History of 12KBW
12 King’s Bench Walk is one of the largest and most successful common law chambers in the country and is consistently featured in the highest rankings for personal injuries chambers.
The Inner Temple, with its cousin the Middle Temple, has been the home of common lawyers since the dissolution of the Order of Knights Templar in the middle ages.
Clustered around their famous round church off Fleet Street, the Templars and then the barristers who followed them established a maze of lanes, courts and gardens where they built their homes and places of work. Many celebrated episodes in English history and literature happened here: the plucking of the red and white roses of Lancaster and York; the first performance of Twelfth Night; Great Expectations.
When the Thames was embanked in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Inner and Middle Temples reclaimed its muddy banks and jetties for gardens and new chambers: 12 King’s Bench Walk is one of these, an historic and protected building, looking out over the gardens and the river. The building has served as barristers’ chambers ever since, apart from a pause during the Second World War when it housed anti-aircraft guns on its roof and was badly damaged by bombs.
Chambers was founded in the nineteenth century and by the 1930s was led by one of the most redoubtable common law Silks of his day, Montague Berryman Q.C., who built a large practice with a group of celebrated advocates, many of whom became formidable judges. Among other barristers who have practised here were the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Gardiner, the former Attorney-General, Lord Rawlinson of Ewell, and the double Olympic gold medallist at 800 metres in 1924 and 1928, Douglas Lowe.