The Kensington District | Page 9

together--Bulwer Lytton, Disraeli, and Landor were frequent visitors, and Prince Louis Napoleon made his way to Gore House when he escaped from prison. Lady Blessington died in 1849. The house was used as a restaurant during the 1851 Exhibition, and afterwards bought with the estate by the Commissioners.
The name "gore" generally means a wedge-shaped insertion, and, if we take it as being between the Kensington Gardens and Brompton and Cromwell Roads, might be applicable here, but the explanation is far-fetched. Leigh Hunt reminds us that the same word "gore" was previously used for mud or dirt, and as the Kensington Road at this part was formerly notorious for its mud, this may be the meaning of the name, but there can be no certainty. Lowther Lodge, a picturesque red-brick house, stands back behind a high wall; it was designed by Norman Shaw, R.A. In the row of houses eastward of it facing the road, No. 2 was once the residence of Wilkes, who at that time had also a house in Grosvenor Square and another in the Isle of Wight. Croker says that the actor Charles Mathews was once, with his wife, Madame Vestris, in Gore Lodge, Brompton. He was certainly a friend of the Blessingtons, and stayed abroad with them in Naples for a year, and may have been attracted to their neighbourhood at the Gore.
Behind the Albert Hall are various buildings, such as Alexandra House for ladies studying art and music, also large mansions and maisonnettes recently built. The Royal College of Music, successor of the old College, which stood west of the Albert Hall, is in Prince Consort Road. It was designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield, and opened in 1894. The cost was defrayed by Mr. Samson Fox, and in the building is a curious collection of old musical instruments known as the Donaldson Museum and open free daily. In the same road a prettily designed church, to be called Holy Trinity, Kensington Gore, is rapidly rising. In the northern part of Exhibition Road is the Technical Institute of the City and Guilds in a large red and white building, and just south of it the Royal School of Art Needlework for Ladies, founded by Princess Christian.
Queen's Gate is very wide; in the southern part stands St. Augustine's Church, opened for service in 1871, though the chancel was not completed until five years later. The architect was Mr. Butterfield, and the church is of brick of different colours, with a bell gable at the west end. In Cromwell Place, near the underground station, Sir John Everett Millais lived in No. 7; the fact is recorded on a tablet. Harrington Road was formerly Cromwell Lane, and there is extant a letter of Leigh Hunt's dated from this address in 1830. Pelham Crescent, behind the station, formerly looked out upon tea-gardens. Guizot, the notable French Minister, came to live here after the fall of Louis Philippe. He was in No. 21, and Charles Mathews, the actor, lived for a time in No. 25. The curves of the old Brompton Road suggest that it was a lane at one time, curving to avoid the fields or different properties on either side.
Onslow Square stands upon the site of a large lunatic asylum. In it is St. Paul's Church, built in 1860, and well known for its evangelical services. There is nothing remarkable in its architecture save that the chancel is at the west end. The pulpit is of carved stone with inlaid slabs of American onyx. Marochetti, an Italian sculptor, who is responsible for many of the statues in London, including that of Prince Albert on the Memorial, lived at No. 34 in the square in 1860. But its proudest association is that Thackeray came to the house then No. 36, from Young Street, in 1853. "The Newcomes" was at that time appearing in parts, and continued to run until 1855, so that some of it was probably written here. He published also while here "The Rose and the Ring," the outcome of a visit to Rome with his daughters, and after "The Newcomes" was completed he visited America for a second time on a tour of lectures, subsequently embodied in a book, "The Four Georges." By his move from Young Street he was nearer to his friends the Carlyles in Chelsea, a fact doubtless much appreciated on both sides. He contested Oxford in 1857, and in the following year began the publication of "The Virginians," which was doubtless inspired by his American experiences. In 1860 he was made editor of the Cornhill, from which his income came to something like ￡4,000 a year, and on the strength of this accession of fortune he began to build a house in Palace Green, to which he moved when it was complete (p.