The entrance to Tattersall's overlooks the green. This famous horse-mart was founded by Richard Tattersall, who had been stud-groom to the last Duke of Kingston. He started a horse market in 1766 at Hyde Park Corner, and his son carried it on after him. Rooms were fitted up at the market for the use of the Jockey Club, which held its meetings there for many years. Charles James Fox was one of the most regular patrons of Tattersall's sales. The establishment was moved to its present position in 1864.
The cavalry barracks on the north side of Knightsbridge boast of having the largest amount of cubic feet of air per horse of any stables in London.
An old inn called Half-way House stood some distance beyond the barracks in the middle of the roadway until well on into the nineteenth century, and proved a great impediment to traffic. On the south side of the road, eastward of Rutland Gate, is Kent House, which recalls by its name the fact that the Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria, once lived here. Not far off is Princes Skating Club, one of the most popular and expensive of its kind in London. Rutland Gate takes its name from a mansion of the Dukes of Rutland, which stood on the same site. The neighbourhood is a good residential one, and the houses bordering the roads have the advantage of looking out over the Gardens. There is nothing else requiring comment until we reach the Albert Hall, so, leaving this part for a time, we return to the Brompton Road. This road was known up to 1856 as the Fulham Road, though a long row of houses on the north side had been called Brompton Row much earlier.
Brompton signifies Broom Town, carrying suggestions of a wide and heathy common. Brompton Square, a very quiet little place, a cul-de-sac, which has also the great recommendation that no "street music" is allowed within it, can boast of having had some distinguished residents. At No. 22, George Colman, junior, the dramatist, a witty and genial talker, whose society was much sought after, lived for the ten years previous to his death in 1836. The same house was in 1860 taken by Shirley Brooks, editor of Punch. The list of former residents also includes the names of John Liston, comedian, No. 40, and Frederick Yates, the actor, No. 57.
The associations of all of this district have been preserved by Crofton Croker in his "Walk from London to Fulham," but his work suffers from being too minute; names which are now as dead as their owners are recorded, and the most trivial points noted. Opposite Brompton Square there was once a street called Michael's Grove, after its builder, Michael Novosielski, architect of the Royal Italian Opera House. In 1835 Douglas Jerrold, critic and dramatist, lived here, and whilst here was visited by Dickens. Ovington Square covers the ground where once stood Brompton Grove, where several well-known people had houses; among them was the editor (William Jerdan) of the Literary Gazette, who was visited by many literary men, and who held those informal conversation parties, so popular in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which must have been very delightful. Tom Hood was among the guests on many occasions. Before being Brompton Grove, this part of the district had been known as Flounder's Field, but why, tradition does not say.
The next opening on the north side is an avenue of young lime-trees leading to Holy Trinity Church, the parish church of Brompton. It was opened in 1829, and the exterior is as devoid of beauty as the date would lead one to suppose. There are about 1,800 seats, and 700 are free. The burial-ground behind the church is about 4½ acres in extent, and was consecrated at the same time as the church. Croker mentions that it was once a flower-garden. Northward are Ennismore Gardens, named after the secondary title of the Earl of Listowel, who lives in Kingston House. The house recalls the notorious Duchess of Kingston, who occupied it for some time. The Duchess, who began life as Elizabeth Chudleigh, must have had strong personal attractions. She was appointed maid of honour to Augusta, Princess of Wales, and after several love-affairs was married secretly to the Hon. Augustus John Hervey, brother of the Earl of Bristol. She continued to be a maid of honour after this event, which remained a profound secret. Her husband was a lieutenant in the navy, and on his return from his long absences the couple quarrelled violently. It was not, however, until sixteen years later that Mrs. Hervey began a connection with the Duke of Kingston, which ended in a form of marriage. It was then that she assumed the title, and caused Kingston House to be built for her residence; fifteen years later her real husband succeeded to the title of Earl of Bristol, and she was brought up to answer to the charge of bigamy, on which she was proved guilty, but with extenuating circumstances, and she seems to have got off scot-free. She afterwards went abroad, and died in Paris in 1788, aged sixty-eight, after a life of gaiety and dissipation. From the very beginning her behaviour seems to have been scandalous, and she richly merited the epithet always prefixed to her name. Sir George Warren and Lord Stair subsequently occupied the house, and later the Marquis Wellesley, elder brother of the famous Duke of Wellington. Intermediately it was occupied by the Listowel family, to whom the freehold belongs.
All Saints' Church in Ennismore Gardens was built by Vulliamy, and is in rather a striking Lombardian style, refreshing after the meaningless "Gothic" of so many parish churches.
The Oratory of St. Philip Neri, near Brompton Church, is surmounted by a great dome, on the summit of which is a golden cross. It is the successor of a temporary oratory opened in 1854, and the present church was opened thirty years later by Cardinal Manning. The oratory is built of white stone, and the entrance is under a great portico. The style followed throughout is that of the Renaissance, and all the fittings and furniture are costly and beautifully finished, so that the whole interior has an appearance of richness and elegance. A nave of immense height and 51 feet in width is supported by pillars of Devonshire marble, and there are many well-furnished chapels in the side aisles. The floor of the sanctuary is of inlaid wood, and the stalls are after a Renaissance Viennese model, and are inlaid with ivory; both of these fittings were the gift of Anne, Duchess of Argyll. The central picture is by Father Philpin de Rivière, of the London Oratory, and it is surmounted by onyx panels in gilt frames. The two angels on each side of a cartouche are of Italian workmanship, and were given by the late Sir Edgar Boehm. The oratory is famous for its music, and the crowds that gather here are by no means entirely of the Roman Catholic persuasion. Near the church-house is a statue of Cardinal Newman.
Not far westward the new buildings of the South Kensington Museum are rapidly rising. The laying of their foundation-stone was one of the last public acts of Queen Victoria. Until these buildings were begun there was a picturesque old house standing within the enclosure marked out for their site, and some people imagined this was Cromwell House, which gave its name to so many streets in the neighbourhood; this was, however, a mistake. Cromwell House was further westward, near where the present Queen's Gate is, and the site is now covered by the gardens of the Natural History Museum.
All that great space lying between Queen's Gate and Exhibition Road, and bounded north and south by Kensington Gore and the Cromwell Road, has seen many changes. At first it was Brompton Park, a splendid estate, which for some time belonged to the Percevals, ancestors of the Earls of Egmont. A large part of it was cut off in 1675 to form a nursery garden, the first of its kind in England, which naturally attracted much attention, and formed a good strolling-ground for the idlers who came out from town. Evelyn mentions this garden in his diary at some length, and evidently admired it very much. It was succeeded by the gardens of the Horticultural Society, and the Imperial Institute now stands on the site. The Great Exhibition of 1851 (see p. [66]) was followed by another in 1862, which was not nearly so successful, and this was held on the ground now occupied by the Natural History Museum; it in turn was followed by smaller exhibitions held in the Horticultural Society's grounds.