Great George Street, made 1750—at the same time as the Bridge, Bridge Street, etc.—contains the Institution of Civil Engineers, a fine building, and at the west end is Delahay Street, once Duke Street, a very fashionable locality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The poet Matthew Prior lived here, and Bishop Stillingfleet died here in 1699. Duke Street Chapel, recently pulled down, was a very well-known place; it was originally part of a house, overlooking the park built by Judge Jeffreys, and the steps into the park at Chapel Place were made for Jeffreys' special convenience. In this wing of his house he sometimes heard cases, and it was later made into a chapel for private subscribers. Jeffreys' house was also used for a time as the Admiralty Office. In Delahay Street may be noted the west end of the Boar's Head Court, marking the spot where Cromwell's house stood. The space between Great George Street and Charles Street will soon be covered by Government offices, now in course of erection. When Parliament Street was made it effaced Clinker's Court, White Horse Yard, Lady's Alley, Stephen's Alley, Rhenish Wine Yard, Brewers' Yard, and Pensioners' Alley—some of the slums which had sprung up outside the Abbey precincts. Now Parliament Street in its turn is effaced, swallowed up in an extended Whitehall. King Street has been completely swept away, as one sweeps a row of crumbs from a cloth, but the part it played in the ancient history of Westminster is not yet forgotten. Undoubtedly the change could be justified: the thoroughfare is an important one, the view as now seen from the direction of Charing Cross one of the finest in the world; yet to gain it we have had to give, and one wonders sometimes whether the gain counterbalances the loss.
Beyond the now vacant space on the north are the great group of Government offices, the Home and Colonial Offices facing Parliament Street, and behind them the India and the Foreign Offices. Above Downing Street there are others, the Privy Council Office and the Treasury.
Downing Street is called after George Downing, an American Ambassador to the Hague under Cromwell and in Charles II.'s reign. John Boyle, Earl of Cork and Ossory and the last Earl of Oxford, lived here. Boswell occupied a house in Downing Street in 1763. But the street is chiefly associated with the official residence of the First Lord of the Treasury. Sir Robert Walpole accepted this house from George II. on condition it should belong to his successors in office for ever.
On the east side, nearly opposite Downing Street, Richmond Terrace stands on the site of the Duke of Richmond's house, burnt down in 1790. Beyond Richmond Terrace is Montagu House, the town residence of the Duke of Buccleuch; the present building, which is of stone, in the Italian style, dates from the middle of the nineteenth century.
Beyond, again, are Whitehall Gardens, on part of the site of the Privy Gardens, belonging to Whitehall Palace. There is now a row of fine houses overlooking the Embankment and the Gardens. One of these was the residence of Sir Robert Peel. A great gallery of sculpture formerly extended along this part of the Embankment. It was partly destroyed in 1778, and wholly burnt down some years later. Gwydyr House, a sombre brick building with heavy stone facings over the central window and doorway is now occupied by the Charity Commission; it was built by Adam. Adjoining it is a new building with an angle tower and cupola; this belongs to the Royal United Service Institute, and next door to it is the banqueting-hall, now used as the United Service Museum. This is the only fragment left of Whitehall Palace, and is described in detail on p. [88].
The gatehouse known as the Holbein Gate stood across Whitehall a little south of the banqueting-hall. It was the third, and the most magnificent of those which previously stood in Westminster, and was built by Henry VIII. after the design of Holbein. It is said that one of the chambers was Holbein's studio. Later it was used as a State Paper Office, and was removed in 1750 to widen the street. It was intended to rebuild it in Windsor Park, but this design was never carried out; though various fragments of it were afterwards worked into other buildings.
It is a pity that it vanished, for it would have been a fine relic of the Tudor times, with its high angular towers and its elaborate decoration. It had a large central entrance and two smaller doorways beneath the towers. The brickwork was in diaper pattern, and the front ornamented with busts in niches—altogether a very elaborate piece of work.
WHITEHALL PALACE.
Hubert de Burgh bequeathed a house on this site to the Dominican Friars in the thirteenth century, and they sold it to the Archbishop of York. For 250 years it was the town-house of the Archbishops of that see, and when Wolsey became Archbishop he entered into his official residence with the intention of beautifying and enlarging it greatly; he had a passion for display, a quality which perhaps cost him more than he was ever aware of. It was a dangerous thing to build or rebuild great mansions close to the palace of so jealous a King as Henry VIII. It was especially dangerous to do so at Whitehall, because, as has been already shown, the King lived at Westminster in a congeries of old buildings more or less dilapidated and inconvenient. Wolsey's fall was doubtless hastened by his master's covetousness, and after it, by agreement with the Chapter of York, the King had the house conveyed to himself. Up to this time it had been known as York Place, but was henceforth Whitehall. At Anne Boleyn's coronation in the Abbey, the Royal party came to and from Whitehall.
"You must no more call it York Place—that is past
For, since the Cardinal fell, that title's lost;
'Tis now the King's and call'd Whitehall."