You step through it into a remote space where a mediæval building stands in the midst of the little rock gardens planted by the Belgian refugees to while away their anxious, tedious hours. Many men have passed through the old hall since Sir John Crosby built it, for at different times it had belonged to the Duke of Gloucester (Richard III.), Sir Thomas More, his son-in-law William Roper, and various ambassadors and nobles. In 1609 it was the home of that Countess of Pembroke whose charms evoked from William Browne the epitaph so often attributed to Ben Jonson: Underneath this sable herse Lies the subject of all verse; Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother; Death! ere thou hast slain another Fair and learned and good as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee. One wonders what they would all have thought of these latest comers to the old mansion which carried on the English tradition of hospitality so well that the poet among the visitors wrote, and you may see his words on a brass tablet opposite the fireplace: Je sens dans l’air que je respire Un parfum de Liberté, Un peu de cette terre hospitalière, * * * * * Le sol de l’Angleterre. The reconstitution of Crosby Hall was never finished; first because of the death of King Edward, who took a great interest in the scheme, and then owing to the war; but there it stands, its perpendicular lines, mullioned windows and oriel and the wonderful oaken roof making it one of the best examples that remain to us of fifteenth-century domestic architecture. Chelsea is full of memories of every period since Sir Thomas More’s day. Queen Elizabeth as a child stayed at her father’s manor house here, and later, as a girl of thirteen, she is said to have lived for a time at Sir Thomas More’s house, when it had passed into the hands of her stepmother, Catherine Parr. The charming Georgian houses of the Cheyne Walk of to-day carry on the tradition of the beautiful Chelsea homes of those times, such as Shrewsbury House which stood on the west side of Oakley Street before it was pulled down in 1813. It was owned by the husband of the famous Bess of Hardwicke, the Earl of Shrewsbury, who guarded Mary Queen of Scots in her captivity.