I am into part three of my Rocque’s Ring walk – exploring the boundaries of built London in 1746, and for this section of the walk, I am starting at the rear of the Bluecoat School in Caxton Street, which was the end of part two, and walking up to Hyde Park Corner, which will be the subject of part four.
The route followed in this post is shown in red in the following extract from Rocque’s 1746 map. Part one is in yellow, and part two in orange:
The following map shows in detail the first section of today’s walk. The Bluecoat School is at bottom right:
Leaving the Bluecoat School behind, I am now walking along Buckingham Gate. In 1746, gardens were on the left with built up streets on the right. The road joining on the right is Caxton Street, which was Little Chapel Street in 1746. The junction with Buckingham Gate has been changed slightly since Rocque’s map, as today, it has been bent slightly to cut across the left hand end of the land of the Bluecoat School, underneath the first “L” of Little Chapel Street:
A short distance along Buckingham Gate is St James Court, a hotel under the Taj Hotel brand and part of the Indian Hotel Company:
St James Court was built at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries, designed as large blocks of apartments. The website of the hotel has a brief history and lists a Major Pawley as the person who proposed construction of the building. I cannot find any reference from the time of a Major Pawley being involved with St James Court (probably down to my lack of time and available resources), however a Major Pawley was around at the time, and was making proposals for the redevelopment of parts of London.
The following is one of his proposals, as reported in the Evening News on the 24th of November 1919, which if it had gone ahead, would have resulted in parts of Westminster looking very different:
“NEW ROAD THROUGH LONDON – Project to Relieve Traffic Between City and West End. A scheme to make a new main road artery connecting Victoria and London Bridge stations is being considered by Sir Eric Geddes, Minister of Transport.
He met Major C.J.C. Pawley, the originator of the proposal, a few days ago and expressed a desire to see the plans of the proposed improvements.
Details have already been made public as part of the Empire War memorial, Westminster. Major Pawley first designed a new city between Westminster, Millbank and Victoria. It entails the clearance of property in this district belonging chiefly to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the Duke of Westminster and the Gas Light and Coke Company.
A centre and home for Science, Art, and Learning is proposed, with wide avenues and circuses adorned with monuments dedicated to the achievements of the Allied Forces. A widened Horseferry-road would become Empire Avenue, leading from Victoria to a Memorial Bridge, in place of the present condemned Lambeth bridge.
I think the enhanced value of the sites would go a long way towards paying for the cost of the street improvements, said Major Pawley, to The Evening News.
The proposed main road would be of enormous value in relieving the congestion in Fleet Street and the Strand, as well as in Holborn and Cheapside. Sir Eric Geddes was very favourably impressed by the scheme.”
Not sure how this scheme would have improved traffic in Holborn and Cheapside, however it is illustrative of one of the many schemes for “improving” London that have been put forward over the centuries, and with Major Pawley’s scheme, it would have left the area covered by the first three sections of the Rocque’s Ring walk looking very different.
When St James Court was completed, adverts started to appear in the press for the apartments that were available, such as, from January 1904: “ST. JAMES’ COURT, Buckingham Gate. HIGH-CLASS RESIDENTIAL FLATS AND BACHELORS’ SUITES. Rent £90 to £500 per annum. Most central situation in the immediate neighbourhood of Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament.”
These were full service apartments, as they had access to the following facilities: “Restaurant recently and tastefully decorated; with Ladies’ Reception Room, Writing Room, and Private Dining Rooms. Catering and Valeting for Tenants, if required. Electric Light, Passenger Lifts, Messengers’ Call Office. Postal Facilities.”
Despite the high rental costs, and the extensive facilities available, the builder of St. James Court had kept his costs down by limiting the facilities available to those constructing the building.
In 1898, the builder, a Mr. W.R. Rickards was summoned by Westminster sanitary inspectors for failing to provide proper sanitary appliances at a workshop on the site. There were up to 200 workmen on site, and they were provided with “sanitary arrangements of the crudest and most outrageous manner – a menace to the health of the public and probably a source of future nuisance”.
The façade onto Buckingham Gate is only a very small part of the hotel, which extends much further back, and which includes apartment buildings also owned by the Taj Hotel brand.
To the right of the entrance arch in the photo above, there is a small plaque which hints at the earlier history of the site:
The plaque states that on the site, the Emmanuel Hospital, founded in 1594 by Lady Dacre once stood, and it is clearly shown in Rocque’s map (as Lady Dacre’s Alms Houses), when it was already 150 years old:
Before looking at Anne Sackville, the Lady Dacre who founded the Emanuel Hospital, a quick look at her mother-in-law, Mary Fiennes, also Lady Dacre who must have been a rather strong and resourceful woman in Tudor England.
Her first husband, Thomas Fiennes, 9th Baron Dacre, had been executed in 1541 following the murder of a gamekeeper. As well as execution, his titles and land were also stripped from his family.
She campaigned for the restoration of these titles and land for her children, and when Elizabeth I became queen in 1558, she restored these to Mary Fiennes second son, as her first born son had already died.
She married a further two times, and had more children (possibly up to 6), and died around 1576.
Mary, Lady Dacre, with her son Gregory, who had the title 10th Baron Dacre after his mother had campaigned for the title to be restored:
Source: Mary Neville, Lady Dacre; Gregory Fiennes, 10th Baron Dacre by Hans Eworth oil on panel, 1559 NPG 6855© National Portrait Gallery, London
Mary’s son, Gregory, married Anne Sackville, who became Lady Dacre.
During the later part of her life, she lived, along with her husband Gregory, Baron Dacre, in Thomas Moore’s old house in Chelsea, which Mary had inherited from her mother. It was in this house that Gregory died in 1594, and Mary died not long after in 1595.
They were both buried in Chelsea Old Church.
Mary’s will stated that her Executors should build a house to be called “Emanuel Hospital in Westminster for the relief of twenty aged people and for the bringing up of twenty children in virtue and good and laudable arts”.
The Emanuel Hospital in 1850:
© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.
Horwood’s map of 1799 shows the Emanuel Hospital, but labelled as Almshouses. There were also three other Almshouses in the very local area, along with the Bluecoat School:
The street in which the hospital / almshouses were located was called James Street, but I have also seen references to the name Dacre Street being in use. Note also in the above map the first use of the name Buckingham, with Buckingham Row, a row of terrace houses on what had been gardens / agricultural land in Rocque’s map.
By the 1880s, educational changes, that also affected the colour coated schools in the area as mentioned in the previous Rocque Ring post, resulted in the merger of several charity schools, and the Emanuel school was included in this merger, and the institution relocated to Wandsworth, where the school is still to be found today.
The old almshouses / school was then demolished, to make way for St. James Court.
A short distance further along Buckingham Gate is Westminster Chapel:
This Grade II listed Nonconformist chapel dates from 1865 – 1866 and was designed by the architect William Ford Poulton, who seems to have been a specialist in designing Nonconformist and Congregational chapels.
The Westminster Chapel was one of several large Nonconformist Chapels in London, including Union Chapel in Islington, and the Surrey Chapel on Blackfriars Road.
I am now passing the junction of Buckingham Gate with Petty France:
Just north of this junction, there is an intriguing feature in Rocque’s map – a Vineyard:
I can find no reference to a Vineyard in Westminster, and in Horwood’s map of 1799, the space occupied by Rocque’s vineyard looks to be part of St. James’s Park. It may have just been a name for a place rather than an actual vineyard, as the map shows the majority of the land as open space with some trees, along with a couple of buildings. There is a small area to top right which may show grapevines being grown, but it is a very small space, and I doubt that they could have been grown successfully or economically in 18th century London.
Between 1833 and 1859, the area occupied by the vineyard, and a large area north of Petty France and alongside Buckingham Gate was taken over by the Wellington Barracks.
The original Grade II listed parts of Wellington Barracks face onto Birdcage Walk, where the large parade ground can also be seen. I took a quick detour down Petty France to see the early 1980s rebuilds of parts of the barracks which loom fortress like over the street and buildings on the opposite side:
Whilst the Birdcage Walk side of the barracks and parade ground is the normal tourist view, Petty France offers a different perspective into the everyday life of a Guardsman:
Back in Buckingham Gate, and I have always been fascinated by this Dry Cleaners on the corner with Wilfred Street:
For as long as I can remember, they have always had a stack of cotton reels up against the window. The different colours and sizes are fascinating, and in a time when shops have such little character, this one stands out:
The Wellington Barracks extend up Buckingham Gate, although unlike Petty France, it is only the castle like walls along the street:
As with the rest of London, Buckingham Gate is constantly changing, and you can walk the street to find a building that was to be seen not so many months ago, has suddenly disappeared:
There are very few buildings along Buckingham Gate that date from the original development of the street, and the majority are at the north western end of the street.
In the above photo, there is a house to the right of the large gap, which thankfully would be rather challenging to demolish, as this is the Grade II listed, late 18th century, number 17 Buckingham Gate:
Next door to the above house, seen to the right of the boarded up house in the photo below is the older, Grade II* listed, number 16 Buckingham Gate, dating from 1706:
It is the only surviving house on the street that would have been here when Rocque was making his map, and I am as certain as I can be, that it is the building that I have circled in yellow in Rocque’s 1746 map below:
The Historic England listing states that the house is “attributed to Captain William Winde”.
William Winde, born around 1645 in the Netherlands to English parents, was typical of the 17th century type of gentleman who moved between different professions. He was described as an architect and a soldier, and was engaged in military engineering, the techniques of which could also be seen in some of his country house commissions.
I assume that rather than just build this house, he also lived there, because, as will become clear later in the post, he worked on one of the major buildings we will soon encounter.
The house to the right of number 16 is Grade II listed, and dates from the mid 18th century. It is not shown in Rocque’s map, and as his survey must have taken place prior to publication in 1746 / 1747, the house must be from the late 1740s onwards.
The house is indicative of the infill that was taking place during the later half of the 18th century.
It has a blue Greater London Council plaque to Wilfred Scawen Blunt, Diplomat, Poet and Traveller, and Founder of Crabbett Park Arabian Stud:
Wilfred Scawen Blunt was certainly an interesting man. He was very anti-establishment, was against imperialism, and for Irish home rule. He had travelled widely particularly throughout the middle east, where Blunt and his wife developed a fascination with Arabian horses, They purchased a number of horses and established the Crabbet Park Arabian Stud in West Sussex.
He seems to have treated his wife appallingly, as he had numerous affairs. His wife Lady Anne Isabella Noel King (whose maternal grandfather was Lord Byron), claimed that she did not receive any love and affection from her husband after their marriage, and the result of one of his many affairs led to the breakdown in his relationship with their only child, a daughter named Judith. Lady Anne had suffered many miscarriages, and Wilfred Blunt appears to have preferred to have had a son.
They legally separated in 1906.
His daughter found out that he had fathered at least one illegitimate child, and he had also tried to seduce her best friend, which understandably led to the estrangement of father and daughter.
Blunt and his wife had owned the Crabbet Park Arabian Stud, where they kept and bred Arabian Horses.
In his later life Blunt signed over management and ownership of the horses at the stud to his ex-wife, but following the death of his wife, he tried to disinherit his daughter and get back the stud and horses.
Legal cases went back and forth between father, daughter and granddaughters, with the court finally finding in favour of his granddaughters.
None of this was mentioned in the obituaries, although some did hint at his more unusual attributes, such as the following from the Liverpool Weekly Courier:
“LOVED HOT WATER – Plenty of conventional notes have been written about the life of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who passed away after a stormy career; but I suppose the most interesting portions of his chequered career will never be recorded – for the simple fact that some of his actions were so unusual that they disturbed a great many highly placed individuals.”
He also served two months in prison for his involvement with Irish political agitation during disturbances of 1888.
He also had some strange conditions for his burial, as he wrote in his will that: “I wish to be buried in the simplest manner, being laid in the ground wrapped in my old Eastern travelling carpet, without coffin or casket, at a spot in Newbuildings Wood known to my executors“.
And so he was, buried in the Sussex woodland in the presence of his daughter, his grandchildren, and a few friends. He also requested that his nurse, Elizabeth Lawrence, arranged him in his grave, and that £10 was given to each of the men of the estate who carried out his burial.
There is always far more to be found behind the names on plaques, and his wife Lady Anne seems to have been at least his equal in developing and managing the stud, so should also be named.
A short distance along, Buckingham Gate turns left, and Birdcage Walk joins from the right:
I am approaching Buckingham Palace, and it is the role and enlargement of this building that has resulted in road changes at this end of Buckingham Gate.
I am now in the following extract from Rocque’s map, and the red line shows the route I am taking. At the very bottom of the red line, Birdcage Walk ran to the right, over the lower part of Rosamond’s Pond, and Buckingham Gate continues to the left, along the bottom edge of the map:
Rosamond’s Pond was probably one of James I’s alterations to St. James’s Park (the park takes its name from a leper hospital, not from King James). The pond cut across the photo of Birdcage Walk shown above.
The following is a view of Rosamond’s Pond (the water on the left), in the mid 18th century, the same timeframe as Rocque’s map:
Rosamond’s Pond was apparently known as a place where lovers would meet, where illicit affairs took place, and more dramatically, where scorned lovers (mainly women) committed suicide. There is some evidence of this from newspapers of the time, for example the following from the Kentish Weekly Post on the 10th of January 1730: “Yesterday a Woman well dressed was observed by the Centinel to throw herself into Rosamond’s Pond in St. James’s Park, but he could not come Time enough to prevent her being drowned; it is not known who she belongs to”.
Rosamond’s Pond was filled in, in 1770.
The following photo shows the view along Buckingham Gate where it cuts through the houses shown in Rocque’s map. These were demolished to make way for the road, and the extension of the estate that makes up the ground surrounding Buckingham Palace:
Now I am looking to the Victoria Memorial and the road that circles the memorial, part of which is now pedestrianised in front of Buckingham Palace. In Rocque’s time, all of these was part of St. James’s Park with grass and avenues of trees covering the area I am looking at:
And this is Buckingham Palace, taken from the Victoria Memorial, one of the most photographed buildings in London:
If you look back at Rocque’s map, the house on the site is much smaller and is called Buckingham House.
The house was originally built as a London town house for John Sheffield, the first Duke of Buckingham in 1703, when much of the surrounding land was of parks and fields. The house is the reason why James Street changed named to Buckingham Gate as there was also a gate at the upper end, near the house.
It was designed by Captain William Winde, which is probably why he also built the Grade II* listed house in Buckingham Gate that we passed earlier in the post.
We can get an idea of the almost countryside location of Buckingham’s house, and of William Winde’s design by looking at some prints of the house, as well as how the house looked when Rocque’s map was being surveyed.
From 1727:
From 1753:
From 1799:
The reason why the Duke of Buckingham wanted his London house here can be seen in the following print from 1736, showing the view from the house over St. James’s Park. Rosamond’s Pond is in the trees to the right and St. James’s Palace is to the left – then as now, those with money and influence want a prime London location for their house:
Looking in the same direction as the above print, but from the Victoria Memorial, which is in the central avenue of trees in the above print:
Buckingham House was purchased by King George III in 1761 as a home for his wife, Queen Charlotte. Whilst very few architectural changes were made to the house, purchase by the King put the house on the road to its use as a royal palace which attracts tourists in the thousands to photograph the building today.
Changes started with King George IV in the 1820s who employed John Nash to transform Captain William Winde’s Buckingham House to a royal palace.
After the work of John Nash, completed in the 1830s by Edward Blore, Buckingham Palace appeared as shown in the following print:
The large arch in front of the palace was Nash’s ceremonial entrance to the palace, however the arch was relocated to the north-east corner of Hyde Park as part of major changes in the 1840s and early 1850s. It is now known as Marble Arch.
The changes which moved the arch also included the first balcony on the eastern front of the palace, and the first recorded balcony appearance by members of the Royal Family was in 1851 as part of celebrations to mark the Great Exhibition.
In 1913, the architect Sir Aston Webb was employed to reface the front with Portland Stone and to create a the more formal classical façade to the palace that we see today.
The Victoria Memorial which stands in front of the palace was the work of the sculptor Sir Thomas Brock, and it was unveiled in 1911.
I had a decision here about the route for Rocque’s Ring which should follow the boundary of built London in 1746.
Buckingham House had a walled garden to the rear, which in a much enlarged state is emulated by the walled garden to the rear of Buckingham Palace. I decided not to take the route around the walled garden, but take Constitution Hill alongside the palace grounds and Green Park.
As shown in Rocque’s map, there was a route through Green Park called Constitution Hill in 1746. It has since been straightened out and now runs up to Hyde Park Corner, and follows the boundary of the much enlarged gardens of Buckingham Palace (the red line shows route of Constitution Hill today):
Constitution Hill from the corner of Buckingham Palace:
As you start to walk along Constitution Hill, you can see the difference in the use of stone, with the more expensive Portland Stone used for the eastern front of the palace, with earlier and cheaper stone for the buildings behind:
Walking along Constitution Hill with the palace gardens on the left and Green Park on the right, with the Wellington Arch at the end of the street:
At the north west end of Constitution Hill are the Commonwealth Memorial Gates. They were unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II in 2002, and are dedicated to the five million people from Commonwealth countries in the Caribbean, Africa and the Indian sub-continent, who volunteered to serve with the British military during the First and Second World Wars. The individual countries are listed on the four pillars alongside Constitution Hill:
And with that, I am at Hyde Park Corner. A simple junction with a turnpike in Rocque’s map, but a very busy circular junction today, with traffic both below and above ground, and with a large central area with an extensive array of monuments, which I will discover in the fourth part of walking Rocque’s Ring.