Westminster (London, England) -- Description and travel
Great George Street, made 1750--at the same time as the Bridge, Bridge
Street, etc.--contains the Institution of Civil Engineers, a fine
building, and at the west end is Delahay Street, once Duke Street, a
very fashionable locality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The poet Matthew Prior lived here, and Bishop Stillingfleet died here in
1699. Duke Street Chapel, recently pulled down, was a very well-known
place; it was originally part of a house, overlooking the park built by
Judge Jeffreys, and the steps into the park at Chapel Place were made
for Jeffreys' special convenience. In this wing of his house he
sometimes heard cases, and it was later made into a chapel for private
subscribers. Jeffreys' house was also used for a time as the Admiralty
Office. In Delahay Street may be noted the west end of the Boar's Head
Court, marking the spot where Cromwell's house stood. The space between
Great George Street and Charles Street will soon be covered by
Government offices, now in course of erection. When Parliament Street
was made it effaced Clinker's Court, White Horse Yard, Lady's Alley,
Stephen's Alley, Rhenish Wine Yard, Brewers' Yard, and Pensioners'
Alley--some of the slums which had sprung up outside the Abbey
precincts. Now Parliament Street in its turn is effaced, swallowed up in
an extended Whitehall. King Street has been completely swept away, as
one sweeps a row of crumbs from a cloth, but the part it played in the
ancient history of Westminster is not yet forgotten. Undoubtedly the
change could be justified: the thoroughfare is an important one, the
view as now seen from the direction of Charing Cross one of the finest
in the world; yet to gain it we have had to give, and one wonders
sometimes whether the gain counterbalances the loss.
Beyond the now vacant space on the north are the great group of
Government offices, the Home and Colonial Offices facing Parliament
Street, and behind them the India and the Foreign Offices. Above Downing
Street there are others, the Privy Council Office and the Treasury.
Downing Street is called after George Downing, an American Ambassador to
the Hague under Cromwell and in Charles II.'s reign. John Boyle, Earl of
Cork and Ossory and the last Earl of Oxford, lived here. Boswell
occupied a house in Downing Street in 1763. But the street is chiefly
associated with the official residence of the First Lord of the
Treasury. Sir Robert Walpole accepted this house from George II. on
condition it should belong to his successors in office for ever.
On the east side, nearly opposite Downing Street, Richmond Terrace
stands on the site of the Duke of Richmond's house, burnt down in 1790.
Beyond Richmond Terrace is Montagu House, the town residence of the Duke
of Buccleuch; the present building, which is of stone, in the Italian
style, dates from the middle of the nineteenth century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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