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VI
APPENDIX.
Scheme for the re-arrangement and re-construction of the
streets and houses within such area or of some of such streets
or houses.
Dated this Twenty-third day of November, 1894.
The Area (which for convenience in dealing with, I have
divided into three Sub-Areas, A, B and C), contains about acres
and is situated in the parishes of St. Clement Danes and of
St. Mary-le-Strand; Sub-Areas A and B being in the former, C
in the latter. The District is divided by the Registrar-General
for Census and Death Registration purposes other than by
parishes, so that Sub-Area A is in the Registration Sub-District
of St. Clement, and Sub-Areas B and C in the Registration
Sub-District of St. Mary.
The arrangement of the streets, courts, and alleys does not
appear to have undergone much change in position from the time
they were originally planned in the first half of the 17th
century. During the last hundred years the whole district has
deteriorated in every respect. Besides being inhabited by the
lowest classes, the streets and courts themselves, in many cases,
have been narrowed and encroached upon by extension of
buildings, and houses which formerly had a fair amount of space
to the rear now stand practically back to back.
Other causes have however accentuated the process of degeneration.
During the last forty years the owners and occupiers in
these parishes have had almost continuously the prospect held
before them of the demolition of their houses for the purposes of
a new street from Holborn to the Strand. Within the first year
of the Strand Board of Works' existence the Central Authority was
memorialised to make such a roadway, which would have opened
up this congested neighbourhood. Soon after and throughout the
sixties, schemes were under discussion for the acquisition of a large
site for the Law Courts and for providing proper means of access
thereto, and had these schemes been carried out in their entirety
these insanitary areas would have been swept away with the other
courts and alleys upon the site of which the Law Courts and other
buildings now stand. The minutes of the Strand Board show that
new plans for dealing with this part of the district were con-