Westminster | Page 6

mouldings, and the edges of the panels are all carved. A mantelpiece of white marble is very fine, and of great height and solidity, with a female face as the keystone.
From Lambeth Bridge the Horseferry Road leads westward. This was the main track to the ferry in ancient days, and as the ferry was the only one on the Thames at London, it was consequently of great importance. It was here that James II. crossed after escaping from Whitehall by night, and from his boat he threw the Great Seal into the river. Horseferry Road is strictly utilitarian, and not beautiful; it passes by gasworks, a Roman Catholic church, Wesleyan chapel, Normal Institute and Training College, all of the present century. North of it Grosvenor Road becomes Millbank Street. The Abbot's watermill stood at the end of College Street (further north), and was turned by the stream which still flows beneath the roadway. In an old survey a mill is marked on this spot, and is supposed to have been built by the same Abbot Litlington who built the wall in College Street (1362-1386). It was still standing in 1644, and mention is made of it at that date in the parish books. The bank was a long strip of raised earth, extending from here to the site of Peterborough House. Strype mentions "the Millbank" as a "certain parcel of land valued in Edward VI.'s time at 58 shillings, and given in the third of his reign" to one Joanna Smith for "services rendered."
Church Street (left) leads into Smith Square. Here stands the Church of St. John the Evangelist. This was the second of Queen Anne's fifty churches built by imposing a duty on coals and culm brought into the Port of London. The new district was formed in 1723, but the consecration ceremony did not take place until June 20, 1728. The architect was Archer, a pupil of Sir John Vanbrugh's, and the style, which is very peculiar, has been described as Doric. The chief features of the church are its four angle belfries, which were not included in the original scheme of the architect, but were added later to insure an equal pressure on the foundations. Owing to these the church has been unkindly compared to an elephant with its four legs up in the air! Another story has it that Queen Anne, being troubled in mind by much wearisome detail, kicked over her wooden footstool, and said, "Go, build me a church like that"; but this sounds apocryphal, especially in view of the fact that the towers were a later addition. The church is undoubtedly cumbrous, but has the merit of originality. In 1742 it was gutted by fire, and was not rebuilt for some time owing to lack of funds. In 1773 the roof was slightly damaged by lightning, and subsequently repairs and alterations have taken place. The building seats 1,400 persons, and a canonry of Westminster Abbey is attached to the living.
The churchwardens of St. John's possess an interesting memento in the form of a snuff-box, presented in 1801 by "Thomas Gayfere, Esq., Father of the Vestry of St. John the Evangelist." This has been handed down to the succeeding office-bearers, who have enriched and enlarged it by successive silver plates and cases.
Smith Square shows, like so much of Westminster, an odd mixture of old brick houses, with heavily-tiled roofs, and new brick flats of great height. In the south-west corner stands the Rectory. Romney and Marsham Streets were called after Charles Marsham, Earl of Romney. Tufton Street was named after Sir Richard Tufton. One of the cockpits in Westminster was here as late as 1815, long after the more fashionable one in St. James's Park had vanished. The northern part of the street between Great Peter and Great College Streets was formerly known as Bowling Alley. Here the notorious Colonel Blood lived.
Near the corner of Little Smith Street stands an architectural museum; it is not a very large building, but the frontage is rendered interesting by several statues and reliefs in stone. This, to give it its full title, is "The Royal Architectural Museum and School of Art in connection with the Science and Art Department." The gallery is open free from ten to four daily, and in the rooms opening off its corridors art 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,