Row (1767). Buckingham Palace
(1840), Brewer Street (1811), and Allingham Street (1826) have no
interest. The latter leads to Victoria Street, a broad thoroughfare
opened in 1851, only the western end of which falls within the district.
On the south side is the Victoria Station of the Metropolitan District
Railway, commenced in 1863 and opened in 1868. The line runs in a curve
underground from Sloane Square, crossing Ebury Street at Eaton Terrace,
and Buckingham Palace Road at Grosvenor Gardens. From the Underground
Station a subterranean passage leads to the Victoria terminus, the
starting-point of the London, Brighton, and South Coast and London,
Chatham, and Dover Railway Companies. The present station, which has no
pretension to architectural beauty, is being greatly enlarged and partly
rebuilt. It was built at a cost of L105,000, provided by the Victoria
Station and Pimlico Railway Company, which, having acquired 91 acres of
land, had built a temporary station and opened the line for the two
companies' traffic in 1860. The bridge over the Thames was built about
the same time by Fowler, and on it is the Grosvenor Road
ticket-collecting station. The land occupied by the railways is freehold
of the Victoria Company, and leased by the two lines. In 1863 the lines
of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway were widened to enable their
trains to come into the station independently. The lines of the London,
Brighton, and South Coast Railway are now being extended. The station of
the latter is a West End branch, the headquarters being at London
Bridge; but the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway have here their
principal starting-point. The ground between Victoria Station and the
river occupies the site of the old manor of Neyte, which belonged to the
Abbey of Westminster until confiscated by Henry VIII. in 1536. It was a
favourite residence of the Abbots, and here also lived John of Gaunt,
and here John, son of Richard, Duke of York, was born in 1448. In 1592
the manor became a farm and passed with the Ebury Estate into the
possession of the Grosvenor family. The manor-house stood where is now
St. George's Row, and in Pepys' time was a popular pleasure-garden.
Between the Willow Walk (Warwick Street) and the river were the Neat
House Gardens, which supplied a large part of London with vegetables.
The name lingered until the present century among the houses on the
river-bank, and is still commemorated by Neat House Buildings