Westminster | Page 4

by an order of the Charity Commission, dated July 11, 1879. The Grenadier Guards Hospital is further down the row on the same side.
Vincent Square is the Westminster School playground. This space, of about ten acres of land, has been the subject of much dispute between the Dean and Chapter and the parish. It was first marked out as a playground in 1810, but not enclosed by railings until 1842. Dr. Vincent, Headmaster of the school and formerly Dean of Westminster, took the lead in the matter, and the enclosure is therefore named after him. The ground is now levelled, and forms magnificent playing-fields; from the south end there is a fine view of many-towered Westminster. The hospital of the Coldstream Guards is in one corner of the Square, and next to it the Westminster Police Court. St. Mary's Church and Schools are on the south side. The Grosvenor Hospital for Women and Children is in Douglas Street close by. This originated in a dispensary in 1865.
The ground in the parish already traversed corresponds roughly with that occupied by the once well-known Tothill Fields. Older writers call this indifferently Tuthill, Totehill, Tootehill, but more generally Tuttle. In Timbs' "London and Westminster" we read: "The name of Tot is the old British word Tent (the German Tulsio), god of wayfarers and merchants.... Sacred stones were set up on heights, hence called Tothills." If ever there were a hill at Tothill Fields, it must have been a very slight one, and in this case it may have been carted away to raise the level elsewhere. We know that St. John's burial-ground was twice covered with three feet of soil, and in the parish accounts we read of gravel being carted from Tothill. The greater part of the ground in any case can have been only low-lying, for large marshy pools remained until comparatively recent times, one of which was known as the Scholars' Pond. Dean Stanley has aptly termed these fields the Smithfield of West London. Here everything took place which required an open space--combats, tournaments, and fairs.
In a map of the middle of the eighteenth century we see a few scattered houses lying to the south of Horseferry Road just below the bend, and Rochester Row stretching like an arm out into the open ground. Two of the great marshy pools are also marked. If all accounts are to be believed, this spot was noted for its fertility and the beauty of its wild-flowers. From Strype's Survey we learn that the fields supplied London and Westminster with "asparagus, artichokes, cauliflowers and musk melons." The author of "Parochial Memorials" says that the names of Orchard Street, Pear Street and Vine Street are reminiscent of the cultivation of fruit in Westminster, but these names more probably have reference to the Abbot's garden. Walcott says that Tothill Fields, before the Statute of Restraints, was considered to be within the limits of the sanctuary of the Abbey. Stow gives a long and minute account of a trial by battle held here. One of the earliest recorded tournaments held in these fields was at the coronation of Queen Eleanor in 1226.
A great fair held in the fields in 1248 was a failure. All the shops and places of merchandise were shut during the fifteen days that it lasted, by the King's command, but the wind and rain ruined the project.
In 1256 John Mansell, the King's Counsellor and a priest, entertained the Kings and Queens of England and Scotland and so many Dukes, Lords, and Barons, at Westminster that he had not room for them in his own house, but set up tents and pavilions in Tothill.
In 1441 "was the fighting at the Tothill between two thefes, a pelour and a defendant; the pelour hadde the field, and victory of the defendour withinne three strokes."
Both the armies of the Royalists and the Commonwealth were at different times paraded in these fields; of the latter, 14,000 men were here at one time. During 1851-52 Scottish prisoners were brought to Tothill, and many died there, as the churchwardens' accounts show. In the latter year we read the entry: "Paid to Thomas Wright for 67 load of soyle laid on the graves in Tuthill Fields wherein 1,200 Scotch prisoners (taken at the fight at Worcester) were buried."
It was fifteen years later, in the time of the Great Plague, that the pesthouses came into full use, for we read in the parish records July 14, 1665, "that the Churchwardens doe forthwith proceed to the making of an additional Provision for the reception of the Poore visited of the Plague, at the Pesthouse in Tuttle ffieldes." The first two cases of this terrible visitation occurred in Westminster, and during the sorrowful months that followed, in place of feasting and pageantry, the fields