Part 10

The name is taken from the seat of the Lowndes family, the ground landlords. In Lowndes Street lived: No. 33, Colonel Gurwood, editor of "Wellington's Despatches"; 40, Mrs. Gore, novelist.

In Chesham Street, at No. 7, lived Henry Parish, diplomatist.

The feature of Lyall Street (1841) is Chesham House, at the corner, in which is the Russian Embassy, noted under Chesham Place. On the other side of Lyall Street is Lowndes Place, built about 1835. Eaton Place is a dull but broad and fashionable street.

Inhabitants: General Caulfield; Sir Robert Gardiner, Sir H. Duncan, d. 1836; Sir Thomas Troubridge, d. 1852; No. 5, Mr. Heywood, 1859; 14, Sir George Grey, 1859; 15, Lord Kelvin; 18, Dr. Lushington, 1859; 26, Sir Erskine Perry, 1859; 38, Mr. Justice Wightman, 1859; 80, Kossuth, 1851; 84, Duke of Atholl; 87, Sir William Molesworth, d. 1853; 93, General Sir Archibald Alison, Bart.; and many others.

Off Eaton Place is West Eaton Place, where lived General Sir Peregrine Maitland, d. 1852.

Belgrave Place, so named in 1879 instead of Upper Eccleston Street; and Upper Belgrave Street, built circa 1827, have the same general characteristics.

Inhabitants: No. 2, Mrs. Gore; 3, Lord Charles Wellesley; 13, Earl of Munster, son of William IV., who shot himself in 1842. It is now Lord Harewood's residence.

In Chester Street, commenced 1805, lived: No. 5, Right Hon. Sir Frederick Shaw, d. 1876; 7, Dr. Pettigrew, d. 1860; 12, Sir Douglas Galton, d. 1899; 13, Dr. Broughton, d. 1837; 27, Colonel Sibthorpe, d. 1855.

Wilton Street was begun in 1817. Here lived Mr. Spencer Perceval, son of the Minister.

Grosvenor Place, Lower Grosvenor Place, Hobart Place, Eaton Square, and Clieveden Place occupy the site of the King's private road, which had existed before as a footpath, but was made a coach-road by Charles II. as a short-cut to Hampton Court. It ran along the north garden of Eaton Square, and crossed the Westbourne at Bloody Bridge, a name which dates as far back as 1590. On the north side, where is now Eaton Terrace, was a coppice which provided wood for the Abbey. Houses were first built on it about 1785, and in 1725 a turnpike existed at its junction with Grosvenor Place. Admission to the road was by ticket, but in 1830 it was thrown open to the public under the name of the King's Road. Part of Lower Grosvenor Place, however, was named Arabella Row in 1789, but became known by its present name in 1789. Here in a shabby house lived Lord Erskine after resigning the Lord Chancellorship in 1806.

Hobart Place was first so called in 1836, but part of it was called Grosvenor Street West until 1869. It leads to Eaton Square, built by Cubitt in 1827-53. This is 1,637 feet long by 371 feet wide, 15 acres in extent, and contains six enclosed gardens. The houses are of the usual type. At the west end is St. Peter's Church, built in 1826 in Ionic style from designs by Hakewell at a cost of L21,515. An altar-piece by Hilton, R.A., was presented by the British Institution in 1828, but was removed in 1877, and is now in the South Kensington Museum. After being nearly burnt down in 1837, it was rebuilt by Gerrard, and in 1872 a chancel and transepts in Byzantine style, by Sir A. Blomfield, were added. The nave was remodelled in 1874, and further alterations have been made in the last ten years at a cost of L5,000. Here are buried Admiral Sir E. Codrington, d. 1851, and General Lord Robert Somerset, G.C.B. The Right Rev. G. H. Wilkinson, Bishop of St. Andrew's, was vicar from 1870-83.

Inhabitants: No. 8, Sir R. T. Reid, K.C., M.P.; 16, Mr. Justice Willes, 1859; 43, Lord Cottesloe; 60, Lord Sandhurst; 66a, Lord Walsingham, F.R.S.; 71, in 1809 the official residence of the Speaker; 74, Cardwell, 1859; 75, Ralph Bernal, M.P., d. 1853, Mr. George Peabody, d. 1869, Viscount Knutsford; 76, Viscount Falkland; 83, Lord Chancellor Truro, d. 1855; Lord Aberdare; 85, Sir Edward Malet, G.C.B., P.C.; 92, Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, d. 1851; 110, General Sir A. Codrington, 1859; 114, Lady Baden-Powell; 115, Earl of Ellenborough, 1859, Marquis of Hertford; Colonel Sibthorpe, d. 1855; Jacob Omnium (Mr. J. Higgins).

Clieveden Place, first built over in 1826, was so named in 1890 from the Duke of Westminster's late estate near Cookham, instead of its original name, Westbourne Place.

Between Clieveden Place and Pimlico Road the streets are narrow and unimportant. In Westbourne Street (1826), so called from the neighbouring Westbourne River, stood the York Hospital for invalid soldiers, removed to Chatham in 1819. On the east side is a Baptist chapel, a plain building, erected in 1825. Skinner Street (1842) and Whittaker Street (1836) lead to Holbein Place, built over the Westbourne, and called in 1877 "the Ditch." Leading from Whittaker Street are Passmore Street (1837) and Union Street, containing industrial dwellings.

Inhabitants--Chester Place: Right Hon. Charles Buller, d. 1848. Chester Square: No. 19, Mantell, the geologist, d. 1852; 24, the poet Shelley's widow, d. 1851.

The houses in Chester Square and the neighbourhood are not so pretentious as those in Belgravia, but it is still a fashionable place of residence. In South Eaton Place, near the south end, stood the Star and Garter Tavern, well known about 1760. The end of this street was called Burton Street (1826) until 1877. In Elizabeth Street, first called Eliza Street in 1820, and until 1866 divided into Upper Elizabeth Street, Elizabeth Street, and Elizabeth Street South, stood the Dwarf Tavern, noted about 1760. At the south end, near St. Philip's Parochial Hall and Parsonage, is St. Michael's Mission House, built in 1893. Gerald Road, 1834 until 1885 named Cottage Road, contains the station of the R Division of Police.

Eccleston Street, with which in 1866 was incorporated Eccleston Street South, was so called from Ecclestone in Cheshire, where the Duke of Westminster has property. A house on the west side inhabited by Sir Frances Chantrey was pulled down during the construction of the underground railway. On the same side is the Royal Pimlico Dispensary, established in 1831. Part of the east side has been rebuilt. In Eccleston Place is the station of the Westminster Electric Supply Company, which supplies this district with electric light. In Lower Belgrave Street (1810), the lower end of which was till 1867 named Belgrave Street South, are St. Peter's National Schools, a large red-brick building with a playground, in connection with St. Peter's, Eaton Square.

At the end of Grosvenor Place great improvements were made in 1868 by the building of Grosvenor Gardens, when Grosvenor Street West, and Upper and Lower Eaton Street were swept away.

At No. 27, Upper Eaton Street, lived George Frederick Cooke, 1870; 25, Thomas Campbell, 1803; 19, Lower Eaton Street, Mrs. Abington, actress, 1807, Mr. Pinkerton, 1802. The present houses are very large and handsome.

Inhabitants: No. 1, Spanish Embassy; 46, Lord Herschell.

On the west side, at the corner of Buckingham Palace Road, are Belgrave Mansions, built from designs by Cundy in 1868, a large block in French Renaissance style, with a frontage of nearly 300 feet. The ground-floor is occupied by shops, and above are five floors of flats. The centre of the open space is occupied by two triangular enclosed gardens, and is crossed by Ebury Street, once an open lane leading over the fields to Chelsea. Houses were built on it after 1750, and in 1779 the north-eastern end was named Upper Ranelagh Street and Ranelagh Street. The south-western end was Upper Ebury Street, but the whole was renamed Ebury Street in 1867. It is an uninteresting street of unpretending houses and shops. In Upper Ebury Street lived: Rodwell the composer; William Skelton, engraver, d. 1848; No. 174 is the Boys' School belonging to the parish of St. Barnabas.

At the north-east end of Ebury Street is Victoria Square, a small square of plain houses built about 1837, out of which Albert Street leads to Grosvenor Place. In the square lived, at No. 8, Thomas Campbell, 1841-43; 5, Earl of Mount Edgcumbe.

At the other end, near Ebury Bridge, is Ebury Square, built about 1820 on the site of Ebury Farm. This ancient property, which derives its name from the Saxon ey, water, and burgh, a fortified place, is mentioned in 1307, when permission was granted by Edward I. to John de Benstede to fortify it. In Queen Elizabeth's time it consisted of a farm of 430 acres, let on lease for L21 per annum. In 1676 it came into the possession of the Grosvenor family, and in 1725 embraced a long narrow area, reaching from Buckingham House to the Thames between the Westbourne and the present Westmoreland Street.

The square was partially destroyed in 1868, but the old houses remain on the north-west and south sides. In the centre is a garden, and the ground between it and Buckingham Palace Road is occupied by St. Michael's National Schools, opened in 1870, a spacious building, accommodating about a thousand scholars; there is a large playground. The site had been previously occupied by the Pimlico Literary Institution, built in 1830 from designs by J. P. Deering.

On the remaining side a handsome block of industrial dwellings (Ebury Buildings) was built in 1872, when the old Flask Lane (1785) was swept away. The approaches on the north-west are Semley Place (1785), late Flask Row, and Little Ebury Street (1823). At the end of Avery Farm Row (probably a corruption of Ebury), opposite Ebury Bridge, is a drinking-fountain, erected in memory of the second Marquis of Westminster, d. 1869, by his widow.

Buckingham Palace, which falls partly within St. George's district and partly within St. Margaret's, Westminster, has already been described in the volume on Westminster.

The Royal Mews, the entrance to which is in Buckingham Palace Road, contains a large riding-school, a room for the state harness, stabling for the state and other horses, and houses for forty carriages. Here also are kept the old and new state coaches, the former of which was built in 1762 of English oak, with paintings by Cipriani, and cost L7,660.

Buckingham Palace Road, now a broad street with large houses and shops, was in 1725 an open country road, known as the coach-road to Chelsea. The houses in it are rated under the name of Pimlico as late as 1786, but rows of houses under various names had been built earlier--Stafford Row in 1752, Queen's Row in 1766. These, with Victoria Road (1838), Stockbridge Terrace (1836), King's Road, Lower and Upper Belgrave Place and Belgrave Terrace (1826), were united under the name of Buckingham Palace Road in 1867, and in 1894 Union Place, Holden Terrace, and South Place were incorporated with it. The portion facing the Palace is named Buckingham Gate, and consists of seven large private houses. On this site, facing the Park, stood Tart Hall, the residence of Viscount Stafford (see "Westminster").