OLD KENSINGTON 49 



Suburb," a book which described what was then a 

 village " near London ; " but when 1 first knew that 

 now bustling place it was, if not exactly to be 

 described as rural, certainly by no stretch, of imagina- 

 tion to be called urban. In those days the great shops, 

 which are no longer called shops, but " emporia," or 

 " stores," or " magazines," did not flaunt with plate- 

 glass windows opposite St. Mary Abbot's Church, 

 nor, indeed, did the present building of St. Mary 

 exist. In its place was a hideous structure, erected 

 probably at some early period of the eighteenth 

 century. It had windows tliat purported to be 

 C4othic, and a bell-turret that beloniyed to no known 

 order of architecture. It, and the now demolished 

 old church of St. Paul, Hammersmith, bore a singular 

 likeness to one another. The present generation can 

 only discover what these unlovely buildings were 

 like by referring to old prints, because there are none 

 other now existing in London to wliich they can be 

 likened ; and a very good thing too. I can recollect 

 old St. Mary's very well indeed, and the days when 

 the old Vestry Hall was still a place for the transaction 

 of vestry business are quite vivid to me. In fact, 

 at that time the Vestry Hall was somewhat new, and 

 where the imposing Town Hall now stands beside 

 it there was a tall building of very grimy brick, with 

 quaint little figures of a boy and a girl perched high 

 up on brackets above, and on either side of, the door. 

 These little figures were represented as clad in a 

 peculiar Dutch-like uniform ; the boy, I think, blue, 

 and the girl a quite painful orange, whenever they 

 repainted her, which was seldom. This was, in fact, 



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