WENTWORTH _street_, Petticoat lane, Spitalfields.† WERE’S _row_, Whitechapel.† WESTBURY _street_, Wheeler street, Spitalfields.† WEST _court_, Spitalfields market. WESTBY’S ALMSHOUSE, on Hoxton causeway, was founded by Mrs. Mary Westby of Bocking in Essex, widow, in the year 1749, for ten poor women. _Maitland._ WESTERHAM or WESTRAM, a neat well built market town, on the western borders of Kent, situated about eight miles to the west of Sevenoaks. Near this place, a very noble seat was begun to be built by a private gentleman; but it was finished by the late Earl of Jersey, and called Squirries. The house stands on a small eminence with respect to the front; but on the back of the edifice the ground rises very high, and is divided into several steep slopes; near the house are some woods, through which are cut several ridings. On the other side the hill behind the house arise nine springs, which, uniting their streams, form the river Dart, or Darent. WEST HAM, a pleasant village, about a mile from Stratford in the Essex Road; thus named from another Ham on the east called East Ham. Here are the country houses of several wealthy citizens. WEST HARDING _street_, Fetter lane, Fleet street. WEST _lane_, Rotherhith wall. WEST _lane stairs_, Rotherhith. WESTMINSTER, had its name from its abbey or minster situated to the westward of the city of London; which according to several modern historians was thus denominated to distinguish it from the Abbey of Grace on Tower Hill, called Eastminster: but Maitland proves this to be a mistake, by shewing that the former is called Westminster in a charter of sanctuary granted by Edward the Confessor in the year 1066, and that the latter was not founded till 1359; he therefore supposes that the appellation of Westminster was given to distinguish it from St. Paul’s church in the city of London. In early times, this noble part of the great metropolis of the kingdom, was a little, mean, unhealthy place, with nothing worthy of notice but its minster or abbey, situated in a marshy island, surrounded on one side by the Thames, and on the others by what was called Long ditch; a branch of the river which began near the east end of the place, where Manchester court is now situated, intersected King street, and running along where Gardener’s lane now is, to the place called from thence Long ditch, crossed Tothill street, a little to the west of the Gatehouse, and continued its course along the south wall of the abbey garden, where a common sewer is erected over it. The island thus formed was in a manner a waste over grown with thorns and briars, and was thence called Thorny Island. In this situation was the abbey, minster, or monastery founded; for the convenience of which a few houses were probably first erected, and these at length grew into a small town, in ancient books called the town of Westminster.