Westminster | Page 7

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 lived here. In Old Pye Street a few squalid houses with low doorways remain to contrast with the immense flats known as Peabody's Buildings, which have sprung up recently. In 1862 George Peabody gave ￡150,000 for the erection of dwellings for the working classes, and to this he subsequently added ￡500,000. The first block of buildings was opened in Spitalfields, 1864. These in the neighbourhood of Old Pye Street were erected in 1882. Pye Street derives its name from Sir Robert