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Auction Mart, Bartholomew Lane and Throgmorton Street.
The Old Auction Mart, Bartholomew Lane, on the site of which Parrs Bank now
stands
The coffee-room of the Auction Mart occupied the whole of the north side of the
building next to Throgmorton Street, with a side entrance from there, and
another, the principal one, from the hall of the building, which was entered
from Bartholomew Lane by a few stone steps. From the main hall a wide staircase
led to the several auction rooms on the floors above. The coffee-room was thrice
as long as its width, and was fitted with the usual old-fashioned mahogany boxes
all round the walls with tables to seat six persons in comfort. The bar occupied
a space immediately opposite the entrance from the hall. The kitchens and
cellars were all in the basement below. Except on the days when sales were in
progress, and those attending them visited the coffee-room to lunch, the
principal frequenters of the place were members of the adjacent Stock Exchange
and their clients, who found the Mart a convenient trysting-place to meet their
brokers on business. There were all sorts of auction sales in the rooms
upstairs, and sometimes there were funny and amusing scenes.
I remember a sale of pictures being announced by a well-known firm of
auctioneers, and the statement on the bills that one of the works of art to be
offered for competition was by Annibale
Correggio. It was not often that the ordinary sales at the Mart had any
attraction for the members of the Stock Exchange ; but when pictures by
celebrated old masters were catalogued it was quite another thing, there being
several men in the house who not only took great interest in such works, but
were excellent judges and connoisseurs.
Such an announcement at once caught the notice of these people, anxious to see a
work by suck an artist, and it soon became evident there would be a good
attendance to await the auctioneer taking his position in the rostrum. Luckily
for the ignorant gentleman, whose knowledge of the old masters was evidently
very
meagre, and somewhat mixed up, he happened to have a friend in one of the share
markets, who pointed out the extraordinary jumble of names that had been
selected. He was only just in time to have fresh bills issued on the daay before
the sale, with the name of Annibale Carracci, in the place of the compound
mixture of a cognomen first announced. It is highly probable that Carracci
had quite as much to do with the production of the picture in question as
Correggio ; for when it was hung up in the sale room those who knew what
pictures are, pronounced it to be the work of
an unmistakable duffer.
The 1829 Robsons directory places
John Humphryes, at the Auction Mart Coffee House, Bartholomew lane, Bank
References :
Lots of references are made to two sources on the
internet archive
:
Edward Callows, Old London Taverns &
John Timbs, Club life of London Volume 2
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