Photographs by George P. Landow. Text by Jacqueline Banerjee [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
King's Bench Walk, Inner Temple. London, looking south. Sir Christopher Wren. 1677-78. Red brick (Weinreb et al. 431; nos. 9-11, in yellow brick, date from 1814). [Click on the photographs to enlarge them.]
Left: King's Bench Walk, looking north. Right: Entrance to one of the barristers' chambers.
In Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Sidney Carton, the "idlest and most unpromising of men," having been finally roused from his stupour at a nearby tavern (probably the Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street), "got up, tossed his hat on, and walked out. He turned into the Temple, and, having revived himself by twice pacing up and down the pavements of the King's Bench Walk and Paper Buildings, turned into the Stryver chambers" ( 82). Of the Victorians, the novelist George Moore lived at no. 8 from 1888-1896, while he was writing his best-known work, Esther Waters (1894).
Related Material
- The two barristers, Mr Stryver and Sidney Carton, practising their profession
- Paper Buildings (on the opposite side of King's Bench Walk)
References
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. London: Dent (Everyman), 1906. Internet Archive. Web. 16 December 2011.
Weinreb, Ben, et al., eds. The London Encyclopaedia. 3rd ed. London: Macmillan, 2008.
Last modified 16 December 2011