- Birdcage Walk
Birdcage Walk is a street in
London ,United Kingdom , in theCity of Westminster . It runs east-west as a continuation ofGreat George Street , from the crossroads withHorse Guards Road andStorey's Gate , with the Treasury building on the north east corner, to a junction withBuckingham Gate , at the southeast corner ofBuckingham Palace .St. James's Park lies to the north, whilst to the south are the backs of buildings onOld Queen Street ,Queen Anne's Gate andPetty France , and, at the western end, the Wellington Barracks of theBrigade of Guards .The street is named after the Royal
Menagerie andAviary which were located there in the reign of King James I. King Charles II expanded the Aviary when the Park was laid out from 1660.Samuel Pepys andJohn Evelyn both mention visiting the Aviary in their diaries. [http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1661/08/18/ This entry] fromAugust 18 ,1661 mentions "and then to walk in St. James’s Park, and saw great variety of fowl which I never saw before".] [ [http://www.decoymans.co.uk/chapter9/page127.html An entry is quoted] in "The Book of Duck Decoys, their construction, management, and history", Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, Bt., Chapter 9, page 127: "...Evelyn's Diary, March 29, 1665. He says, "I went to St. James' Park, where I saw various animals, and examined the throat of ye 'Onocratylus,' or Pelican, a fowle between a Stork and a Swan, a melancholy waterfowl brought from Astracan by the Russian Ambassador; it was diverting to see how he would toss up and turn a flat fish, plaice or flounder, to get it right into its gullet..."] . Storey's Gate, named after Edward Storey, Keeper of the Kings Birds at the time of Pepys, was originally the gate at the eastern end of Birdcage Walk: the name is now applied to the street leading from the eastern end toWestminster Abbey , which was formerly called Prince's Street. [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=45182 Westminster: St. James's Park] , "Old and New London": Volume 4 (1878), pp. 47-60.]Only the
Royal Family and theHereditary Grand Falconer , theDuke of St Albans , were permitted to drive along the road until 1828, when it was opened to the public. A new roundabout was built at the western end in 1903. Simon Bradley andNikolaus Pevsner , "The Buildings of England: London 6: Westminster" (Yale University Press, 2003), p. 654.]Birdcage Walk is also the name of a march composed in 1951 by Arnold Steck.
References
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