Exploring the complicated and challenging environment faced by Roman Catholics at the Middle Temple over the centuries, from state surveillance to emancipation, via the building of Hall, the Gordon Riots and a mysterious stained glass pomegranate.
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Exploring the story of music at the Inn, its high notes and moments of discord, including noisy musical neighbours, Spanish minstrels in the garden, wartime concerts for wounded soldiers, and a turn on the piano by the founder of the Proms.
The Inn, two decades into the twenty-first century, is a robust institution which looks to the future and respects its past. The conditions laid out by James I in the 1608 charter (confirmed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2008 with a second charter) – to provide education and accommodation for lawyers – remain at the core of the Inn’s mission, and it strives to serve and support its members at all points in their careers.
An exploration of the history of the Middle Temple Gate, the main entrance to the Inn from Fleet Street. Several versions of the gate have existed over the course of seven hundred years, providing the Society with the means to protect and maintain order within the Temple.
Uncovering the history of four silver salvers in the Middle Temple’s silver collection. Inconsistencies between the dates of production of the salvers led to discoveries relating to their origin as well as a dramatic tale of grand larceny.
Casting the spotlight back 300 years on an eventful year in Middle Temple history, featuring such challenges as pirates, swindlers, abandoned children and exploding privies.
A modern institution with a long and distinguished history, Middle Temple is a place of many parts.
First and foremost, Middle Temple is one of the four Inns of Court which have the exclusive right to Call students to the Bar. The education and training of advocates lie at the heart of the Inn, but we are also a professional society for our membership worldwide; and we maintain a heritage estate in central London housing chambers from which barristers practise.
Considered to have been, at the time of its construction, the first permanent water fountain in London, this month we will be using the records in the archive to delve into the history of Middle Temple's fountain.
Although we know that the Inn had a small library prior to 1540, an early account about the Inns of Court states that Middle Temple ‘had a simple library in which were not many bookes besides the law and that library by meanes that it stood always open, and that the learners had not each a key unto it, it was at last robbed of all the bookes in it’!