Lincoln's Inn Fields & The Inns of Court: Cloisters of the Law
Why is it significant?
Walk across the wide central park of Lincoln's Inn Fields and pass through the heavy wrought-iron gate into the timeless enclave of Lincoln's Inn.
Key Facts
| Place | Lincoln's Inn Fields & The Inns of Court: Cloisters of the Law |
|---|---|
| Address | Lincoln's Inn, London WC2A 3TL, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.51640, -0.11580 |
| Part of Walk | Literary Bloomsbury & The British Museum: Rosetta Stone to Virginia Woolf |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk across the wide central park of Lincoln's Inn Fields and pass through the heavy wrought-iron gate into the timeless enclave of Lincoln's Inn. Suddenly, the roar of London traffic drops away into a cloistered medieval hush: gravel paths lead past pristine lawns, ancient plane trees, and four-story red brick chambers with diamond-leaded windows.
Dating back to the fourteenth century, this is one of London's four ancient Inns of Court, where every English barrister must train and dine before being called to the bar. Oliver Cromwell, William Pitt the Younger, and Margaret Thatcher all walked these flagstones as legal students.
Look up at the Tudor brick gatehouse on Chancery Lane, completed in fifteen eighteen: legend holds that the playwright and poet Ben Jonson helped lay its bricks with a trowel in one hand and a copy of Horace in the other.
Follow Chancery Lane down to the magnificent Victorian Gothic towers of the Royal Courts of Justice on Fleet Street.