Abstract

MARK GIROUARD HE associations that 'Scotland Yard' has today are of comparatively recent origin. It was only in 1829 that Sir Robert Peel's new Metropolitan Police Force moved into modest accommodation in the Scotland Yard area opposite the Admiralty (and subsequently took the name to its grand new headquarters on the Embankment). Before then Scotland Yard stood for architecture rather than the law. The area had originally formed the least prestigious end of the interminable rabbit warren which made up Whitehall Palace. From the sixteenth century onwards an increasing portion of its rambling and undistinguished buildings \vere occupied by the offices, staff accommodation, workrooms, stores, building yards and wharves of the King's Works - the organisation responsible not only for building or main- taining royal palaces, and for the temporary but often elaborate structures required for coronations and royal funerals, but also for the majority of government buildings. A huge collection of Works papers, dating from the early Middle Ages onwards, is now in the Public Record Office, and can be supplemented by additional material scattered in collections all over the country. The formidable task of investigating and making sense of this material has been one of the main