Old Hall

Built around 1490, the Old Hall at Lincoln's Inn in London is the Inn's oldest surviving Tudor building and inspired the Court of Chancery scene in Charles Dickens' Bleak House. Measuring 71 by 32 feet, its construction was partly funded by fines on misbehaving lawyers. Architect Sir John Simpson dismantled and restored the crumbling structure, which was officially reopened by Queen Mary on November 22, 1928.

London Β· from the walk β€œBeneath the Bar: Lincoln's Inn & Legal London” Β· audio ~3 min Β· Generated

Old Hall

Old Hall, Lincoln's Inn, London WC2A 3TL

Which Charles Dickens novel was inspired by the Court of Chancery at Lincoln's Inn's Old Hall?

You're standing before one of Lincoln's Inn's best kept secrets... the Old Hall. Built around fourteen ninety, this is the Inn's Oldest surviving building, and one of the finest Tudor halls left in all of London.......... Now here's a detail most visitors never hear. The construction of this hall was partly funded by a sharp increase in the fine for... fornicating with a woman in chambers. That's right. The lawyers of Lincoln's Inn helped pay for their grand new hall with penalty fees for misbehaving behind closed doors.......... Step inside, and you'd find a space seventy one feet long and thirty two feet wide, with original roof timbers still overhead. Look up... and you can spot a covered hole in the centre of the ceiling. That's where smoke once escaped from a central fire that heated the hall. No chimney. Just an open vent. Medieval heating at its finest!......... In sixteen seventy two, King Charles the Second dined here with his brother James, Duke of York. The occasion was recorded in the Inn's Golden Book, and by all accounts, it was a Rambunctious affair. The diners were reportedly so drunk they could not stand to say the loyal toast... so the King gave special permission for them to remain seated!......... At the south end stands a magnificent wooden screen, often attributed to Inigo Jones but actually constructed by Robert Lynton, a Warden of the London Joiners' Company, in sixteen twenty four. Until eighteen eighteen, this screen stood in the Middle of the room, dividing the hall into high and low sections... important members on one side, everyone else on the other.......... At the opposite wall hangs William Hogarth's painting, Paul Before Felix, commissioned in seventeen forty eight. Why a biblical courtroom scene for a lawyers' hall? Because from seventeen thirty seven onward, this very room served as the Court of Chancery. And it was This gloomy, fog filled court that inspired Charles Dickens to write the opening of Bleak House... the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall.......... By the nineteen twenties, the hall was literally falling apart. A plaster ceiling added around seventeen twenty had put such enormous strain on the old timbers that the whole structure threatened to collapse. Sir John Simpson carefully dismantled the Entire building, straightened warped timbers, stripped away the plaster, and put it all back together. It was reopened on the twenty second of November, nineteen twenty eight, by Queen Mary. Some of the replacement panelling was even carved from sixteenth and seventeenth century oak sourced especially for the project.......... Five centuries of feasting, law, scandal, and literature... all within these ancient walls.

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