Yes, it is very well: the pile is perhaps handsome; but I doubt if there are so many bedesmen in the United Charity as there were in the separate charities. And it is no longer the same thing. Each House formerly had its own garden, in which the almsmen took the air; and its own chapel, in which those on the foundation could remember the founder—Lady Dacre, to wit; or Cornelius Van Dun, Yeoman of the Guard to Henry VIII., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth (his house stood near the present Town Hall); or Emery Hill, or George Whicher, or Judith Kifford, or Nicholas Butler Palmer. Busts and tablets outside the new buildings commemorate these worthies, but where are their buildings gone? The Almshouses of Westminster are all destroyed, and with them have perished the sentiment and the romance of the streets.
Something still remains; for, with the most laudable desire to destroy whatever can teach or suggest or soften manners or point to heaven, the Charity Commissioners have not been able to destroy one or two of the schools. There were formerly the Grey Coat School, the Green Coat School, the Blue Coat
THE GRILLE, EMANUEL HOSPITAL.
By permission of “The Architect.”
School, and the Black Coat School. The Grey Coat School has become a school for nearly four hundred girls; their old house still remains for them—a most beautiful monument, built in the seventeenth century for a poorhouse. The great hall in which the paupers formerly lived is now the school hall; above it ran the old low dormitory, now thrown open to the roof; there are paneled old rooms for board rooms; there are broad passages and corridors; there are schoolrooms of later date; and at the back, still uninjured, lie the broad gardens that belong to the time when every house in Westminster had its garden.
In any map of London except those of the actual present,—say, in Crutchley’s of 1838,—there is laid down in its place, just north of Rochester Row (which is now Artillery Place), St. Margaret’s Hospital, otherwise called the Green Coat School. This part of Westminster was once called Palmer’s Village; the Hospital was founded by the parish for the benefit of orphans. Charles II. endowed it; the Duchess of Somerset gave the school a thousand pounds; other benefactions flowed in. Forty years ago the place was thus described by a writer who is not often eloquent in praise (Walcott’s “Westminster”):
“The Hospital of St. Margaret consists of a large quadrangle. Upon the east side are the schoolroom, lavatory, and dormitories. The Master’s house fronts the entrance—a detached building ornamented with a bust of the kingly founder, and the Royal arms painted in colours widely carved and gilded, which were, according to tradition, only preserved from the destructive hands of the Puritans by a thick coating of plaster laid over the obnoxious remembrancers of the rightful dynasty. The south side is formed by the refectory and board room, wainscoted—once, it is said, with old portions of the woodwork which stood in St. Margaret’s chancel—to a considerable height, in large panels, upon which are hung full-length paintings of King Charles II., by Sir Peter Lely, and Emery Hill, an ancient benefactor to the institution, in the manner of the same master. Over the mantelpiece is a beautiful portrait of King Charles I., by Vandyke. The windows command a view of the Hospital Garden, with its fragrant flower-beds and grassy plots—a pleasant relief to the eye wearied with the interminable brick buildings of the outer street, and well attesting the constant care bestowed upon it.