Westminster | Page 7

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.
Orchard Street is so named from the Abbot's Orchard. John Wesley
once