Staple Inn, London

Towering above Chancery Lane underground station, on the southern side of High Holborn, stands a somewhat askew Tudor-style wooden structure known as Staple Inn. Its overhanging half-timbered façade and gables originate from the 16th century and are the most extensive of their kind in all of London. Remarkably, they withstood the Great Fire but required extensive reconstruction after the Blitz.

A narrow passageway tucked beneath the building leads into an inner courtyard, a place vividly depicted by Charles Dickens in his final, unfinished novel "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" as a "little nook composed of two irregular quadrangles". It was within this enclave that Mr. Grewgious, a prominent character in the novel, resided. Dickens's literary descriptions of this space remain accurate to this day: "It is one of those nooks, the entrance to which from the bustling street imparts to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of having placed cotton in his ears and velvet soles on his boots."

During the late 1820s, Dickens was well-acquainted with this courtyard as he worked in a solicitor's office on the opposite side of High Holborn at Gray's Inn, one of the four Inns of Court. Contrary to the modern connotation of the term "inn" as a public house or tavern, an Inn of Court refers to a professional organization and a residential school for aspiring lawyers. Dickens also had a daily view of this 7-gabled roof building when he later embarked on his career as a journalist.