Grey gave some land in trust to the Canons of St. Bartholomew to endow the chaplain in his mansion of Portpool. From its situation near London, the ready access both to the City and the country, with the fine views northward towards Hampstead and Highgate, this must have been a more desirable place of residence than even the neighbouring manor of the Bishop of Ely. It consisted in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries of a gate-house which faced eastward, the chapel close to it on the left, and various other buildings, some of them apparently forming separate houses, with spacious gardens and a windmill. Here the Lords Grey lived for a couple of centuries in great state, apparently letting or lending the smaller houses to tenants or retainers--it would seem not unlikely to lawyers or students of the law, possibly their own men of business. This is no mere theory or guesswork. There has been too much conjecture about the early history of Gray's Inn, and the sober-minded topographer is warned off at the outset by a number of inconsistent assertions as to the early existence here of a school of law. Dugdale tells us that the manor was granted to the Priory of Shene in the reign of Henry VII., and after the dissolution it was rented by a society of students of the law. A fictitious list of Readers goes back to the reign of Edward III., but will not bear critical examination. The lawyers paid a rent of L6 13s. 4d.