Bleeding Heart Yard

You'll find this cobbled courtyard tucked away off Greville Street in Clerkenwell, and the name alone should stop you in your tracks. Bleeding Heart Yard. There's a story behind it, and it's gloriously gruesome.

Legend says that in sixteen twenty-six, Lady Elizabeth Hatton threw a grand winter ball at her mansion in Hatton Garden. During the evening, she was seen dancing with the Spanish Ambassador — some versions say the Devil himself in disguise. The next morning, her body was found in the courtyard. Her limbs were scattered across the cobblestones, and her heart had been torn from her chest. It was still pumping. Still bleeding. Hence the name.

The story was popularised in R.H. Barham's Ingoldsby Legends in eighteen thirty-seven, a collection of comic horror verse that was wildly popular with the Victorians. In Barham's version, the Devil tears out Lady Hatton's heart during a particularly rowdy housewarming party. The real explanation is almost certainly more mundane — there was probably a sixteenth-century pub here called the Bleeding Heart, referencing the Virgin Mary's heart pierced by five swords, a common Catholic symbol. But nobody wants that version.

Charles Dickens set the home of the Plornish family here in Little Dorrit. He describes it as a damp, dismal place where poor families crammed into crumbling rooms. The courtyard today is rather more pleasant — there's a well-regarded restaurant and a tavern. But the cobblestones are original, and on a dark evening, with the right frame of mind, you can absolutely see why someone invented a story about the Devil ripping out a heart.