The Kensington DistrictMitton, G. E. (Geraldine Edith)
History
The Kensington District
Mitton, G. E. (Geraldine Edith)
Kensington (London, England) -- Description and travel
The two houses, Nos. 10 and 11, in the eastern corner on the south side
are the two oldest that look on to the square. They were reserved for
the maids of honour when the Court was at Kensington, and the wainscoted
rooms and little powdering closets speak volumes as to their bygone
days; these two were originally one house, as the exterior shows. Next
door is the women's department of King's College. J. R. Green, the
historian, lived at No. 14 until his death, and in No. 18 John S. Mill
was living in 1839. Three Bishops at least are known to have been
domiciled in the square: Bishop Mawson of Ely, who died here in 1770;
Bishop Herring of Bangor, a very notable prelate, who was afterwards
Archbishop of Canterbury; and in the south-western corner Bishop Hough
of Oxford, Lichfield, and Worcester had a fine old house until 1732. The
Convent of the Assumption now covers the same ground in Nos. 20 to 24.
The original object of the convent was prayer for the conversion of
England to the Roman Catholic faith, but the sisters now devote
themselves to the work of teaching; they have a pleasant garden, more
than an acre in extent, stretching out at the back of the house. In the
chapel there is a fresco painting by Westlake.
No. 26 is the Kensington Foundation Grammar School. Talleyrand lived in
Nos. 36 and 37, formerly one house. He succeeded Bishop Herring in the
occupancy, after a lapse of fifty years, and the man who had abandoned
the vocation of the Church to follow diplomacy was thus sheltered by the
same roof that had sheltered a Churchman by vocation, if ever there were
one. Many foreign ambassadors patronized the square at various times.
The Duchess of Mazarin, already mentioned in the volume on Chelsea, was
here in 1692, and six years later moved to her Chelsea home, where she
died; but her day was over many years before she came here. Joseph
Addison lodged in the square for a time, four or five years before his
marriage with the Countess of Warwick. At No. 41 Sir Edward Burne-Jones
lived for three years, subsequently removing to West Kensington, but the
association which has most glorified the square is its proximity to
Young Street, so long the home of Thackeray. He came to No. 16, then 13,
in 1846, aged only thirty-five, but with the romance of his life behind
him. A tablet marks the window in which he used to work. Six years
previously his wife, whom he had tenderly loved, had developed
melancholia, and, soon becoming a confirmed invalid, had had to be
placed permanently under medical care. Their married life had been very
short, only four or five years, but Thackeray had three little daughters
to remind him of it. He had passed through many vicissitudes, from the
comparatively opulent days of youth and the University to the time when
he had lost all his patrimony and been forced to support himself
precariously by pen and pencil. Yearly he had become better known, and
by the time he came to Young Street he was sufficiently removed from
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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