Dean Stanley presented 2,000 volumes of standard works in 1883, to which others were added by his sister, Mrs. Vaughan, to whom they had been left for her lifetime. The library also contains 449 valuable volumes published by the Record Office. These consist of Calendars of State Papers, Reports of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Record Office, Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, and Records of Great Britain from the Reign of Edward the Confessor to Henry VIII. The Westminster Public Baths and Wash-houses, designed by the same architect are next door to the library. The Church House opposite is a very handsome building in a Perpendicular style; it is of red brick with stone dressings. The interior is very well furnished with fine stone and wood carving. The great hall holds 1,500 people, and runs the whole length of the building from Smith Street to Tufton Street. The roof is an open timber structure of the hammer-beam type, typical of fourteenth-century work. Near the north end of Great Smith Street is Queen Anne's Bounty Office, rebuilt 1900.
Orchard Street is so named from the Abbot's Orchard. John Wesley once lived here. In Old Pye Street a few squalid houses with low doorways remain to contrast with the immense flats known as Peabody's Buildings, which have sprung up recently. In 1862 George Peabody gave £150,000 for the erection of dwellings for the working classes, and to this he subsequently added £500,000. The first block of buildings was opened in Spitalfields, 1864. These in the neighbourhood of Old Pye Street were erected in 1882. Pye Street derives its name from Sir Robert Pye, member for Westminster in the time of Charles I., who married a daughter of John Hampden. St. Matthew Street was Duck Lane until 1864, and was a very malodorous quarter. Swift says it was renowned for second-hand bookshops. The Westminster Bluecoat School was first founded here.
St. Ann's Street and Lane are poor and wretched quarters. The name is derived from a chapel which formerly stood on the spot (see p. 37). Herrick lodged in the street when, ejected from his living in the country in 1647, he returned with anything but reluctance to his beloved London. He had resumed lay dress, but was restored to his living in 1662 in reward for his devoted loyalty to the Stuarts. The great musician, Henry Purcell, was born in St. Ann's Lane. Seymour, writing in 1735, says: "Great St. Ann's Lane, a pretty, handsome, well-built and well-inhabited place." St. Matthew's Church and Schools were built by Sir G. A. Scott in 1849-57.