THE VILLAGE : IN AND ABOUT IT 143 



performance ; and I was told the decrepit 

 draughtsman derives a competency from passing 

 travellers." 



A sight that lasted longer was the City State 

 Barge, the Maria Wood, rotting at Kew Bridge 

 almost to our own day, till it had to be broken 

 up ; but well on in the nineteenth century it 

 still made a scene of junketings, and earlier it 

 had cruised with aldermanic guests as far as 

 Richmond and Twickenham, not to speak of 

 that famous voyage to Oxford described in the 

 Middlesex volume of this series. Another lion 

 of Kew in the early part of the last century was 

 a pretentious modern structure, said to have 

 been built from the materials of George III.'s 

 unfinished palace, but as Sir R. Phillips notes 

 them both on his walk this statement seems 

 doubtful. It took the name of the Priory, that 

 has been spread over a district of the present 

 suburb. 



The Priory was built by a Catholic parishioner. 

 Romanists and Dissenters would have every 

 chance of making way at Kew, when its living, 

 still conjoined with Petersham, was held for ten 

 years, from 1818, by Charles Caleb Colton, a 

 parson who might well speak of himself as only 



