Whitehall : $b historical and architectural notesLoftie, W. J. (William John)
History
Whitehall : $b historical and architectural notes
Loftie, W. J. (William John)
Architecture -- England -- London; Whitehall (London, England) -- History
The first fire destroyed the Stone Gallery and the rooms between it
and the river. This Stone Gallery, as already mentioned, ran along the
east side of the Privy Garden. It was not rebuilt, and the Duchess of
Portsmouth lost her house. After the second fire the ground was leased
out, and Pembroke House was built on it. I think it is now part of the
Board of Trade. The rest of the row is now called Whitehall Gardens,
a place in which many eminent people have lived, including Sir Robert
Peel, one of the Queen’s Premiers. Beyond, further south, was the
Bowling Green. Here Montagu House now stands. We may feel sure, when we
see how little was burnt, that William and Mary, if they had liked the
place, might easily have reinstated the royal lodgings.
There is a curious print in Smith’s _Sixty-two Additional Plates_,
which seems to have puzzled some people. It represents Whitehall in a
bird’s-eye view in outline, and must have been drawn after the second
fire, as Pembroke House has been built. The original drawing was in
Crowle’s collection. Smith stumbles over it when he says, “The dotted
lines show the parts that were not penned in ‘by the artist.’” He
does not perceive that they mark places which had been burnt and had
not been rebuilt. For us this print is interesting, as showing what a
comparatively small part of the whole perished in the fire of 1698, and
it shows us also what is the true answer to a question often asked: Why
were not the pictures consumed? We can see now that they may have been
taken down, all but the Holbeins, which were painted on the walls and
ceiling of a chamber, and leisurely stored, probably in the Banqueting
House, to be removed to St. James’s and Kensington as convenient.
In the same way there was time to remove anything of value from the
chapel, including Inigo’s great marble reredos. Indeed, it may be
doubted if the chapel was burnt.
[Illustration: _Privy Garden_.
_From an Engraving by_ T. MALTON, _1795_.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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