41-42 Cloth Fair — The City's Oldest House

41-42 Cloth Fair is the only house in the City of London to survive the Great Fire of 1666. Constructed between 1597 and 1614 by Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland, it originally formed part of eleven houses on a priory laundry site. Saved from demolition in 1929 by architects Paul Paget and John Seely for £3,000, its leaded windows display signatures etched by Sir Winston Churchill and the Queen Mother.

London · from the walk “Monks, Martyrs & Revolutionaries” · audio ~3 min · Generated

41-42 Cloth Fair, EC1A 7JQ

Why is 41-42 Cloth Fair famous in the City of London?

Look at the building in front of you... forty one, forty two Cloth Fair. It doesn't shout for attention. The ground floor looks almost modern. But lift your gaze to the first and second floors, and those rectangular timber bays with their glinting leaded windows tell a very different story. This is the Only house in the City of London to have survived the Great Fire of sixteen sixty six. You are looking at over four hundred years of history, hiding in plain sight.......... From fifteen ninety seven to sixteen fourteen, a block of eleven houses was constructed here by the church, around a small courtyard. The square was known as "the Square in Launders Green," a nod to the fact that this used to be the site of the priory's laundry. Of those eleven houses... only this one remains.......... Now, here's where it gets dramatic. The house was constructed by Henry Rich, a flamboyant courtier and favourite of the crown. Henry Rich, first Earl of Holland, was described as an "extravagant, decorative, quarrelsome and highly successful courtier." But his luck ran out. Distrusted both by King And Parliament after twice changing sides during the English Civil War, he was executed in sixteen forty nine. Just thirty five years after completing this house... his head was on the block.......... The first tenant, William Chapman, turned the ground floor and cellar into an alehouse called The Eagle and Child. Over the centuries, it became a wool draper's shop in the seventeen hundreds, and then a tobacconist's from eighteen twenty nine, run by a Mrs Corram.......... And there's a darker legend. There are rumours that skeletons are buried in the foundations of the building, which is plausible given its location so close to the church.......... By nineteen twenty nine, this ancient house was earmarked for Demolition as part of a slum clearance programme. But it was saved when two architects, Paul Paget and John Seely, bought it for just three thousand pounds. The pair were business partners... but also life partners. They apparently referred to each other simply as "the partner." And their domestic life? They had twin baths in the bathroom so that they could chat with each other whilst bathing!......... One day in nineteen fifty four, the poet John Betjeman came to lunch at number forty one and suddenly announced, "But of Course I've got to live here!" Paget obliged, and Betjeman moved into two rooms above a shop at number forty three next door, paying an annual rent of two hundred pounds. Inside this house, a set of leaded windows bear the signatures, etched with a diamond pen, of Sir Winston Churchill and the Queen Mother!......... Four centuries of plague, fire, civil war, the Blitz... and this quiet house on Cloth Fair survived them all.

Nearby stories