Bleeding Heart Yard is a cobbled courtyard off Greville Street in the Holborn area of the London Borough of Camden. The courtyard is probably named after a 16th-century inn sign dating back to the Reformation that was displayed on a pub called the Bleeding Heart in nearby Charles Street. The inn sign showed the heart of the Virgin Mary pierced by five swords.[1][2]
Urban legend has it that the courtyard's name commemorates the murder of Lady Elizabeth Hatton, the second wife of Sir William Hatton, whose family formerly owned the area around Hatton Garden. It is said that her body was found here on 27 January 1646, "torn limb from limb, but with her heart still pumping blood." [3] Elizabeth Hatton did own a house in this vicinity, known as "Ely Place", but she died of natural causes.[4]
In literature
An image of Bleeding Heart Yard from Walter Thornbury's Old and New London, 1873–8.
Bleeding Heart Yard features in the Charles Dickens novel Little Dorrit as the home of the Plornish family. Dickens wrote of it:
[It was] a place much changed in feature and in fortune, yet with some relish of ancient greatness about it. Two or three mighty stacks of chimneys, and a few large dark rooms which had escaped being walled and subdivided out of the recognition of their old proportions, gave the Yard a character. It was inhabited by poor people, who set up their rest among its faded glories, as Arabs of the desert pitch their tents among the fallen stones of the Pyramids; but there was a family sentimental feeling prevalent in the Yard, that it had a character.[5]
Of poor Lady Hatton, it's needless to say,
No traces have ever been found to this day, Or the terrible dancer who whisk'd her away; But out in the court-yard — and just in that part
Before Dickens, the courtyard was best known for its appearance in R. H. Barham's The Ingoldsby Legends, a collection of poems and stories first published in Bentley's Miscellany beginning in 1837. In one of the stories, The House-Warming: A Legend Of Bleeding-Heart Yard, Lady Hatton, wife of Sir Christopher Hatton, makes a pact with the devil to secure wealth, position, and a mansion in Holborn. During the housewarming of the mansion, the devil dances with her, then tears out her heart, which is found, still beating, in the courtyard the next morning.[1] It is from this legend, together with a case of mistaken identity, that the myth of Lady Elizabeth Hatton's murder — wife, not of Christopher, but of William Hatton — was born.
"Bleeding Heart Square" by Andrew Taylor (published by Michael Joseph 2008 and by Penguin Books 2009). A gothic thriller and crime novel combined, "Bleeding Heart Square" is set in the 1930s in and around Bleeding Heart Yard and the adjacent Ely Place. Many of the street names in the area, e.g. Holborn Circus, Farringdon Road and Hatton Garden remain unchanged, but many have been altered, in keeping with a long and respected tradition among novelists.
Bleeding Heart Yard is mentioned (as "Bleeding-Heart-Yard") in Stephen Vincent Benét's poem American Names, as one of a list of old world places whose names are compared, unfavorably, with the place names of America.
‘Bleeding Heart Yard’ is the title of a 2022 crime novel by Elly Griffiths, the third in the Detective Harbinder Kaur series. The yard is the location of one of the main happenings in the plot.
The yard today
A French restaurant, bistro and tavern called The Bleeding Heart now occupies a number of the buildings in the courtyard. A gate at the south of the yard leads to Ely Place.
Greville Street links Bleeding Heart Yard to another notable street from Charles Dickens' novels: Saffron Hill, which was the home of Fagin in Oliver Twist.
Notes
1 2 Philpotts, Trey. A Companion to Little Dorrit. Helms Information Ltd. 2003, p. 172.
Holborn is a district in central London, which covers the south-eastern part of the London Borough of Camden and a part of the Ward of Farringdon Without in the City of London.
Little Dorrit is a novel by Charles Dickens, originally published in serial form between 1855 and 1857. The story features Amy Dorrit, youngest child of her family, born and raised in the Marshalsea prison for debtors in London. Arthur Clennam encounters her after returning home from a 20-year absence, ready to begin his life anew.
Richard Harris Barham was an English cleric of the Church of England, a novelist and a humorous poet. He was known generally by his pseudonym Thomas Ingoldsby and as the author of The Ingoldsby Legends.
Daniel St George Chatto is a member of the British royal family, a British artist and former actor. He is the husband of Lady Sarah Chatto, the daughter of Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, niece of Queen Elizabeth II and cousin of King Charles III.
Hatton Garden is a street and commercial zone in the Holborn district of the London Borough of Camden, abutting the narrow precinct of Saffron Hill which then abuts the City of London. It takes its name from Sir Christopher Hatton, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, who established a mansion here and gained possession of the garden and orchard of Ely Place, the London seat of the Bishops of Ely. It remained in the Hatton family and was built up as a stylish residential development in the reign of King Charles II. For some decades it often went, outside of the main street, by an alternative name St Alban's Holborn, after the local church built in 1861.
The George Inn, or The George, is a public house established in the medieval period on Borough High Street in Southwark, London, owned and leased by the National Trust. It is located about 250 metres (820 ft) from the south side of the River Thames near London Bridge and is the only surviving galleried London coaching inn.
Saffron Hill is a street and ward in the south eastern corner of the London Borough of Camden, between Farringdon Road and Hatton Garden. The name of the street derives from the fact that it was at one time part of an estate on which saffron grew. The ecclesiastical parish was St Peter, Saffron Hill, a daughter parish of Holborn, which is now combined with St Alban, Holborn.
Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke, de jure 13th Baron Latimer and 5th Baron Willoughby de Broke KB PC, known before 1621 as Sir Fulke Greville, was an Elizabethan poet, dramatist, and statesman who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1581 and 1621, when he was raised to the peerage.
Little Dorrit is a 1987 film adaptation of the 1857 novel Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. It was written and directed by Christine Edzard, and produced by John Brabourne and Richard B. Goodwin. The music by Giuseppe Verdi was arranged by Michael Sanvoisin.
The Ingoldsby Legends is a collection of myths, legends, ghost stories and poems written supposedly by Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor, actually a pen-name of an English clergyman named Richard Harris Barham.
Ely Place is a gated road of multi-storey terraces at the southern tip of the London Borough of Camden in London, England. It hosts a 1773-rebuilt public house, Ye Olde Mitre, of Tudor origin and is adjacent to Hatton Garden.
Lady Elizabeth Mary Finch-Hatton was a British aristocrat and the subject of a notable painting, once thought to be by Johann Zoffany, now attributed to David Martin.
Marshalsea Road is a major street in Southwark, south London, England. At the northwest end is the Southwark Bridge Road. At the southeast end is Borough tube station on Borough High Street. Continuing across the street are Long Lane and Great Dover Street. At the northeast corner is the historic St George the Martyr church, where the Charles Dickens character Little Dorrit was married in Dickens' book of the same name. The area around Marshalsea Road has many Dickens associations.
The Marshalsea (1373–1842) was a notorious prison in Southwark, just south of the River Thames. Although it housed a variety of prisoners—including men accused of crimes at sea and political figures charged with sedition—it became known, in particular, for its incarceration of the poorest of London's debtors. Over half the population of England's prisoners in the 18th century were in jail because of debt.
Lant Street is a street south of Marshalsea Road in Southwark, south London, England.
Little Dorrit's Playground, named after Little Dorrit, the eponymous Charles Dickens character, is a public playground and small park just north of Marshalsea Road in Southwark, south London, England.
Charles Dickens's works are especially associated with London, which is the setting for many of his novels. These works do not just use London as a backdrop but are about the city and its character.
Frances Coke, Viscountess Purbeck, was the sister-in-law of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and the central figure in a notable sex scandal within the English aristocracy of the early 17th century that was known at the time as "the Lady Purbeck’s business".
Little Dorrit is a lost 1920 British silent historical drama film directed by Sidney Morgan and starring Lady Tree, Langhorn Burton and Joan Morgan. It is based on the 1857 Charles Dickens' novel of the same name. A few fragments totaling 18 minutes survive, and are featured in the documentary Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood. They've also been uploaded to YouTube.
This is a list of the etymology of street names in the London district of Southwark. The area has no formally defined boundaries – those utilised here are: the river Thames to the north, Tower Bridge Road to the east, Bricklayers Arms/New Kent Road/Elephant and Castle to the south, and London Road/St George's Circus/Blackfriars Road to the west.
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