Burlington Street (Old) runs from Burlington Gardens to Boyle Street, between and parallel with Savile Row and Cork Street. According to the parish rate-books this street was in 1729 called Nowell Street. In the book for 1733 the name Burlington replaces that of Nowell. It was at one time styled Great Burlington Street. Eminent Inhabitants.-Lord Hervey (Pope's Lord Fanny) had " a fine house" in this street, which he sold (October 1730) to Stephen Fox, (afterwards Earl of Ilchester) son of old Sir Stephen Fox, "his lordship intending in a few days to remove from thence to his apartment in St. James's House."1 Addison's widow, the Countess of Warwick (d. 1731). Colonel Ligonier, and Charles Dartiquenave, the glutton celebrated by Pope, were both here in 1729. On February 12, 1743, General Wolfe, then an ensign of sixteen, writes to his mother "at Burlington Street, near Burlington Gardens, London ;" and in the following year to his brother, "Captain Wolfe, at Brigadier Wolfe's in Old Burlington Street, Burlington Gardens." In March 1751 he himself dates a letter from the same house, which his father appears to have sold in the course of the year, and removed to Blackheath, which was thenceforth the "home" of the family. Dr. Akenside, author of the Pleasures of Imagination, lived in this street from 1762, and dying here, June 23, 1770, was buried in the church of St. James's, Piccadilly. The last London residence. of that fine specimen of an English nobleman, soldier, and statesman, the Marquis of Cornwallis (d. 1805), was No. 29 in this street. It had previously been the residence of Sir John Call, the engineer who planned Fort St. David on the Coromandel coast, and defended Madras against Lally. Uxbridge House, at the Burlington Gardens corner, is sometimes referred to as No. 1 Old Burlington Street. [See Uxbridge House.] In the corn riots of 1815 the mob attacked No. 15 Old Burlington Street, the residence of the Hon. Frederick [Prosperity] Robinson, tore up the railings and burst open the street door. Some soldiers inside fired into the crowd and killed a midshipman named Edward Vyse. Burse (The), or, BRITAIN'S BURSE. [See Royal Exchange and New Exchange.] Burton Crescent, between Marchmont Street and Mabledon Place, EUSTON ROAD, so called after Mr. James Burton, the speculative builder and architect, on land leased from the Skinners' Company. The statue of Major Cartwright, by Clarke of Birmingham, is a mean Old Major John Cartwright, who called himself the Fatherbut by the wits was named the Mother-of Reform, lived at No. 37 in this crescent, and there died, September 23, 1824, aged eighty-four. Burton Street, a short street at the back of Burton Crescent, also built by James Burton and named after him. At No. 17, a small detached house in a garden, lived and worked for more than thirty years 1 Read's Weekly Journal, October 31, 1730. that indefatigable topographer John Britton, and here died, January 1, 1857, in his eighty-sixth year. In 1843 he printed an account, with illustrations, of the house and its contents, which he reprinted in 1850 in the appendix to volume ii. of his rambling Autobiography. He notices in this work that Robert Owen, the author of the New Moral World, lived for several years at No. 4 Crescent Place (which connects Burton Street with Burton Crescent), and lectured on his favourite theories in a neighbouring building, afterwards converted into a Jewish synagogue. The street has greatly deteriorated of late years. Burwood Place, CONNAUGHT TERRACE. At No. 4 lived and painted for many years Benjamin Robert Haydon, and here (June 22, 1846) he died by his own hand. Bury Street, ALDGATE, between Heneage Lane and Bevis Marks. The name is derived from "a great house pertaining to the abbots of Bury in Suffolk." After the suppression the house was granted to Sir Thomas Heneage, and being demolished and the grounds parcelled out and built over, one of the new streets was called Heneage Lane, and another Bury Street in commemoration of its former owners. Here, in 1708, was built the chapel for the congregation whose pastor was Dr. Isaac Watts, the author of the universally popular hymns for children, and the Hymns and Divine Songs which are still sung every Sunday by hundreds of congregations. Among his separate publications is "A sermon preached at Berry Street, on occasion of the Death of our late gracious Sovereign George I., and the Peaceful Succession of his present Majesty George II., 1727," which possesses some historical value as a statement of the religious and political views of the dissenting body at a rather important epoch. Bury Street and Bury Court, which run from it to St. Mary Axe, are now chiefly occupied by Jewish merchants. The congregation left this chapel about 1823 and settled at Founders Hall. Subsequently they moved to Bethnal Green. Bury (Berry) Street, ST. JAMES's, between Jermyn Street and King Street, was built circ. 1672,1 and so called after a half-pay officer of that name who died in 1735. November 1735.-Died, -Berry, Esq., a half-pay officer, and landlord of most of Berry Street, St. James's. He was above 100 years old, and had been an officer in the service of King Charles the First.-Historical Register for 1735, p. 52. Eminent Inhabitants (or rather lodgers, for none of them rented houses in the street).-Dean Swift. I lodge in Bury Street, where I removed a week ago. I have the first floor, a dining-room, and bed-chamber, at eight shillings a week; plaguy deep, but I spend nothing for eating, never go to a tavern, and very seldom in a coach; yet, after all, it will be expensive.-Swift, September 21, 1710, Journal to Stella (ed. Scott, vol. ii. p. 27). When in England, in 1726 (for the last time), he was in lodgings “in Bury Street, next door to the Royal Chair." Five doors from him lodged Mrs. Vanhomrigh and her daughter, the Vanessa whose sad 1 Rate-books of St. Martin's. story is so inextricably bound up with that of the Dean; and here she experienced, as she tells him, that "something in your looks so awful that it strikes me dumb." Sir Richard Steele, on the west side, over against No. 20. One of his many short notes to his wife not to expect him home to dinner is addressed "To Mrs. Steele, at the third house, right hand, Berry Street, turning out of German [Jermyn] Street." The general description was "the last house but two on the left hand." We thus know its exact position. The landlady, a Mrs. Vanderput, had him arrested in November 1708, and it was on this occasion that Addison was "devotedly his friend." Of the landlady he writes to his wife, "My dear Life, nothing troubles me sorely but the affront that insufferable brute has put upon you, which I shall find ways to make her repent." He was again in Bury Street two years later. The house was pulled down in 1830. I should only, perhaps, have advised you, in order to the preventing some troublesome visits, and some impertinent letters, to cause an advertisement to be inserted in Squire Bickerstaff's next Lucubrations, by which the world might be informed that the Captain Steele who lives now in Bury Street is not the Captain of the same name who lived there two years ago, and that the acquaintance of the military person who inhabited there formerly, may go look for their old friend, e'en where they can find him.-Dennis (the Critic) to Captain Steele, July 28, 1710 (Letters, p. 29). George Frederick Cooke, the actor, 1802. Hon. W. Spencer at No. 37 in 1813. Thomas Moore in 1806 dedicated his Odes and Epistles to Lord Moira from No. 27, and lodged here at intervals till 1830, but not always in the same house. In November 1811 the advertisement of the fourth number of his Irish Melodies is dated from this street; in 1814 he was at No. 33, in 1824 he was at No. 24, and in 1830 at No. 19. I wish you to send the proof of Lara to Mr. Moore, 33 Bury Street, to-night, as he leaves town to-morrow, and wishes to see it before he goes.-Lord Byron to Mr. Murray, July 11, 1814. Three or four days ago I wrote to London, 19 Bury Street, to know whether his second floor would be vacant next week, and he has not answered me. You could perhaps stir him up with a long pole on the subject to-morrow, as I am rather in a difficulty about a lodging, and would not go to him but for my hatred of strange places and faces.-Moore to Power, 1830. Crabbe, the poet. June 28, 1817.—Seek lodgings, 37 Bury Street. Females only visible. My new lodgings a little mysterious. 29th.-Return to my new lodgings. Inquire for the waiter. There is one, I understand, in the country. Am at a loss whether my damsel is extremely simple, or too knowing.-Crabbe's Journal in Life, p. 242. Daniel O'Connell, in No. 19, during the struggle (1829) for Catholic Emancipation. Busby's Folly, ISLINGTON, a noted place of entertainment on the site afterwards occupied by the Belvedere Tavern, at the corner of Penton Street, Pentonville Road. Busby's Folly was, in the latter part of the 17th century, the place of assemblage on the first of May of the "Society of Bull Feathers' Hall," whence, with their mock dignitaries, trumpeters and banners, and preceded by their "Standard, an exceeding large pair of horns fixed on a pole," they marched in procession, "attended by multitudes of people," to the gate-house at Highgate and round the pond there, when a speech was made and the oath administered to novitiates. Lempriere in his Views of Noted Places near London, 1731, gives a "S. view of Busby's Folly," which Mr. Tomlins has copied in his Yseldon, p. 163. Busby's Folly, then known as Penny's Folly, was closed in 1780, and soon after taken down and the Belvedere Tavern erected in its place. Bush Lane, CITY, between Cannon Street and Upper Thames Street, immediately east of the South-Eastern Railway Station. It was once famous for its needles. And now they may go look for this Bush Lane needle in a bottle of hay.Lenton's Characterisme or Leisures, 1631. Butcher Hall Lane, now King Edward Street, runs from Newgate Street to Little Britain. Christ Church and the gates of Christ's Hospital are on the west side. Then is Stinking Lane, so called, or Chick Lane, at the east end of the Gray Friars' Church, and there is the Butchers' Hall.-Stow, p. 118. [See Butchers' Hall, Blowbladder Street, St. Nicholas Shambles.] Butcher Row, in the STRAND, a group of tenements, forming a very narrow street between the back-side of St. Clement's (as Holywell Street was commonly called) and Ship Yard in the Strand, "so called from the butchers' shambles on the south side." Here the "foreign " butchers, i.e. those who did not possess the freedom of the City, brought their meat to shambles just outside the civic boundary, within which they were only allowed to pursue their trade under very stringent regulations. At the opposite extremity of the City there was (and is still) a Butcher Row immediately outside Aldgate-extending along the south side of Aldgate High Street eastward from the Minories. In the Strand Butcher Row, in 1708, was a good market for meat, and nearer the Bar for all kinds of poultry, fish, and oilmen's goods.' Later it was noted for its inns and eating-houses, as Clifton's, Betty's Chop House and the like.2 Middleton in the Inner Temple Masque (1619) makes Fasting Day complain that The butchers' boys At Temple Bar set their great dogs upon me; I dare not walk abroad, nor be seen yet; The very poulters' girls throw rotten eggs at me. The hero who for brawn and face May claim right honourable place, Among the chiefs of Butcher Row.—Churchill, The Ghost. A house in this row-timber-framed with projecting upper storyes and barge-boarded gables, the front decorated with fleur-de-lis and coronets -was known as Beaumont House, and was said to be the house of the Earl of Beaumont in which Sully, then Marquis of Rosny, "supped and slept " on his arrival in London (1603) as Ambassador to James I., then newly seated on the throne. At this house was born the Rev. Andrew Reed, D.D., the philanthropist. His father kept a watchmaker's shop. In its later stages Beaumont House was divided into tenements, and had become very dilapidated before it was taken down with the rest of the row in 1813. Nat Lee, the dramatic poet, died (1692) at the Bear and Harrow, in Butcher Row, a noted eating-house with that sign. Here at a tailor's house, and it is said with the tailor's wife, lived Edmund Saunders, afterwards Lord Chief Justice (d. 1683). The 'Reports" which bear his name led Lord Mansfield to call him the Terence of Reporters, and Lord Campbell to say that no other work afforded such a treat for a common lawyer. Saunders left the tailor and his wife (Nathaniel and Jane Earle) his executor and executrix and residuary legatees, "as some recompense for their care of him and attendance upon him for many years." Steele prints a letter, apparently a genuine one, from Sergeant John Hall, of the Grenadier Guards, dated "from the Camp before Mons, September 26, 1709," and addressed to Sergeant Cole, in the Coldstream Regiment of Foot-Guards at the Red Lettice in the Butcher Row, near Temple Bar." After some happy compliments to the English private soldier, whose character Steele so well understood, he goes on to say, "I will engage Sergeant Hall would die ten thousand deaths rather than a word should be spoken at the Red Lettice, or in any part of the Butcher Row, in prejudice to his courage or honesty." In a house of ill-fame, in this narrow street, died in 1718, Peter Motteux, the translator of Don Quixote. When Paul Whitehead had printed (1739) his poem "Manners," with the line "2 And Sherlock's shop and Henley's are the same, he was summoned before the House of Lords, and not being found, his publisher, Dodsley, "was taken and conveyed, as he himself informed me (J. Warton), to a spunging house in the Butcher Row, under the custody of a messenger, which cost him £70. The next morning the neighbouring street was crowded with the carriages of some of the first noblemen and gentlemen, who came to offer their services and to be his bail. Among the rest, he told me, were Lord Chesterfield, Lord Marchmont, Lord Granville, Lord Bathurst, Lord Essex, Mr. Lyttleton, Mr. Pulteney, etc." 3 Butcher Row was not unfamiliar to Johnson. Our next meeting was not till Saturday, June 25 (1763), when, happening to dine at Clifton's eating-house, in Butcher Row, I was surprised to see Johnson come in and take his seat at another table.-Croker's Boswell, p. 136. It was in Butcher Row that the meeting happened (April 17, 1778) of Johnson with his old fellow-collegian, Edwards, whom he had not seen. for nearly fifty years, of which Boswell has given so full and interesting an account.4 The Row was pulled down in 1813 and Pickett Street 1 Oldys's Notes on Langbaine; Shadwell's Works, vol. iv. pp. 340, 368; and Strype, B. iv. P. 118. 2 Tatler, October 28, 1709. 3 Pope's Works, Warton's ed., vol. i. |