South-Coast Railway across the Thames; and adjoining this is the bridge which carries the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway. The West London Railway crosses the Thames some distance west of Battersea Bridge. Battersea is well supplied with railway stations, and has two steam-boat piers. Battersea Park, east of Battersea, has an area of 199 acres. An Act empowering the formation of a park on the land known as Battersea Fields was passed in 1846, and an Act to alter and extend the powers of the commissioners in 1851. The construction of the park proved to be costly and tedious. Much of the land was submerged at every tide, and most of it was marshy. An embankment had to be carried along the Thames, the land thoroughly drained, and, as most of it was below the river, it was deemed expedient to raise the level of the surface by laying upon it about 1,000,000 cubic feet of earth, obtained in excavating the Victoria Docks, below Blackwall, and brought up here in barges. The land so prepared was ready for laying out and planting in 1856, and the park was formally opened, March 28, 1858. The total cost was nearly £313,000. The park was laid out with much taste and increases in beauty yearly. Its special feature is the Subtropical Garden, of about 4 acres, which is the finest thing of the kind open to the public. As mentioned under BATTERSEA, bridges cross the Thames directly east and west of the park, and there are railway stations and a steam-boat pier close at hand, so that Battersea Park is readily accessible from any part of London, and it is well worth visiting. Battle Bridge, ST. PANCRAS, at the junction of Gray's Inn Road with the Pentonville and Euston Roads. It is now known as KING'S CROSS, from a statue of George IV., erected in 1836 by Stephen Geary, a most execrable performance, cleverly burlesqued by Cruikshank, and not unfairly represented by Pugin in his amusing Contrasts. The statue was taken down in 1845, deposited in a mason's yard, and broken up. The name Battle Bridge was commonly derived from a battle said to have been fought here between Alfred and the Danes. Stukeley, on the other hand, fancied he had found in Battle Bridge the site of the battle fought by the Britons, under Boadicea, against the Romans under Suetonius Paulinus. A fragment of stone bearing portions of a Roman inscription, in which occur the letters Leg. XX., was found here in July 1842.1 The spring after the conflagration at London, all the ruines were overgrown with an herbe or two; but especially one with a yellow flower: and on the south side of St. Paul's Church it grew as thick as could be; nay, on the very top of the tower. The herbalists call it Ericolevis Neapolitana, small bank cresses of Naples; which plant Tho. Willis [the famous physician] told me he knew before but in one place about the towne; and that was at Battle Bridge, by the Pindar of Wakefield, and that in no great quantity.-Aubrey's Natural History of Wiltshire, p. 38. As late as 1791 Battle Bridge is described as a small village on the new road from Islington to Tottenham Court." 2 Battle Bridge, 1 Gentleman's Magazine, August 1842, p. 144. 2 Kearsley's Stranger's Guide. or King's Cross, is now a very busy place. Here is the terminus of the Great Northern Railway, erected 1852 by Mr. Lewis Cubitt, on the grounds of the Small-Pox Hospital;1 and only divided from it by St. Pancras Road is the magnificent terminus of the Midland Railway, designed by Sir Gilbert Scott. Battle Bridge, by Mill Lane, Tooley Street, SOUTHWARK. So called of Battaile Abbey, for that it standeth on the ground, and over a watere course (flowing out of the Thames), pertaining to that Abbey.—Stow, p. 155. The Abbot of Battle had here his inn or town-house, with its gardens and maze. Here by the Thames, opposite the east end of the Custom House, are Battle Bridge Stairs. Batty's Hippodrome, KENSINGTON, was situated immediately opposite the broad walk of Kensington Gardens, and was opened as a place of entertainment at the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851, when London was filled with visitors. The site was subsequently occupied by a riding school until it was required for building purposes. Bayham Street, CAMDEN TOWNS, runs from Crowndale Road to Camden Road, parallel to and east of High Street. So named from Bayham Abbey, Sussex, the seat of the Marquis Camden, ground landlord of the property. In 1821, when Charles Dickens was brought from Chatham to London, his father took a house in this street. Dickens in after life used to speak of his musings "in the little dark back-garret in Bayham Street."2 Mr. Holl the engraver, father of Mr. Francis Holl and Mr. William Holl, engravers, and Mr. Henry Holl the actor, lived in this street, as did Mr. Henry Selous the painter. Bayley Street, BEDFORD SQUARE, leading from Tottenham Court It was formerly Bedford Street, but the name [See Bedford Street.] Road to the Square. was changed in 1878. Baynard's Castle stood on the banks of the Thames, at the western boundary of London, and was so called of Ralph Baynard, or Bainardus, the Norman associate of William the Conqueror. It was forfeited by William Baynard, Baron of Dunmow, in IIII, and was granted by Henry I. to Robert Fitzgerard, son of Gilbert, Earl of Clare. In 1213 Robert Fitzwalter, who had succeeded to the castle and honour, taking part with the Barons, was banished the realm by John, and his castle dismantled. A year or two later he was recalled and pardoned, had his estates restored, and was declared of right chief bannerer or castellan of the City of London. The site of the castle was included in the precincts of the Blackfriars. The better-known Baynard Castle, built in 1428 by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, was built on land on the banks of the Thames, below Thames Street. The relative positions of the two Castles Baynard are shown in a plan of the ward of Castle Baynard in Mr. Loftie's London (Historic Towns). 1 Originally built in 1793-1794. 2 Forster, Life of Dickens, vol. i. pp. 15, 19. On the Duke of Gloucester's attainder it reverted to the Crown, in whose possession it continued to the reign of Elizabeth, when it was leased to the Earl of Pembroke. In 1457 Richard, Duke of York, was lodging in Baynard's Castle "as in his own house." On the death of Edward IV., the great council of nobles and prelates for the settlement of the government, and for arranging the coronation of Edward V., met from day to day at Baynard's Castle; and in the court there, after the murder of Hastings, Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, offered the crown to the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III. Shakespeare has depicted it in a scene of inimitable excellence; but in his description he has closely followed Sir Thomas More's Life of Edward V., where the citizens are conducted to "the courtyard of Baynard's Castle," Catesby "enters from the castle;" Richard "appears in a gallery above between two bishops;" and Buckingham "plays the orator so effectually that the whole assembly in the courtyard say Amen when he winds up with— Thus I salute you with this royal title Long live King Richard, England's worthy King. From its occupation by the Duke of York, Baynard's Castle had come to be called York House; but the old name was restored by Henry VII., about 1487, when he entirely re-edified the castle, but made it less like a fortress and more like a palace than before. He and his queen lodged or refreshed here on occasion of visits of ceremony to the City. In 1503 the King of Castile was lodged at Baynard's Castle. In 1515, when the great case of Dr. Standish was pending, "all the Lords spiritual and temporal, with many of the House of Commons, and all the judges and the King's council, were called before the King [Henry VIII.] to Baynard's Castle," where the proceedings commenced by Wolsey kneeling down before the King and stating the case of the clergy. It was here that, on July 19, 1553, "the council, partly moved with the right of the Lady Mary's cause, partly considering that the most of the realm were wholly bent on her side, changing their mind from Lady Jane, lately proclaimed Queen, assembled themselves, where they communed with the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Shrewsbury; and Sir John Mason, clerk of the council, sent for the Lord Mayor, and then riding into Cheap, to the Cross, where Garter King-at-Arms, trumpets being sounded, proclaimed the Lady Mary, daughter of King Henry VIII. and Queen Katherine, Queen of England, etc." 2 Queen Elizabeth granted Baynard's Castle on lease to the Earl of Pembroke; and here the brothers, to whom the first folio of Shakespeare was dedicated, William, Earl of Pembroke, in 1617, and Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, in 1641, were respectively installed Chancellors of the University of Oxford; and here the latter's second countess, the still more celebrated "Anne Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery," took up her abode while her husband, as Lord Chamberlain, resided at the Cockpit at Whitehall. 1 Burnet, vol. i. p. 13; Greyfriar's Chronicle. 2 Stow, p. 26. She describes it in her Memoirs as a house full of riches and more secured by my lying there." April 25, 1559.-The Queen in the afternoon went to Bainard's Castle, the Earl of Pembroke's place, and supped with him, and after supper she took a boat and was tossed up and down upon the river Thames, hundreds of boats and barges rowing about her, and thousands of people thronging at the water-side to look upon her Majesty, rejoicing to see her, and sights upon the Thames.-Strype, History of the Reformation under Queen Elizabeth, p. 188. Sir Philip Sidney writes to Hatton, "from Bainard's Castle," November 13, 1581.1 Here, on June 19, 1660, King Charles II. went to supper :— June 19, 1660.-My Lord [i.e. Lord Sandwich] went at night with the King to Baynard's Castle to supper.-Pepys. In a letter of December 18, 1648, Evelyn mentions that the Parliament had garrisoned Baynard's Castle with divers other considerable places in the body and rivage of the City. Baynard's Castle was destroyed in the Great Fire. "Only a round tower, part of Baynard's Castle, yet stands, and, with other additional buildings, is converted into a dwelling-house." 2 A memory of its existence is preserved in the name it has given to the ward of Castle Baynard, and in the sign of Castle Baynard given to a new tavern, noticeable for its elaborate terra-cotta decoration, at the corner of St. Andrew's Hill, in Queen Victoria Street. Bayswater, a large district of handsome houses, west of Oxford Street, and within the parish of Paddington, formed into crescents, terraces, squares, and streets since 1839. The best houses front Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, the largest and showiest cluster about Lancaster Gate. The eastern portion of the district is now best known perhaps as Tyburnia, but this last is a colloquial term, and somewhat indefinite in its limitations. [See Tyburnia.] Bayswater was so called from Bainardus, the Norman associate of William the Conqueror, who has given his name to Baynard's Castle, and the ward of Castle Baynard. Bainardus was a tenant of the Abbot of Westminster, and in a Parliamentary grant of the year 1653 of the Abbey or Chapter Lands, "the common field at Paddington" is described as 66 near to a place commonly called Baynard's Water." In 1720 the lands of the Dean and Chapter in the same common field are stated (in a terrier of the Chapter) to be in the occupation of Alexander Bond, of Bear's Watering, in the parish of Paddington. To this we may add that in the Vestry Minute Book of the Parish of St. Martin's for the year 1654, is the entry, "From the place or water commonly called by the name of Baynard's Watering." Canon Taylor's conjecture that Bayswater derives its name from the circumstance that "where this stream [the Westbourne] crossed the Great Western Road it spread out into a shallow bay-water where cattle might drink by the wayside," finds no support in local character, documents, or tradition. 1 Wright, vol. ii. p. 163. 3 2 Strype's Stow (1720), B. i. p. 62. Bayswater was famous of old for its springs, reservoirs, and conduits, supplying the greater part of the City of London with water. Part of the great main pipe of lead which conveyed water from this place to the City conduits was discovered during the repavement of the Strand in June 1765; and as late as 1795 the houses in Bond Street standing upon the City lands were supplied from Bayswater.1 Two of the original springs on Craven Hill were covered in as late as 1849. In the early years of the present century there was a popular Tea Garden and place of entertainment at Bayswater, the house and gardens having previously acquired notoriety as the place where the famous quack doctor and author, Sir John Hill, wrote his books,-British Herbal, History of the Materia Medica, General Natural History, and Vegetable System, in twenty-six folio volumes,-received his patients, and grew the simples with which he treated them. Besides the churches and chapels which have been erected here, two rather remarkable places of worship have been recently opened in Moscow Road and Petersburg Place: one is a Greek Church, very richly fitted internally, and now the chief church of the wealthy Greek community settled in London; the other the New West End Synagogue, a structure of some external display and much internal splendour, designed by Messrs. Nathan and Pearson, and consecrated March 29, 1879. The Hebrew name of the new synagogue, it was said in the consecration sermon, is "The Western Wall," and it is so called from the sole relic of the great Temple in Jerusalem, now "the Wailing Place" of the Jews in the Holy City. At Bayswater House (which stood by itself in the road. somewhere between Lancaster Gate and Orme Square) lived Fauntleroy, the banker and forger. Fronting Hyde Park, and formed in 1764, is a spacious burial-ground belonging to the parish of St. George, Hanover Square. Eminent Persons interred.-Lawrence Sterne (d. 1768), on the west side, about the middle of the ground, and against the wall; there is a head-stone to his memory, raised by certain free masons. The graveyard lay far from houses; no watch was kept after dark; all shunned the ill-famed neighbourhood. Sterne's grave was marked down by the body-snatchers, the corpse dug up and sold to the Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge. A student present at the dissection recognised under the scalpel the face.—Leslie's Reynolds, vol. i. p. 293. Sir Thomas Picton, who fell at Waterloo, this body was removed to the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, in the family vault. Mrs. Radcliffe, author of The Mysteries of Udolpho (d. 1823); Sir John Parnell, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Ireland (1744-1801), and his son, Henry Brooke Parnell, first Lord Congleton (1776-1842); Paul Sandby, R.A., (1725-1809); Horace Hone, minature painter (d. 1825), in the vaults of the chapel. J. T. Smith, the engraver of so many curious London views (d. 1833), keeper of the prints in the British Museum, and author of Nollekens and his Times, and the gossiping Streets of London, and 1 Of the "Conduit near Bayswater" there is a view by J. T. Smith. |