at an expense of £23,975.

The income, two years CHAP. II.

afterwards, was estimated at £1,500 a-year, and is now

supposed to be at least double.

On Putney heath, at a little distance from the road, Fire house. a house was erected in 1776 by David Hartley, Esq. for the purpose of proving the efficacy of his invention of plates for the preservation of buildings from fire. The experiments were several times repeated before their majesties, the lord mayor and aldermen of London, and many members of both houses of parliament, with complete success; some of the spectators remaining in perfect confidence and security in the room over that in which the fire was burning with great rapidity. This house is still standing; and near it is an obelisk built by the city of London in 1776, with inscriptions commemorating the invention. Near the obelisk was, in 1796, erected one of the semaphores which form the communication between London and Portsmouth.

Not far from the Fire-house was formerly a fashionable place of resort for public breakfasts and evening assemblies. The mansion erected on its site still retains the name of Bowling-green house, and was for some time in the occupation of that great statesman, the Right Hon. William Pitt, who here breathed his last, January 23, 1806. On the brow of the heath, which commands a charming prospect over the Thames and the county of Middlesex, are several handsome seats, particularly those of Earl Bathurst, earl of Bristol, Vicount Cliefden, and Lady Grantham.

men.

Putney had the honour of being the birth-place of Eminent Nicholas West, bishop of Ely, and Thomas Cromwell, earl of Essex, two eminent statesmen of the sixteenth century, who, though of humble parentage, raised themselves by their merits and abilities to the highest

BOOK III. dignities. The circumstances attending the rapid elevation and tragical end of the latter must be well known to every reader of English history.

Alms

house.

Edward Gibbon was born at Putney in 1737, in the house now the property and residence of J. P. Kensington, Esq. and received the first rudiments of his education at a day-school at this place. His Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the first volume of which appeared in 1776, and which was afterwards extended to six volumes in quarto, has placed him in the first rank as an historical writer, and is too well known to need any remark on its merits. From 1774 to 1782, Mr. Gibbon represented the borough of Liskeard in parliament, and obtained a seat at the board of trade; but on the abolition of that board in 1783, he retired to Switzerland, where he employed himself in completing his history. When the French revolution began to disturb the neighbouring states, Mr. Gibbon returned to England, and died of a dropsy in January 1794. His posthumous works, with his memoirs, written by himself, and finished by his friend, Lord Sheffield, were published by that nobleman in two quarto volumes.*

Sir Abraham Dawes having erected in his life-time an alms-house in this place for twelve poor persons, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, by his will dated 1639, endowed it with a rent charge of forty pounds per annum, issuing out of his estates. Mrs. Elizabeth D'Aranda, in the year 1780, left the interest of one hundred pounds, four per cent. annuities, to the poor of this house; Michael Turner, Esq. left them the interest of four hundred pounds, new South-Sea annuities, after the death of his servant Susannah Hill; Mr. Henry Stead,

* Beauties of England, vol. xiv. p. 113.

in 1785, bequeathed one hundred pounds in the three CHAP. H. per cents. after the death of his widow; and Mrs. Mary Girardot, in 1791, the interest of five hundred pounds in the four per cents., to the same purpose.

Mr. Thomas Martyn, by his will dated Oct. 22, in the 36th of Charles II. bequeathed all his landed estates, in case his niece Lucy Cook died unmarried or without issue, for the purpose of building and endowing a school for the education and maintenance of twenty watermen's sons. The benefits of the school are limited to Putney only, if there should be boys sufficient to fill up the number; otherwise they are to be taken from the neighbouring parishes. The estates bequeathed under this will consisted of the manor of Buck-steep in Sussex, and lands there, valued, at the time of the testator's death, at one hundred and twenty-seven pounds per annum ; lands and tenements at Staplehurst, Kent, valued at one hundred and twenty-eight pounds per annum; and lands and houses in Putney, valued at one hundred pounds per annum.

In Putney is a chapel belonging to the Independents; it was erected about twenty years ago.

ton.

At the western extremity of Putney heath is the Roehamppleasant hamlet of Roehampton, adorned with many elegant mansions. Roehampton grove, the residence of William Gosling, Esq. stands on part of the site of Putney park. It is an elegant modern structure, erected by Sir Joshua Vanneck (now Lord Huntingfield,) after a design by James Wyatt, Esq. Sir Joshua, on his accession to his brother's title and estate, sold Roehampton grove to Thomas Fitzherbert, Esq. who also expended considerable sums in improvements. At the termination of the lawn a fine piece of water is supplied by pipes from a conduit on Putney commom.