Hampstead and Marylebone Part 4

In Blandford Square there is a convent which has survived the general wreck. It was first established near Queen's Square, Bloomsbury, in 1844, and was opened on its present site in 1851.

The House of Mercy is for servants out of work, who do laundry and other work, and so contribute to their own support. There are thirty Sisters, who, besides attending to the home, do much charitable work in teaching and the visitation of the sick.

Dorset Square was built on the site of the original Lord's Cricket Ground. It was made by one Thomas Lord at the end of the eighteenth century, and, as stated above, in 1814 the present ground was subst.i.tuted, so Dorset Square can claim only a small connection with the famous game. The streets leading northward from Dorset Square are of little interest. In Hill Street is a small Baptist place of worship. In Park Street is St. Cyprian's little church, opened in 1866.

The last house on the east side of Upper Baker Street bears one of the Society of Arts memorial tablets to the memory of Mrs. Siddons, who lived here intermittently for many years. She used to give readings from Shakespeare to her friends in this house, and here in 1831 she died. The house is now called "Siddons House Private Hotel."

In the Marylebone Road, close to the underground station, stands Madame Tussaud's famous waxwork exhibition, the delight of children and visitors from the country. The waxworks were begun in Paris in 1780, and brought to London in 1802 to the place where the Lyceum Theatre now stands, and afterwards were removed to Hanover Square rooms.

On the west side of Park Road are the terraces ab.u.t.ting on Regent's Park. Some of these terraces show fine design, though in the solid, c.u.mbrous style of the Georgian period. Hanover Terrace was designed by Nash, and also Suss.e.x Place, which was named after the Duke of Suss.e.x.

The latter is laid out in a semicircle, and is crowned by cupolas and minarets. The houses are very large, and, in spite of fashion having deserted the district, can still show a goodly list of inhabitants.

The district lying to the west of Suss.e.x Grove and Grove Road is the poorest and most miserable in the borough. In Grove Road is a Home for Female Orphans, a large gabled building. The girls are received here at six years of age, and pa.s.s on to service when about sixteen. The little village of Lisson Green stood out in the country not far from the great Roman Road, the present Edgware Road (see p. 58), and it formed the nucleus round which houses and streets sprang up. From the Marylebone Road to St. John's Wood Road the streets are poor and squalid, abounding in low courts and alleys. Several great Board Schools in the neighbourhood of Great James Street rise up prominently, and round about them neat lines of workmen's houses are gradually replacing the wretched tenements. The district is still miserable, but it has bettered its notoriously bad reputation of ten or twenty years ago.

St. Barnabas Church, near Bell Street, was built by Blomfield, and is in a kind of French Gothic. Christ Church, in Stafford Street, not far off, is surmounted by a cupola, and built in the cla.s.sical style. It was the work of P. Hardwick in 1825.

Earl Street is a long, dreary, but fairly respectable thoroughfare. The Marylebone Theatre or Music Hall is in Church Street. This was opened in 1842 as a penny theatre, and enlarged in 1854. In Church Street there is also a Baptist chapel.

Salisbury and Carlisle Streets are indescribably dingy. In the latter is St. Matthew's Church, which has the (perhaps) unique distinction of having been built for a theatre. It was consecrated in 1853, and restored forty years later. Close by the church, between the two streets mentioned above, is the Portman Market. This was opened as a hay-market in 1830, and the year following was dedicated to general uses. The market is still held on Friday every week. Smith speaks of it as bidding "fair to become a formidable rival to Covent Garden," a prophecy which has not been fulfilled. There is another Board School of great size between two miserable little streets on the east, and another a little further north between Grove Road and Capland Street.

Infant, National, and Catholic Schools lie near North and Richmond Streets. One or two of the houses to the north of the latter have still retained a certain cottage-like appearance, a memory of the bygone village. Lyon's Place, a straggling mews, preserves the name of the benefactor who left the estate he had bought here to found Harrow School; and the names Aberdeen, Cunningham, Northwick, etc., are a.s.sociated with the school.

The Regent's Ca.n.a.l runs under Aberdeen Place. Emanuel Church, a curious little square building with an Ionic portico, was formerly known as Christ's Chapel. It was largely remodelled in 1891, and seats over 1,000 persons. On the interior walls are several memorial tablets.

Edgware Road forms the western boundary of the parish. It is a very ancient road. In the 1722 edition of Camden's "Britannia" we read: "Towards the Northern boundary of Middles.e.x a military way of the Romans commonly called Watling Street enters this country, coming straight along from the older Verulam to London over Hampstead Heath; not the road which now lies through Highgate, for that, as is before observed, was opened only about 400 [marginal note, 300] years ago by permission of the Bishop of London, but that more ancient way (as appears by the old charters of Edward the Confessor) which ran along near Edgeworth, a place of no great antiquity."

The difficulty of accounting for the entrance of the road at this particular point has been solved in various ways. It has been suggested that a circuit had been made to avoid the great Middles.e.x forests, but a more likely theory is that it followed this route to avoid the Hampstead and Highgate hills. Edgware was the name of the first town it pa.s.sed through after the forests of Middles.e.x.

We have only to deal with the east side of the road at present. This is lined with shops, varying in quality and increasing in size towards the Marble Arch. There are no buildings of importance. The road ends in Oxford Street, the ancient Tyburn Road, a name a.s.sociated with the direful history of the gallows.

The Tyburn gallows were originally a huge tripod, subsequently two uprights and a cross beam. The site was frequently changed, so that both Marylebone and Paddington can claim the dreadful a.s.sociation. Timbs says that the gallows were erected on the morning of execution right across the Edgware Road, opposite the house at the corner of Upper Bryanston Street. This house has iron galleries from which the Sheriffs watched the execution, and in it after the ceremony the gallows were deposited.

Galleries were erected for spectators as at a gladiatorial show, and special prices were charged for special exhibitions. Among the people who suffered at Tyburn, the best known are: Roger de Mortimer, for treason, 1330; Perkin Warbeck, 1449; the Holy Maid of Kent and her confederates, 1534; Robert Southwell, the Elizabethan poet, 1595; Mrs.

Turner, murderess of Sir T. Overbury, 1615.

In 1660-61, on the anniversary of Charles I.'s execution, Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were dragged from their graves and hanged at Tyburn, after which their heads were cut off and exposed on Westminster Hall, and their bodies buried beneath the gallows.

Jack Sheppard was hanged here in 1724, and the last person to suffer at Tyburn was John Austin, in 1783. The turnpike gate across the road near the gallows remained until 1825. It was a double turnpike, with gates on both the Edgware and Uxbridge Roads.

The Marylebone Road was at first called the New Road, when it was cut in 1757. The Bill for its making had met with strong opposition in Parliament from the Duke of Bedford. In consequence of his opposition a clause was introduced prohibiting the erection of any building within 50 feet of the road, and the effect of this prohibition is to be seen in the gardens which front the houses.

The new road was later subdivided into the Marylebone and Euston Roads.

Beginning at the Edgware Road, the first building on the south side to attract attention is St. Mark's Church, designed by Blomfield. This church is of red brick, and is prettily built and surmounted by a high steeple. The schools form a part of the same building. The consecration ceremony took place on June 29, 1872. A few doors further on are the Christian Union Almshouses, founded in John Street, 1832, and extended to Marylebone Road in 1868. These are supported by voluntary contributions, and are for the benefit of old women or married couples of the parishes of Marylebone, Paddington, or part of St. Pancras. The inmates receive sundry gratuities, coal and lodging, but the eligible must possess not less than 4s. 6d. per week.

A neatly built Roman Catholic church with high-pitched roof stands at the corner of Homer Row. This was built about 1860, and is called the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary. The northern side of the Marylebone Road, for the distance traversed, consists of huge red brick flats in the most modern style.

Standing back a little from the road, again on the south side, near Harcourt Street, is Paddington Chapel, for Congregationalists.

Queen Charlotte's Lying-in Hospital and Midwifery Training School comes soon after. This was founded in 1752, and was the third of its kind to be established in London. It was at first situated in Bayswater, and moved to the present site in 1813. In 1809 the Duke of Suss.e.x was elected president for life, and it was he who induced Queen Charlotte to give the hospital her patronage, and to allow it to be called by her name. The Duke was the guiding spirit of the inst.i.tution until his death in 1843. In 1857 the present building was erected on the site of the older one.

No. 183 is the Yorkshire Stingo public-house, which preserves the name of a celebrated tavern and place of entertainment. From here the first pair of omnibuses in the Metropolis were started on July 4, 1829. They ran to the Bank and back, and were drawn by three horses abreast. The return fare was a shilling, which included the use of a newspaper. A fair was held at the Yorkshire Stingo on May 1 for many years. Close by are the St. Marylebone Public Baths and Wash-houses, which claim the honour of having been the first of the kind in the Metropolis.

The St. Marylebone County Court adjoins. This was erected in 1874-75, when the need for further accommodation than that afforded by the old Court House was felt.

Seymour Street was cut through a nest of slums about 1872-73; it partly replaced the old Stingo Lane, which extended from Marylebone Road to Crawford Street, and was a most disreputable thoroughfare. The Samaritan Free Hospital, for diseases peculiar to women, occupies the place of ten numbers, 161 to 171. This is a fine modern building with fluted pilasters running up the frontage to an ornamental pediment. The memorial stone was laid on July 24, 1889, by the King, then Prince of Wales. The hospital was first established by Dr. Savage in Orchard Street in 1847. The celebrated engineer James Nasmyth, after whom a ward is named, left a bequest of 18,000. There is a well staircase in the building which separates the hospital into two parts, one devoted to medical, the other to surgical cases. The benefits of the hospital are extended free to patients from all parts of the world, not even a subscriber's letter being required. The only requisites are that the applicant must be poor and respectable and a suitable case, then she is taken in directly a vacancy occurs.

Almost opposite the hospital is the Great Central Hotel, and behind it the railway-station, in an elaborate style that forms a contrast to some of the dismal termini in London. The Western Ophthalmic Hospital, a gloomy-looking stuccoed building, is near at hand. This was founded in 1856.

The small streets leading from the Marylebone Road into York and Crawford Streets are poor in character. In the north of Seymour Place is a small Primitive Methodist chapel, erected in 1875. York Street, in spite of being a little wider, is not much better than its neighbours.

In Wyndham Place is the Church of St. Mary's, Bryanston Square, in the style of Grecian architecture so much affected in this parish. The architect was R. Smirke. Dibdin, the bibliographer, was the first inc.u.mbent of this church, and the poetess L. E. Landon was married here June 7, 1838.

Bryanston and Montagu Squares are almost duplicates. They are built on ground known as Ward's Field, where there was formerly a large pond, which was the cause of many fatal accidents. Near this spot was a little cl.u.s.ter of cottages called Apple Village. The squares were built about the beginning of the present century. They are lined by large houses in a uniform style, and are as fashionable now as in 1833. The Turkish Emba.s.sy is at No. 1, Bryanston Square, at the south-east corner.

Horace Street was once known as Cato Street, and was the scene of the infamous conspiracy which originated with Thistlewood in 1820. The conspiracy was to murder the Cabinet Ministers, burst open the prisons, set fire to the Metropolis, and organize a revolution. Thistlewood and his fellow-conspirators were caught in a hay-loft in this street, where they used to hold their meetings, and the five of them, including the ringleader, suffered the extreme penalty of the law, while the rest were transported. It is now a poor and squalid thoroughfare, occupied by general shops, and reached only by a covered entry at each end.

In Nutford Place is St. Luke's Church, built in the Early English style in 1854. It stands on the site of a cholera hospital, which was not used during the great epidemic of 1849, as there was not a single case in the parish. The church was built in memory of this great deliverance.

The Marylebone Presbyterian church stands between Upper George Street and Little Queen Street.

Upper Berkeley Street contains a Jewish Synagogue, built in 1870 for Jewish dissenters. Brunswick Chapel was built in 1684 by Evelyn Cosway for Lady Berkeley.

In Bryanston Street there is a synagogue which was built for the Spanish and Portuguese Jews resident at the West End. This has been recently superseded by a much larger building in Lauderdale Road, Sutherland Avenue. Quebec Chapel was built in 1788, and is now called the Church of the Annunciation. It has numbered among its inc.u.mbents Dr. Alford and Dr. Goulburn, later Deans of Canterbury and Norwich respectively, and Dr. Magee. The number of chapels of every denomination thus shown to cl.u.s.ter in this district is curious.

Great c.u.mberland Place is fashionable still. This was formerly Great c.u.mberland Street, and was called after the Duke whose name is a.s.sociated with Culloden. It leads us out nearly opposite to the Marble Arch.

OXFORD STREET.--Lysons says the north side of the street was completed in 1729, and then called Oxford Street. But against this statement there is the fact that a stone built into a house at the corner of Rathbone Place was dated "Rathbone Place in Oxford Street, 1718."

Pennant remembers Oxford Street "a deep hollow road and full of sloughs, with here and there a ragged house, the lurking place of cut-throats."

Its chief a.s.sociation will always be that of the many dismal processions going to Tyburn, when some poor wretch, tied upright in a jolting cart with his coffin in front of him, was taken in face of all the world from Newgate to the gallows to "make a public holiday." The slow grinding of the wheels, the jeers and shouts, the scuffling of those who would be foremost not to miss one tremor of agony, must have combined to form a torture felt even by the most hardened criminal. The scene must have been more degrading still when the punishment was that the victim should be flogged at the cart-tail.

The terrible procession is familiar to all from Hogarth's ill.u.s.tration "On the way to Tyburn," one of the series of Idle and Industrious Apprentices. Here he shows people among the crowd sinking up to their knees in mire, thus proclaiming the state of the princ.i.p.al highways in the eighteenth century.

The present Oxford Street is a wide and handsome thoroughfare, with many splendid shops lining either side. There are no buildings of any public importance. The Princess's Theatre occupies the site of a large bazaar known as Queen's Bazaar. It has been many times remodelled and rebuilt.

The latest rebuilding was in 1879. Its chief claim to notice is that here took place Kean's famous Shakespearian revivals.

The part of the borough lying to the north of Oxford Street includes both the oldest and the most aristocratic quarters. Bryanston and Montagu Squares have been already noticed.

Portman Square was begun about 1764, but not completed for nearly twenty years. The centre was at first a shrubbery or wilderness, and here the Turkish Amba.s.sador placed a summer-house or kiosk, where he used to sit when the Turkish Emba.s.sy was in this Square. Thornbury says he was then occupying Montagu House, but Smith says the Emba.s.sy was in No. 78, and Montagu House is now numbered 22. However, it is possible that the numbers have been altered. The list of the names of the present inhabitants reads like a page from the Court Guide. Among the most important are those of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Fife at No. 15, and Viscount Portman at Montagu House.

This house was built for Mrs. Montagu, a celebrated blue-stocking of the eighteenth century. She was born at York in 1720, and came to Montagu House in 1781. Here she founded the "Blue-Stocking" Club, and gathered round her many famous men and women. On May 1 every year she gave a feast to all the chimney-sweeps of London, "so that they might enjoy one happy day in the year," an expression hardly appreciated now when the lot of chimney-sweeps is so very different from what it was then. Timbs remarks of the house: "Here Miss Burney was welcomed and Dr. Johnson grew tame." The lease reverted to the Portman family in 1874.

York Place, Baker Street, and Orchard Street form a long line cutting straight through from Marylebone Road to Oxford Street. Baker Street was named after a friend of W. H. Portman's. The combined thoroughfare is uniformly ugly, with stiff, flat houses and some shops. Nos. 8 and 9, York Place were once occupied by Cardinal Wiseman, and later by Cardinal Manning. They are now Bedford College for Ladies. The Baker Street Bazaar was originally designed for the sale of horses, and behind it, until 1861, was held the Smithfield Cattle Club Show. Later, the bazaar was the scene of Madame Tussaud's well-known waxworks.

Portman Chapel, near Adam Street, was built in 1779. Between King and George Streets is Little George Street, in which is a French chapel, built in the reign of George III. by _emigres_ from the French Revolution. It is a Catholic chapel, and is called "Chapelle de St.

Louis de France."

Orchard Street was named after W. H. Portman, of Orchard Portman in Somerset, who bought the estate of the manor. St. Thomas's Church is the only object of note in the street; it was built by Hardwick, and consecrated July 1, 1858.

In Lower Seymour Street is the Steinway Hall, used for concerts and various entertainments. In Nos. 9, 11, 13 is the home of the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul. Two of these houses were formerly occupied by the Samaritan Eye Hospital. A statue of our Lord stands over the central doorway, and at His feet an inscription on stone announces that a night-home for girls of good character was originally started here, and was founded by public subscription in honour of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and in memory of the pilgrimage made to Paray-le-Monial on September 4, 1873, by the Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland. The Home is now for dest.i.tute children, and is on the same lines as the sister inst.i.tution at Westminster. The noticeable feature of the Home is that girls who have been placed out as dressmakers, teachers, etc., and are earning their own living, may still return every evening. The Sisters are also engaged in many other charitable works.