Overall: 73cm (28.7in) x 56cm (22in
Oil on panel. Inn of chancery heraldic panel emblazoned with the arms of Donaldson and inscribed to a barrister-at-law. ‘Barnards Inn William Leverton Donaldson Secretary 1859 and Antient 1860’. Panel: 44.5cm x 59.5cm. Contained in gilt frame.
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Hall of Barnards Inn, Holborn, 1886 by Philip Norman
Barnard's Inn was a haunt of lawyers since medieval times, and as such numbered among London’s Inns of Chancery. Over the centuries it provided offices, a law school and residential chambers. Mr Pip, the hero of Charles Dickens’s novel ‘Great Expectations’ lodged in Barnard’s Inn with Herbert Pocket following his arrival in 1830s London. This would have been after the area was rebuilt following an arson attack on a nearby Catholic-owned gin factory during the Gordon Riots of 1780. With the creation of the Law Society in 1825 the regulatory purpose of the Inns died out and they were gradually sold off. Barnards Inn was disolved in the late 1880s.