on, and as
Henry Cromwell was married in Kensington parish church, there is nothing
improbable in the fact of his having lived in the parish. Faulkner
follows Lysons, and adds a detailed description of the house. He says:

"Over the mantelpiece there is a recess formed by the curve of the
chimney, in which it is said that the Protector used to conceal
himself when he visited the house, but why his Highness chose this
place for concealment the tradition has not condescended to inform
us."

In Faulkner's time the Earl of Harrington, who had come into possession
of the park estate by his marriage with its heiress, owned Cromwell
House; his name is preserved in Harrington Road close by. When the Manor
of Earl's Court was sold to Sir Walter Cope in 1609, Hale House, as it
was then called, and the 30 acres belonging to it, had been especially
excepted. In the eighteenth century the place was turned into a
tea-garden, and was well patronized, but never attained the celebrity of
Vauxhall or Ranelagh, and later was eclipsed altogether by Florida
Gardens further westward (see p. 32). The house was taken down in 1853.

The Natural History Museum is a branch of the British Museum, and,
though commonly called the South Kensington Museum, has no claim at all
to that title. The architect was A. Waterhouse, and the building rather
suggests a child's erection from a box of many coloured bricks. The
material is yellow terra-cotta with gray bands, and the ground-plan is
simple enough, consisting of a central hall and long straight galleries
running from it east and west. The mineralogical, botanical,
zoological, and geological collections are to be found here in
conformity with a resolution passed by the trustees of the British
Museum in 1860, though the building was not finished until twenty years
later. The collections are most popular, especially that of birds and
their nests in their natural surroundings; and as the Museum is open
free, it is well patronized, especially on wet Sunday afternoons. The
South Kensington Museum, that part of it already standing on the east
side of Exhibition Road, is the outcome of the Great Exhibition, and
began with a collection at Marlborough House. The first erection was a
hideous temporary structure of iron, which speedily became known as the
"Brompton Boilers," and this was handed over to the Science and Art
Department. In 1868 this building was taken down, and some of the
mate