The first fire destroyed the Stone Gallery and the rooms between it and the river. This Stone Gallery, as already mentioned, ran along the east side of the [Privy Garden]. It was not rebuilt, and the Duchess of Portsmouth lost her house. After the second fire the ground was leased out, and Pembroke House was built on it. I think it is now part of the Board of Trade. The rest of the row is now called Whitehall Gardens, a place in which many eminent people have lived, including Sir Robert Peel, one of the Queen’s Premiers. Beyond, further south, was the Bowling Green. Here Montagu House now stands. We may feel sure, when we see how little was burnt, that William and Mary, if they had liked the place, might easily have reinstated the royal lodgings.
There is a curious print in Smith’s Sixty-two Additional Plates, which seems to have puzzled some people. It represents Whitehall in a bird’s-eye view in outline, and must have been drawn after the second fire, as Pembroke House has been built. The original drawing was in Crowle’s collection. Smith stumbles over it when he says, “The dotted lines show the parts that were not penned in ‘by the artist.’” He does not perceive that they mark places which had been burnt and had not been rebuilt. For us this print is interesting, as showing what a comparatively small part of the whole perished in the fire of 1698, and it shows us also what is the true answer to a question often asked: Why were not the pictures consumed? We can see now that they may have been taken down, all but the Holbeins, which were painted on the walls and ceiling of a chamber, and leisurely stored, probably in the Banqueting House, to be removed to St. James’s and Kensington as convenient. In the same way there was time to remove anything of value from the chapel, including Inigo’s great marble reredos. Indeed, it may be doubted if the chapel was burnt.
Privy Garden.
From an Engraving by
T. Malton, 1795.
At the beginning of the last century there remained the two gates. The queer old Gothic [King Street Gate] was taken down in 1723. In 1759, [Holbein’s Gate] was also removed, including, of course, the stairs and gallery by which Charles I. entered the palace on that fatal 30th January. The terra-cotta heads of the Cæsars eventually went to Hampton Court. They are said to have been made by an Italian named Maiano. The brick and stone-work were removed by the Duke of Cumberland to make a triumphal arch at Windsor. They form now a green mound near the Long Walk. Toby Rustat’s leaden statue of James II. still stands behind the hall, and is popularly supposed to point to the spot on which James’s father was beheaded. We have seen that this tragedy took place at the other side of the hall. There was an immediate talk of a new palace on this site, but it never came to anything. The second plan of Inigo Jones, that of 1639, is sometimes said to have been consulted by the authorities. Colen Campbell obtained it for his Vitruvius Britannicus, as he says, “from that ingenious gentleman, William Emmet, of Bromley, in the county of Kent, Esq., from whose original drawings the following five plates are published, whereby he has made a most valuable present to the sons of Art.” Was Mr. Emmet, that ingenious gentleman, who seems otherwise unknown to fame, the architect consulted by William’s Government?
Bird’s-eye View of Whitehall and St. James’s Park.
From Smith’s “Views of Westminster.”