Quality Court, just off Chancery Lane is most appropriately named, being an upmarket concealed courtyard space.
Entry is via a narrow covered alley lined with Victorian tiles and is now built over by a modern building with Tudor echoes in the stonework and windows. The arched passage is also decorated with ironwork proclaiming the name of the alley within.
Entered through a passageway lined with red and white tiles, and do look down by one door for an unusually large recessed boot scraper.
Within, the Court tapers towards the eastern end, where there is a single storey classical stone frontage built in 1928. Recessed from this is a two-storey yellow brick frontage while lining the south side is a long classical frontage in grey and red brick with an elaborate stone door surround and giant cornice.
That end building is fairly important, as it used to be the Patent Office, before it moved away, and to the side can still be seen an old sign telling people the Patent Office has now closed. Today it’s occupied by co-working offices that rent space out by the room.
The northern side is partly taken up with a utilitarian modern frontage and partly with a traditional red brick elevation.
The court seems to have been built up around 1700 as the area developed with new buildings along Chancery Lane, and it was first named on maps by the time of the Rocque map of 1749. The Court is paved in stone and is enhanced by square cast iron planters.
It’s a pleasing, and at weekends, very quiet little space that’s more noticeable thanks to the ironwork at the entrance.
It seems The Patent Office now has a new name –
The Intellectual Property Office became the operating name of The Patent Office on 2 April 2007. The Patent Office was set up in 1852 to grant patents, although the origins of the patent system date back a further 400 years.
I have in my possession and am transcribing letters from the 1780’s by William Clulow where he gives his address as “Quality Court, Chancery Lane, London.
Thank you so much for the photos!