men of the Privy Chamber and
Master of Mechanics. He died in 1696, and was buried at Hammersmith.
There are here also large lead-mills. Behind the Lower Mall is a narrow
passage, called Ashen Place; here is a row of neat brick cottages,
erected in 1868. These were founded in 1865, and are known as William
Smith's Almshouses. Besides the building, an endowment of L8,000 in
Consols was left by the founder. There are ten inmates, who may be of
either sex, and who receive 7s. a week each.

Waterloo Street was formerly Plough and Harrow Lane. Faulkner mentions a
Wesleyan Methodist Chapel here, built in 1809, which probably gave its
name to Chapel Street hard by.

Near the west end of the Lower Mall is the Friends' Meeting House, a
small brick building which, though new, inherits an old tradition; for
there is said to have been a meeting-house here from the beginning of
the seventeenth century, and one of the meetings was disturbed and
broken up by Cromwell's soldiers. At the back is a small burial-ground,
in which the earliest stone bears date 1795.

The Lower is divided from the Upper Mall by a muddy creek. This creek
can now be traced inland only so far as King Street, but old maps show
it to have risen at West Acton. An old wooden bridge, erected by Bishop
Sherlock in 1751, crosses it; this is made entirely of oak, and was
repaired in 1837 by Bishop Blomfield. Near the creek the houses are poor
and mean, inhabited by river-men, etc., and the place is called Little
Wapping. There is a little passage between creek and river, and in it
is a low door marked "The Seasons." It was here that Thompson wrote his
great poem, in a room overlooking the water, in the upper part of the
Doves public-house, which was then a coffee-tavern. The poem was so
little appreciated by the booksellers, who then combined the functions
of publishers with their own trade, that it was with difficulty he
persuaded one of them to give him three guineas for it.

Opposite is Sussex Lodge, once the residence of the Duke of Sussex, who
came to the riverside for change of air. It was afterwards inhabited by
Captain Marryat, the novelist. Sir Godfrey Kneller lived for a time in
the Upper Mall; and Bowack tells us that "Queen Katherine, when
Queen-Dowager, kept her palace in the summer time" by the river. This
was Catherine of Braganza, consort of Charles II. She came here after
his death, and remained until 1692. She took great interest in
gardening, and