2 
ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW 
Notable 
Residents. 
nineteenth century to have been a typical English village, combining 
a quiet beauty with an air of unostentatious well-being. Those 
days have gone. Materially, no doubt, Kew is more prosperous 
than ever it was before, but on one side of the Green rows of latter- 
day villas have sprung up, while most of the picturesque old houses 
between the bridge and the chief entrance to the gardens have been 
transformed into tea-houses and restaurants, with all their unlovely 
accessories. Then steamboats, railways, and electric trams have 
each helped to swell the daily exodus from London in this direction. 
This, and the enormous growth in the local population on both 
sides of the river, have made the streets that converge on Kew 
Bridge some of the busiest in the south-western part of the metro- 
politan area. 
Until comparatively recent times, Kew was a favourite place of 
residence of more or less notable people. Its contiguity to the old 
palace of Richmond naturally led to the residence here 
of people whose interest or duty made it incumbent 
on them to be near the Court. Here, in the reign of 
Henry VIII., lived Mary, Dowager Queen of France, sister of the 
King and third wife of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. But the 
house in which she lived — called Suffolk Place — was demolished 
during Queen Elizabeth’s reign, and the spot on which it stood is 
not known, although it has been surmised that the Gothic crypt 
beneath the present Kew Palace is a remnant. 
But, in addition to Royal personages — with whom, in the later times 
with which we shall have to deal, Kew had so long and intimate a 
connection — several famous or notable people have lived 
here. About the middle of the sixteenth century there 
lived at Kew William Turner, author of a famous Herbal, 
and known in later times as the “ Father of English Botany.” It 
is a singular and happy coincidence that such a man should have 
lived and maintained a garden in the place destined to become in 
after years the headquarters of the science to which he was devoted. 
But he died in 1568, and no connection can be traced between 
his garden and the Gardens of the present time. Its site even 
is not known. 
Sir Peter Lely once lived in a house that stood on the spot now 
occupied by the west wing of the Herbarium. Gainsborough, perhaps, 
lived here ; he is, at any rate, buried in the churchyard. Meyer, 
William 
Turner. 
