MONTPELIER SQUARE, so called from the salubrity of its air, {159} was built about 1837. Mr. Fairholt, the distinguished artist and antiquary (at No. 10), Mr. Walter Lacy (38), Dr. Morison (27), and the Rev. Mackenzie Walcot, to whose writings on the city of Westminster I owe several obligations, are among its residents. NEW STREET, built, I believe, about 1773, was a new street across the fields to Sloane Street, and is the point dividing Knightsbridge and Brompton—formerly, according to the landladies, a very “respectable” street; it has in our day sadly changed. At No. 7, Chalon, the animal painter, resided; and at No. 6, the Right Hon. David Pigott in 1824 and ’25, while studying under Mr., afterwards Chief Justice, Tindal. Mr. Godwin, the editor of the _Builder_, also in his boyhood. In Exeter Street resided a family named Perrin, one of whom it has been said was employed by the Duchess of Kingston to furnish a place of meeting between Prince George, afterwards George III., and his fair _inamorata_, Hannah Lightfoot. {160} The Perrins appear to have long resided in Knightsbridge; entries of the name occur in the registers of Trinity Chapel as far back as 1680. PARK SIDE, abutting on the south side of Hyde Park, is a part of the manor of Knightsbridge, although eastward of the stream, and is the freehold of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster. The Birkheads were once the lessees; at present it is rented by the descendants of Mr. Gamble, of Trinity Chapel. The row of petty shops at its east end were erected about fifty years since, the houses formerly extending no further than the one now occupied by Miss Marshall. The Knightsbridge Bank, a private concern, was carried on in Mr. W. Stocken’s house, and these shops were offices belonging thereto. Just within the park is a conduit, which supplies the palace with spring water; a descent of three steps in the main road led to a receptacle for its supply to the inhabitants of Knightsbridge, which still exists in another form. Close to this “spring,” as it is termed, the stocks were placed for the punishment of village sots and rogues. No hamlet around the “great wen,” as Cobbett called the metropolis, was without one. Taylor, the water-poet, says— “In London, and within a mile, I ween, There are of jails or prisons full eighteen, And sixty whipping-posts, and stocks, and cages!” {161a}