Great George Street, made 1750--at the same time as the Bridge, Bridge Street, etc.--contains the Institution of Civil Engineers, a fine building, and at the west end is Delahay Street, once Duke Street, a very fashionable locality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The poet Matthew Prior lived here, and Bishop Stillingfleet died here in 1699. Duke Street Chapel, recently pulled down, was a very well-known place; it was originally part of a house, overlooking the park built by Judge Jeffreys, and the steps into the park at Chapel Place were made for Jeffreys' special convenience. In this wing of his house he sometimes heard cases, and it was later made into a chapel for private subscribers. Jeffreys' house was also used for a time as the Admiralty Office. In Delahay Street may be noted the west end of the Boar's Head Court, marking the spot where Cromwell's house stood. The space between Great George Street and Charles Street will soon be covered by Government offices, now in course of erection. When Parliament Street was made it effaced Clinker's Court, White Horse Yard, Lady's Alley, Stephen's Alley, Rhenish Wine Yard, Brewers' Yard, and Pensioners' Alley--some of the slums which had sprung up outside the Abbey precincts. Now Parliament Street in its turn is effaced, swallowed up in an extended Whitehall. King Street has been completely swept away, as one sweeps a row of crumbs from a cloth, but the part it played in the ancient history of Westminster is not yet forgotten. Undoubtedly the change could be justified: the thoroughfare is an important one, the view as now seen from the direction of Charing Cross one of the finest in the world; yet to gain it we have had to give, and one wonders sometimes whether the gain counterbalances the loss.
Beyond the now vacant space on the north are the great group of Government offices, the Home and Colonial Offices facing Parliament Street, and behind them the India and the Foreign Offices. Above Downing Street there are others, the Privy Council Office and the Treasury.
Downing Street is called after George Downing, an American Ambassador to the Hague under Cromwell and in Charles II.'s reign. John Boyle, Earl of Cork and Ossory and the last Earl of Oxford, lived here. Boswell occupied a house in Downing Street in 1763. But the street is chiefly associated with the official residence of the First Lord of the Treasury. Sir Robert Walpole accepted this house from George II. on condition it should belong to his successors in office for ever.