Proceeding forward from Purser’s Cross on the main Fulham Road, where St. Peter’s Villa may be noticed as the residence of Madame Garcia in 1842, about a quarter of a mile brings us to Munster House, which is supposed to owe its name to Melesina Schulenberg, created by George II., in 1716, Duchess of Munster. [Picture: Munster house (1844)] According to Faulkner, it was also called _Mustow_ House—this was not improbably the duchess’s pronunciation; and he adds that tradition makes it a hunting-seat of Charles II., and asserts that an extensive park was attached to it; but Faulkner also tells us that Munster House “was during the greater part of the seventeenth century, the _residence_ and property of Sir William Powell, Bart., who founded the almshouses.” How, after this statement, Mr. Faulkner could have admitted the tradition, requires some explanation, as he seems to have followed, without acknowledgment, the particulars supplied to Lysons from authentic documents by Mr. Deere, of the Auditor’s Office, who appears merely to have informed that gentleman, that among the title-deeds of this property there is one of Sir Edward Powell’s, dated 1640, and that Sir William Powell’s will bears date 1680. According to the same unquestionable records, Munster House came from the Powells into the possession of Sir John Williams, Bart., of Pengethly, Monmouthshire. In 1795, Lysons says that Munster House was “occupied as a school.” Faulkner, in 1813, states that it was “in the occupation of M. Sampayo, a Portuguese merchant.” And his successor in the tenancy was John Wilson Croker, Esq., M.P., then secretary of the Admiralty, and afterwards the Right Hon. Mr. Croker, {171} a gentleman who brilliantly retired into private life, but whose character is so well known, and has been so often discussed in political and literary circles, that I shall only venture to remark the local coincidence of three indefatigable secretaries of the Admiralty, during the most critical periods of England’s history—namely, Sir Philip Stevens, Sir Evan Nepean, and Mr. Croker—having selected the quietude of Fulham as the most convenient and attractive position in the neighbourhood of London, where they might momentarily relax from the arduous strain of official duties. [Picture: Marble bust] About 1820, Mr. Croker resigned Munster House as a residence, after having externally decorated it with various Cockney embattlements of brick, and collected there many curious works of art, possibly with a view of reconstruction. In the garden were two marble busts, one of which is figured on previous page. The other a female head, not unlike that of Queen Anne. There was also a fragment of a group, representing a woman with a child at her side, obviously the decoration of a fountain, and a rustic stone seat, conjectured to have been the bed of a formidable piece of ordnance. [Picture: Woman and child—Rustic stone seat]