If you pass this spot on the stroke of the hour after ten o’clock on a summer’s evening, you may well rub your eyes and wonder if time has been rolled back and you are suddenly living in the London of two centuries ago. For the iron gates of the little place are closed, and out of the tiny porter’s lodge in the middle comes an important person with a gold-laced hat, who solemnly makes the tour of the square, crying five or six times, “Past ten o’clock and all’s well!” The crying of the hours by the night watchman is not the only custom of this old-world corner, so carefully guarded by the commissioners in whose hands the rights of Ely Place are vested. The little square, now given over to law offices and business premises, was once a “sanctuary,” a place where law-breakers could take refuge and where the civil authorities had no right of arrest. To this day the caretakers who form the bulk of the resident population of Ely Place are inordinately proud of the fact that they are independent of police protection, having their own standing army of three porters, who take eight-hour turns in guarding the tranquillity of their self-contained domain. They even have a public-house of their very own, for in the tiny passage that connects Ely Place with Hatton Garden is a dim little inn of dubious antiquity, that takes its name of the “Mitre” from the carved stone mitre set in the façade which once formed part of the old palace of the bishops of Ely. The innkeeper is very proud of the remains of a Methuselah of a cherry-tree now incorporated in one corner of the house. You can see the whitewashed remains of the tree that may have shaded good Queen Bess if you peer through the left-hand corner window. At ten of the clock the iron gate leading into Hatton Garden is duly fastened, and the “Mitre” is closed to the outside world. I have kept the best and most amazing of the treasures of Ely Place until the last. Walk down the left-hand side of the square to the far corner, and you will find your way into one of the most beautiful things in London,--a thirteenth century chapel practically intact. It is so beautiful that if it were necessary to pay a high entrance fee or write for cards of admission, it would probably be the Mecca of every artist and antiquarian. But since it is in London, prodigal of such treasures, and anyone may walk in and look at its beauty undisturbed at any hour, St. Etheldreda’s Chapel is only known to a few people. It was built in the last decade of the thirteenth century by a certain Bishop de Luda, as the chapel for Ely House, the town residence of the bishops of Ely.