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A political history of Britain in the places where it happened: parliament and palace, courts and counting houses, and the streets where people pushed back.
One of the four medieval societies that still decide who may call themselves a barrister.
Law & justice
Also in Literary London.
There are four Inns of Court in London - Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn, the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple - and between them they hold the exclusive right to Call a student to the Bar, which is the ceremony that makes a barrister. They grew out of the medieval lodgings where lawyers lived, ate and taught within walking distance of the royal courts at Westminster. None of the four claims to be older than the others. They are landlords, libraries and dining societies rather than universities, and they have never stopped being any of those things.
Middle Temple Hall was begun in 1562 and finished in the early 1570s, and its double hammerbeam roof has a fair claim to be the best in London. Elizabeth I arrived unannounced in 1578 to look at the new building and listen to the barristers argue, the earliest known visit of a reigning monarch to an Inn, and the first recorded performance of Twelfth Night was given in this room on 2 February 1602, probably with Shakespeare in it. The Inn still dines here, and that is not sentiment: students learned by arguing set exercises and by eating together, and long after the medieval teaching had gone the dinners stayed as the qualification. A student must still keep a set number of dining sessions before the Inn will Call them.
Tours and open days only
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.