In 1982 Richard Jones added one of his most popular London walks to his repertoire of tours. Called the Hidden Interiors of Old London this walk took participants into some of the secret buildings around Temple, Fleet Street and Lincoln’s Inn.

A Highlight of this London walk was the visit to the Sir John Soane House in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

The house is situated at numbers 12, 13 and 14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields and it is named for Sir John Soane, the architect of the Bank of England.

His greatest distinction as an architect of London is that more of his buildings have been demolished than anyone other London architect!

Thankfully, as those who join our hidden London walks can testify to this was not the case with the wonderful old time capsule that was once his home and is now a museum.

He built No 12 in 1792, No 13 in 1812 and No 14 in 1824, residing at No 12 from 1792 to 1812.

But this was never intended to be just a house, he was also building a museum. The facade of this museum, a striking feature (which was open until glazed by Soane in 1834), shows his kleptomania: the Gothic pedestals built into the piers between the windows come from the fourteenth- century north front of Westminster Hall. The museum houses a remarkable collection of Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Medieval, Renaissance and Oriental objects, a fascinating ‘Aladdin’s Cave’. William Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress and The Election are on show in the picture room.

They say every picture tells a story and this is particularly true of the works of William Hogarth.

On the Hidden London walk Richard used to delight in explaining the story behind these two works by Hogarth.

Hogarth was an engraver, draughtsman, painter and satirist. He was an influential artist of his age. Under the patronage of Thornhill (painter of the ceiling of St Paul’s Cathedral), whose daughter he married, he changed from silver engraver to a critic of the dehumanizing money values, cultural snobbery and Palladianism of his time; creating paintings of the crowd which used real people, people who get in each other’s way, people whose breath smells.

In his own words he says, ‘I therefore turned my thoughts to a still more novel mode, viz. painting and engraving modern moral subjects…. I wished to compose pictures on canvas, similar to representations on the stage…. I have endeavoured to treat my subjects as a dramatic writer; my picture is my stage, and men and women are my players…. This I found was most likely to answer my purpose, provided I could strike the right passions, and by small sums for many, by the sale of prints I could engrave from my own pictures, thus secure the property to myself.’

In tomorrows blog we will look at how Hogarth’s Rakes Progress features on our Hidden Interiors of Old London walks.