In the late 80s I was doing Bar Finals at the Inns of Court Law School and had to visit the RCJ in the evening for advocacy exercises: we would arrive to find the wooden cases which held the court lists rolled out of the way, artificial turf rolled out, and civil servants playing badminton. It was such a wonderful juxtaposition: the gothic arches and stern legal portraits looming as they leapt and chased after shuttlecocks.
I knew nothing of this project but having spent many hours within its hallowed portals, at least some of which were remunerative and a few could even be described as happy, I am pleased to learn that it is being put to other uses. Thank you for providing me with a good excuse to revisit old haunts.
1. to seek bail pending appeal in as I recall the long vacation for a young client of mine where I had instructed a fairly senior Counsel and we had appeared before a judge who confessed to be “swimming in unfamiliar waters”. How booming, empty and labyrinthine it seemed. The appeal? Yes: successful (for me an early pro Bono foray).
2. After the controversial “Solicitors’ Festival” in Disneyworld (for me of value, actually) within the year there was a mini- Law Society Conference encompassing (inter alia) the conference dinner in the vast Hall.
3. A visit to the then Senior Residential Judge (second in command to Lord Justice Woolf) before the start of business with the then Policy Adviser to the Criminal Law Committee then chaired by me to discuss non-disclosure. I had written to Sir Igor and he had invited us. I THINK it was worthwhile and he had been very worried about it. Then on to our monthly meeting.
Ever afterwards he greeted me cordially since I had known him when he had been increasingly senior on the Midlands and Oxford Circuit.
3. I was very sad to learn of his demise.
4. I remember the new meeting rooms at Chancery Lane fashioned out of the old cells from which prisoners had been transported to the RCJ vis the tunnel under Bell Yard. There is still much the same arrangement with Steelhouse Lane Police Station lockup to the Victoria Law Courts. (There is a museum there now where I always try to take visitors since it had for so many years been my workplace)
I had the impression that my principal (the person who nominally trains articled clerks, now trainee solicitors) was an intensely practical man. When he showed me round the RCJ in early 1968 he described the hall as one of the biggest white elephants in London. I say no more....
Fun which masons have in buildings they put up and decorate: now there is quite another subject going back to Romanesque buildings, and before, I suspect... Spot the monkey in the tracery in Lincoln cathedral, for example.
In the late 80s I was doing Bar Finals at the Inns of Court Law School and had to visit the RCJ in the evening for advocacy exercises: we would arrive to find the wooden cases which held the court lists rolled out of the way, artificial turf rolled out, and civil servants playing badminton. It was such a wonderful juxtaposition: the gothic arches and stern legal portraits looming as they leapt and chased after shuttlecocks.
I knew nothing of this project but having spent many hours within its hallowed portals, at least some of which were remunerative and a few could even be described as happy, I am pleased to learn that it is being put to other uses. Thank you for providing me with a good excuse to revisit old haunts.
I recall just three visits to the RCJ:
1. to seek bail pending appeal in as I recall the long vacation for a young client of mine where I had instructed a fairly senior Counsel and we had appeared before a judge who confessed to be “swimming in unfamiliar waters”. How booming, empty and labyrinthine it seemed. The appeal? Yes: successful (for me an early pro Bono foray).
2. After the controversial “Solicitors’ Festival” in Disneyworld (for me of value, actually) within the year there was a mini- Law Society Conference encompassing (inter alia) the conference dinner in the vast Hall.
3. A visit to the then Senior Residential Judge (second in command to Lord Justice Woolf) before the start of business with the then Policy Adviser to the Criminal Law Committee then chaired by me to discuss non-disclosure. I had written to Sir Igor and he had invited us. I THINK it was worthwhile and he had been very worried about it. Then on to our monthly meeting.
Ever afterwards he greeted me cordially since I had known him when he had been increasingly senior on the Midlands and Oxford Circuit.
3. I was very sad to learn of his demise.
4. I remember the new meeting rooms at Chancery Lane fashioned out of the old cells from which prisoners had been transported to the RCJ vis the tunnel under Bell Yard. There is still much the same arrangement with Steelhouse Lane Police Station lockup to the Victoria Law Courts. (There is a museum there now where I always try to take visitors since it had for so many years been my workplace)
Ah, me!
I had the impression that my principal (the person who nominally trains articled clerks, now trainee solicitors) was an intensely practical man. When he showed me round the RCJ in early 1968 he described the hall as one of the biggest white elephants in London. I say no more....
Fun which masons have in buildings they put up and decorate: now there is quite another subject going back to Romanesque buildings, and before, I suspect... Spot the monkey in the tracery in Lincoln cathedral, for example.