Transcribed from the 1856 J. Russell Smith edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Many thanks to Royal Kensington Libraries for allowing their copy to be used for this transcription. [Picture: Knightsbridge—The site of Albert Gate] THE MEMORIALS OF THE HAMLET OF KNIGHTSBRIDGE. With Notices of its Immediate Neighbourhood. * * * * * BY THE LATE HENRY GEORGE DAVIS. * * * * * * * * * * EDITED BY CHARLES DAVIS. * * * * * * * * * * LONDON: PUBLISHED BY J. RUSSELL SMITH, SOHO-SQUARE; AND TO BE HAD OF MR. DAVIS, ST. PAUL’S SCHOOLS, KNIGHTSBRIDGE. 1859. * * * * * LONDON: TAYLOR AND GREENING, PRINTERS, GRAYSTOKE-PLACE, FETTER-LANE, HOLBORN. PREFACE. IN presenting the MEMORIALS OF KNIGHTSBRIDGE to the public, apology must be made for the delay in its appearance since the announcement of its intended publication. This was occasioned by the sudden and protracted illness of its Editor: since his restoration, he has prosecuted the work with all the diligence which his time permitted. The book is published in the hope that its critics may treat its Author kindly, since the brain that indited it is, alas! no more. It is the result of great assiduity and perseverance amidst peculiar difficulties, and was only completed just before the death of the compiler, who, towards its close, had laboured at it with greater energy than his weakened frame ought properly to have borne. The immediate motive for publication was the Editor’s regard, it might almost be termed veneration, for its writer, seconded by favourable opinions expressed by several literary gentlemen who perused the manuscript, and knowledge that many notices by the same hand had already appeared in “Notes and Queries,” “The West Middlesex Advertiser,” and the various local papers that have occasionally been published in the neighbourhood. The work was written from notes made at various times, some having been taken when its author was yet a boy. It may therefore be described as the labour of his short and painful life; and it was felt that so long as the result of his application was laid aside, so long did the Editor’s duty to his brother remain unperformed. As some little notice of our historian may be desirable, the following sketch is subjoined:—