‘A pleasant academical retreat’

Wednesday, 15th April 2009

Lloyd Evans wanders round Inner Temple and discovers another world in the tangle of squares

Where’s the best place to eat lunch in London? First let’s strike restaurants off the list. At a restaurant your plate of recently throttled livestock will have been executed by a pimply sadist, cooked by a cursing psychopath and delivered to your table by a grudging PhD drop-out angling for a tip. So forget restaurants. Instead, choose outdoor refreshment and a bill of fare invented by the Romans and suitable for any time of day. A hunk of bread, a wedge of cheese and a flagon of Valpolicella. And for a picnicking spot you couldn’t do better than the lush shelving lawn of Inner Temple just off the Strand.

A young Scots barrister in the 18th century described its attractions with an outsider’s eye. ‘You quit all the hurry and bustle of the City in Fleet Street, and all at once you find yourself in a pleasant academical retreat. You see good, convenient buildings, handsome walks, venerable trees, you view the silver Thames.’

The only adjustment modernity has made to this description is the rumbling fume-stream of the Embankment which is shielded from the Inn by a sturdy wall and a row of carbon-quaffing, noise-muffling lime trees. These tranquil gardens are not the exclusive reserve of QCs and criminals. Ordinary folk are welcome, too, and if you choose to lunch there you’ll find history literally growing out of the ground. Beneath the turreted intricacies of Paper Buildings you’ll notice beds of red and white roses planted to commemorate the 15th-century grudge match between the houses of York and Lancaster which, according to legend, originated when the leading combatants stalked out of the Hall and chose their emblems from the gardens.

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