tavern and gardens was a popular place of resort, much delighted in by Pepys. April 17, 1668.-To the King's House and saw The Surprizall, where base singing, only Knipp who came, after her song in the clouds, to me in the pit, and there oranges, 25. After the play, she and I, and Rolt, by coach 6s. 6d. to Kensington, and there to the Grotto, and had admirable pleasure with their singing, and some fine ladies listening to us; with infinite pleasure I enjoyed myself: so to the tavern there and did spend 16s. 6d., and the gardener 2s.-Pepys. The road to Kensington at this time seems to have been in a very dangerous condition. Pepys relates that landing at Somerset House, where Lord Sandwich's coach was waiting for them, it being past ten at night (June 15, 1664), he was in such a state of perplexity how to get Lady Paulina and her two sisters home to Kensington, on account of “the troublesome passage," that it was only after "half an hour's stay in the street" that he and Creed decided to go in the coach home with them. "But, Lord! the fear that my Lady Paulina was in every step of the way and indeed, at this time of the night, it was no safe thing to go that road; so that I was even afraid myself, though I appeared otherwise." Nor was it much better seventy years later. The road between this place [Kensington] and London is grown so infamously bad, that we live here in the same solitude as we should do if cast on a rock in the middle of the ocean, and all the Londoners tell us there is between them and us a great impassable gulf of mud. There are two roads through the park, but the new one is so convex, and the old one so concave, that by this extreme of faults they agree in the common one of being, like the high road, impassable.-Lord Hervey to his mother, November 27, 1736 (Hervey's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 189). The Half-way House, long an unsightly excrescence in the road, near what is now Prince's Gate, was removed in 1846 at a cost of £3050. In a meadow outside Holland Park, where is now Addison Road, Mr. Best shot Lord Camelford in a duel, 1803. Kensington is famed for its rich red gravel, hence its salubrity. Many artists reside here. Kensington parish had 162,294 inhabitants in 1881; Kensington town 120, 141. Kensington Gardens, pleasure grounds attached to Kensington Palace, open to the public, pedestrians only are admitted. The stranger in London should, during the London season, make a point of visiting these gardens on one of the days when the band plays. Queen Anne employed Wise to lay the gardens out, which he did, much to Addison's satisfaction. It is usually stated that the original park, attached to Nottingham House when William III. bought it and made it into Kensington Palace, consisted of only 26 acres, that Queen Anne added 30 acres, and that Caroline, Queen of George II., took 300 acres from Hyde Park, but most of these supposed facts are false, and the last of the three could not possibly be correct as the extent of Kensington Gardens is now officially given at 245 ̊5 acres. In March 1662 a grant was made to Sir Heneage Finch, SolicitorGeneral, "of that ditch or fence which divides Hyde Park from his own lands, with the trees thereto belonging, 10 feet by 150 roods, from the south highway leading to Kensington to the north highway leading to Acton, with the dispoiling the same."1 Mr. Loftie, in his Kensington, Picturesque and Historical, 1888 (p. 142), points out that proof positive will be found in a map of Hyde Park, dated 1725, before her husband came to the throne, that Queen Caroline did not take 300 or any other number of acres therefrom; the map shows the western boundary to be exactly the same as it was when Queen Caroline died in 1737, and as it is still. We have Bowack's Antiquities of Middlesex (1705) as the authority for saying that Queen Anne planted "near thirty acres more towards the north, separated from the rest by a stately greenhouse not yet finished." Mr. Loftie suggests that the blunder respecting Queen Caroline probably arose from a want of discrimination in not taking note of the distinction between Nottingham Park and the gardens attached to Nottingham House. The Queen enlarged the gardens and took in some land for that purpose from the park, that is Nottingham Park, now Kensington Gardens, and not Hyde Park. The Serpentine was formed between the years 1730-1733. The bridge over it, separating the gardens from Hyde Park, was designed by J. and G. Rennie, and erected in 1826, and cost £36,000. The gardens were laid out by Bridgman, but Kent afterwards modified his arrangements. Alterations and improvements have been made in the gardens at various times by "Capability" Brown, Humphry Repton, and W. Aiton. The gardens extend from the west end of Hyde Park to Kensington Palace. They form a "continuity of shade" that is very delightful on a summer's day. The trees are planted in avenues, groups, and singly. Some of the elms and Spanish chestnuts are magnificent trees. Flowering trees and shrubs-limes, hawthorns, lilacs, laburnums, guelder roses, rhododendrons and the like-abound; the rarer shrubs are numerous, and, what is very grateful to the unlearned, all named, and the flower-beds are well filled and admirably kept. The Broad Walk, the central avenue from the palace, is 50 feet wide. I find, by a minute of the Board of Green Cloth, in the year 1798, that a pension of £18 per annum is granted to Sarah Gray, widow, in consideration of the loss of her husband, who was accidentally shot while the keepers were hunting foxes in Kensington Gardens.-Historical Recollections of Hyde Park, by Thomas Smith, P. 39. June 15, 1773.-I am content without running races, as our Maccaronis do every Sunday evening in Kensington Gardens, to the high amusement and contempt of the mob.-Walpole to Mason, vol. v. p. 474. September 26, 1782.-The air perfectly balsamic, even in Kensington Gardens, where we spent the morning in slow marches from bench to bench.-Mrs. Boscawen, Delany, vol. vi. 112. Kensington Gardens have a very peculiar effect; not exhilarating, I think, yet alive and pleasant.-Crabbe's Journal. Where Kensington, high o'er the neighbouring lands, 1 Cal. State Pap., Domestic Series, 1661-1662, p. 320. And sees each spring, luxuriant in her bowers, To gravel walks and unpolluted air. Here, while the town in damps and darkness lies, Where rich brocades and glossy damasks glow, Sheridan, 1781, Prologue to the Miniature Pictures. Kensington Palace, a large and irregular edifice, originally the seat of Sir Heneage Finch, Solicitor-General and afterwards Earl of Nottingham and Lord Chancellor of England; whose son, the second earl, sold it to King William III. for 18,000 guineas very soon after his accession to the throne. The lower portion of the building was part of Lord Nottingham's house; the higher storey was added by William III., from the designs of Sir C. Wren, Surveyor-General. The upper floor was partly rebuilt and enlarged by N. Hawksmoor, clerk of the King's works, also from the designs of Wren. The northwest angle was built by George II. as a nursery for his children. William III. and Queen Mary, Queen Anne, her husband Prince George of Denmark, and King George II., all died in this palace. Her present Majesty was born in it (1819), and here (1837) she held her first Council. The Duke of Sussex, son of George III., lived, died, and had his fine library in this palace. The last memorable meeting between Queen Anne and the Duchess of Marlborough took place here. February 25, 1690.—I went to Kensington, which King William had bought of Lord Nottingham, and altered, but was yet a patch'd building, but with the garden, however, it is a very sweete villa, having to it the Park, and a straight new way through the Park.-Evelyn. In November 1691 Evelyn records that "part of the King's house at Kensington was burnt," but it was soon repaired. Later he went to visit it, and tells us how the King had furnished his new gallery. It is very April 23, 1696.-I went to see the King's House at Kensington. noble, but not great. The Gallery furnish'd with the best pictures from all the houses, of Titian, Raphael, Corregio, Holbein, Julio Romano, Bassan, Vandyke, Tintoret and others; a great collection of Porcelain; and a pretty private library. The gardens about it very delicious.-Evelyn. The orangery, a very fine detached room, was built by Wren. The royal collection of pictures, long famous, has been removed to other palaces; and the kitchen-garden has, pursuant to 5 Vict. c. 1, been built over with two rows of detached mansions, called "Palace Gardens." Kent House, KNIGHTSBRIDGE, opposite to the Riding School of the Household Brigade, took its name from the Duke of Kent, the father of Queen Victoria, who lived here for some time and greatly added to the building. Lord George Seymour was the next tenant, and the lease passed in 1817 to the Villiers family. In 1844, when Sir George Cornewall Lewis married Lady Theresa Lister (Villiers), he went to live at Kent House, the lease of which belonged to his wife. The house was divided, the Earl of Derby occupying one part, Sir G. C. Lewis the other. It was finally pulled down in 1870. Kent Road (OLD and NEW) is the main line of road from Newington Causeway into Kent. The New Kent Road commences at the Elephant and Castle and joins the Old Kent Road at the Bricklayers' Arms. The Old Kent Road starts from the Dover Road and the New Kent Road, and is continued to the New Cross Road, Deptford. In the New Kent Road are the Elephant and Castle Theatre, St. Austin's Anglican Priory, and the district church of St. Matthew. In the Old Kent Road, by the Bricklayers' Arms, is the admirable Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb. Opposite to it is the principal Goods Station of the South Eastern Railway. At the farther end Christ Church and the Licensed Victuallers' Asylum. "2 Kent Street, SOUTHWARK, from St. George's Church to the Old Kent Road, the old Canterbury and Dover road from London Bridge; the Southwark portion of the old street has been superseded as a great artery by the construction of Great Dover Street. It was called Kentish Street in the reign of Edward VI.,1 and it is so called by Stow, "for that," he says, "is the way leading into that country." Kent Street is a curious example of how stationary as well as progressive a great city may be; the poor lodging-houses in this street continued till quite recently to be the most awful receptacles of the houseless in the country-worse than the "dry arches." But as the result of recent legislation and police supervision a marked improvement has taken place. And with that improvement sprung up a desire to wipe out, as far as possible, the old associations, and the Metropolitan Board of Works and the Newington Vestry in November 1877 acceded to the petition of the inhabitants, and changed the name from Kent Street to Tabard Street. Kent Street, so called as being seated in the road out of Kent into Southwarke, a street very long, but ill built, chiefly inhabited by Broom Men and Mumpers. But here are divers large yards wherein are vast stocks of Birch, Heath, and some only of Broom Staves, which the Broom Men dispose of to those that make the Brooms. -Strype, B. iv. p. 31. 1 Norton, p. 388. 2 Stow, p. 150. December 5, 1683.-I was this day invited to a wedding of one Mrs. Castle, etc. She was the daughter of one Burton, a broom-man, by his wife who sold kitchen-stuff in Kent Street, whom God so blessed that the father became a very rich, and was a very honest man; he was Sheriff of Surrey, where I have sat on the bench with him.-Evelyn. There are still several broom-makers in Kent Street, but now brushmakers and basket-makers are much more numerous. Then in Kent Street is a lazar house for leprous people, called the Loke in Southwarke; the foundation whereof I find not.-Stow, p. 156. Evelyn and Pepys give us glimpses of Kent Street in the terrible plague year of 1665. September 7, 1665.—I went all along the City and suburbs from Kent Street to St. James's, a dismal passage and dangerous to see so many coffines exposed in the streetes, now thin of people; the shops shut up, and all in mournful silence, as not knowing whose turn may be next.—Evelyn. November 14, 1665.—Captaine Cocke and I in his coach through Kent Streete, a sad place through the plague, people sitting sick and with plaisters about them in the street begging.-Pepys. King James II. in his Memoirs represents Titus Oates as saying of him that "the Duke is a Rascal, a Papist, and a Traitor: he shall be hanged, says he, and I hope to live to see it; we will have no more regard for him than if he were a Scavenger of Kent Street."1 "The inhabitants of Kent Street and St. Giles's," we are told,2 "are mentioned by those of Wapping, Mile End, and the Borough with sovereign contempt." You then, O ye beggars of my acquaintance, whether in rags or lace; whether in Kent Street or the Mall; whether at the Smyrna or St. Giles's.—Goldsmith's Essays, ed. 1765, p. 43. Goldsmith appears to have been familiar with the place, or at least with its name; it is here he has fixed the residence of Madame Blaize, who "freely lent to all the poor-who left a pledge behind: " Let us lament in sorrow sore, For Kent Street well may say, That had she lived a twelvemonth more She had not died to-day.-Goldsmith, An Elegy. Besides "broom-men and mumpers," low lodging-house keepers and those who, like Madame Blaize, were ready to lend to all the poor "who left a pledge behind," there was yet another curious trader in Kent Street. In the Beaufoy Collection there is a 17th century tradesman's token issued by "H. E. M. at the White Beare in Kent Streete, a Farthing Changer." Mr. Burn thinks that H. E. M. "officiated as an agent in the collecting and interchanging with the issuers of farthing_tokens."3 But as the customers to be looked for at the White Bear would in their several vocations of beggars or mumpers, tramps and hawkers of small wares, be very likely to find themselves at the close of the day possessors of an inconvenient excess of farthings, Captain Grose, Essays, p. 72. 1 Memoirs of James II., vol. i. p. 522. 3 Burn, Descriptive Catalogue, p. 146. |