ons says that Munster House was "occupied as a school."
Faulkner, in 1813, states that it was "in the occupation of M. Sampayo, a
Portuguese merchant." And his successor in the tenancy was John Wilson
Croker, Esq., M.P., then secretary of the Admiralty, and afterwards the
Right Hon. Mr. Croker, {171} a gentleman who brilliantly retired into
private life, but whose character is so well known, and has been so often
discussed in political and literary circles, that I shall only venture to
remark the local coincidence of three indefatigable secretaries of the
Admiralty, during the most critical periods of England's history--namely,
Sir Philip Stevens, Sir Evan Nepean, and Mr. Croker--having selected the
quietude of Fulham as the most convenient and attractive position in the
neighbourhood of London, where they might momentarily relax from the
arduous strain of official duties.

[Picture: Marble bust]

About 1820, Mr. Croker resigned Munster House as a residence, after
having externally decorated it with various Cockney embattlements of
brick, and collected there many curious works of art, possibly with a
view of reconstruction. In the garden were two marble busts, one of
which is figured on previous page. The other a female head, not unlike
that of Queen Anne.

There was also a fragment of a group, representing a woman with a child
at her side, obviously the decoration of a fountain, and a rustic stone
seat, conjectured to have been the bed of a formidable piece of ordnance.

[Picture: Woman and child--Rustic stone seat]

A recent tenant of Munster House, the Rev. Stephen Reid Cattley, who is
known to the reading public as the editor of an issue of Fox's 'Book of
Martyrs,' was unacquainted with the history of the relics in the garden,
and can only remember the removal of two composition lions from the
gate-piers of Munster House,--not placed there, it must be observed, by
Mr. Croker, but which had the popular effect, for some time, of changing
the name to _Monster House_. It is now a Lunatic Asylum. Opposite
Munster House is Dancer's extensive garden for the supply of the London
market, by the side of which a road runs leading by a turning on the left
direct back to Parson's Green, or if the straight road is kept, the
King's Road is reached opposite Osborn's Nursery; adjoining which nursery
is Churchfield House, the residence of Dr. Burchell the African
traveller.

[Picture: Fulham Lodge] Fulham Lod