Buckingham Palace, which falls partly within St. George's district and partly within St. Margaret's, Westminster, has already been described in the volume on Westminster.
The Royal Mews, the entrance to which is in Buckingham Palace Road, contains a large riding-school, a room for the state harness, stabling for the state and other horses, and houses for forty carriages. Here also are kept the old and new state coaches, the former of which was built in 1762 of English oak, with paintings by Cipriani, and cost £7,660.
Buckingham Palace Road, now a broad street with large houses and shops, was in 1725 an open country road, known as the coach-road to Chelsea. The houses in it are rated under the name of Pimlico as late as 1786, but rows of houses under various names had been built earlier—Stafford Row in 1752, Queen's Row in 1766. These, with Victoria Road (1838), Stockbridge Terrace (1836), King's Road, Lower and Upper Belgrave Place and Belgrave Terrace (1826), were united under the name of Buckingham Palace Road in 1867, and in 1894 Union Place, Holden Terrace, and South Place were incorporated with it. The portion facing the Palace is named Buckingham Gate, and consists of seven large private houses. On this site, facing the Park, stood Tart Hall, the residence of Viscount Stafford (see "Westminster").
Facing Grosvenor Gardens is the Grosvenor Hotel, opened in 1862 in connection with Victoria Station. The building, designed by Knowles, is 272 feet long, 75 feet deep, and 150 feet high, and cost £100,000.
Beyond, on the north side, a row of large red-brick houses has been built since 1883, containing Buckingham Palace Mansions (flats), the National Training School of Cookery, and the City of Westminster Public Baths. Here also is St. Peter's Institute, in connection with St. Peter's, Eaton Square, which cost £15,000. It consists of a club for 600 men and 600 boys, with gymnasium, class-rooms, reading-room, concert-hall, etc.
Buckingham Palace Gardens, also on the north side, is a row of large, ornamental, red-brick houses, newly erected, adjoining the Free Library built by Bolton and opened in 1894. On the first floor is a natural history collection presented by a parishioner. St. Philip's Church, built 1887-90, is a plain but spacious red-brick building, in Early English style by Brierley and Demaine, with seats (free) for 850. Adjoining is the Grosvenor Club and Grosvenor Hall, used for social entertainments, etc. Nearly the whole of the south side of the road has recently been demolished in view of the extension of Victoria Station.
Inhabitants—Stafford Row: W. Ryland, engineer, executed for forgery 1767; Mrs. Radcliffe, authoress of the "Mysteries of Udolpho"; Richard Yates, d. 1796. Lower Belgrave Place: No. 3, George Grote, historian (later 102, Buckingham Palace Road); 29 and 30, Sir Francis Chantrey, 1814-41 (later 98, Buckingham Palace Road); 27, Allan Cunningham, poet, 1824-42; 96, Henry Weekes, R.A. Buckingham Palace Road: E. B. Stephen, R.A., 1882.
From the end of Buckingham Palace Road Chelsea was reached by the present Pimlico Road, so called in 1871, when the old names of Jews' Row, Grosvenor Row (1785), and Queen Street (1774) were abolished. The origin of the name Pimlico is uncertain. There was one also at Hoxton, where a certain Ben Pimlico kept a noted hostelry in Queen Elizabeth's time. It is now officially used to denote the whole district south of Knightsbridge, but is popularly confined to the part between Chester Square and the Thames. It began to be sparsely inhabited in 1680, after which date it is mentioned occasionally in the rate-books, and regularly after 1739.
On the north side, near the east end, are two narrow streets—Clifford's Row (1785), and King Street (1785). At the corner of Ebury Street stood an old inn, the Goat and Compasses, now replaced by the Three Compasses public-house. Further on is the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, built about 1850 as a chapel of ease to St. Barnabas. Adjoining is the site of the Chelsea Bun House, in its best days kept by Richard Hand, "who has the honour to serve the Royal Family." It was celebrated by Swift in 1711, and was taken down in 1839. Opposite stood Strombelo or Stromboli House, a minor place of amusement, at its height in 1788. Near here Nell Gwynne is said to have lived, and her name is kept up by the Nell Gwynne Tavern and a passage called Nell Gwynne Cottages.
Between the Pimlico and Commercial Roads are several small streets. In Bloomfield Place stood St. John's School for girls, established in 1859 under the auspices of the Sisterhood of St. John; adjoining, under the same management, St. Barnabas' Mission House and St. Barnabas' Orphanage, established in 1860. In Bloomfield Terrace lived at No. 1 Captain Warner, inventor of the "long range," d. 1853.