قراءة كتاب The Strand District The Fascination of London

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‏اللغة: English
The Strand District
The Fascination of London

The Strand District The Fascination of London

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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The Chapel Royal is supposed to be on the site of the chapel of the ancient hospital, and various Norman remains dug up in the course of repairs favour this supposition. The roof is beautifully decorated in panels by Holbein; the date of its completion is supposed to be 1540. Prince George and Princess Anne; Frederick, Prince of Wales; George IV.; Queen Victoria; and the Empress Frederick, were all married in this Chapel.

The German Chapel was founded in 1700 by Princess Anne; service was held in it once on Sundays up to the present reign, but has now been discontinued.

Just opposite to the palace is Marlborough House, the residence of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The house was built in 1709 at the public expense, as a national compliment to the Duke of Marlborough. Sir Christopher Wren was the architect. After the death of the third Duke it was sublet to Leopold, subsequently King of the Belgians. Queen Adelaide lived in it after the death of King William IV. The building was afterwards used as a gallery for the pictures known as the Vernon Collection. But in 1850 it was settled on King Edward VII., then Prince of Wales, when he should attain his eighteenth year, which he did nine years later. The interior is decorated with beautiful mural paintings executed by La Guerre; many of these represent the battles of the famous Duke of Marlborough. On the removal of the King to Buckingham Palace the present Prince of Wales comes in his turn to Marlborough House.

Carlton House Terrace owes its name to Carlton House, built by Henry Boyle, Baron Carlton, in Queen Anne's reign. It was afterwards sold to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and was occupied subsequently by George IV. before he succeeded to the throne. J. T. Smith says: "Many a saturnalia did those walls witness in the days of his hot youth." Princess Charlotte was born here. In 1811 the ceremony of conferring the regency upon Prince George was enacted at Carlton House, and in the June following the Prince gave a magnificent supper to 2,000 guests. In 1827 the house was pulled down. It stood right across the end of the present Waterloo Place, where now a flight of steps lead into the park. At the head of the steps is the York Column of granite, 124 feet high, designed by Wyatt, and surmounted by a figure of the Duke of York, son of George III.

One of the sights of London in the seventeenth century, was the garden which lay between St. James's Park and Charing Cross, called Spring Gardens. The place was laid out as a bowling-green; it had also butts, a bathing-pond, a spring made to scatter water all around by turning a wheel. There was also an ordinary, which charged 6s. for a dinner—then an enormous price—and a tavern where drinking of wine was carried on all day long. In the "Character of England," 1659, attributed to Evelyn, the following account of Spring Gardens is found:

"The manner is as the company returned [from Hyde Park] to alight at the Spring Gardens so called, in order to the Parke, as our Thuilleries is to the Course; the inclosure not disagreeable, for the solemness of the grove is broken by the warbling of the birds, as it opens into the spacious walks at St. James's; but the company walk in it at such a rate, you would think that all the ladies were so many Atalantas contending with their wooers.... But fast as they run they stay there so long as if they wanted not time to finish the race; for it is usual here to find some of the young company till midnight; and the thickets of the garden seem to be contrived to all advantages of gallantry; after they have been refreshed with the collation, which is here seldom omitted, at a certain cabaret, in the middle of this paradise, where the forbidden fruits are certain trifling tarts, neats' tongues, salacious meats, and bad Rhenish; for which the gallants pay sauce, as indeed they do at all such houses throughout England."

After the Restoration the gardens were built over. Prince Rupert lived here 1674-1682. Colley Cibber, actor and prolific dramatist, had a house "near Bull's Head Tavern in Spring Gardens, 1711-14"; Sir Philip Warwick and George Canning were also among the residents.

"Locket's ordinary, a house of entertainment much frequented by gentry," was on the site of Drummond's Bank:

"Come, at a crown ahead ourselves we'll treat:
Champagne our liquor, and ragouts our meat;
       *       *       *       *       * With evening wheels we'll drive about the Park,
Finish at Locket's, and reel home i' the dark."

Vague rumour assigns an earlier house to Cromwell on the same spot. The bank was established about 1712 by Mr. Andrew Drummond, a goldsmith. George III. transferred his account from Coutts' to Drummond's when he was displeased with the former firm, and he desired Messrs. Drummond to make no advances to Frederick, Prince of Wales, who also had an account here. This order was obeyed, with the consequences that in the succeeding reign the royal account was transferred again to Messrs. Coutts. The County Council offices are at present a very noticeable feature in Spring Gardens, and the aspect of the place is no longer rural.

The part of Whitehall included in St. Martin's parish is not very large, yet it is of some importance. On the west side is Old Scotland Yard, for long associated with the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, now removed to New Scotland Yard. Stow says:

"On the left hand from Charing Cross are also divers tenements lately built till ye come to a large plot of ground inclosed with brick, and is called Scotland, where great buildings have been for receipt of the Kings of Scotland and other estates of that country, for Margaret Queen of Scots and sister to King Henry VIII. had her abiding here when she came to England after the death of her husband, as the Kings of Scotland had in former times when they came to the Parliament of England."

Here for some time was the official residence of the Surveyor of Works to the Crown, and Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren were both occupants. Sir J. Vanbrugh also resided at Scotland Yard, and as Secretary to the Council Milton had an official residence here before he went to Petty France, as described in the book on Westminster in the same series.

Craig's or Cragg's Court, in which is the Royal Almonry office, is shown in old maps. Strype speaks of it as a "very handsome large Court, with new buildings fit for gentry of Repute." It was built in 1702, and is supposed to have been called after the father of Secretary Craggs, who was a friend of Pope and Addison. Woodfall, the publisher, had a West End office in the court, and Romney the painter lived there. There is a fine old Queen Anne house still standing at the back of the court.

Opposite Scotland Yard is the Admiralty, built round a courtyard, and hidden by a stone screen surmounted by sea-horses. The screen was the work of the brothers Adam, and was put up to hide a building which even the taste of George III.'s reign declared to be insufferable. This had been built for the Admiralty in 1726, and replaced old Wallingford House, so called from its first owner, Viscount Wallingford, who built it in the reign of James I. George Villiers, the well-known Duke of Buckingham, bought the house, and used it until his death. Archbishop Usher saw the execution of Charles I. from the roof, and swooned with horror at the sight. The house was occupied by Cromwell's son-in-law, General Fleetwood, and in 1680 became Government property. In one of the large rooms the body of Nelson lay in state before his

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