be surprising if certain amateurs, busy in improving the architectural concerns of the City, should at length request of their brethren to allow the Bar or grand gate of entrance into the City of London to stand, after they have so repeatedly sought to obtain its destruction." In 1852 a proposal for its repair and restoration was defeated in the Common Council; and twelve months later, a number of bankers, merchants, and traders set their hands to a petition for its removal altogether, as serving no practical purpose, as it impeded ventilation and retarded improvements. Since then Mr. Heywood has proposed to make a circus at Temple Bar, leaving the archway in the centre; and Mr. W. Burges, the architect, suggested a new arch in keeping with the new Law Courts.
_1.030_-_The_Room_over_Temple_Bar,_1876.jpg)
It is a singular fact that the "Parentalia," a chronicle of Wren's works written by Wren's clever son, contains hardly anything about Temple Bar. According to Mr. Noble, the Wren manuscripts in the British Museum, Wren's ledger in the Bodleian, and the Record Office documents, are equally silent; but from a folio at the Guildhall, entitled "Expenses of Public Buildings after the Great Fire," it would appear that the Bar cost altogether £1,397 10s.; Bushnell, the sculptor, receiving out of this sum £480 for his four stone monarchs. The mason was John Marshall, who carved the pedestal of the statue of Charles I. at Charing Cross and worked on the Monument in Fish Street Hill. In 1636 Inigo Jones had designed a new arch, the plan of which still exists. Wren, it is said, took his design of the Bar from an old temple at Rome.
The old Bar, once a protection, then an ornament, became an obstruction — the too narrow neck of a large decanter — a bone in the throat of Fleet Street. It also became dilapidated and dangerous, and was eventually removed, as already stated, in 1877-8. Yet to the last we felt a lingering fondness for the old barrier that we had seen draped in black for a dead hero and glittering with gold in honour of a young bride. It is worthy of notice here that the visit of Her Majesty and the Prince of Wales to St. Paul's in February, 1872, was the very last occasion on which Royalty passed in state through its gates.
The Bar, after much discussion as to its resting-place, was rebuilt in 1887 as an entrance to Sir H. Meux's park at Cheshunt; its ancient site is marked by a monument of which we shall speak in a later chapter.
