If you want to see a Tudor building from the time of Shakespeare then here it is: Staple Inn. It’s had a few renovations down the years but it’s basically the same as Shakespeare would have seen it when he was writing Romeo and Juliet.
The last Inn of Chancery
It was originally an Inn of Chancery, attached to one of the four Inns of Court (the training schools for London’s lawyers), most of which fell into decay and were demolished or rebuilt by the Victorians, but Staple Inn was covered over in plain plaster and survived. In the 1930s they removed all of this unsightly plaster and uncovered the fantastic black beams again, only for the Germans to come along and drop a bomb on it. Luckily for us the front facade escaped with a few minor cuts and bruises, but the old Hall and courtyard behind we’re pretty much obliterated.
But let’s have a look at the front first… how cool is that! This is Elizabethan London. This is the London of 1590. When Shakespeare was strolling past here singing his sonnets Walter Raleigh was locked up inside the Tower of London twenty minutes down the road. People were still celebrating the defeat of the Spanish Armada and putting posters of Drake on their bedroom wall. This was probably how all their houses looked: overhanging floors (a bit wonky at the top) with a runny, muddy footpath out the front filled with whatever they tipped out the window. Shakespeare would have felt right at home.
Staple Inn’s courtyard and Old Hall
If you head through the central arch then you’ll find yourself in a pretty little cobbled courtyard. At the time of writing it’s just me and a few bees, pink blossom on the trees, and flower baskets dripping with the water they’ve just tipped in. You’d never know it from a cursory look, but this is the courtyard that got hit by the Luftwaffe in 1941. They obviously weren’t satisfied with their night’s work because they pummelled it again in 1944, reducing the Old Hall to rubble. Fortunately they managed to rebuild it using the salvaged stones and you can see it standing in righthand corner, looking a lot older than its seventy years.
If you head through the next arch then you’ll find yourself inside another pretty little garden that Dickens mentions in his novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. I’m trying not to mention the modern-day monstrosity that ruins one whole side of this scene (too late, I just did). Maybe we should invite the Luftwaffe back again to erase it from existence. We’ll just call it compensation for what they did to the Old Hall.
If you enjoy this then try Lincoln’s Inn (you can walk it in 4 mins)
