Poland Street

Poland street, a new str. on the Nly side of Broad str. near Berwick str. in Soho fields.

Poland street, Oxford street.

Poland street, Oxford street,—at 365, the sixth on the L. about ⅓ of a mile from St. Giles's, extending to 14, Broad-street.

Poland St., Oxford-street, is about one third of a mile from St. Giles's.

Poland Street, Oxford Street, Dr. Burney (author of the History of Music} and Dr. Macaulay (husband of Mrs. Macaulay, the historian) both resided in this street. Dr. Burney came to live here in 1760, when his second daughter Fanny was eight years old. Seventy-two years afterwards she wrote:

The new establishment was in Poland Street; which was not then, as it is now, a sort of street that, like the rest of its neighbourhood, appears to be left in the lurch. House fanciers were not yet as fastidious as they are become at present, from the endless variety of new habitations. Oxford Road, as at that time Oxford Street was called, into which Poland Street terminated, had little on its further side but fields, gardeners' grounds, or uncultivated suburbs. Portman, Manchester, Russell, Belgrave Squares, Portland Place, etc.; had not yet a single stone, or brick laid, in signal of intended erection; while in plain Poland Street, Mr. Burney then had successively for his neighbours, the Duke of Chandos, Lady Augusta Bridges, the Hon. John Smith and the Miss Barrys, Sir Willoughby and the Miss Astons; and well noted by Mr. Burney's little family, on the visit of his black majesty to England, sojourned almost immediately opposite to it, the Cherokee King.—Memoirs of Dr. Burney, vol. i. p. 134.

In this house died his first wife, Esther Sleepe, the mother of Fanny Burney, of Dr. Charles Burney, and of that Admiral Burney who when a schoolboy had seen the handcuffs placed on the wrists of Eugene Aram, while in early manhood had witnessed the death of Captain Cook, and in his closing years was a much loved companion of Charles Lamb. Here, September 29, 1766, died the old Earl of Cromarty, who was pardoned by King George II. for the part he took in the Rebellion of 1745. Sir William Chambers, the architect, lived here before he removed to Berners Street about 1770. Gavin Hamilton, the painter, lived in this street in 1779, after his return from Italy. In 1787 William Blake took lodgings in this street—the house "No. 28 (now [1863, a tobacconist's in 1890] a cheesemonger's shop, and boasting three brass bells), not many doors from Oxford Street, on the right-hand side going towards that thoroughfare."¹ He left it for Hercules Buildings, Lambeth, in 1793. Schnebbelie, the engraver of many views of Old London, was living here in 1792. The poet Shelley on his expulsion from Oxford in 1811 took lodgings at No. 15, in this street.

---

¹ Gilchrist's Life of Blake, vol. i. p. 60.