The now huge town of Lambeth presents few points of interest either to the visitor or to the historian. There are no buildings of any antiquity except the Palace and the Church. There are no modern buildings at all worth notice. There have been two or three memorable houses which we shall do well to touch upon: but they are not so memorable as to deserve long description. The Bishops of Rochester had a house in the Marsh--the site is in Carlisle Place, Westminster Road, at the back of St. Thomas's Hospital, close to Lambeth Palace. It was in this house that, in 1531, a wretched man named Robert Roose, in the Bishop's service as cook, wilfully, as was alleged, poisoned a large number of people, and was boiled to death in oil--the only instance, I believe, of this dreadful punishment. The wretched man was tied naked to a post and slowly lowered into the boiling fluid. Fisher was the last Bishop of Rochester who lived in this house. The buildings, with losses and additions, existed in some form or other till 1827. The house, indeed, had a strangely chequered history. The Bishop of Rochester exchanged it with the Crown for a house thought more convenient in Southwark, close to Winchester House. The Crown gave it to the Bishop of Carlisle, who seems to have let it on lease: thus it lost its ecclesiastical character altogether and became given over to entirely secular uses. It was at one time a pottery: then a tavern, and even a notorious and disorderly house: then a dancing master taught his accomplishments in the house: then it became a school. Finally, the gardens were built over, the operations disclosing many interesting gates and 'bits.'
Another house was that belonging to the Duke of Norfolk: it was called Norfolk House, and it stood on the other side of the Palace, on the site now marked by Paradise Street. Here lived the old Duke whose life was saved by the death of Henry the Eighth; here was brought up the accomplished Earl of Surrey whose life would have been saved had Henry died a few days earlier. Leland, the antiquary and scholar, was the Earl's tutor. The widow of Dr. Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, obtained the house. Her heirs ceased to live in it; the house was neglected, probably because no tenant could be found for it. Finally, it was pulled down. It is interesting to note the town houses which stood upon the Bank from Rotherhithe to Battersea: that of the Prior of Lewes; of Sir John Fastolfe; of the Augustines; the House of St. Mary Overies; Winchester House; Rochester House; Norfolk House; and later, the house of the St. Johns at Battersea. There are none between Bankside and Lambeth; that part of the Embankment which lies between Blackfriars and Westminster Bridge has no history and no associations.