Villiers Street
Villiers Street is a street in London connecting the Strand with the Embankment. It is partly pedestrianised; traffic runs northbound only up to John Adam Street, where vehicles must turn right. It was built by Nicholas Barbon in the 1670s on the site of York House, the property of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, whom the street commemorates. A watergate in nearby Embankment Gardens is the only remnant of the mansion and shows the original position of the north bank of the River Thames.[1]
Noteworthy buildings on Villiers Street
- Charing Cross railway station
- Kipling House, where Rudyard Kipling lived in 1889–91[4]
Housing on the west side of the street was demolished in the 1860s to make way for Charing Cross station. From 1889 to 1891, Rudyard Kipling lived at small rooms with windows facing the street, at number 43 (later renamed Kipling House).[5] He there wrote the partly autobiographical novel The Light That Failed, which contains references to the area. Kipling remarks that:
From my desk I could look out of my window through the
Father Thames under the Shot towerwalked up and down with his traffic.
After the
Gordon's Wine Bar, in a basement under Kipling House and with cellars below street level and a terrace overlooking Embankment Gardens, is a popular refreshment and eating place.
See also
References
- ^ The Strand, southern tributaries – continued, Old and New London: Volume 3 (1878), pp. 100–110 accessed: 17 October 2007
- ^ "The Story of the Strand", Rudyard Kipling, The Strand Magazine, January 1891. The specific comment is: "In Villiers Street both Evelyn and Steele lived: but it is now the haunt of anything rather than genius."
- ^ History of Imperial College, in a timeline (Imperial College) accessed 17 October 2007
- ^ "London Famous # 21: Rudyard Kipling". Knowledge of London. Retrieved 9 April 2015.
- ^ "Houses for sale with blue plaques". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 30 January 2013.
"Villiers Street" in Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert (1983) The London Encyclopedia.