Beyond this spot our description does not extend: the district of All Saints and manor of Knightsbridge stretch much further, but such parts have been already described by Mr. Faulkner. Ere, however, I quite leave the Gore, it must be mentioned that, among others, Carrington Bowles, the celebrated printseller, had a house, and died here June 20th, 1793. The Rev. Thomas Clare, vicar of St. Bride’s, Fleet Street, and an author of some repute, also at one time resided here.
Kinnerton Street is so called from an estate belonging to the Grosvenor family. Here is a dissecting school and anatomical museum attached to St. George’s Hospital.
Knightsbridge Green, formed by the junction of the Kensington and Fulham Roads, was formerly of greater extent than at the present time. It was formerly the village green in reality, and its last Maypole was preserved as lately as 1800. At its east end was, till about 1835, a watch-house and pound, and Addison, in a humorous paper in the “Spectator,” alludes to it. Proposing to satisfy by home news the craving for intelligence occasioned by the just concluded war, he writes,—“By my last advices from Knightsbridge, I hear that a horse was clapped into the pound on the third instant, and that he was not released when the letters came away.”—(Spectator, No. 142.)
The greater part of the Green is now covered by Middle Row, a medley of very inferior houses. On the north side is an old inn (rebuilt in 1851) called after the bluff Marquis of Granby. The soldier has been dethroned, and Sir Joseph Paxton promoted in his stead.
Vernon, the Butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppell, Howe,
Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk,
And fill’d the sign-posts then as Wellesley now.
William Moffatt, who in conjunction with Frederick Wood, surveyed London and published a valuable and clever map of the levels thereof, lived at this time in Middle Row. His coadjutor still lives (in indigent circumstances) in the locality.
The small plot of ground railed in, is said, by a very general tradition, to have been the spot where the victims of the plague from the Lazar House and elsewhere in the hamlet were buried. I have strong reasons for placing faith in this tradition; and in 1808, some human remains found where now stands William Street were buried here, it being considered the proper spot for such. King’s Row, built in 1785, has not a cellar to a single house for this reason. At its end is a detached brick building, the school-house of All Saints district.
A market was held here till the beginning of the present century for cattle every Thursday; the last pen-posts were not removed till 1850. A fair was also held here annually on July 31st.
Grosvenor House, which formed with Mr. Rogers’ premises one tenement, was for many years the residence of the Gosling family, who were for a long while connected with the hamlet. Francis Gosling, Esq., an eminent banker, lived here; he died February 25th, 1817. Bennett Gosling, Esq., his nephew, resided in Lowndes Square, where he died, May 12th, 1855.
The “Pakenham” was built as the hotel for an intended railway terminus. On its site was an old house, many years the residence of Mr. Egg, the founder of the well-known firm of gunsmiths in Piccadilly.