In Brooke Street, opening to the left, Chatterton took his own life in 1770, at the age of seventeen. Brooke St. leads to St. Alban's Church, a brick edifice, the masterpiece of Butterfield (1858), with an elaborately decorated interior. It was the church of the Reverand A. H. Mackonochie (died 1887) and the Reverand A. H. Stanton (died 1913; commemorated by a chantry in the south aisle), and is noted for its ritualistic services (good music; fine organ by H. Willis). Just beyond Brooke St., to the left, opposite Furnival St., are the offices of the Prudential Assurance Co., a huge Gothic edifice of red brick, built by Waterhouse in 1879. It occupies the site of Furnival's Inn, in which Charles Dickens was lodging when he wrote the first part of the �Pickwick Papers� (1836; memorial tablet and bust in the court). Leather Lane, skirting the east side of the Prudential Buildings, leads north to Eyre Street Hill, largely inhabited by an Italian colony. On the other (south) side of Holborn is the entrance to the Mercers� Schools, erected by the Mercers� Company in 1894 and occupying the site of Barnard's Inn. The old Hall (circa 1540) has been retained as the dining-room of the boys (250 in number). The school, founded in College Hill about 1450, has the names of Dean Colet and Sir Thomas Gresham among its pupils.
