"Law and equity, or A peep at Nando's": a cartoon from 1787, depicting Edward Thurlow in his Chancellor's wig, approaching the bar at Nando's.

Nando's was a coffee house in Fleet Street in London. It was known to exist in 1696, being the subject of a conveyance, and was popular in the 18th century, especially with the legal profession in the nearby courts and chambers.

The name Nando is thought to be a short form of Ferdinando,[1] and its exact address is given variously as somewhere between 15 and 17 Fleet Street.[1][2] David Hughson wrote in 1807 that Nando's occupied the building at 15 Fleet Street[1] which was previously the Rainbow Coffee House.[3] However, property deeds in the Middle Temple Archive place the location of the coffee house at 14 Fleet Street.[4]

The venue was a favourite haunt of Edward Thurlow, who became Lord Chancellor, and he was satirised as being enamoured of the landlady's attractive daughter.[5]

Charles Lamb refers to Nando's in his essay "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading", writing, "Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment. What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at Nando's, keeps the paper! I am sick of hearing the waiter bawling out incessantly, 'The Chronicle is in hand, Sir.'"[6]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Norman, Philip (1905). London Vanished & Vanishing. Macmillan.
  2. ↑ Timbs, John (1872). Club Life of London.
  3. ↑ Hughson, David (1807). London.
  4. ↑ MT/4/1/12/5: 13-14 Fleet Street deeds, 1737-1926, 39 files. In the Middle Temple Archive.
  5. ↑ Henry Benjamin Wheatley, Peter Cunningham (2011), London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions, vol. 2, Cambridge University Press, pp. 571–572, ISBN 9781108028073
  6. ↑ Lamb, Charles (1949). Brown, John Mason (ed.). The Portable Charles Lamb. New York: Viking. p. 442.

51°30′49″N 0°06′40″W / 51.5137°N 0.1111°W / 51.5137; -0.1111

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