A grade 2 listed building, built in 1914, this site has been The Hung, Drawn and Quartered since 1996. The building was a bank prior to this and formed part Christ’s Hospital till 1987. Jon Fowkes of Claybury bequeathed it to the school in 1686. Christ’s Hospital are a charitable education foundation founded in 1552, the result of the vision of King Edward VI, assisted by Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, and Sir Richard Dobbs, Lord Mayor of the City of London, to educate poor children. The original school was based in Newgate Street where it was occupied as the major site for 350 years. The school still exists today and is based in Horsham, Sussex and remains true to its founder’s principals of supporting disadvantaged children. Samuel Pepys, famous diarist and one vice president of Christ’s Hospital, lived locally in Seething Lane and is buried in St Olave’s Church in Hart Street. His diary is a primary source of history with an eyewitness account to some of London’s historic events, such as the Great Plague of 1665 and The Great Fire of London in 1666, which began in a bakery Pudding Lane near the Monument, which is erected in memory of the Great Fire. On the wall outside the pub you will find an altered quote from Samuel Pepys describing his attendance of the execution at Charing Cross of Major General Harrison on October 13, 1660, for the regicide of Charles I.
“I went to see Major General Harrison hung, drawn and quartered. He was looking as cheerful as any man could in that condition.”
To be hanged, drawn and quartered was the penalty in Medieval England for high treason, and was deemed more heinous a crime than murder, until abolished under the treason act of 1814. It was a gruesome form of public torture and execution applied to men only, woman found guilty of treason were burned at the stake. The full sentence passed upon those convicted of High Treason was as follows: “That you be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution where you shall be hanged by the neck and being alive cut down, your privy members shall be cut off and your bowels taken out and burned before you, your head severed from your body and your body divided into four quarters to be disposed of at the King’s pleasure.”
