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The interesting sketch from which this quotation is made
seems to have answered the twofold purpose of the history
and funeral oration of the village. Victoria Street thrust
its way through it, pushed on by the powers vested by
Parliament in the Westminster Improvement Commission,
though phoenix-like, there has risen out of its ashes, within
the thirty years, a new "Prince of Orange," a few yards
only from the site of its predecessor, but shorn of every
vestige of its character as a village-inn. The village shop
is replaced by that conglomeration of business under one
roof known as the Army and Navy Stores, where even
more trades than those depicted in the sketch are carried
on to the extent of a yearly turnover of more than
£2,500,000.
The ancient Pound House of the parish, with several
adjoining buildings, disappeared in 1864-5 to make way for
an improvement at the approach to Rochester Row from
Grey Coat Place. The Engine House in Regent Place was
improved out of existence shortly afterwards.
The topographical changes in that portion of the district
known as the "Hamlet of Knightsbridge" have been far
less remarkable than in the Home District. The principal
alterations are, indeed, only those due to the extension of
the building works authorised by the Albert Gate Act,
which became law some years prior to the Metropolis
Management Act, and to the development of the Kensington
Palace Gardens, Rutland Gate, Princes Gate, and Kensington
Gore, on which latter the Albert Hall stands, and in the
rear of which the buildings used for the purposes of the
Fisheries, Health, Inventions, and Colonial and other
Exhibitions are within the boundaries of the district.
The alterations in the street nomenclature during the
thirty-two years have consisted for the most part of the
abolition of subsidiary names of terraces and places in
some of the principal thoroughfares, and the re-numbering
of the houses in each case. A few only of the instances in