North Street leads us into a network of small slums, and Paradise Street
opens into a public recreation ground, laid out with trees and shrubs,
where the children play among sombre altar-tombs of a past generation.
This was formerly a cemetery, consecrated in 1733, and the Marylebone
historian, Smith, says that more than 80,000 persons have been interred
in it. Of the names he gives--country gentlemen, baronets, captains,
etc.--none are now remembered. George III.'s master-cook and Princess
Amelia's bedchamber woman are of little interest to us of the twentieth
century. The only men here buried who can claim a faint degree of
posthumous fame are Canning, father of the great statesman, and Bonomi
the architect.
The cemetery on the north side of Paddington Street was consecrated much
later, in 1772. In this also there is little of present interest.
Stephen Riou, one of Nelson's captains, killed in action at Copenhagen,
deserves mention, but the others have no public memory. The Mortuary and
Coroner's Court stand near the ground, of which the greater part is
attached to the workhouse for the benefit of the inmates.
Paddington Street was built about the time of the consecration of the
northern graveyard. It is in the centre of a poor district, and has
nothing to commend it. There is a mission-house and an Industrial Home
for Destitute Boys.
In Northumberland Street stands the workhouse, built about 1775, and
adjoining is a solid, well-built stone edifice containing the offices of
the Guardians of the Poor. At the north-east corner of the street is the
Cripples' Home and Industrial School for Girls. The inmates are taught
sewing, basket-making, and are educated, clothed, and boarded.
MARYLEBONE CHURCH.--William de Sancta Maria, who was Bishop of London in
the reign of King John, appropriated the church at Tybourn to the Priory
of St. Lawrence de Blakemore in Essex, but with the reservation of a
maintenance for a vicar. In 1525 the Priory suffered the fate of its
fellows, and the King seized the control of Tybourn Church. He passed it
on to Wolsey, with license to appropriate it to the Dean and Canons of
Christ Church. At Wolsey's request they granted it to the master and
scholars of his old college at Ipswich. When the Cardinal was disgraced
the King resumed the Rectory, and in 1552 granted it to Thomas Reve and
George Cotton. Before 1650 it came into the possession of the Forset
family, from which time its history has been identified with that of the
manor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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