The Kensington District | Page 6

centuries, which must have been very delightful. Tom Hood was
among the guests on many occasions. Before being Brompton Grove,
this part of the district had been known as Flounder's Field, but why,
tradition does not say.
The next opening on the north side is an avenue of young lime-trees
leading to Holy Trinity Church, the parish church of Brompton. It was
opened in 1829, and the exterior is as devoid of beauty as the date
would lead one to suppose. There are about 1,800 seats, and 700 are
free. The burial-ground behind the church is about 4½ acres in extent,
and was consecrated at the same time as the church. Croker mentions
that it was once a flower-garden. Northward are Ennismore Gardens,
named after the secondary title of the Earl of Listowel, who lives in
Kingston House. The house recalls the notorious Duchess of Kingston,
who occupied it for some time. The Duchess, who began life as
Elizabeth Chudleigh, must have had strong personal attractions. She
was appointed maid of honour to Augusta, Princess of Wales, and after
several love-affairs was married secretly to the Hon. Augustus John
Hervey, brother of the Earl of Bristol. She continued to be a maid of
honour after this event, which remained a profound secret. Her husband
was a lieutenant in the navy, and on his return from his long absences
the couple quarrelled violently. It was not, however, until sixteen years
later that Mrs. Hervey began a connection with the Duke of Kingston,
which ended in a form of marriage. It was then that she assumed the
title, and caused Kingston House to be built for her residence; fifteen
years later her real husband succeeded to the title of Earl of Bristol, and
she was brought up to answer to the charge of bigamy, on which she
was proved guilty, but with extenuating circumstances, and she seems
to have got off scot-free. She afterwards went abroad, and died in Paris
in 1788, aged sixty-eight, after a life of gaiety and dissipation. From the
very beginning her behaviour seems to have been scandalous, and she
richly merited the epithet always prefixed to her name. Sir George
Warren and Lord Stair subsequently occupied the house, and later the

Marquis Wellesley, elder brother of the famous Duke of Wellington.
Intermediately it was occupied by the Listowel family, to whom the
freehold belongs.
All Saints' Church in Ennismore Gardens was built by Vulliamy, and is
in rather a striking Lombardian style, refreshing after the meaningless
"Gothic" of so many parish churches.
The Oratory of St. Philip Neri, near Brompton Church, is surmounted
by a great dome, on the summit of which is a golden cross. It is the
successor of a temporary oratory opened in 1854, and the present
church was opened thirty years later by Cardinal Manning. The oratory
is built of white stone, and the entrance is under a great portico. The
style followed throughout is that of the Renaissance, and all the fittings
and furniture are costly and beautifully finished, so that the whole
interior has an appearance of richness and elegance. A nave of
immense height and 51 feet in width is supported by pillars of
Devonshire marble, and there are many well-furnished chapels in the
side aisles. The floor of the sanctuary is of inlaid wood, and the stalls
are after a Renaissance Viennese model, and are inlaid with ivory; both
of these fittings were the gift of Anne, Duchess of Argyll. The central
picture is by Father Philpin de Rivière, of the London Oratory, and it is
surmounted by onyx panels in gilt frames. The two angels on each side
of a cartouche are of Italian workmanship, and were given by the late
Sir Edgar Boehm. The oratory is famous for its music, and the crowds
that gather here are by no means entirely of the Roman Catholic
persuasion. Near the church-house is a statue of Cardinal Newman.
Not far westward the new buildings of the South Kensington Museum
are rapidly rising. The laying of their foundation-stone was one of the
last public acts of Queen Victoria. Until these buildings were begun
there was a picturesque old house standing within the enclosure marked
out for their site, and some people imagined this was Cromwell House,
which gave its name to so many streets in the neighbourhood; this was,
however, a mistake. Cromwell House was further westward, near
where the present Queen's Gate is, and the site is now covered by the
gardens of the Natural History Museum.

All that great space lying between Queen's Gate and Exhibition Road,
and bounded north and south by Kensington Gore and the Cromwell
Road, has seen many changes. At first it was Brompton Park, a
splendid estate, which for some time belonged to the Percevals,
ancestors