Further northward in the Grosvenor Road, Peterborough House once stood, facing the river, and this was at one time called "the last house in Westminster." It was built by the first Earl of Peterborough, and retained his name until 1735, when it passed to Alexander Davis of Ebury, whose only daughter and heiress had married Sir Thomas Grosvenor. It was by this marriage that the great London property came into the possession of the Grosvenor (Westminster) family. The house was rebuilt, and renamed Grosvenor House. Strype says: "The Earl of Peterborough's house with a large courtyard before it, and a fine garden behind, but its situation is but bleak in winter and not over healthful, as being too near the low meadows on the south and west parts." The house was finally demolished in 1809.
Beyond, in the direction of the Houses of Parliament, there are several interesting old houses, of which the best specimens are Nos. 8 and 9, offices of the London Road Car Company, and No. 10. In the first a well-furnished ceiling proclaims an ancient drawing-room; in the second panelled walls and a spiral staircase set off a fine hall. This house has a beautiful doorway of the old scallop-shell pattern, with cherubs' heads and ornamental brackets decorating it. In the third house a ceiling is handsomely finished with dental mouldings, and the edges of the panels are all carved. A mantelpiece of white marble is very fine, and of great height and solidity, with a female face as the keystone.
From Lambeth Bridge the Horseferry Road leads westward. This was the main track to the ferry in ancient days, and as the ferry was the only one on the Thames at London, it was consequently of great importance. It was here that James II. crossed after escaping from Whitehall by night, and from his boat he threw the Great Seal into the river. Horseferry Road is strictly utilitarian, and not beautiful; it passes by gasworks, a Roman Catholic church, Wesleyan chapel, Normal Institute and Training College, all of the present century. North of it Grosvenor Road becomes Millbank Street. The Abbot's watermill stood at the end of College Street (further north), and was turned by the stream which still flows beneath the roadway. In an old survey a mill is marked on this spot, and is supposed to have been built by the same Abbot Litlington who built the wall in College Street (1362-1386). It was still standing in 1644, and mention is made of it at that date in the parish books. The bank was a long strip of raised earth, extending from here to the site of Peterborough House. Strype mentions "the Millbank" as a "certain parcel of land valued in Edward VI.'s time at 58 shillings, and given in the third of his reign" to one Joanna Smith for "services rendered."
Church Street (left) leads into Smith Square. Here stands the Church of St. John the Evangelist. This was the second of Queen Anne's fifty churches built by imposing a duty on coals and culm brought into the Port of London. The new district was formed in 1723, but the consecration ceremony did not take place until June 20, 1728. The architect was Archer, a pupil of Sir John Vanbrugh's, and the style, which is very peculiar, has been described as Doric. The chief features of the church are its four angle belfries, which were not included in the original scheme of the architect, but were added later to insure an equal pressure on the foundations. Owing to these the church has been unkindly compared to an elephant with its four legs up in the air! Another story has it that Queen Anne, being troubled in mind by much wearisome detail, kicked over her wooden footstool, and said, "Go, build me a church like that"; but this sounds apocryphal, especially in view of the fact that the towers were a later addition. The church is undoubtedly cumbrous, but has the merit of originality. In 1742 it was gutted by fire, and was not rebuilt for some time owing to lack of funds. In 1773 the roof was slightly damaged by lightning, and subsequently repairs and alterations have taken place. The building seats 1,400 persons, and a canonry of Westminster Abbey is attached to the living.
The churchwardens of St. John's possess an interesting memento in the form of a snuff-box, presented in 1801 by "Thomas Gayfere, Esq., Father of the Vestry of St. John the Evangelist." This has been handed down to the succeeding office-bearers, who have enriched and enlarged it by successive silver plates and cases.
Smith Square shows, like so much of Westminster, an odd mixture of old brick houses, with heavily-tiled roofs, and new brick flats of great height. In the south-west corner stands the Rectory. Romney and Marsham Streets were called after Charles Marsham, Earl of Romney. Tufton Street was named after Sir Richard Tufton. One of the cockpits in Westminster was here as late as 1815, long after the more fashionable one in St. James's Park had vanished. The northern part of the street between Great Peter and Great College Streets was formerly known as Bowling Alley. Here the notorious Colonel Blood lived.
Near the corner of Little Smith Street stands an architectural museum; it is not a very large building, but the frontage is rendered interesting by several statues and reliefs in stone. This, to give it its full title, is "The Royal Architectural Museum and School of Art in connection with the Science and Art Department." The gallery is open free from ten to four daily, and in the rooms opening off its corridors art classes for students of both sexes are held; the walls are absolutely covered with ancient fragments of architecture and sculpture. The row of houses opposite to the museum is doomed to demolition, a process which has begun already at the north end. The house third from the south end, a small grocer's shop, is the one in which the great composer and musician Purcell lived. He was born in Great St. Ann's Lane near the Almonry, and his mother, as a widow, lived in Tothill Street. The boy at the very early age of six was admitted to the choir of the Chapel Royal, and was appointed organist to Westminster Abbey when only two-and-twenty, a place he very nearly lost by refusing to give up to the Dean and Chapter the proceeds of letting the seats in the organ-loft to view the coronation of James II., a windfall he considered as a perquisite. He is buried beneath the great organ, which had so often throbbed out his emotions in the sounds in which he had clothed them. On leaving Tufton Street he went to Marsham Street, where he died in 1695. The art students from the gallery now patronize the little room behind the shop for lunch and tea, running across in paint-covered pinafore or blouse, making the scene veritably Bohemian.
At the north end of Tufton Street is Great College Street. Here dignified houses face the old wall built by Abbot Litlington. They are not large; some are overgrown by creepers; the street seems bathed in the peace of a perpetual Sunday. The stream bounding Thorney Island flowed over this site, and its waters still run beneath the roadway. The street has been associated with some names of interest. Gibbon's aunt had here a boarding-house for Westminster boys, in which her famous nephew lived for some time. Mr. Thorne, antiquary, and originator of Notes and Queries, lived here. Some of Keats' letters to Fanny Brawne are dated from 25 Great College Street, where he came on October 16, 1820, to lodgings, in order to conquer his great passion by absence; but apparently absence had only the proverbial effect. Walcott lived here, and his History of St. Margaret's Church and Memorials of Westminster are dated from here in 1847 and 1849 respectively. Little College Street contains a few small, irregular houses brightened by window-boxes. A slab informs us that the date of Barton Street was 1722, but the row of quiet, flat-casemented houses looks older than that. At the west end of Great College Street stood the King's slaughter-house for supplying meat to the palace; the foundations of this were extant in 1807. The end of Great College Street opens out opposite the smooth lawns of the Victoria Public Garden, near the House of Lords.
In Great Smith Street there was a turnpike at the beginning of the last century. Sir Richard Steele and Keats both dated letters from this address, and Thomas Southerne, the dramatist, died here. The northern part of the street was known as Dean Street until 1865; the old workhouse of the united parish used to stand in it. The Free Library is in this street. Westminster was the first Metropolitan parish to adopt the Library Acts. The Commissioners purchased the lease of a house, together with furniture, books, etc., from a Literary, Scientific, and Mechanics' Institute which stood on the east side of the road, a little to the north of the present library building, and the library was opened there in 1857. In 1888 the present site was purchased, and the building was designed by J. F. Smith, F.R.I.B.A.
Dean Stanley presented 2,000 volumes of standard works in 1883, to which others were added by his sister, Mrs. Vaughan, to whom they had been left for her lifetime. The library also contains 449 valuable volumes published by the Record Office. These consist of Calendars of State Papers, Reports of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Record Office, Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, and Records of Great Britain from the Reign of Edward the Confessor to Henry VIII. The Westminster Public Baths and Wash-houses, designed by the same architect are next door to the library. The Church House opposite is a very handsome building in a Perpendicular style; it is of red brick with stone dressings. The interior is very well furnished with fine stone and wood carving. The great hall holds 1,500 people, and runs the whole length of the building from Smith Street to Tufton Street. The roof is an open timber structure of the hammer-beam type, typical of fourteenth-century work. Near the north end of Great Smith Street is Queen Anne's Bounty Office, rebuilt 1900.