Lindsey House — Inigo Jones's Oldest Survivor

Lindsey House at numbers 59 and 60 Lincoln's Inn Fields is the oldest surviving building on London's square, built between 1638 and 1641 and attributed to architect Inigo Jones. Architect Sir John Soane renovated the structure between 1802 and 1808 for Prime Minister Sir Spencer Perceval, Britain's only assassinated prime minister. The house also served as the literary model for Mr. Tulkinghorn's office in Charles Dickens's novel Bleak House.

London · from the walk “Secrets of Lincoln's Inn Fields” · audio ~3 min · Generated

59-60 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3LJ

What is the oldest surviving building on Lincoln's Inn Fields in London?

Look at this building... numbers fifty-nine and sixty, Lincoln's Inn Fields. It doesn't shout for attention. No grand dome, no towering columns. Just a calm, elegant stone and brick facade, set back behind a quiet forecourt. And yet... this is the Oldest surviving building on the entire square. Nearly four hundred years old.......... This is Lindsey House, built between sixteen thirty-eight and sixteen forty-one. The architect Colen Campbell stated it was designed by Inigo Jones, and the writer Ralph asserted it was built on his model. Both wrote long after the house went up, and no contemporary document has ever confirmed Jones as the designer. Nevertheless, the building shows so many characteristics of his work that leading architects have accepted the attribution to this day.......... Now, who actually built it? The usual story claims it was built for Robert Bertie, First Earl of Lindsey, who died from wounds at the Battle of Edgehill in sixteen forty-two. But that story is almost certainly Untrue. The first reference to this house appears in a deed from March sixteen forty-one, showing that William Newton sold it to Sir David Cunningham for three hundred pounds.......... So where does the name Lindsey House come from? The name was only applied After the fourth Earl of Lindsey took up residence here in the early eighteenth century.......... The house had a parade of dramatic occupants. Charles Rich's only son died of smallpox right here in May sixteen sixty-four, and within two months, the grief-stricken Earl had sold the property. Then came the most colorful owner of all... the Marquess of Winchester, later Duke of Bolton. He was a rather odd character, given to long periods of silence and bizarre nocturnal parties and hunting expeditions. In sixteen eighty-seven, he travelled the country with four coaches and a retinue of One Hundred horsemen, giving elaborate entertainments by night... and sleeping by day.......... And of course, Samuel Pepys knew this square well. On the tenth of February, sixteen sixty-four, he wrote of visiting Lord Sandwich at "his new house, a fine house, but Deadly Dear, in Lincoln's Inn Fields." The rent? Two hundred and fifty pounds a year... at a time when a Navy official's residence cost just seventy pounds.......... But here is a detail most people walk right past. Sir John Soane himself worked on this building between eighteen oh two and eighteen oh eight, joining the two halves back together for a very special client... Prime Minister Sir Spencer Perceval. Perceval would go on to become the Only British Prime Minister ever to be assassinated, shot dead in the lobby of the House of Commons in eighteen twelve. He once lived right Here.......... And one more ghost lingers in these walls. In Charles Dickens's Bleak House, the sinister solicitor to the aristocracy, Mister Tulkinghorn, has his offices in Lincoln's Inn Fields... and the description of his building corresponds most closely to Lindsey House. Fiction and history, woven together in one extraordinary facade.

Unlocked for everyone by someone who walked here

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