Lincoln's Inn Old Hall — Where Thomas More Walked

Lincoln's Inn Old Hall in London is a 1490 Tudor structure where Sir Thomas More studied law in 1496 and Charles Dickens later set the Court of Chancery in Bleak House. Built with 500-year-old roof timbers, the hall served as a courtroom from 1717, saving it from 1845 demolition plans. King Charles II dined in the hall in 1672, and William Hogarth's painting Paul Before Felix adorns its north wall.

London · from the walk “Secrets of Lincoln's Inn Fields” · audio ~4 min · Generated

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

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

You are standing before the Old Hall of Lincoln's Inn... one of the oldest surviving buildings in all of legal London. Built around fourteen ninety, this is the Inn's oldest surviving structure. Look up, if you can catch a glimpse through the windows... those are Original Tudor roof timbers above you, over five hundred years old.......... Now, picture a young man walking through that doorway in fourteen ninety-six. He is barely eighteen. His name is Thomas More, and his father has just pulled him out of Oxford and brought him back to London to study the common law. This hall... this very space... was where he ate, debated, argued his first legal cases. Sir Thomas More spent much of his professional life right here.......... But here is something most people do not know. While studying law in this hall, young More was secretly living a double life. He was so torn between law and faith that he actually resided for about four years in the Carthusian monastery right next door, sharing the monks' way of life as much as he could. He wore a hair shirt under his clothes for the rest of his life. Imagine him here... debating points of law by day, praying like a monk by night.......... And More was not the only family connection to this place. His father, John More, had actually started as the Butler of Lincoln's Inn, managing meals for the lawyers here, before the benchers liked him enough to approve him for membership at the bar. From serving dinner in this hall... to his son becoming Lord Chancellor of England. Extraordinary.......... Now, fast forward a few centuries. Besides its use for feasts and moots, the Old Hall became a court of law. The Master of the Rolls sat here between seventeen seventeen and seventeen twenty-four, and from seventeen thirty-seven onward it housed the Court of Chancery... that infamous, fog-choked engine of legal delay. This is the Very room that Charles Dickens immortalized in Bleak House... the Lord Chancellor sitting right here, "at the very heart of the fog."

...... It was actually this use as a courtroom that Saved the building from demolition when the grand new Great Hall was built in eighteen forty-five. And among the most notable events these walls have witnessed was a visit from King Charles the Second in sixteen seventy-two. The King himself dined in this hall, alongside his brother James, Duke of York, and numerous noblemen.......... One last detail. Look for the painting on the north wall. That is Hogarth's "Paul Before Felix"... a scene of a man standing trial before a powerful ruler. Rather fitting, wouldn't you say, for a room where both Thomas More and the Court of Chancery once held sway?

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