GERARD'S HALL HOTEL, BASING LANE, and BREAD STREET, CHEAPSIDE, has a good coffee-room, a ball-room, good wines, beds for seventy eight, and a Norman crypt. The landlord and landlady are proud of the antiquity of their hall, and are very liberal in allowing it to be seen. ... The figure of the giant outside is a modern fabrication.

Peter Cunningham, Hand-Book of London, 1850