Besides being plentiful in the main thoroughfares, important inns, like the churches, were often crammed away in narrow and inconvenient lanes. This was the case with the "Oxford Arms" and the "Bell," both in Warwick Lane. The former was approached by a passage, being bounded on the west by the line of the old city wall, or by a later wall a few feet to the east of it, and touching Amen Corner on the south. It was a fine example of its kind. As was said by a writer in _The Athenæum_ of May 20th, 1876, just before it was destroyed: "Despite the confusion, the dirt and the decay, he who stands in the yard of this ancient inn may get an excellent idea of what it was like in the days of its prosperity, when not only travellers in coach or saddle rode into or out of the yard, but poor players and mountebanks set up their stage for the entertainment of spectators, who hung over the galleries or looked on from their rooms--a name by which the boxes of a theatre were first known." The house must have been rebuilt after the Great Fire, which raged over this area. That it existed before is proved by the following odd advertisement of March, 1672-73: "These are to give notice that Edward Bartlet, Oxford Carrier, hath removed his inn in London from the Swan at Holborn Bridge to the Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane, where he did Inn before the Fire. His coaches and waggons going forth on their usual days, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. He hath also a hearse and all things convenient to carry a Corps to any part of England." The "Bell" Inn, also galleried, was on the east side of Warwick Lane. There Archbishop Leighton died in 1684. As Burnet tells us, he had often said that "if he were to choose a place to die in it should be an Inn; it looked like a pilgrim's going home, to whom this world was all as an Inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion in it." Thus his desire was fulfilled. There is a view of the old house in Chambers' _Book of Days_, vol. i., p. 278. It was demolished in 1865, when the value of the unclaimed parcels, some of which had been there many years, is said to have been considerable. According to one statement, the jewellery was worth £700 or £800.