arets. The houses are very large, and, in spite of fashion having
deserted the district, can still show a goodly list of inhabitants.

The district lying to the west of Sussex Grove and Grove Road is the
poorest and most miserable in the borough. In Grove Road is a Home for
Female Orphans, a large gabled building. The girls are received here at
six years of age, and pass on to service when about sixteen. The little
village of Lisson Green stood out in the country not far from the great
Roman Road, the present Edgware Road (see p. 58), and it formed the
nucleus round which houses and streets sprang up. From the Marylebone
Road to St. John's Wood Road the streets are poor and squalid, abounding
in low courts and alleys. Several great Board Schools in the
neighbourhood of Great James Street rise up prominently, and round about
them neat lines of workmen's houses are gradually replacing the wretched
tenements. The district is still miserable, but it has bettered its
notoriously bad reputation of ten or twenty years ago.

St. Barnabas Church, near Bell Street, was built by Blomfield, and is in
a kind of French Gothic. Christ Church, in Stafford Street, not far off,
is surmounted by a cupola, and built in the classical style. It was the
work of P. Hardwick in 1825.

Earl Street is a long, dreary, but fairly respectable thoroughfare. The
Marylebone Theatre or Music Hall is in Church Street. This was opened
in 1842 as a penny theatre, and enlarged in 1854. In Church Street there
is also a Baptist chapel.

Salisbury and Carlisle Streets are indescribably dingy. In the latter is
St. Matthew's Church, which has the (perhaps) unique distinction of
having been built for a theatre. It was consecrated in 1853, and
restored forty years later. Close by the church, between the two streets
mentioned above, is the Portman Market. This was opened as a hay-market
in 1830, and the year following was dedicated to general uses. The
market is still held on Friday every week. Smith speaks of it as bidding
"fair to become a formidable rival to Covent Garden," a prophecy which
has not been fulfilled. There is another Board School of great size
between two miserable little streets on the east, and another a little
further north between Grove Road and Capland Street.

Infant, National, and Catholic Schools lie near North and Richmond
Streets. One or two of the houses to the north of the latter have still
retained a certain cottage-like appearance