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VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM

DEPARTMENT OF WOODWORK

THE PANELLED ROOMS

II. THE CLIFFORD'S INN ROOM

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VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM
DEPARTMENT OF WOODWORK

THE PANELLED ROOMS
II. THE CLIFFORD'S INN ROOM

LONDON: PRINTED UNDER THE AUTHORITY
OF HIS MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE 1922

Publication No. 105 W.
Crown Copyright Reserved.
First -printed, December 1914-
Revised and Reprinted, October 1922.

This Monograph may be obtained directly from the Victoria and Albert
Museum, price is. 6d. (by post is. Sd.). It may also be obtained either
through any bookseller or directly from H.M. Stationery Office at the
following addresses : Imperial House, Kings way, London, JV.C.2,
and 28 Abingdon Street, S.W.i ; 37 Peter Street, Manchester ;
1 St. Andrew's Crescent, Cardiff; and 13 Forth Street, Edinburgh.

(7378) Wt. 12692— Am. 2694/662 2000 8/22 Harrow G.51

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
THE panelled room, formerly in No. 3, Clifford's Inn, Fleet
Street, was purchased for the Museum at a Sale by Auction
on the 23rd July, 1903, and has been re-erected in Gallery
No. 56 on the ground floor ofthe Museum (No. 1029-1903).
^The following history of it has been compiled and the description
written by Mr. Oliver Brackett, Assistant-Keeper in the Depart
ment of Woodwork. The authorities consulted are referred to in
the Bibliography, and among them special mention should be
made of the interesting records of the Penhallow family, collected
and published by Mr. Chas. T. Penhallow, of Jamaica Plain,
Massachusetts, U.S.A. The measured drawings have been made
by Mr. A. E. Bullock, A.R.I.B.A.
I have read through the proof-sheets. EDWARD F. STRANGE,
Keeper of Woodwork.

m

CONTENTS.

LIST OF PLATES
HISTORY OF THE ROOM 
EXTRACT FROM THE GENEALOGY OF JOHN PENHALLOW
DESCRIPTION OF THE ROOM 
LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 

PAGE vi I
3
4 8

LIST OF PLATES.

Frontispiece. — General View of the Room.
Plate I. — Plan of the Room.
II. — -The Chimney-piece.
III. — The Overmantel.
IV. — Detail of the Chimney-piece.
V. — Measured drawing ofthe Chimney-piece with Panelling.
VI. — Measured drawing of a Side Wall of the Room.
VII.— Measured drawing of the End Wall with Window Openings.
VIII. — Doorway.
IX. — Measured Drawing of Head of Doorway (VIII).
X. — Doorway.
XI. — Measured drawing of Head of Doorway (X).
XII. — Measured drawings of Sections of Mouldings.

* [>

VI

PANELLED ROOM OF CARVED OAK AND
CEDAR, FROM No. 3, CLIFFORD'S INN,
LONDON.
Date 1686 to 1688.
HISTORY.
IN the year 13 10 Edward II granted to Roger de Clifford,
Marshal of England, a house and garden called, in the language
of the time, " messuage with the appurtenances next to the
church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West in the suburb of London."
At Roger de Clifford's death the property passed to his second son
Robert, whose widow, in 1345, let it to students of the law for £10
a year. Such is the origin of Clifford's Inn. Mention of it is made
in State Papers of the fourteenth century as " Inn of Clyfford by the
Church of St. Dunstan," and it is probable that to this time can be
put down the foundation of the Society of Clifford's Inn. For more
than one hundred years the property remained in the possession of
the Clifford family, though used as a school for study of the law ; but
in 1468 the freehold was granted to John Kendale and his heirs
male, and later, in 16 18, was acquired by the Society of Clifford's
Inn. Records of the Society show that from about the latter date,
resident members of the Inn, called Fellows, were admitted to a set
of chambers, at first for a life and afterwards for one or two lives
beyond their own. This sense of ownership sometimes led them
to take great pride in the decoration of their chambers, as in the
case of the panelled room now exhibited in the Museum.
In the course of history the buildings of Clifford's Inn have
undergone great changes. Of those still standing, the earliest in
date, No. 12, goes back to the year 1624. Although a small part
only of the Inn suffered from the ravages of the Great Fire in 1666,
much rebuilding was done during the architectural revival which

followed this historic disaster. To this period belongs the panelled
room here described, but the building of which it formed part has
been pulled down within recent years.
The occupant of the chamber, according to the Records of
Clifford's Inn, was named John Penhallo or Penhallow. His arms
are carved on the mantelpiece. He was admitted on the 5th
February, 1674, to a chamber on the first floor of the building in
the south-west corner of the first Court, afterwards known as No. 3.
This building was pulled down and re-erected in 1686, and two
years later John Penhallow was admitted to the chamber in which
the panelling was put up, and also to another chamber over it " in
consideration of the interest which he had in his own chamber before
it was rebuilt, and also of the money which he had laid out in
rebuilding the same chamber."* There is no doubt, therefore,
that it was for John Penhallow that the room now exhibited in the
Museum was made, and it is evident that the work was carried out
between the years 1686 and 1688. John Penhallow died in 171 6,
and was succeeded by his brother and executor, Benjamin (d. 1722),
whose administrator, George Robinson, nominated one Timothy
Rogers, duly admitted in 1722, as the second life. It does not
appear that the later tenants of the chamber were persons of any
historical interest.
In " The Visitations of Cornwall, comprising the Heralds'
Visitations of 1530, 1573 and 1620, with additions by Lieutenant-
Colonel J. L. Vivian (Exeter, 1887)," a full genealogy of the
Penhallow family is given, of which an extract relating to the John
and Benjamin Penhallow, who occupied the chambers in Clifford's
Inn, is quoted on the following page. The family was of Cornish
origin, and dated back in the 14th century to John Penhalow de
Penhalow, an estate in Philleigh county in Cornwall. On maps of
Cornwall the name Penhallow is still found. The family appears
to have been of Puritan faith, and in the reign of Charles II one
of their number, Samuel Penhallow, emigrated to America, arriving
* Records of the Society of Clifford's Inn,

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in New England in 1686. He rose to high positions in the town
of Portsmouth, U.S.A. His descendants are still living in America,
and one of them, Mr. Chas. T. Penhallow, has kindly supplied the
Museum with information on the history of the family.
DESCRIPTION OF THE ROOM.
The dimensions of the room are as follows : —
Height ... ... 9 feet 10 inches.
Length ... ... 18 „ 6 „
Width  14 ,, 10 „
The room is panelled in oak, with applied carvings in cedar*
[Frontispiece]. The arrangement of thewalls is as follows[PLATEl]:
a chimney-piece is placed near the centre of one of the end walls,
the opposite wall containing two windows with cupboards beneath ;
the side walls have each two doorways facing one another, the rest
of the ground on all four walls being covered by raised panelling
with large rectangular panels framed by bolection mouldings,
divided by a dado rail. The chimney-piece [Plate II] consists of
overmantel with raised and enriched panel for a painting, framed
above and at the sides by applied carving of festoons of flowers,
fruit, beans and hops ; above the panel is a shield with helmet and
mantling bearing the arms of Penhallow quartering Penwarin,f
and referring to the marriage, in the reign of Henry VII, of John
Penhallow with Mary, daughter and co-heiress of Vivian Penwarin;
the jambs and architrave below the shelf are carved with two bands
of ornament, the outer of applied floral ornament with cherubs at
the angles, and the inner (of ogee section) of acanthus leaves mitred
round a central panel carved with a festoon of drapery ; a fluted
marble lining surrounds the opening for the fireplace.
* Professor Groom (Professor of woods and fibres technology at the Imperial College of
Science and Technology) states that this wood is North American " pencil " cedar (ffuniperus
Virginiand) .
j- 1 and 4 vert a coney arg. (Penhallow) and 2 and 3 sa. a chevron between three fleurs-de-lis
arg. (Pen warren, Penwarin or Penwarn). [Burke: General Armory.]

The two pairs of doorways are similar to one another in general
character, but differ in detail. In one case a broken pediment
terminating in volutes surmounts a mitred architrave carved with a
design of acanthus leaves with an gle brackets, and further ornamented
above the centre of the door with an applied cherub's head in high
relief [PlateVIII] ; in the other case the pediment is lunette-shaped
and encloses a lion's mask, with enrichments consisting of applied
leaf ornament above the door and in the spandrels outside the pedi
ment [Plate X] ; the doors, of which one pair are not fitted with
hinges or handles, have each two large raised panels with moulded
framework. Two of the doors are fitted with brass rim-locks.
The panelling is divided by a moulded dado-rail into two
parts, both parts having raised rectangular panels, wide and narrow,
with projecting mouldings, while a cornice consisting of several
members and carved with acanthus and running husk ornament
surrounds the room. A similar but larger husk ornament enriches
the windows, which are recessed and ornamented with sunk panels
having raised centres.
In its original position at Clifford's Inn the room had a plain
plaster ceiling. The plan of the room was not symmetrical. In one
of the long walls, near the angle on the left of the chimney-piece,
was a small pointed arched window of pinewood, which had
evidently been added in the 1 8th century. This window was not
put up with the room in its. present position. Further, the chimney-
piece and the windows are not placed in the middle of the walls to
which they belong. When the panelling was first brought to the
Museum the surface was covered with many coats of paint. The
removal of the paint revealed wood of fine surface and colour,
admirable from the point of view of tone and marking. There is no
reason for supposing that the wood was painted at the time when the
panelling was first put up in Clifford's Inn. The date to which it
belongs — the early period of Wren — was marked by a certain
severity in the treatment of interior decoration ; ceilings for the
most part were left in white plaster and walls were wainscoted in
5

wood — usually walnut or oak— the natural surface of which was
intended to form a background for the carved, gilt and upholstered
furniture of the time. The Galleries at Hampton Court Palace
present a typical example of this treatment of interiors. It was not
till the 1 8th century that colour and gilding became the fashionable
medium for the decoration of rooms, and then inferior woods, such
as pinewood, were used for the construction.
CHARACTER OF ENGLISH PANELLING OF THE
LATER RENAISSANCE.
This room is the earliest example in the Museum of English
panelling of the later Renaissance. The character of architectural
design in the second half of the 17th century differed essentially
from that of the preceding styles, which, from the time of Henry
VIII to Charles I, had followed an inherited tradition. In the
earlier Renaissance — as shown in the Museum by panelling from
Exeter and Bromley-by-Bow — walls were covered from floor to
ceiling with panelling, usually of oak, divided on all the surface into
small panels, for the most part rectangular and framed by mouldings;
chimney-pieces were heavily carved, often in high relief, but
ornament otherwise was of a flat and conventional character. The
plan of the room was often irregular and followed no definite
scheme. But in the second quarter of the 17th century, owing to
the revival of classical study under Inigo Jones and the adoption of
the Palladian principles of architectural construction, a revolution
both in plan and decoration was effected, and the laws of design
thus evolved were followed by the school of Sir Christopher Wren
in the second half of the century, and passed on to his successors of
the 1 8th century. This progress of development, however, was
not quite unbroken. The style of Wren, though carrying on the
classical traditions which Inigo Jones presented, was influenced by
the contemporary schools both of France and Holland, and seems
further to possess a human interest, which is lacking in the colder
and more technically perfect work of the early Georgian period, a
6

period which followed the Palladian rules with slavish exactness.
A comparison of the Clifford's Inn Room in the Museum with the
adjacent room from Hatton Garden will serve to illustrate this
difference in the character of these two styles.
In the panelled room from Clifford's Inn the student can study
the principles of architectural design which by the time of Charles II
had been universally adopted in England. Symmetry and balance
were demanded as important factors in the plan, and comparative
proportions depended on a logical system of calculation which
contrasted with the more haphazard methods of earlier periods.
Ornamental details are here arranged with due regard to balance,
and the floral carvings on the chimney-pieces and doors, though
elaborate in design and execution, avoid the over-realistic treatment
which is usually associated with the school of Grinling Gibbons. If
criticism should be made of the room it would be mainly on account
of the crowding of one pair of doors into the angles, thus producing
a cramped effect which is contrary to the sense of space and pro
portion required by the architectural canons of the time ; but this
apparent fault, as well as the original irregularity of plan referred to
before, might be accounted for by considerations in the position and
structure of the building. OLIVER BRACKETT.

PHOTOGRAPHS.
The following photographs are in the Museum Collection,
and can be seen on application in the Library. Prints from the
official negatives may be purchased at the Photograph Stall in the
Museum. The numbers in brackets are those of the official
negatives: —
Chimney-piece, detail of (38140).
Chimney-piece (Front view) (27263) (38137).
Chimney-piece (f view) (27264).
Door (Broken pediment) (27265).
Door (Broken pediment) with portion of panelling (38139).
Door (Lunette head) (27260).
Door (Lunette head) with portion of panelling (38138).
Overmantel (38141).
Panelling, Section of (27261).
Panelling, Section of (27262).
Room, View of (with furniture) (33638) (38136).
Room, View of (without furniture) (33639).

WORKS OF REFERENCE.
Art Journal. — See Cundall, H. M.
Bell, Walter George. — The Great Fire of London in 1666. London, 1921.
Blomfield, Sir Reginald'. — A History of Renaissance Architecture in England. London, 1897.
Burke, Sir Bernard. — The General Armory of England, Scotland, and Wales. London, 1884.
Burlington Magazine. — See Norman, Philip.
Country Life. — See Tipping, H. Avray.
Cundall, H. M. — Old Panelled Rooms. [In Art Journal, 1906.]
Dictionary of Architecture.
Ditchfield, P. H. — Memorials of Old London. London, 1908.
Elwood, G. M. — English Furniture and Decoration, 1680-1800. London (1909?). [Photos
of Chimney-piece and Panelling. Pp. 3 and 4.]
Fletcher, Handslip. — London Passed and Passing. London, 1908. [Illustration of room
before demolition.]
Gilbert, C. S. — An Historical Survey ofthe County of Cornwall. London, 1817. [Vol. II,
Plates 18 and 19. Arms of Penhallow and Penwarne.]
Gill, C. Lovett. — See Richardson, A. E.
Gotch, J. Alfred. — The English Home from Charles I to George IV. London, 1918.
— The Growth ofthe English House. London, 1909.
Griggs, F. L. — See Norman, Philip.
Harben, H. A. — A Dictionary of London. London, 1918.
Lenygon, Francis. — Decoration in England from 1660 to 1770. London, 1914.
Loftie, W. J. — The Inns of Court and Chancery. London, 1893.
Maclean, Sir John. — Deanery of Trigg Minor, Cornwall. London, 1876. (Pedigree of
Penhallow family, Vol. II, p. 537.)
Norman, Philip, and Griggs, F. L. — Clifford's Inn. By P. N., with illustrations by F. L. G.
[In Burlington Magazine, Vol. I, p. 239, 1903.]
Penhallow, Chas. T. — The Penhallow Panels. Jamaica Plains, Mass. 1905. (Privately
Printed.)
Richardson, A. E., and Gill, C. Lovett. — London Houses from 1660 to 1820. London, 191 1.
Shuffrey, L. A. — The English Fireplace? London, 1912.
Stratton, Arthur. — The English Interior. London, 1920.
Tipping, H. Avray.— The Clifford's Inn Room. [In Country Life, Vol. XXXI, p. 391.]
— Grinling Gibbons and the Woodwork of his Age (1648-1720). London,
1914.

Vivian, J. L. — The Visitations of Cornwall, comprising the Heralds' Visitations of 1530,
1573, and 1620, with additions by Lieutenant-Colonel J. L. Vivian, Exeter, 1887. [Pedigree
of Penhallow family.]
Wheatley, H. B. — London Past and Present. London, 1891.

Burgess, W. W. — Etching of the Outer Court of Clifford's Inn, showing the house, No. 3,
from which the panelled room was removed.
Catalogue of Sale of Panelling at No. 3, Clifford's Inn, on 23rd July, 1903. [Lithograph on
cover by T. Way.]

IO

PLATE I.

WINDOW

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Plan of the Room.

PLATE II

The Chimney-piece.

PLATE III.

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PLATE IV.

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PLATE V.

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PLATE VII.

PLATE VIII.

Doorway.

PLATE IX.

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PLATE X.

Doorway.

PLATE XI.

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Measured drawing of Head of Doorway
(see Plate X).

XII.

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