The Story of the House of Cassell
coming of Cassell to La Belle Sauvage the business had far outgrown its accommodation, and in 1872 a lease was taken from the Governors of St. Thomas's Hospital of an extensive site behind the Yard, bordered by Fleet Lane on the north and by Seacoal Lane on the west. Here, in the early 'seventies, was reared around an oblong well, 70 ft. by 30 ft., with a glass roof, a huge structure in five stories, for the administrative offices and the general editorial, art, cliché, foundry, and composing departments, as well as for the warehouse, while the basement was reserved for the engines and printing machines. The excavations on the site unearthed the walls of a dock on the Fleet river, and also a Roman sarcophagus which is now in the Guildhall Museum.
The new building was ready for occupation in 1875. Before long even this was insufficient to meet the still growing needs of the business, and presently the printed stock had to be relegated elsewhere, to find a home at last under the arches of the London, Chatham and Dover (now the South-Eastern and Chatham) Railway, on the other side of Seacoal Lane, while in 1892 another block was built in La Belle Sauvage Yard. The only trace of the old inn which is now to be seen in the Yard is a stone relief of the Elephant and Castle, the crest of the Cutlers' coat-of-arms, which used to surmount one of the gateways below the sign of the Bell, and now looks down upon the Yard from the advertisement department on the eastern side.
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