A relic of a most interesting old building is the figure of Gerard the Giant,[7] ‘carved from a twisted block of timber, distorted and ill at ease,’ which stood in the niche between the first-floor windows of Gerard’s Hall Hotel, on the south side of Basing Lane. It is about 6 feet high, and painted more or less to imitate life. Gerard’s Hall is described by Stow as ‘one great house, of old time built upon arched vaults, with gates of stone from Caen in Normandy. The same is now a common hostrey for receipt of travellers, commonly and corruptly called Gerrardes Hall, of a giant said to have dwelt there. In the high-roofed hall of this house sometime stood a large fir pole, which reached to the roof thereof, and was said to be one of the staves that Gerrarde the giant used in the wars to run withal.--John Gisors, mayor of London in the year 1245, was owner thereof, and Sir John Gisors, mayor and constable of the Tower 1311, and divers others of that name and family since that time, owned it.--So it appeareth that this Gisor’s Hall, of late time by corruption, hath been called Gerrard’s Hall.’ The upper part of the building was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, but the crypt remained,[8] and on this was built a brick house, with no remarkable feature except the above-named grotesque wooden figure, by way of sign. This house was destroyed in April, 1852, when the new Cannon Street was being formed. For some months the crypt--a fine specimen of thirteenth-century Gothic--continued in existence; but as the crown of the arched roof stood 2 feet or more above the roadway, it was also pulled down. Mr. Wheatley tells us that the stones were carefully numbered, and presented to the Crystal Palace Company, with a view to its re-erection. After a time, however, they were used in making the foundations for a new engine-house. Some of the stones are even said to have found their way to Kensington, to be broken up for mending the roads. There is a good view of the crypt of Gerard’s Hall in Burn’s ‘Catalogue to the Beaufoy Trade Tokens,’ and a descriptive article in the _Builder_ for April 10, 1852, which also gives drawings of several devices of the nature of merchants’ marks, and an unfinished inscription, cut on the wall of the entrance.