Temple Bar, London

The Devil Tavern, whose full sign was The Devil and Saint Dunstan, was a tavern at number 2, Fleet Street in London, near the Temple Bar. It existed from the reign of James I (1603–25) until it was demolished in 1787 by Child & Co. to expand their banking premises.The tavern was opposite the church of Saint Dunstan, and its sign depicted the devil tweaking Saint Dunstan's nose.

Child & Co. is a private bank. Founded in 1664 it is the oldest bank in the United Kingdom, and the third oldest bank in the world. Formerly independent, it is now owned by the NatWest Group. The Royal Bank of Scotland incorporating Child & Co., Bankers is based at 1 Fleet Street on the western edge of the City of London, beside Temple Bar Memorial and opposite the Royal Courts of Justice. Child & Co. is authorised as a brand of The Royal Bank of Scotland by the Prudential Regulation Authority.

Essex House was a house that fronted the Strand in London. Originally called Leicester House, it was built around 1575 for Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, and was renamed Essex House after being inherited by his stepson, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, after Leicester's death in 1588. The poet Philip Sidney lived in Leicester House for some time. The property occupied the site where the Outer Temple, part of the London headquarters of the Knights Templar, had previously stood, and was immediately adjacent to the Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court. The house was substantial; in 1590, it was recorded as having 42 bedrooms, plus a picture gallery, kitchens, outhouses, a banqueting suite and a chapel. Essex’s mother, Lettice Knollys, leased out the house for a while, but she moved in later with her new husband, Sir Christopher Blount, as well as her son and his family. After the executions of Blount and Essex in 1601, she continued to live there until her death, leasing part of the house to James Hay, the first Earl of Carlisle. Hay hosted a lavish banquet for the French ambassador in 1621 at Essex House involving sweetmeats costing £500 and ambergris used in cooking costing £300, and the total bill was £3,300.The house then became the property of Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, who leased part of it to his brother-in-law, William Seymour, 1st Marquess of Hertford. After the English Civil War, the family lost ownership as a result of their debts. Following the Restoration and the death of William Seymour, Sir Orlando Bridgeman lived in the house for a time. When the Duchess of Somerset died in 1674, she left the house to her granddaughter, whose husband, Sir Thomas Thynne, sold it, along with the adjoining lands and properties. The main part of the house was demolished some time between 1674 and 1679. Essex Street was built on part of the site. One of those buildings was used in the mid-1770s as a Dissenters' meeting house known as the Essex Street Chapel, where Unitarianism was first preached in England. The denominational headquarters are still on the site, now called Essex Hall. Their building footprint is believed to include the Tudor chapel of Essex House.

The Queen's Head Tavern (later the Apollo Tavern) was located on Fleet Street to the east of the Temple Bar in London. It was already established in 1682 when it is mentioned in the diary of Narcissus Luttrell: "The 2nd, in the morning early, a fire broke out in the back part of the Queen's Head Tavern, by Temple Bar".Perhaps its most notable clientele were the members of a masonic music club that met there between 1725 and 1727, known as Philo-musicae et -architecturae societas Apollini; their musical director was the Italian composer and violinist Francesco Geminiani.The club's minute-book, now in the British Library, reveals that during its residency at the tavern, the landlord Thomas Oliverson (d.1731) agreed to change the name of the tavern to Apollo, and a new tavern sign was painted by James Parmentier, a member of the club.The area of the tavern can be seen on John Rocque's Map of London, 1746, however the name of the tavern seems to have disappeared from the record by the end of the eighteenth century. The site of the tavern and the southern end of Apollo Court was cleared in the nineteenth century to make way for a branch of the Bank of England to serve the newly built Law Courts. The bank building later became a pub, The Old Bank of England. Present-day maps show that the northern end of Apollo Court is still evident on the ground and still accessible from Bell Yard.

The Old Bank of England is a public house at 194 Fleet Street, where the City of London meets the City of Westminster. It was constructed on a corner site in 1886 by Sir Arthur Blomfield in a grand Italianate style, the interior having three large chandeliers with a detailed plaster ceiling. It is a Grade II listed building.The building was occupied by the Law Courts branch of the Bank of England from 1888 to 1975 before it was refurbished and put to its current use in 1994. The vaults beneath the pub once contained gold bullion, and are said to have held the Crown Jewels for a period as well. The pub is close to where the fictional Sweeney Todd is said to have plied his trade.The pub is currently operated by McMullen's Brewery.

The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, also known as the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and sometimes referred to as the Abolition Society or Anti-Slavery Society, was a British abolitionist group formed on 22 May 1787. Slavery was abolished in all British colonies in 1833 as a result. Historians posit that this anti-slavery movement is the first peaceful social movement which all modern social movements are built upon.The society was established by twelve men; including prominent campaigners Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp, who, as Anglicans, were able to be more influential in Parliament than the more numerous Quaker founding members. The society worked to educate the public about the abuses of the slave trade, and achieved abolition of the international slave trade when the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act 1807, at which time the society ceased its activities. (The United States also prohibited the African slave trade the same year, to take effect in 1808.) In 1823 the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions (also known as the Anti-Slavery Society) was founded, which worked to abolish the institution of slavery throughout the British colonies. Abolition was passed by parliament in 1833 (except in India, where it was part of the indigenous culture); with emancipation completed by 1838.

The Outer Temple is a building next to the Temple in London, just outside the City of London. In the 14th century, the property seized from the Knights Templar was divided, and that part of the Temple property then just outside London was given the name Outer Temple. It has been suggested that the name Outer Temple once also referred to an Inn of Chancery; its historical existence was first posited by A. W. B. Simpson and confirmed by John Baker in 2008. Little is known of it, other than that it lacked a hall; Baker suggests that this is the reason that it did not survive long enough to appear in many records. Other writers have insisted that it was never an inn: Sir George Buck wrote in 1612 "the Utter Temple neither is nor was ever any college or society of students".

The Grecian Coffee House was a coffee house, first established in about 1665 at Wapping Old Stairs in London, England, by a Greek former mariner called George Constantine. The enterprise proved a success and, by 1677, Constantine had been able to move his premises to a more central location in Devereux Court, off Fleet Street. In the 1690s, the Grecian Coffee House was the favoured meeting place of the opposition Whigs, a group that included John Trenchard, Andrew Fletcher and Matthew Tindal. In the early years of the eighteenth century, it was frequented by members of the Royal Society, including Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Hans Sloane, Edmund Halley and James Douglas, and the poet and statesman, Joseph Addison. Classical scholars were also said to congregate there, and on one occasion, two of them fought a duel in the street outside because they fell out over where to position the accent on an Ancient Greek word. In the 1760s and 1770s it was a favourite haunt of Irish law students, especially "the Templers", those young Irishmen who were studying at the Middle Temple. They were attracted there by the presence of the poet and playwright Oliver Goldsmith, who "delighted to entertain his friends there". These friends included the future statesman Henry Grattan.The Grecian was the favourite coffee-house in London of the renowned Shakespearean scholar Edmond Malone. In April 1776, he wrote his father a letter from there, boasting "I am at present writing in a coffee-house, in the midst of so much noise and bustle—the celebrated anti-Sejanus (Mr. Scott) on one side and Mr. [Charles] Macklin [the actor] on the other—that I can't add anything more at present."By 1803, the Grecian was no longer the meeting place of radicals, scholars and scientists but of lawyers and it finally closed in 1843, becoming a pub. The site is now occupied by The Devereux public house, and is a Grade II listed building.

Nando's was a coffee house in Fleet Street in London. It was known to exist in 1696, being the subject of a conveyance, and was popular in the 18th century, especially with the legal profession in the nearby courts and chambers. The name is thought to be a contraction of "Ferdinand's" or "Ferdinando's", and its exact address is given variously as somewhere between 15 and 17 Fleet Street. David Hughson wrote in 1807 that Nando's occupied the building at 15 Fleet Street which was previously the Rainbow Coffee House.The venue was a favourite haunt of Edward Thurlow, who became Lord Chancellor, and he was satirised as being enamoured of the landlady's attractive daughter.Charles Lamb refers to Nando's in his essay "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading," writing, "Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment. What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at Nando's, keeps the paper! I am sick of hearing the waiter bawling out incessantly, 'The Chronicle is in hand, Sir.'"

The Rainbow Coffee House was a famous coffee house located at 15 Fleet Street, London. It was opened by James Farr in 1657, becoming London's second coffee house.The Rainbow provided a meeting place for freemasons and French refugee Huguenots who established an information centre there. The Rainbow was also featured in the furore created by Titus Oates, who accused Sir Philip Lloyd of denying the existence of a popish plot there, finding witnesses from amongst the coffee drinkers to testify against himIn 1719 John Woodward wrote a satire The Two Sosias: Or, the True Dr. Byfield at the Rainbow Coffee-House, to the Pretender in Jermyn-Street David Hughson wrote in 1807 that the Rainbow was replaced by Nando's Coffee House in the same building, later in the 17th century.

The Devereux is a pub at No. 20 Devereux Court, off Essex Street, London WC2. It is a Grade II listed building that was built in about 1676 as the Grecian Coffee House. It was refurbished as a pub in 1843.

The Twinings Museum is a small museum adjacent to the Twinings shop at 216, Strand, in London, England.