a letter addressed by Wood to him from here dated June, 1861. Lady Halifax died here on July 5, 1884, and Lord Halifax in the following year. It was, too, in Belgrave Square that Edward Thomas Delafield, once a member of the brewing firm of Combe, Delafield, & Co., had a house, the rent of which, including the stables, amounted to no less than £1095 a year, in or about 1847. A man of great wealth, he ran through a large fortune, caused by the extravagance of his living, but particularly by his connection with the opera, the management of which he joined in 1848, after he had retired from the brewery and had drawn the whole of his capital from the concern. In a little over three years, over £100,000 had been fooled away, and when he became bankrupt his only available assets are said to have amounted to £3, 14s. 6d.1 The central garden of Belgrave Square is of great extent, wooded and shrubbed and intersected with paths, but there is no statue in the middle, which, considering the general want of success of such effigies, is perhaps a want not to be greatly deplored. LOWNDES SQUARE Not the least interesting of the squares of Belgravia is Lowndes Square, which is not part of the Grosvenor property. If we examine a plan of that estate, dated 1723, a copy of which is given in Mr. Clinch's Belgravia and Mayfair, we shall see that a piece of ground practically semicircular in shape lies between the Duke of Westminster's land and the river Westbourne, which divides it from what is called Chelsea Common. On that piece of ground is marked the name "Mr. Lownds," and it is on part of this that Lowndes Square stands. This "Mr. Lownds" was William Lowndes, Esq., of Chesham (a descendant of William Lowndes, Secretary to the Treasury in Anne's reign), and a friend and patron, bythe-bye, of Haydon the painter; he was the ground landlord, and it was after him that the Square was named. In remote days the site once belonged to a Benedictine convent, according to Dr. King, Rector of Chelsea from 1694 to 1732, who left a MS. account of the parish which Faulkner quoted and Davis refers to. But although it formed part of Edward the Confessor's gift to Westminster Abbey, it passed into the 1 Timbs, in his Romance of London, gives a detailed account of the matter. hands of the laity at the time of the Reformation. Davis says that the well-known Spring Gardens, so often referred to in early diaries and plays, was situated about where William Street joins Lowndes Square. "The World's End," mentioned by Pepys and Congreve, was probably a sign used by the keeper of Spring Gardens, and would thus help to differentiate it from other Spring Gardens about the town, some such discriminating title being necessary, as many places of outdoor amusement bore this title. The house which bore this sign appears to have been inhabited from 1773 to 1805, by Dr. C. Kelly, who had an anatomical museum here; he was succeeded by one Bowes, and the museum was let as an auction-room to a Mr. Herring. About 1818, according to Davis, Warren the builder took the premises, and presumably the land on which they stood, and used the former as a workshop. A few years later Cubitt secured a lease of the whole from Mr. Lowndes, and proceeded to lay it out. Building operations would appear to have been commenced about 1836-7, following on the development of the Grosvenor estate, but the Square was not entirely constructed till 1849. Cubitt is supposed to have built the houses on the south side of the Square, which were erected in 1843, with greater regard to architectural effect than anything which had up to then been attempted in London. Lowndes Square would appear to have always been a favourite residential centre. It has the advantage of being in close touch with the Park and Piccadilly, while at the same time it is quiet and retired, and the neighbouring Sloane Street carries much traffic that might otherwise have passed down the central roads of the Square. Among the interesting people who have lived here in the past, I find at No. 1, for a time, the inseparable Sir William Molesworth and Mr. Leader, M.P. for Westminster; following them came to the same house M. J. Higgins-the "Jacob Omnium" of the Times-whom Mrs. Gascoigne in her poem of "Belgravia " apostrophises as Mrs. Gascoigne herself lived at No. 14, where she was not likely to "forget to sing thy Square, O Lowndes," to use her own words. Other notabilities living here at one time or another were Admiral Sotheby, who died at No. 38, on January 20, 1854, and who had been present at the Battle of the Nile; Sir Henry Campbell; Sir Willoughby Cotton; Sir William Tite, M.P. for Bath and a well-known architect; Thomas Brassey, the great contractor, and father of the present Lord Brassey; Mr. Whiteside, M.P.; Mr. R. B. Wingfield; and Mr. Malins, M.P. These names are given by Davis, and therefore represent inhabitants anterior to 1859, the year in which his Memorials of Knightsbridge appeared; and to these may be added the names of Sir John Rennie, the distinguished engineer; the Right Hon. Robert Lowe, M.P., afterwards Lord Sherbrooke; and General Lord Airey, whom I find writing to Abraham Hayward from No. 7, in May, 1878. It is curious that Davis does not mention the fact of Lady Morgan (the "Wild Irish Girl") residing in the Square, for here she died on April 13, 1859, in the seventy-seventh year of her age; fifty-three years after her reputation had been made by the political novel whose title is always identified with her personality. The central garden of the Square is long and narrow, and requires no description. THE SQUARES OF CHELSEA THE squares of Chelsea are not of great importance from a residential point of view; indeed they may be termed curious rather than interesting from any point of view; they are mostly small in area, and the houses comprising them are exiguous in size and not particularly attractive in appearance. But there is such a glamour of romance; such a pleasant air of old-world association, wreathed round any part of the borough, that the squares contained in it take on themselves in the aggregate an interest to which, individually, they hardly have a claim. Properly, of course, Cadogan Square should find a place among them; but the contrast between this fashionable spot and these retiring and unfashionable centres is too marked to allow me to place them in juxtaposition; and so, leaving Cadogan Square among other and more appropriate surroundings, I will deal here with the nine (it would have been a pity, too, to spoil this magic number) squares which are more homogeneous in their form and character. These Squares are known by the names of Camera, Carlyle, Gillray, Markham, Marlborough, Paultons, Tedworth, Trafalgar, and Wellington. The most easterly of them are the three small ones: Markham Square, on the north of the King's Road facing Smith Street, which connects that main thoroughfare with Royal Hospital Road; Marlborough Square, to the north of Cale Street, and lying directly south of Pelham Crescent; and Tedworth Square, which lies between the King's and Queen's Roads and faces Christchurch Street on its south side. Of MARKHAM SQUARE, all that Besant says is that therein is a large Congregational Chapel opened in 1860; which does not seem to promise much in the way of antiquarian interest, or of interest of any kind for that matter; and indeed there is little to be said of the place as it stands to-day, but a house in the adjoining Markham Street is mentioned by Beaver as bearing a name-plate on which appear the initials "H. I. A.,' with the name Box Farm and the date 1686. The land attached to this farm is now partly covered by the Square. This land is known to have belonged to one Edward Green over a hundred years later, and at a later date still was the site of Moore's Nursery. A large area here between the King's Road and the Fulham Road was known as Chelsea Common, and at a time when local authorities were not so careful in their guardianship of these open spaces as they are to-day, it is probable that much of it, particularly where it abutted on the King's Road, was annexed, without right or authority, by enterprising gardeners who were not slow to recognise the advantages of its position and the richness of the ground; the number of market gardens formerly here helping to confirm this supposition. It takes some stretch of the imagination to realise that what we now consider a part, and that not an extremely western part of the town, was two hundred years since a heath covered with furze, and somewhat analogous to what Wimbledon Common (to take an example) appears to-day. The first interference with this common generally, as apart from those portions that may have been filched by the enterprising, would seem to have been in the reign of George I., when an Act was passed empowering the Surveyor of London Roads to dig gravel from any common or waste lands which might be convenient to him for making or repairing the highways. In 1736, the matter was, however, after many complaints and indeed ejectments by force of the surveyors by those locally interested and naturally indignant, adjusted, and I find building operations commencing on the common some years later; the earliest building lease being dated 1790, and granted to the Hon. George Cadogan. As various other individuals also obtained leases, the varied character and want of uniformity in the streets and buildings erected here is easily accounted for. Of these building operations Markham Square, so denominated to perpetuate the name of a family once owning land here, was one of the later results; the church in it, mentioned by Besant, was erected of Kentish rag, with dressings of Bath stone, in 1860, after the designs of John Tarring, and is in the Decorated style1 so beloved by architects of that period for this sort of building. MARLBOROUGH SQUARE is named after the great Duke of Marlborough, of whose one-time residence in a house at the south end of Marlborough Road there is a tradition, but probably only a tradition. A statue, presumably of the great Captain, once stood, I am told, in the centre of the Square, but has long since disappeared. What I have said about the site of Markham Square applies practically to Marlborough Square, which lies within a stone's throw of it; and as there is no record of any interesting inhabitants in either, they must, perforce, be passed over in this somewhat summary manner. If not for the same reason, yet for a very sufficient one, TEDWORTH SQUARE must also be dismissed with a mere allusion, for it has no history, and beyond being a square, no particular interest for us here except what can be attached to it through Mark Twain, and Mrs. Langtry both having sojourned in its precincts. A little to the north-west of Tedworth Square is WELLINGTON SQUARE, the north side of which is formed by King's Road. It is named, of course, after the great Duke of Wellington, whose brother, the Hon. and Rev. Dr. Wellesley, preceded, it will be remembered, the Rev. Charles Kingsley as Rector of Chelsea. The site of Wellington Square was formerly occupied by one of the best known of the many nurseries of Chelsea, that kept by Thomas Davey, who died in 1833, and to whom a local poet, Samuel Shepherd, F.S.A., addressed some lines quoted by Beaver. A certain greenness is still imparted to the spot by the double row of trees in the central garden, which form a pleasant relief to the houses of which the Square is composed. Between the Fulham Road and the King's Road, just east of Church Street, is the largest of the Chelsea Squares-TRAFALGAR SQUARE, named after Nelson's crowning victory. The north side of the Square is formed by what is called South Parade, while the continuation of its eastern side is now known as Manresa Road. The Square is of consider 1 Walford's Old and New London, and Beaver's Memorials of Chelsea. It was here that Mark Twain gave his memorable reply to a reporter who had, as he thought, seen an announcement of the humourist's death: "Report greatly exaggerated." |