TOPOGRAPHY
THE ROYAL BOROUGH OF WINDSOR
Windsores, Vuindesor (xi cent.); Nova Windleshora (xii cent.); Windeshores, Windesorum, Windesores (xiii cent.); Windsoure, Windsore (xiv–xvii
cent.).
The parish of Windsor, more properly called New
Windsor, has an area of 2,559 acres, of which 59 are
covered by water. The borough of Windsor includes
the whole parish of New Windsor together with part
of the parish of Clewer. In 1894 the part of
Clewer within the borough was formed into the civil
parish of Clewer Within, the remainder being known
as Clewer Without. Dedworth, a hamlet of New
Windsor, was transferred to Clewer in 1878. Windsor Castle was extra-parochial until 1886, when the
Lower Ward was included, for purposes of rating,
within the borough of New Windsor. The rest of
the castle, being in the occupation of the Crown, is
not rateable.
The road from Slough and Eton enters the town
on the north, crossing the Thames by a bridge built
in 1823, on the site of the earliest bridge. The
road from Datchet, which enters the town on the
north-east, crosses the river by the Victoria Bridge,
of one arch, built in 1850, about which time there
was a rearrangement of the roads crossing the Home
Park. (fn. 1)
The plan of the town is irregular, the oldest part
lying in a comparatively small area between the
western front of the castle and the river, and west
and south of the castle. The centre of this older
portion is at the crossing of Thames Street and High
Street with Peascod Street and Castle Hill, close to
which point, in the High Street, are the parish
church of St. John Baptist, approached by a flight
of stone steps, the town hall, and the market-place. Sheet Street bounded mediaeval Windsor
in one direction and Windsor Bridge on the other. (fn. 2)
The extension of the residential portion of the town
to the west began in the early part of the 19th
century, and the further expansions to the north-west towards Clewer, and south-west towards Spital,
are later.
One of the oldest streets of the town is Thames
Street, from which a flight of steps, known as the
Hundred Steps, leads into the Lower Ward. The
houses in Thames Street built on the site of the
former castle ditch were removed in 1852. The
majority of the shops here and in High Street and
Peascod Street have modern shop fronts inserted on the
ground floor, but the superstructures of many are of
the 18th century or even earlier. None, however,
are of any great architectural interest. Thames Street
is continued as High Street, which contains the
White Hart Hotel, on the site of the famous Garter
Inn, and leads upward to the Castle Hill, the highest
point of the town. High Street is continued in the
south-westerly direction as Park Street, formerly
Pound Street, which leads into the Home Park by
Cambridge Lodge. Park Street has probably altered
very little since the close of the 18th century. The
houses are principally of red brick with tiled roofs
and some have Doric pilasters on either side of the
entrance doorways supporting entablatures.
Peascod Street runs at right angles into High
Street, opposite Castle Hill. The Duke's Head Inn,
in this street, took its name from the house occupied
by George Villiers Duke of Buckingham. The houses
in Church Street, which is opposite the Henry VIII
Gateway of the castle, are almost without exception
of the latter part of the 17th or early 18th century.
In the middle of the east side of the street stand two
fine late 17th-century red brick houses treated in one
design with tiled roofs. At either end are pilastered
doorways, above which, supported on carved brackets,
are projecting bays carried up the full height of the
building and roofed with hipped roofs, while at the
wall-head level is a wooden modillion cornice. On the
south side of this building is the King's Head Museum,
a small house of about the same date, and at the south
corner of the street stands the parish room, a two-storied 18th-century building with hipped dormers
in the roof. The walls are rough-casted and the
roof is tiled; the cornice is of wood and has carved
modillions. At the opposite corner of the street is a
large three-storied red brick building of 18th-century
date; on the north side of this is a house of similar
design, the walls of which are stuccoed. Higher up
the street, on the west side, there stands a four-story red brick house probably of early 18th-century
date.
Most of the old buildings in High Street, which
had tiled roofs and good interiors, and the quaint
shuttered shops in Peascod Street, have been pulled
down, but there are still a few houses in High Street
and Thames Street which contain oak panelling and
fine staircases. The town hall, which was begun
from the designs of Sir Thomas Fitz in 1687, and
completed after his death by Sir Christopher Wren,
is a building of brick and stone with an open area
beneath it, and a later addition on the east of brick
with stucco dressings containing the council chamber
and parlour. The three exposed elevations of the
hall are divided into two stages by a stone entablature
supported at the angles by rusticated piers and on the
west by plain Doric columns; on the north and south
the entablature is supported by elliptical arches
springing from smaller Doric columns. The intercolumniations, which were originally open, are now
filled with modern glazing. The upper stage, containing the hall, is of brick with stone quoins and a
crowning cornice, the end walls on the north and
south being finished with pediments following the
pitch of the roof. Six square-headed windows with
moulded stone architraves light the hall on the west,
while the north and south walls are each divided into
three bays by small Corinthian pilasters, the side bays
being occupied by windows like those on the west,
but having swags beneath their sills, and the centre
bay by a niche with a semicircular head. The niche
on the north contains a statue of Queen Anne with
the inscription:
'Arte tua, sculptor, non est imitabilis Anna;
Annae vis similem sculpere, sculpe deam
Anno Regni VI. A. S. MDCCVII. S. Chapman
Praetore.'
The Town Hall, Windsor
In the southern niche is a statue of Prince George
of Denmark, given by Christopher Wren, the son of
the architect, in 1713. Within the area under the
hall are columns which appear to support the floor,
but the beams do not in reality touch them. The
interior has been very much modernized.
In Church Lane adjoining the north-east corner of
the churchyard stands an early 18th-century red brick
building, the design of which is attributed to Wren.
It was formerly the free school, but is now used as a
masonic lodge. The house stands on a projecting
plinth and is two stories high with a tiled roof. The
elevations are symmetrically designed and have at the
wall-head level a moulded brick modillion cornice.
The central bays to both north and east elevations
project slightly, and the cornice to the latter is carried
up in a pointed pediment; the windows have segmental and semicircular heads.
Sheet Street, which appears early in the history
of the town, runs southwards from High Street and
is continued as King's Road. It contains the Royal
Albert Institute, a red brick building with stone
dressings opened by Edward VII when Prince of
Wales, in 1881.
Standing on the east side of Sheet Street, opposite
Victoria Street, is Hadleigh House. It is an 18th-century building of red brick, roofed with slates, and
three stories high with a basement and attics. There
is a wooden Ionic portico to the entrance doorway,
which is approached by a small flight of stone steps.
The house stands back from the roadway behind a
high brick wall with some fine ornamental entrance
gates of wrought-iron.
The names of several other streets which appear
early in the history of Windsor have been changed.
Queen's Street was formerly Butcher Row, St. Alban's
Street was Priest Street. River Street leads from
Thames Street down to the river and was formerly
called Beer Lane. At the foot of Castle Hill stands
a bronze statue of Queen Victoria in royal robes, by
Boehm, which was unveiled in 1887. The statue
is placed on a granite pedestal.
The King Edward VII Hospital, in St. Leonard's
Road, was opened by his late Majesty in 1909. The
Victoria Barracks, enlarged in 1911, lie south of
Victoria Street, and the Cavalry Barracks are in
St. Leonard's Road. The Windsor almshouses in
Victoria Street, founded in 1503, were rebuilt in
1862. Chariott's almshouses is a smaller foundation.
The Great Western railway has a station in George
Street, originally built in 1850, and entirely rebuilt and
remodelled with a new royal waiting-room in 1897.
This station was the scene of an attempt on the life of
Queen Victoria in 1882. The London and South-Western railway station is in the Datchet Road, and
has a private entrance for the use of the royal family.
The borough contains a good theatre, the Theatre
Royal, built in 1823, and rebuilt, after being burnt
down, in 1910. The first
theatre in Windsor was opened
in 1793. (fn. 3)
There is a public recreation
ground, known as Bachelors'
Acre, on the north side of
Sheet Street, where a revel
was held formerly every year.
Seventy-five acres of land lying
north of the castle which were
cut off from the rest of the
Home Park by the new road
from Windsor to Datchet
were, by order of Queen
Victoria, thrown open for the
use of the public.
The fairs formerly held in
the town on Easter Tuesday
and on 5 July have now been
abandoned. As early as 1811
they were described as 'very
inconsiderable.' (fn. 4) A weekly
market is, however, held on
Saturdays.
The first street to appear
on the records is Peascod
Street (Pesecroftestrete) in
1308. (fn. 5) Le Frithe, afterwards
Frith Lane, is found in 1321, (fn. 6)
and the name Hugh atte Gate
of Windsor suggests the existence of a town gate. (fn. 7) Among
15th and 16th-century place-names are Shete Strete, Bisshop's Strete, Puket's Lane,
Grope cownt Lane, Fishe
Strete, Prest Strete, Pokatt's
Gate, Spitell, tenements called
Tawneys, le Whitehorse, the
Black Egyll, the Saracen's hed,
the Ram, le Ledenporche, le
Crosse Keyes, the George and
Deryngs. (fn. 8)
The Home Park, containing 400 acres, is magnificently timbered with elms and oaks; among the
latter was the famous Herne's Oak which fell in
August 1863, its site being marked by a young
oak planted by Queen Victoria in the same year.
The Long Walk, with its avenue of elms, runs southwards from the George IV gateway of the castle
through the park in a straight line for 3 miles.
At the end of the Long Walk is the bronze
equestrian statue of George III in Roman dress,
by Westmacott, which stands on a granite pedestal
26 ft. high at the top of an elevation known as Snow
Hill.
Adelaide Cottage stands in a picturesque dell
within the Home Park, about half a mile to the
south-east of the castle. It is a small stuccoed two-storied building in the 'cottage-ornée' style of the
early 19th century. Over the entrance, which is on
the south side, is inscribed A.R. 1831, and on the
north where the ground rises above the level of the
ground floor of the southern portion are two large
rooms opening on to the garden. The northern of
the two rooms is a complete octagon, papered
internally with an interesting trellis-pattern paper,
while the southern room is decorated with fittings
from the old yacht 'Royal George.' Adelaide
Lodge, immediately to the south of the cottage, is
designed in the same manner and serves as a
gardener's residence. The names of the two houses
were formerly reversed.
Church Street, showing Old Houses and Henry VIII Gateway
Frogmore House, (fn. 9) about three-quarters of a mile
to the south of the castle, is a stuccoed building
consisting of a plain three-storied central block with
low projecting wings on the north and south connected on the ground floor of the west front by a
glazed and painted wooden colonnade of the Tuscan
order. The central block dates from the first half of
the 18th century and retains some detail of that
period in the brick groining of the basement beneath
it and the panelling of two of the rooms on the
ground floor, but on the purchase of the house by
the Crown in 1792 the interior was almost entirely
redecorated by Wyatt, who also added the colonnade
on the west with the portions of the wings immediately adjoining the original building on the north
and south. A print of 1794 preserved in the house
shows these works as on the point of completion, but
without the large rooms at the extreme ends of the
west front, and with the colonnade unglazed. The
wings appear to have been extended to their present
size between this date and 1819, as the view in
Pyne's 'Royal Residences' shows the garden front
precisely as it now exists. The principal entrance
is in the centre of the east front and is covered by a
'porte cochère' with stone Doric columns and entablature, evidently an addition of the 19th century.
The porch admits directly to a well-proportioned
staircase hall with a black and white stone pavement;
the stairs have a central and two return flights on
either side, the handrails being supported by delicately
designed wrought-iron balustrading, while the first-floor landing over the hall is supported by fluted
Corinthian columns of wood with answering pilasters.
The equerry's room to the left of the hall and the
small room adjoining it are lined with oak panelling
of the original date of the house. On the west side
of the central block, and entered directly from the
entrance hall, is the small dining-room; no features
of architectural interest remain here, but the ante-chamber or lobby opening out of it on the east has a
good late 18th-century ceiling. From this lobby the
rooms in the south wing, which are planned 'en suite,'
are entered. The walls and ceiling of the first of these
rooms are decorated with flower-paintings by Mary
Moser, R.A., while the large drawing-room adjoining
it is a very complete and charming example of early
Victorian decoration from the panelled paper on the
walls to the flowered carpet on the floor. The doorcases and mouldings are painted in white and gold,
and the room is lighted on the west by a large semicircular bay window, a recess of the same form
answering to it on the east. The suite is completed by the large dining-room, a plain room of no
artistic interest. The north wing, which is arranged
in the same manner, contains the library, the yellow
drawing-room, the king's writing-room, lighted on
the west by a bay window corresponding to that of the
large drawing-room, and the queen's writing-room,
or boudoir. The landing at the head of the principal
stairs leads by two doors directly into a narrow gallery
running from back to front in the centre of the first
floor, the walls of which are painted in the Pompeian
manner; this decoration is probably the work of one
of the daughters of George III, perhaps the Princess
Elizabeth, who is known to have decorated two of
the ground-floor rooms in imitation Japan; the execution is somewhat crude, the swags of the frieze and
some of the smaller figures being merely cut out of
paper and pasted on. On the west front, leading
out of the gallery on the north, is the bedroom in
which the Duchess of Kent died, and on the south a
sitting-room. These and the remaining rooms on
the upper floors are quite plain and contain no
fittings of interest. On the west side of the house
is a large piece of artificial water, skilfully laid out in
a winding course, and in the grounds are several
summer-houses, one of which, designed in the
'Gothic taste,' has some wrought detail brought
from St. George's Chapel. A little under a quarter of
a mile to the north of the house is Frogmore Cottage,
a plain two-storied early 19th-century building.
On the west side of the water, about the same
distance to the west of the house, is the mausoleum of
Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort. The building,
which is in the Italian Renaissance manner, was designed by Professor Grüner and consists of a central
domed octagon, 30 ft. in diameter, with four transepts at the cardinal points, each 16 ft. deep, and
connected with each other by curved aisles or ambulatories encircling the octagon. The walls are of granite
to the sill level of the aisle windows, and of Portland
stone above, the pilasters at the angles of the transepts being entirely of granite. The domed plaster
ceiling of the central portion is framed with teak and
has a low-pitched pyramidal roof covered, like those
of the rest of the structure, with Australian copper.
The whole building stands upon a paved terrace
following its outline and is entered by a doorway
in the end wall of the east transept beneath a large
triple-arched porch with polished granite columns
and pilasters, approached from the terrace level by
black marble steps. Both transepts and porch have
low-pitched gables, and the windows, which are all
round-headed, are arranged, with the exception of
those of the aisles, in groups of three. Over the
entrance doorway is inscribed:—
'Alberti Principis quod mortale erat | hoc in
sepulcro deponi voluit | vidua moerens Victoria
Regina A. D. MDCCCLXII | Vale desideratissime!
Hic demum conquiescam tecum | tecum in Christo
consurgam.'
The doors themselves are of gun-metal fashioned
in panels, and behind them is a well-executed grille
of the same material gilded. Internally the central
octagon opens to the transepts by four great arches of
Sicilian marble springing from an entablature which
is continued round the walls of the transepts and
across the four blank faces of the octagon and is
supported beneath the arches and at the angles of the
transepts by Corinthian pilasters with gilt bronze
capitals and bases. The pilasters stand upon pedestals,
the mouldings of which are likewise continued round
the building. The drum of the dome, which is also
octagonal, rises from an enriched dentil cornice
immediately above the great arches and the intervening pendentives, and is lighted from each face by
three grouped round-headed windows divided by
polished granite shafts with gilt bronze capitals, while
from the angles spring the ribs of the dome, the shell
of which is arched over the windows. In each of the
blank faces of the octagon below the main entablature is a hemispherical-headed niche of marble with
a canopy of gilt bronze containing statues of Daniel,
by Gustav Kuntz; Isaiah, unsigned; David, by F.
Rentsch; and Solomon, by H. B. Baumer; all of
white marble. The niches are surrounded by panels
of various coloured marbles with borders of white
marble, while the pendentives above contain paintings
of the four Evangelists, also inclosed by panels of
coloured marbles. The drum of the dome is painted
in imitation of marble, and the eight ribs are fashioned
as gilded angels, the dome itself being painted with
angels and stars on a gold ground. In the centre of
the marble pavement beneath, standing on a black
marble step, is the sarcophagus containing the bodies
of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort, a huge mass
of Cairn-gall granite with their recumbent effigies in
white marble on the top and four bronze angels at the
corners, the work of Baron Marochetti. The transepts have barrel-vaulted ceilings concentric with the
great arches enriched with paintings and plaster basreliefs, and are lighted from their end walls by triplets
of round-headed windows above the main entablature.
In the west transept is placed a marble altar, and
above it is a large painting on canvas of the Resurrection, while the end walls of the north and south
transepts have similar paintings of the Nativity and
the Crucifixion. In the south transept is the memorial
to Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, a marble
table tomb with the recumbent effigies of herself and
her child. Small arches of white marble open from the
side walls of the transepts into the aisles, and round
these are painted arabesque panels. In their jambs
are niches, all of which originally contained vases of
serpentine, but three of these have been replaced by
busts of Leopold Duke of Albany, the Grand Duke of
Hesse, and Prince Henry of Battenberg. The aisles
are lighted by round-headed windows with jambs
painted in imitation of marble and are covered by
barrel ceilings.
A little distance to the south-east upon an artificial
promontory on the east bank of the water is the
mausoleum of the Duchess of Kent, a circular domed
building surrounded by a peristyle of polished granite
Ionic columns with bronze capitals and bases. The
whole stands upon a circular terrace approached by
balustraded flights of steps, beneath which is the
vault containing the sarcophagus. On the frieze of
the peristyle is inscribed:—
'Hoc templum pietatis monumentum consecrarunt
Victoria Britt: regina et Albertus consorseius an. sal.
MDCCCLXI Victoriae Mariae Louisae Cantii ducissae matris dilectissimae reliquiis conservandis.'
The doors are of gunmetal backed with oak, and
within the cell is a white marble statue of Her Royal
Highness, by Theed, standing upon a pavement of
coloured marbles. The walls are painted with the
heraldry of her husband and her ancestors of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld upon a ground of scarlet drapery,
and light is obtained from an internal dome of blue
glass with yellow stars, itself borrowing light from the
eye of the external dome.
The Home Park also contains the royal gardens,
dairy and dairy farm and the Prince Consort's Home
Farm and Shaw Farm, model farms established by the
Prince Consort and maintained by King Edward VII
and King George V, and also the Queen's aviary,
which contains a fine collection of birds. Lower
Lodge was occupied in the 17th century by the Duke
of St. Albans, being then known as Burford House.
It was bought by George III and was later occupied
by members of the royal family. The whole of the
Home Park and a small part of Windsor Great Park (fn. 10)
lie within the parish.