The Lord Chamberlain's offices and residence, and also the official residence of the Keeper of the Privy Purse, are among the official chambers in the palace. There are minor offices also, those of the Clerk of the Works, and the Gentlemen of the Wine Cellar; there are state apartments and the quarters of the Gentlemen at Arms and the Yeomen of the Guard. There are several courts in the palace, namely, the Ambassadors' Court, Engine Court, Friary Court, and Colour Court. There have been various chapels connected with the palace, but the only two of importance are the Chapel Royal and German Chapel, which still remain.
The Chapel Royal is supposed to be on the site of the chapel of the ancient hospital, and various Norman remains dug up in the course of repairs favour this supposition. The roof is beautifully decorated in panels by Holbein; the date of its completion is supposed to be 1540. Prince George and Princess Anne; Frederick, Prince of Wales; George IV.; Queen Victoria; and the Empress Frederick, were all married in this Chapel.
The German Chapel was founded in 1700 by Princess Anne; service was held in it once on Sundays up to the present reign, but has now been discontinued.
Just opposite to the palace is Marlborough House, the residence of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The house was built in 1709 at the public expense, as a national compliment to the Duke of Marlborough. Sir Christopher Wren was the architect. After the death of the third Duke it was sublet to Leopold, subsequently King of the Belgians. Queen Adelaide lived in it after the death of King William IV. The building was afterwards used as a gallery for the pictures known as the Vernon Collection. But in 1850 it was settled on King Edward VII., then Prince of Wales, when he should attain his eighteenth year, which he did nine years later. The interior is decorated with beautiful mural paintings executed by La Guerre; many of these represent the battles of the famous Duke of Marlborough. On the removal of the King to Buckingham Palace the present Prince of Wales comes in his turn to Marlborough House.
Carlton House Terrace owes its name to Carlton House, built by Henry Boyle, Baron Carlton, in Queen Anne's reign. It was afterwards sold to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and was occupied subsequently by George IV. before he succeeded to the throne. J. T. Smith says: "Many a saturnalia did those walls witness in the days of his hot youth." Princess Charlotte was born here. In 1811 the ceremony of conferring the regency upon Prince George was enacted at Carlton House, and in the June following the Prince gave a magnificent supper to 2,000 guests. In 1827 the house was pulled down. It stood right across the end of the present Waterloo Place, where now a flight of steps lead into the park. At the head of the steps is the York Column of granite, 124 feet high, designed by Wyatt, and surmounted by a figure of the Duke of York, son of George III.
One of the sights of London in the seventeenth century, was the garden which lay between St. James's Park and Charing Cross, called Spring Gardens. The place was laid out as a bowling-green; it had also butts, a bathing-pond, a spring made to scatter water all around by turning a wheel. There was also an ordinary, which charged 6s. for a dinner—then an enormous price—and a tavern where drinking of wine was carried on all day long. In the "Character of England," 1659, attributed to Evelyn, the following account of Spring Gardens is found:
"The manner is as the company returned [from Hyde Park] to alight at the Spring Gardens so called, in order to the Parke, as our Thuilleries is to the Course; the inclosure not disagreeable, for the solemness of the grove is broken by the warbling of the birds, as it opens into the spacious walks at St. James's; but the company walk in it at such a rate, you would think that all the ladies were so many Atalantas contending with their wooers.... But fast as they run they stay there so long as if they wanted not time to finish the race; for it is usual here to find some of the young company till midnight; and the thickets of the garden seem to be contrived to all advantages of gallantry; after they have been refreshed with the collation, which is here seldom omitted, at a certain cabaret, in the middle of this paradise, where the forbidden fruits are certain trifling tarts, neats' tongues, salacious meats, and bad Rhenish; for which the gallants pay sauce, as indeed they do at all such houses throughout England."
After the Restoration the gardens were built over. Prince Rupert lived here 1674-1682. Colley Cibber, actor and prolific dramatist, had a house "near Bull's Head Tavern in Spring Gardens, 1711-14"; Sir Philip Warwick and George Canning were also among the residents.
"Locket's ordinary, a house of entertainment much frequented by gentry," was on the site of Drummond's Bank:
"Come, at a crown ahead ourselves we'll treat:
Champagne our liquor, and ragouts our meat;
* * * * * With evening wheels we'll drive about the Park,
Finish at Locket's, and reel home i' the dark."