Scotland Yard

(Great, and New) Westminster (SW1) At one time an appendage to the royal palace of Whitehall, the name of Scotland Yard is now most familiar as the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police and the Criminal Investigation Department. In Scotland Yard as it formerly existed there was a small palace, built for the reception of the Kings of Scotland (hence the name) , when they came to do homage for their fiefs in Cumberland. In the reign of Henry VIII the palace was appropriated to the Queen Margaret of Scotland, his sister, and widow of James II of Scotland, in right of their descent from whom the Stuarts afterwards. ascended the throne of Great Britain. Milton, when he was Latin Secretary to Cromwell, had lodgings in Scotland Yard. Vanbrugh, the poet and architect, built a house for himself there out of the ruins of the old palace of Whitehall, which was burned down at the close of the seventeenth century. (Reference: Smith's Streets of London, pp. 93-5)