The garden attached to St. Chad’s Well seems in the last century to have been famous for its tulips; at least, if one may believe an advertisement in my possession, which has the date 1779. It speaks of ‘The largest and richest collection of early Dutch tulips ever yet seen in Great Britain, now in bloom, with many fine double hyacinths of various colours raised by Van Hawsen, to be had of Richard Morris at St. Chad’s Wells, Battle Bridge, near London; the lowest prices marked in the catalogue, which may be had as above, and the flowers seen gratis. No person admitted with a dog. Seedsmen and gardeners will be furnished wholesale with Duke Vantol, Claremond, and many other sorts of early tulips at the Dutch prices, and with the usual discount: the grand present Auricula at 1s. per pot: Gold and Silver Fish cheap.’ Mr. Pinks gives the particulars of the sale by auction of St. Chad’s Well on September 14, 1837. It seems that there was then a brick house facing Gray’s Inn Lane, having a pump-room and a large garden at the back. The water appears to have been still sold three years afterwards, when a pamphlet was issued setting forth ‘the characteristic virtues of the Saint Chad’s Wells aperient and alterative springs.’ [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER IX. TWO OLD CITY MANSIONS. ‘The crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth.’ _Isaiah_ xxiii. 8. BEFORE the summer of 1892 a large and interesting old mansion was destroyed in the City. This, known as Nos. 8 and 9, Great St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate Street, was situated on the south side of the churchyard. It was of brick, having engaged pilasters, which were furnished with stone bases and capitals; they also had bands, on two of which, composed, however, of cement, appeared in relief the initials A L I and the date 1646. The projecting sills or cornices, and the deep keystones of the first-floor windows, gave a striking character 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,[92] 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. [Illustration: NOS. 8 AND 9, GREAT ST. HELEN’S.]