Abingdon Street

Abingdon street, near Old Palace yard.

Abingdon-Street, Westminster,—the first W. parallel to the Thames, extending from Old Palace-yard to Millbank-street.

Abingdon-St., Westminster, is at the end of Old Palace-yard, parallel to the Thames, and leads to Millbank-street.

Abingdon Street, Westminster, runs north and south parallel to the Thames from Old Palace Yard to Millbank Street. It is said to commemorate the name of Mary Abingdon, or Habington, sister to the Lord Monteagle, the lady to whom is ascribed the famous letter which occasioned the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot.¹ But this is very unlikely, as Abingdon Street was only formed under the provisions of the Act 23 Geo. II., 1750, the previous thoroughfare, called Dirty Lane, being "a narrow lane, pestered with coaches, narrow and inconvenient."² Thomas Telford, engineer of the Menai Bridge, lived and died (December 25, 1834) at No. 24 in this street. Richard Bentley, the great critic, and in 1787 Isaac Hawkins Browne, lived here. The gallant Sir John Malcolm lived at No. 12, David Roberts, R.A., at No. 8. In Abingdon Buildings, a turning between Nos. 16 and 17 at the Old Palace Yard end of Abingdon Street, Richard Cumberland lived shortly after his marriage in 1759.³

¹ Smith's Westminster, p. 41.

² Walcott's Westminster, p. 24.

³ Memoirs of Richard Cumberland, 1806, p. 156.

Abingdon Street, which forms the connecting link between Old Palace Yard and Millbank, was, at the commencement of the last century, known as Lindsay Lane, down the narrow length of which the lumbersome state carriage and eight heavily-caparisoned horses were driven into the court-yard of Lindsay House (at the south-west end of the thoroughfare), afterwards the residence of the Earl of Abingdon, and subsequently that of the Earl of Carnarvon, in order to be turned round to take up the King when he went to open Parliament.

At No. 24 in this street, in September, 1834, died, at an advanced age, Thomas Telford, the engineer. He was buried in the Abbey.