was also
abandoned. Finally, the present site to the north of the old church was
secured after many delays. Mr. Thomas Hardwicke (a pupil of Sir W.
Chambers) was the architect of the new church, which was designed at
first to be merely a chapel of ease. The first stone was laid July 5,
1813; when the building was finished it was resolved to make it the
parish church, and the old church the chapel of ease. Accordingly, this
was done by Act of Parliament, and the new church consecrated on
February 4, 1817. In this church Robert Browning was married in 1846.

The building is of great size, seating over 1,400 people. The front is
ornamented by an immense portico with six Corinthian columns, and the
building is surmounted by a high belfry tower. In 1883-84 a thorough
investigation of the church took place. The interior was restored in the
Italian Renaissance style, the architect employed being T. Harris. An
apse was added and other alterations made. The necessary funds were
raised by a bazaar held in the Portman Rooms, Baker Street, in which all
the features of the old Marylebone Gardens were reproduced. Close beside
the church are the Central National Schools of St. Marylebone, with a
higher grade Technical School for boys and girls opening on to the High
Street. The latter building overlooks the graveyard filled with hoary
tombstones.

At the top of High Street, in the Marylebone Road, formerly stood a
turnpike, otherwise there is little to remark on in High Street. It has
fallen from its former importance, and is a dingy, uninteresting
thoroughfare with poor shops. This, being one of the older streets,
follows a tortuous course, in contrast with more modern streets
westward. We are now at the nucleus of the old village of Marylebone.

Nearly opposite to the old church was the manor-house, and its site can
be fixed accurately; it was at the end of the present Devonshire Place
mews, and is incorrectly described in one or two books as having been on
the site of Devonshire mews, which would take it out of the High Street
altogether.

This manor-house was originally a royal palace, built by Henry VIII.,
doubtless as a kind of hunting-lodge for the adjacent Marylebone Park,
as Regent's Park was then called.

It is said to have been visited by Mary and Elizabeth, and as there are
authentic records of the latter Queen's entertainment of the Russian
Ambassador here, the statement is probably true. The house was rebuilt
and c