Not many years ago a curious sign was placed in front of No. 16, Church Street, formerly Church Lane, Chelsea, having been dug up in the small back garden which was built over a short time previously. The material of this sign is cast iron; it is therefore not, strictly speaking, a sculptured sign, but may, I think, be fairly included in the same class. The design (see _ante_, 89) is like that of a seventeenth-century fire-back, and represents a cock vigorously attempting to swallow a snake which he has seized by the tail; a second snake on the ground behind him rears its head as if to strike. Above is the date 1652. When this sign first saw the light, Chelsea was a detached village grouped near the old church, with fine villas of noblemen in the immediate neighbourhood. On the east side of Church Lane houses were continuous from the church to the parsonage; one of them was doubtless known as the Cock, but I have no special information about it. A curious fact has, however, come to light, tending to show that signs of this description were kept in stock, and repeated again and again. In 1874 a sign was dug up in the foundations of Messrs. Smith, Payne, and Smith’s Bank, No. 1, Lombard Street, which, on comparison, I find to be similar in all respects, and, as far as I can judge, cast from the same mould. No. 1, Lombard Street is on the site of the east end of the Stocks Market, cleared away in 1737 to make room for the Mansion House. I find from the ‘Handbook of Bankers,’ by Mr. F. G. Hilton Price, F.S.A., that in 1734 there was a house here with the sign of the Cock in the occupation of Thomas Stevenson, fishmonger. Later in the century the site was occupied by Messrs. Harley and Co., bankers. A sign of similar kind, perhaps really a decorated fire-back, is to be seen at the entrance to a Cock Tavern near Billingsgate. This appears to be considerably older. It has been very much damaged; possibly, as the owner says, in the Great Fire of London. [Illustration]