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Suburbs: Pimlico

Westminster was denominated after the Abbey [see WESTMINSTER ABBEY]. Belgravia is the name given to the fashionable district of which Belgrave Square is the common centre. Pimlico owed its designation to an attempt on the part of the tavernkeepers of this neighbourhood to rival the celebrated nut-brown ales of one Ben Pimlico, who kept a pleasure-garden near Hoxton, the road to which was known as Pimlico Walk (still in existence), and the garden itself, first as "Pimlico's," and subsequently as "Pimlico." The name of Knightsbridge carries us back to the time when two knights, on their way to receive a blessing from the Bishop of London at Fulham, engaged in a deadly combat on the bridge that spanned the Westbourne, exactly on the spot where Albert Gate now stands. Prior to this incident the bridge had borne the name of Fulham Bridge. Mayfair occupies the site of an annual six days' fair held in May, originally at the instance of Edward I., for the benefit of the leper hospital of St. James the Less, Bishop of Jerusalem, now St. James's Palace. The district of Soho was known by its present name as long ago as the sixteenth century; "So ho!" being the cry of the huntsmen when calling off their harriers in the days when the whole of London west of Drury Lane was open country. Bloomsbury is a corruption of "Lomesbury Village," of which the Manor House stood on the site of Bloomsbury Square. Smithfield is a modern perversion of "Smoothfield," an extensive tract of meadow land where horses were sold and tournaments were held as far back as the twelfth century. The first recorded English horserace was witnessed in Smoothfield in the year 1154. Clerkenwell derived its name from an ancient well (now marked by an iron pump let into the wall at London Districts and Suburbs. the south-east end of Ray Street) beside which the parish clerks performed their Miracle Plays.