King's Bench walk looking
north-west, c.1900. |
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The name of the Walk commemorates the King's Bench
Office (that is, the office of the chief clerk or master of that
court), which was brought to the Inner Temple in 1621. The chambers
on the east side are now known simply by their numbers in King's
Bench Walk. But they formerly had individual names: Serjeant Baldwin's
Building (No. 1); Finch's Building (No. 2), named after Sir Heneage
Finch, later Lord Nottingham; 'The Staircase next the Alienation
Office' (No. 3); King's Bench Buildings (Nos. 4-6); Sir Thomas Robinson's
Building (No. 7), named after a chief prothonotary of the Common
Pleas; Serjeant Hampson's Building (Nos. 8-9); Minor's Building
and Minor's Low Building (Nos. 10-11), named after a butler of the
Inn.
No. 4, King's Bench Walk.
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Most of the chambers were rebuilt in 1678, following
a disastrous fire in 1677, and the names refer to the investors
in that work; some of the sets still have their original panelling.
No. 4 has an inscription recording the fire and the rebuilding of
1678, when Richard Powell was Treasurer.
No. 10, King's Bench
Walk, from the Gardens. |
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No. 7 was restored after another fire in 1684,
during which Sir Thomas Robinson died leaping from his window. No.
8 was destroyed by fire in 1781 and rebuilt the following year.
Nos. 10-11 were rebuilt at the Inn's expense in 1814; the monogram
T ICH over the doorways is for Sir John Coxe Hippisley, Treasurer.
Nos. 12-13 were added in a plainer Regency style,
faced with stone; they were destroyed in the Blitz and reconstructed
in replica. No. 6 and most of No. 1 (apart from the doorway) were
also rebuilt after the war. An inscription on No. 1 records that
it was opened in 1946 by King George VI (Royal Bencher of the Inn)
as a temporary library.
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