Canning [7/20] Caption: Just past Royal Crescent is Royal Crescent Hotel (now flats) . Round the corner, on the Burlington Street facade is a plaque to GEORGE CANNING (1770–1827). Canning has been called one of the best Foreign Secretaries that England ever had. He became Prime Minister in April 1827, but died a few months later. Take a good look at his plaque as it is one of the few designed by Eric Gill in the 1920's which is still in anything like its original state.