LONDON’S BUILDINGS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 865, 8 January 1930, Page 7

LONDON’S BUILDINGS

HISTORIC WHITEHALL GARDENS The intention of the London Office j of Works to pull down the fine houses ! iu Whitehall Gardens in order to erect 1 new skyscraper Government buildings j will sweep away another set of nine- j teenth century traditions, especially in connection with Peel and his great enemy, Disraeli, says “The Observer.” Whitehall Gardens, until recent times known as Privy Gardens, were at, the heart of the old palace of Whitehall. The extent of the Privy j Gardens was rather over three acres, j and they were laid out in “sixteen square compartments having a standing statue iu the centre. They were con- j cealed from the street by a lofty wall, j from the river by the Stone Gallery [ and State apartments, from the court j behind the banqueting house by lodgings allotted to the King’s chief attendants, and from the bowling green to which they led by a row of lofty trees. They would appear to have | been in ‘every respect private gardens. It was in the Privy Garden, May j 21, 1662, that Pepys saw ‘‘the finest j smocks and linen petticoats of my | Lady Castlemaine’s, laced with rich j lace at the bottom, that 1 ever saw; j and did me good to look upon them.” i With the exception of No. 7—the ! Ministry of Transport—which is older, the houses are late Georgian, and had their gardens and lawns stretching down to the river before the making of the embankment, a pleasant dispensation of which there is a reminder at the back of No. 7. They were fashionable residences at the time of William IV., but undoubtedly their most interesting associations are with Peel and Disraeli in the past, and with the War Cabinet and the Ministry of Munitions in modern times. Peel’s bouse, then No. 4, was the best in the row, and there is 'A curious reminder of less settled days in the fact that when the third baronet, Sir Robert’s son, clainjed compensation for the making of the Embankment in 1870, he. mentioned that the house was built in 1824, and had steps leading down to the river. And on one occasion he could remember preparations being made to remove valuables from the house —and it was full of valuables in Sir Robert’s day—at a time when it was feared that it might be attacked by tbe mob and sacked! Disraeli Sets Them Going . Disraeli’s first association with Whitehall Gardens was probably in 1539, when he went to one of Peel’s dinners there. “I came late, having mistaken the hour. I found some 25 gentlemen grubbing in solemn silence. I threw a shot over the table, and set them going, and in time they became noisy. Peel, I think, was pleased that I broke the awful stillness, as he talked to me a great deal, though we were far removed.” Nearly 40 years later, when, as leader himself, it was his turn to hold solemn political dinner parties in Whitehall Gardens, did he ever think back to 1839, and sigh for some young freelance to “throw a shot over the table and set them going”? It was to Whitehall Gardens that they brought Peel after the fall from his horse in 1850, and there, he lay in exquisite agony waiting for the end. The house was paid for by the first Sir Robert, who also gave 2,700 guineas for the “Chapeau de Paille,” which was one of his son’s treasures. At No. 2, a person of very different pecuniary fortunes came to live in 1874. Disraeli secured the house just in the nick of time to “live again like a gentleman” as Premier, and to complete the making of his Cabinet. One of his first letters from No. 2 was the all-important one to Lord Salisbury proposing a reconciliation:—“Lady Derby tells me that she thinks it very desirable, and that

you do not altogether disagree with her, that you and myself should have some conversation on the state of public affairs. The high opinion which you well know I always had of your ability, and the personal regard which from the first I entertained for you, and which is unchanged, would render such a conversation interesting to me, and I think not disadvantageous to either of us or to the public interests.” Fourteen months later, in April, 1875, he was boasting that “1 have now dined 242 members of the House of Commons and 60 peers. I had hoped to have finished the Commons by the end of April, but shall hardly be able to do it, as there are 112 members of the House of Commons to be invited, and they are not content unless they meet a certain number of swells.” In October, 1877, he left Whitehall Gardens for Downing Street, explaining that he did so “to avoid my terrible steep Whitehall stairs, which I cannot manage.” The house had had a certain fame before Disraeli, for it was there that old Lady Townshend, who, according to Wraxall, has succeeded to the place left vacant by Mrs. Hervey and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, entertained George Selwyn and the wits.

Even after Disraeli it was to be associated with other Prime Ministers, for there was (and is) the home of the Defence Committee, of which successive Prime Ministers have been chairmen, and there Mr. Lloyd George installed his War Cabinet. And since it was in Whitehall Gardens that the Munitions Ministry first began to function, a full century of official history will be swept away by the contemplated demolition.