part iv
. (1816), p. 175; Clinch’s _Marylebone and St. Pancras_; Palmer’s _St. Pancras_; Miller’s _St. Pancras_; Roffe’s _St. Pancras_ (1865), p. 10; Lewis’s _Islington_, p. 37, note; Walford, v. 339.]
VIEWS.
1. A bird’s-eye view of St. Pancras Wells, showing the garden, house, &c., the old church, &c., with a description of the mineral waters. A tinted drawing, 1751, Crace, _Cat._ p. 580, No. 57. The original engraving is of _circ._ 1730; _see_ Palmer’s _St. Pancras_, p. 246, ff.; Clinch’s _Marylebone_, p. 156; Walford, v. 336.
2. “The south-west view of Pancras Church and Wells.” Chatelain del., J. Roberts sc., 1750. Crace, _Cat._ p. 579, No. 45; W. Coll. (Pl. 30 in Chatelain’s _Fifty Views_); also the south-east view, Chatelain’s _Fifty Views_, pl. 29, with “Adam and Eve.”
3. Pancras Wells. A north view of the garden, house, &c. Copy of an old drawing, 1775, Crace, _Cat._ p. 580, No. 58.
4. A view of the Long Room at St. Pancras, and the Trap-Ball Ground. Copy of an old drawing, 1775. Crace, _Cat._ p. 580, No. 59.
5. Colonel Jack robbing Mrs. Smith going to Kentish Town (near the Wells). W. Jett del., J. Basire sc., 1762. Crace, _Cat._ p. 580, No. 60.
ADAM AND EVE TEA GARDENS, ST. PANCRAS
The Adam and Eve Tavern, situated near the west end of old Saint Pancras Church, was in existence at least as early as 1730[128], and is mentioned in 1754[129] as a resort of the London “cit.” In 1778 it could boast of a long room adorned with gilt-framed oval pier-glasses;[130] and in 1786 the landlord, Charles Eaton, advertised[131] the attractions of his gardens and pleasure grounds.
About the beginning of the present century it could still be described as an agreeable retreat “with enchanting prospects,” and the gardens were well laid out with arbours, flowers and shrubs. Cows were kept for making syllabubs, and on summer afternoons a regular company met to play bowls and trap-ball in an adjacent field. One proprietor fitted out a mimic squadron of frigates in the garden, and the long room was a good deal used for bean-feasts, and tea-drinking parties.[132]
In 1803, about three and a half acres of the Adam and Eve tea-gardens were taken to form the St. Giles-in-the-Fields Cemetery (adjoining the old St. Pancras Churchyard), though the tavern still lingered on. In later years (_circ._ 1865–1874) the Adam and Eve was an ordinary public-house. It still retained (1874) a portion of its old grounds, which were used by its frequenters for bowl-playing. This ground, however, was enclosed by a high wall, and was overlooked by the mean houses that formed Eve Place. The building has since been taken down.
[F. Miller’s _St. Pancras_, pp. 45 and 49; Palmer’s _St. Pancras_, pp. 244, 245; Roffe’s _St. Pancras_, p. 3; _Picture of London_, ed. 1802, p. 370; Wheatley’s _London_, III., 20, 22, 23; _see also_ notes.]
VIEWS.
The Adam and Eve is shown in the 1730 view of Pancras Wells, and in the views of old St. Pancras Church, _e.g._, in the “South view of the Church of St. Pancras,” printed for Bowles and Carver (W. Coll.).
THE ASSEMBLY HOUSE, KENTISH TOWN
The Assembly House was in existence in 1725[133] or earlier, and consisted of a large inn, partly built of wood, with a Long Room on the south, entered from outside by a covered staircase. This room for many years continued to be used for dancing by the élite of the neighbourhood.
By about 1776 the village of Kentish Town had become a somewhat populous place, and in the summer-time was much resorted to by Londoners, who took lodgings there, or made brief excursions thither. In 1788 the Assembly House was taken by a Mr. Thomas Wood, who specially advertised his trap-ball and skittle-ground, pleasant summer-house, and extensive garden.
The house was pulled down in 1853, and its site and that of the garden covered by houses. The Assembly House tavern (No. 298 Kentish Town Road) and a police station have been built on the baiting ground and yard that were formerly in front of the old house.
[Miller’s _St. Pancras_, p. 294, ff.; Roffe’s _St. Pancras_, pp. 10, 11; Walford, v. p. 320; Palmer’s _St. Pancras_, p. 62, ff.]
VIEWS.
1. “The Assembly Rooms, Kentish Town, 1750,” Walford, v. p. 313.
2. “The Old Assembly House, Kentish Town,” May 1853; drawn and etched by W. B. Rye, _Etchings_, London, 1857.
WHITE CONDUIT HOUSE
White Conduit House was originally a small ale-house of the seventeenth century, and, according to tradition, the workmen who built it were carousing there to celebrate its completion on the day of the execution of Charles I.
It derived its name from the water-conduit, faced with white stone, which stood in a field nearly opposite. In 1731 White Conduit House was still a one-storied building, but between that date and about 1745 it was pulled down, or altered,[134] and a Long Room added.
From about 1745 the garden was well laid out, and possessed a circular fish-pond and a number of pleasant arbours. Robert Bartholomew, the proprietor in 1754, added a long walk, and, to prevent his visitors being in the “least incommoded from people in the fields,” constructed a fence some seven feet in height. Hot loaves, tea, coffee and liquors ‘in the greatest perfection’ were the refreshments offered, and he assured those who drank his milk, procured directly from the cow, that his animals “eat no grains.” Cricket was played at this time (1754) in a meadow adjoining the house; bats and balls being provided by the proprietor.[135]
The house contained rooms for tea-drinking, and also the Long Room, from whence “is the most copious prospects and airy situation of any now in vogue,” a description ungrammatical but correct, for White Conduit House at this time, and until about 1775, was picturesquely situated. Standing on rising ground, and environed by pleasant country lanes and pastures, it commanded towards the north fine views of Hampstead and Highgate.
In 1774 the gardens at the back of the house were described as being laid out with several pleasing walks, prettily disposed, with the pond in the centre, and an avenue of trees. For the accommodation of the tea-drinkers, there were “genteel boxes” let into the hedges, and decorated with Flemish paintings. A large painting was placed at the far end of the avenue, and seemed to increase its length.
Under Robert Bartholomew (who was probably proprietor until his death in 1766) White Conduit had become a popular tea-garden, and till about the end of the eighteenth century, its visitors, though never in the least people of fashion, were on the whole of a respectable class. The favourite day was Sunday in the spring and summer-time, when large numbers of holiday-folk crowded the house and gardens. The ‘City prig,’ in white satin waistcoat and scratch wig; the graver man of business, clad in brown, his wife and family, were persons of consequence here; while their dependants also spent their holiday at the same place:--
Wish’d Sunday’s come, mirth brightens ev’ry face, And paints the rose upon the housemaid’s cheek, Harriot, or Mol, more ruddy. Now the heart Of ’prentice, resident in ample street, Or alley, kennel-wash’d, Cheapside, Cornhill, Or Cranbourne, thee for calcuments renown’d, With joy distends. His meal meridian o’er With switch in hand, he to White Conduit House Hies merry-hearted. Human beings here In couples multitudinous assemble, Forming the drollest group that ever trod Fair Islingtonian plains. Male after male, Dog after dog succeeding, husbands, wives, Fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, And pretty little boys and girls. Around, Across, along the gardens’ shrubby maze They walk, they sit, they stand. What crowds press on, Eager to mount the stairs, eager to catch First vacant bench, or chair in long room plac’d. Here prig with prig holds conference polite, And indiscriminate the gaudy beau And sloven mix. Here he who all the week Took bearded mortals by the nose, or sat Weaving dead hairs, and whistling wretched strain, And eke the sturdy youth, whose trade it is Stout oxen to contund, with gold-bound hat And silken stocking strut. The red-arm’d belle Here shows her tasty gown, proud to be thought The butterfly of fashion.[136]
Curtseys, bows and compliments were the order of the day. A White Conduit method of effecting an introduction was for the gallant ’prentice to tread on the lady’s train, to apologise profusely, and finally to suggest an adjournment for tea in one of the arbours. By five o’clock on a fine Sunday afternoon a seat was hardly procurable; for the tea-drinking was then in full vigour, and the famous White Conduit loaves[137] in great request.
Among its frequenters White Conduit House could number Oliver Goldsmith, who was wont (_circ._ 1768) to call there at tea-time on his “shoemaker’s holidays.”[138] (cp. Highbury Barn, _infra_). On one occasion, meeting in the gardens the wife and daughters of a tradesman to whom he was under some obligation, he treated the ladies handsomely to refreshments; only to find when the reckoning came, that his purse was empty.[139] Abraham Newland, the famous cashier of the Bank of England, was also a visitor at White Conduit, and, at a later time George Cruikshank[140] made many of his character sketches there. The visitors came to dread his sketchbook, and children who made faces were set on their good behaviour by the threat that Mr. Cruikshank would put them in his book.
In 1794, or earlier, the owner of White Conduit was Mr. Christopher Bartholomew,[141] a man of considerable means, who did much to improve the grounds. At one time he owned the freeholds of both the Angel Inn, Islington, and White Conduit House, and was said to be worth £50,000. Having won a lottery prize, he gave a public breakfast in the Conduit gardens “to commemorate the smiles of fortune,” as the invitation tickets expressed it. Unfortunately his taste for gambling in the Lottery increased, and soon his entire fortune was squandered, and he ultimately died in poverty at a mean lodging in March, 1809, at the age of sixty-eight.
The surroundings of White Conduit House were still agreeable, and in 1803 we find references to the fine prospect, and the mild refreshing breezes from the abundant hay crops for which the district was noted. By about 1833, however, brickfields and rows of houses had destroyed its rural aspect.
Until about the beginning of the present century, White Conduit House appears to have had no entertainments apart from its tea-gardens, and from the organ performances[142] in the house. But under the proprietorship of Sharpe and Warren (from about 1811, or earlier, till 1828) several changes took place. The pond was filled in and planted over, and a new tea and dancing saloon, dignified by the name of the Apollo Room, and subsequently converted into a billiard-room, was erected in the north-west angle of the gardens. The tea-boxes were enlarged, and the old paintings removed or defaced. A pretty miniature steeple, set up in the last century, and a maze were still to be seen in the garden. From about 1825 White Conduit House possessed a band-stand, and a small stage erected at the north-east end of the grounds, which were further embellished with fountains and statuary.
Bowls and dutch-pins were played, and archery (in 1827) was a popular amusement. Balloon-ascents were also a feature; the most important being those made by Graham (1823–1825); Mrs. Graham (1826); Charles Green (1828); and John Hampton in 1842, and on 19 August 1844 when Hampton was accompanied by “Mr. Wells” (Henry Coxwell). In 1824 (September) at a Benefit and Gala Fête thirty kinds of fireworks were displayed: fiery pigeons flew across the gardens, and two immense snakes went in pursuit of one another.
In 1825 the place was advertised as “the New Vauxhall: White Conduit Gardens,” and evening concerts, variety entertainments and firework displays were given in the grounds. On 21 June of this year, in commemoration of the Battle of Waterloo, a grand Gala and Rural Fête took place in the evening, with a concert and fireworks. There was music in the Quadrille Room and the Country Dance Room; and for dancing in the Grand Walk, the Pandean band The gardens were illuminated by variegated lamps; “vigilant officers” were in attendance, and no person was admitted “in dishabille.” The admission was two shillings.
[Illustration: WHITE CONDUIT HOUSE.]
Chabert,[143] the fire-eater, was here in 1826 (June). After swallowing arsenic, oxalic acid, boiling oil and molten lead, without, it is said, feeling any inconvenience, he entered a large heated oven, supported by four pillars, and there cooked a leg of lamb and a rump steak, which he proceeded to divide among the spectators. The admission was half a crown and eighteenpence. In July of this year, Mrs. Bland here made her last public appearance. This singer,[144] well-known for the sweet quality of her mezzo-soprano voice and unaffected rendering of English ballads, was long attached to Drury Lane Theatre, and for several years appeared at Vauxhall. About 1824 her mind became affected, and on her recovery she was glad to accept an engagement at an inferior place of entertainment.
In October 1826 the magistrates in granting the license stipulated that the music should cease at 11.30 P.M., and that the gardens should close at 11.45. Masquerades and fireworks were prohibited. These restrictions, however, appear to have been subsequently withdrawn or disregarded.
About this period (1826) part of the south side of the gardens was cut off by the formation of Warren Street; and a few years later (before 1833) a gasometer and a tall chimney disfigured the north-east corner of the grounds.
The accommodation of White Conduit House having now become insufficient, a new hotel was contemplated. The first stone was laid on 2 February 1829, Messrs. Bowles and Monkhouse being then the proprietors. About the middle of June 1829[145] the new building, referred to in the bills as “New Minor Vauxhall: White Conduit House, Hotel and Tavern,” was opened with a concert and ball. It was a tall, plain structure. Its chief room, a large hall about eighty feet by sixty, was much used for dances, dinners, and political meetings.
From many of the laudatory press notices, from about 1826 onwards, it might appear that White Conduit House was a crowded and even fashionable resort. But this was by no means the case. Surrounding buildings had spoilt the place, and at this period “Vite Cundick Couse,” as its Cockney visitors called it, was comparatively neglected: the chimes of the miniature steeple were silent, and the gardens had lost their rural charm.
Hone[146] severely describes it as a “starveling show of odd company and coloured lamps” possessing a mock orchestra with mock singing, and a dancing room, in which no respectable person would care to be seen. In 1832 (November) the magistrates refused to grant the license, and in 1834 (15 February) the proprietor was fined £5 for the “rowdy” conduct of some of the audience. A satirical visitor in 1838[147] ridicules the vocal attainments of the singers, and the gaudy dresses of the female performers, whose heads were decorated with blue roses and adorned with corkscrew curls. The audiences were now composed of the artisan class, the small shop-keeper, the apprentice and shop lad; with a sprinkling of lawyers’ clerks recognisable by their long hair, worn-out “four and ninepenny gossamers,” short trousers, and blucher boots, and by their conversation, which is described as no less objectionable than their cabbage-leaf cigars.
From 1830 till the close of the place in 1849 the entertainments, beginning about 7.30, were of a very varied character; concerts, juggling, farces and ballets. The admission, occasionally sixpence, was usually one shilling; half of which was sometimes returned in refreshments. Ladies and children generally came in half price. A diorama, and moonlight view of Holyrood were exhibited in 1830; and about the same time Miss Clarke made one of her ascents upon an inclined rope attached to a platform above the highest trees in the garden, reaching this eminence “amidst a blaze of light.” Here, too, in 1831 (August), and also in 1836 and 1837, Blackmore of Vauxhall made some of his “terrific ascents.” A play of T. Dibdin’s entitled the ‘Hog in Armour’ was performed in 1831 (April), and Charles Sloman, the clever impromptu versifier, appeared in August and September 1836.
In 1839 Breach the proprietor, who exerted himself in popularising the house, placed its amusements under the management of John Dunn,[148] styled the English Jim Crow on account of his imitations of T. D. Rice in “Jump Jim Crow.” In 1841 a large painting of Windsor Castle and the park-troops was placed at the end of the centre (then denominated the Chinese) walk; and in 1842 (July and August), a Mr. Bryant being the landlord, Batty’s Circus was engaged.
In 1843 R. Rouse was the proprietor, and in these later years the amusements of White Conduit House gradually deteriorated, until they were terminated on 22 January, 1849, by a Ball given for the benefit of the check-takers. Three days afterwards the demolition of the house was begun, and it was soon levelled for a new line of streets, the present White Conduit public-house being erected on part of the site.
The gardens had extended from Penton Street, in an easterly direction, to White Conduit Street, now called Cloudesley Road. Albert Street now approximately marks their southern boundary; and Denmark Road the northern limit.
[Fillinham’s collection relating to White Conduit House in Brit. Mus.; Pinks’s _Clerkenwell_; Walford’s _Old and New London_; Wheatley’s _London P. & P._; Lewis’s Islington; Tomlins’s _Peramb. of Islington_; Cromwell’s _Islington_; Hone’s _Every Day Book_, vol. ii. p. 1201, ff.; _Mirror_, 1833, vol. xxi. p. 426; Nelson’s _Islington_; Brayley’s _Londiniana_; _Era Almanack_, 1871; newspaper cuttings in W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
The Crace, Fillinham, and other collections contain numerous views, from which the following may be selected:--
1. South view of White Conduit House in Lempriere’s Set of Views, 1731; reproduced in Lewis’s _Islington_ and Pinks’s _Clerkenwell_.
2. White Conduit House, 1749. Engraving in Knight’s _Old England_, vol. ii. fig. 2,402.
3. White Conduit House near Islington (_circa_ 1771). A print, Crace, _Cat._ No. 200.
4. White Conduit House in the last century (_circa_ 1780). A woodcut, Crace, _Cat._ No. 201.
5. The Old White Conduit Tea Gardens, Islington. Coloured view, 1822 (W. Coll.).
6. Old White Conduit House Tea Gardens. Sepia drawing, signed C. H. M. Fillinham Coll. p. 46.
7. White Conduit House Tavern and Tea Gardens, 1828. Engraved heading of a White Conduit bill. Fillinham Coll.
8. General View of the Gardens, White Conduit House. Fillinham Coll. p. 46.
9. White Conduit House. Engraving in Cromwell’s _Clerkenwell_, p. 216.
10. White Conduit Gardens from Islington Terrace. Sepia drawing, signed C. H. M. 1829. Fillinham Coll. p. 46.
11. Old White Conduit House. P. H. D. 1831, engraved in Rogers’s _Views of Pleasure Gardens of London_, p. 53 (showing balloon and old conduit).
12. The White Conduit Gardens, north view. Sepia drawing by C. H. Matthews, 1832. Crace, _Cat._ No. 204.
13. View in Gardens showing stage, &c. Water-colour drawing, signed I. F., June 2, 1832. Fillinham Coll. p. 48.
14. A view in the Gardens of White Conduit House with the rope-dancing and fireworks. Sepia drawing, 1848. Crace, _Cat._ No. 207; cp. Ashton’s _The Fleet_.
15. White Conduit House, Hotel and Tavern. North-west view of front. A water-colour drawing by Matthews, 1849. Crace, _Cat._ No. 208.
16. Bird’s-eye view of the gardens of White Conduit House, taken from the balcony. A coloured drawing by Mr. Crace, 1849. Crace, _Cat._ No. 209.
DOBNEY’S BOWLING GREEN, OR PROSPECT HOUSE
Dobney’s Bowling Green, or, as it was originally called, Prospect House, stood on a portion of the site of Winchester Place (now part of Pentonville Road) near to the south-east corner of Penton Street, and opposite the New River Reservoir. It was in existence as early as the seventeenth century, a Mr. Ireland being rated in 1669[149] for “the Prospect.”
Prospect House, standing on Islington Hill, derived its name from the fine views that it commanded, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a vantage-ground from which artists often sketched St. Paul’s and the Metropolis. It possessed good bowling greens probably as early as 1633, and in the spring of 1718 these were advertised as open for the accommodation of all gentlemen bowlers.
Later on, the place was called Dobney’s (or D’Aubigney’s) Bowling Green House, from the name of its proprietor, whose widow, Mrs. Ann Dobney, also kept the place for many years.[150] She was succeeded by a Mr. Johnson, who called the place Johnson’s Prospect and Bowling Green House. He converted the bowling green, which was near the corner of Penton Street, into an _al fresco_ amphitheatre, and in 1767 engaged the equestrian Price[151] who drew large audiences by his performances, which lasted during the spring and summer season, beginning at six o’clock. Price is said to have made, by his exhibitions at Dobney’s and elsewhere, a fortune of £14,000.
[Illustration: “A REPRESENTATION OF THE SURPRISING PERFORMANCES OF MR. PRICE” AT DOBNEY’S. _Circ._ 1767.]
In 1769 Philip Jonas performed there feats of manual dexterity, and the exhibition of the skeleton of a whale, three score feet long, was reckoned an attraction. In 1770, the house was occupied as a boarding-school by the Rev. John Davis, but the place was soon again re-opened as the Jubilee Gardens, in allusion to the Stratford Jubilee of Shakespeare.
In 1772, Daniel Wildman, an expert in bee-keeping, gave on summer evenings a curious performance called “Bees on horse-back,” described as follows:--
“Daniel Wildman rides standing upright, one foot on the saddle, and the other on the horse’s neck, with a curious mask of bees on his face. He also rides standing upright on the saddle with the bridle in his mouth, and by firing a pistol makes one part of the bees march over a table, and the other part swarm in the air, and return to their places again.” This performance, together with other entertainments, began at a quarter before seven, and the admission was one shilling, or two shillings to the boxes and gallery.
In 1774, the gardens were still open, but in a much neglected condition, as the walks were not kept in order nor the hedges properly cut. There were, however, at this time several good apartments in the house and two tea-rooms on the north side of the bowling green, built one above the other, and Dobney’s (as it was still popularly called) was a favourite Sunday resort of the London apprentice:--
On Sabbath day who has not seen In colours of the rainbow dizened, The ’prentice beaux and belles, I ween, Fatigued with heat, with dust half-poisoned, To Dobney’s strolling, or Pantheon, Their tea to sip or else regale, As on their way they shall agree on, With syllabubs or bottled ale.[152]
In 1780, we hear of lectures and debates taking place in the house; but in 1781 “the lease and trade of the Shakespeare Tavern and Jubilee Gardens, formerly called Dobney’s Bowling Green,” were offered for sale by auction. At that time, according to the auctioneer’s advertisement, Dobney’s consisted of a dwelling house, a building containing a bake-house, kitchens, &c., with an adjoining erection comprising two spacious rooms, capable of dining near two hundred people each, a trap-ball ground, bowling green and “extensive gardens properly laid out.”
The place, however, ceasing to be frequented, the ground was, about 1790, partly built over with the houses forming Winchester Place. The gardens, or a part of them, remained until 1810, when they disappeared.[153] Dobney’s Court, an alley on the east side of Penton Street, now occupies a small part of the original site.
[Pinks’s _Clerkenwell_; Nelson’s _Islington_; Lewis’s _Islington_; _Sunday Ramble_; Tomlins’s _Perambulation of Islington_, pp. 160, 187; _Memoirs of De Castro_, p. 29.]
VIEWS.
1. A drawing of Prospect House taken about 1780 was at one time in the possession of Mr. Upcott (_Notes and Queries_, 1st series, ix. 1854, p. 572).
2. “A representation of the surprising performances of Mr. Price,” engraved for the _Universal Museum and Comp. Mag._ (_circ._ 1767), W. Coll.
BELVIDERE TEA GARDENS, PENTONVILLE ROAD
The Belvidere tavern and tea gardens in the Pentonville Road, at the south-west corner of Penton Street, occupied the site of Busby’s Folly, itself a house of entertainment with a bowling green attached to it. Busby’s Folly, which was in existence at least as early as 1664,[154] afterwards (between 1731 and 1745) acquired the name of Penny’s Folly.
In August 1769, Penny’s Folly was taken by a German named Zucker, who exhibited there his Learned Little Horse, while Mrs. Zucker played favourite airs on the musical glasses, and “the so-much admired and unparalleled Mr. Jonas” displayed his “matchless and curious deceptions.” The entertainment began at 6.30, and took place in a large room commanding a “delightful prospect” from its fourteen windows. The admission was one shilling, and it was announced that “The Little Horse will be looking out of the windows up two pair of stairs every evening before the performances begin.”
The performances of Zucker had already been for some years in repute with holiday folk, and in 1762 he had received honourable mention in a prologue spoken at the Haymarket Theatre:--
How dull, methinks, look Robin, Sue and Nancy At Greenwich Park did nothing strike your fancy; Had you no cheese-cakes, cyder, shrimps or bun, Saw no wild beastis, or no jack-ass run? Blest Conduit House! what raptures does it yield; And hail, thou wonder of a Chelsea field! Yet Zucker still amazingly surpasses Your Conduit-house, your pigmy, and your asses.[155]
Penny’s Folly was afterwards pulled down and the Belvidere tavern came into existence about 1780.
In the early part of the present century, and probably twenty years earlier, the Belvidere possessed a bowling green, and a large garden, with many trees and plenty of accommodation for tea-drinking parties. The chief attraction was a large racket-court. The garden and racket-court continued to be frequented till 1860 or later. In 1876, the Belvidere was rebuilt and is now used as a public-house, the garden, or part of it, being occupied by the pianoforte works of Messrs. Yates.
[Pinks’s _Clerkenwell_, 531–533; Tomlins’s _Perambulation of Islington_, 40, 41, 163, 164; _Picture of London_, 1802, p. 370.]
VIEWS.
1. South front of Busby’s Folly, one of C. Lempriere’s Set of Views, 1731 (woodcut in Pinks, p. 530); cp. woodcut in Tomlins’s _Perambulation of Islington_, p. 164, and a water-colour drawing by C. H. Matthews in Crace, _Cat._ p. 606, No. 212.
2. The Belvidere Gardens, early in the present century, woodcut in Cromwell’s _Clerkenwell_ (1828), p. 414, J. and H. S. Storer del. et sculp. (copied in Pinks, p. 531).
3. The “Belvidere Gardens at the present time” (_circ._ 1860?), Pinks, p. 532.
THE CASTLE INN AND TEA-GARDENS, COLEBROOKE ROW, ISLINGTON
The Castle Inn is mentioned in 1754 as a Sunday resort of the London “cit.,” who frequented it in the evening to smoke his pipe and obtain the light refreshment of cyder and heart-cakes. The house must have stood nearly alone till 1768, when the oldest portion of the street called Colebrooke Row was built. The Castle Inn, with its tea gardens, was then the last house but one at the northern end of the Row.[156] A pleasant nursery garden occupied, till about 1822, six acres of the ground in the rear of Colebrooke Row.
The inn and tea gardens were still in existence about 1772, but the house had ceased to be a place of public entertainment at the time when Nelson published his _Islington_, _i.e._ 1811.
[_The Connoisseur_, No. 26 (1754); Nelson’s _Islington_ (1811), p. 385; Lewis’s _Islington_ (1842), pp. 351, 352.]
THREE HATS, ISLINGTON
The Three Hats was a picturesque old inn standing in the Upper Street, Islington, a few doors from the corner of the Liverpool Road and on the site of the present Islington branch of the London and County Bank.
It first became known as a place of amusement in 1758, when, in the field adjoining, Thomas Johnson, “the Irish Tartar,” one of the earliest equestrian performers in England, made his _début_. He galloped round the field standing first on one horse, then on a pair, then on three horses. At one time he rode the single horse standing on his head, but as this posture “gave pain to the spectators” he discontinued it. His feats seem to have been of a simpler kind than those afterwards performed by the rider Price at Dobney’s in 1767. One of Johnson’s performances at the Three Hats (17 July, 1766) took place in the presence of the Duke of York and of about five hundred spectators.
In the spring of 1767 Johnson was succeeded by the equestrian Sampson, who announced his appearance at five o’clock at a commodious place built in a field adjoining the Three Hats. “A proper band of music” was engaged for this entertainment. In the summer of this year Sampson introduced his wife into his entertainment, and inserted the following advertisement in the _Public Advertiser_ for 23 July: “Horsemanship at Dingley’s, Three Hats, Islington. Mr. Sampson begs to inform the public that besides the usual feats which he exhibits, Mrs. Sampson, to diversify the entertainment and prove that the fair sex are by no means inferior to the male, either in courage or agility, will this and every evening during the summer season perform various exercises in the same art, in which she hopes to acquit herself to the universal approbation of those ladies and gentlemen whose curiosity may induce them to honour her attempt with their company.”
[Illustration: JOHNSON AT THE THREE HATS, 1758.]
The Three Hats had other attractions besides the horsemanship and at least as early as 1768 had become a favourite Sunday resort. In Bickerstaffe’s comedy the “Hypocrite,” published in 1768, Mawworm says: “Till I went after him (Dr. Cantwell) I was little better than the devil. My conscience was tanned with sin like a piece of neat’s leather, and had no more feeling than the sole of my shoe, always aroving after fantastical delights. I used to go every Sunday evening to the Three Hats at Islington--mayhap your ladyship may know it. I was a great lover of skittles, but now I can’t bear them.”
Sampson’s performances still continued in 1770 and additional diversions were occasionally provided: “At the Three Hats, Islington, this day, the 1st of May (1770) will be played a grand match at that ancient and much renowned manly diversion called Double Stick by a sett of chosen young men at that exercise from different parts of the West country, for two guineas given free; those who brake the most heads to bear away the prize.” “To begin precisely at four.” “Before the above mentioned diversion begins, Mr. Sampson and his young German will display alternately on one, two, and three horses, various surprising and curious feats of famous horsemanship in like manner as at the Grand Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon. Admittance one shilling each person.”
In 1771 Sampson was under a cloud--he is said to have been ensnared “into gay company” by Price, his rival at Dobney’s--and sold his horses to Coningham, who performed in the evening at the Three Hats (1771 and 1772), and was announced as follows:--“First: He rides a gallop, standing upright on a single horse, three times round the room without holding. Second: He rides a single horse on full speed, dismounts, fires a pistol, and performs the boasted feat of Hughes’s leaping over him backwards and forwards for forty times without ceasing; also flies over three horses on full speed, leaps over one and two horses on full speed as they leap the bar, plays a march on the flute, without holding, upon two horses, standing upright.” It was also announced that “Mr. and Mrs. Sampson, Mr. Brown, &c., will perform to make these nights the completest in the kingdom. The Tailor and Sailor upon the drollest horses in the kingdom. The doors to be opened exactly at five, and to mount at a quarter to five. Admittance in the front seats two shillings, and the back seats one. Mr. Coningham will engage to fly through a hogshead of fire upon two horses’ backs, without touching them, and, for a single person, will perform activity with any man in the world.”
In 1772 Sampson resumed his performances at the Riding School of the Three Hats and gave lessons there. On Whit Monday some other curious attractions were advertised in the _Gazetteer_ (June 6, 1772): “A young gentleman will undertake to walk and pick up one hundred eggs (each egg to be the distance of one yard apart) and put them in a basket within an hour and fifteen minutes; if any egg breaks he puts down one in its place, for a wager of ten guineas. And on Whitsun Tuesday will be run for an holland shift by a number of smart girls, six times round the School.”
About this period the riding seems to have come to an end,[157] though the Three Hats continued for many years to be a favourite tea-garden until the ground at the back of the house was built over. The _Morning Chronicle_ gives us a glimpse of the place in 1779 (21 July): “Yesterday morning upwards of twenty fellows who were dancing with their ladies at the Three Hats, Islington, were taken by the constables as fit persons to serve his Majesty, and lodged in Clerkenwell Bridewell, in order to be carried before the commissioners.”
On 6 January, 1839, a fire (which destroyed two neighbouring houses) so damaged the roof of the Three Hats, then a mere public-house, that in April of the same year the whole place was demolished, and the present branch office of the London and County Bank was erected on the site.
[Lewis’s _Islington_; Pinks’s _Clerkenwell_.]
VIEWS.
1. Engraving of Three Hats and other old houses adjacent, in _Gent. Mag._ 1823, pt. 2, frontispiece; cp. p. 113.
2. A sepia drawing by C. H. Matthews, 1839. Crace, _Cat._ p. 596, No. 110.
3. Engraving in the _Grand Magazine_, showing Johnson’s equestrian feats, 1758, W. Coll.; cp. Crace, _Cat._ p. 596, No. 108.
BARLEY MOW TEA HOUSE AND GARDENS, ISLINGTON
The Barley Mow Tea House and Gardens were on the west side of Frog Lane, now Popham Road, Islington. They are first mentioned in 1786.[158] About 1799, the Barley Mow was kept as a public-house by a man named Tate, and George Morland lived there for several months, indulging in drinking and low company, but finding time to paint some good pictures which he generally sold for small sums. He often borrowed for sketching purposes old harness and saddles from a farm-house opposite, and was wont “to send after any rustic-looking character” to obtain a sitting. The Barley Mow has been used as a public-house to the present time, and is now No. 31, Popham Road, but it has been modernised, or rebuilt, and the garden has disappeared.
[Nelson’s _Islington_, 128, 197; Cromwell’s _Islington_, p. 194, ff.; Lewis’s _Islington_, 154, ff.; Walford, ii. 262; _Morning Herald_, 22 April, 1786.]
CANONBURY HOUSE TEA GARDENS
The Canonbury House tea-gardens, a quiet and unpretending resort of Londoners, derive a certain antiquarian interest from their situation within the ancient park attached to Canonbury House, the mansion built by the Priors of St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, for their summer residence. Houses in Canonbury Place, first erected about 1770, occupy the site of the old mansion, though a substantial relic still exists in Canonbury Tower, built in the sixteenth century, and during the last century let out for summer lodgings to various tenants, the best known of whom was Oliver Goldsmith.
About 1754 a small ale-house was built by a Mr. Benjamin Collins on the eastern side of the mansion. This afterwards came into the possession of James Lane, who made additions to the premises, utilising, it would seem, a range of tiled outhouses on the east of the house which were supposed to have originally been its stables.
The place had a good reputation and became much frequented as a tea-garden under the name of Canonbury House. Lane died in 1783, and about 1785 the tavern was taken by a Mr. Sutton, who died soon after, leaving the premises to his wife.
The “Widow Sutton” enlarged the tavern, which was then known as Canonbury House Tavern (or Canonbury Tavern), laid out a bowling green and improved the tea-gardens. The house was much used for the dinners of Societies.
The gardens, which at this time occupied about four acres, were almost entirely situated within the old park wall of the Priors of St. Bartholomew’s, and the wall on the east divided them from the open fields. The old fish-pond of the Priors was also connected.
The _Sunday Ramble_ describes Canonbury House in 1797 as “a place of decent retreat for tea and sober treatment.” In 1810 an Assembly was established at the tavern, and about 1811 the grounds consisted of a shrubbery and bowling green with Dutch-pin and trap-ball grounds and butts for ball-firing used by the Volunteers. The old tiled outhouses were used as a bake-house for the pastry and rolls till 1840, when they were pulled down.
About 1823 the builders had invaded the rural neighbourhood of Canonbury, but the tea-gardens continued to be frequented as a pleasant resort till 1843, or later.
At sometime between 1843 and 1866 the Canonbury Tavern was rebuilt. It now stands on the north side of Canonbury Place, a little to the east of Canonbury Tower and on the opposite side of the road.
A garden, though not of the old dimensions, is still attached to the tavern and open to the public during the summer.
[Nichols’s _Canonbury_, 1788, 33; _The Ambulator_, 1st ed. 1774, s.v. “Canonbury House”; Kearsley’s _Strangers’ Guide_ (1793?), s.v. “Canonbury or Cambray House”; _A Modern Sabbath_, 1797, chap. vii.; Nelson’s _Islington_, 252; Brayley’s _Londiniana_, iii. 269, ff.; _Picture of London_, eds. 1802 and 1829; Lewis’s _Islington_, p. 310; Timbs’s _Club Life_, 1866, ii. 228.]
VIEWS.
Exterior of Canonbury Tavern (north view), a small engraving published in 1819 by R. Ackermann (W. Coll.); Crace, _Cat._ p. 602, No. 174.
COPENHAGEN HOUSE
Copenhagen House stood alone on an eminence in the fields, on the right-hand side of Maiden Lane, the old way leading from Battle Bridge to Highgate, being about midway between those places.[159]
It is known to have been a house of public entertainment in 1725[160] and was probably one much earlier, seeing that the oldest part of the building was in the style of the seventeenth century. “Coopen-hagen” is marked in a map of 1695.[161]
There are various accounts of the origin of the the name. A Danish Prince or a Danish Ambassador is said to have resided in the house during the Great Plague. Or, again, an enterprising Dane is said to have built the inn for the accommodation of his countrymen who had come to London in the train of the King of Denmark on his visit to James I. in 1606.[162] In the early part of the eighteenth century Copenhagen House is not often mentioned, though the curious Highbury Society[163] used to assemble here previous to the year 1740, when it began to meet at Highbury.
[Illustration: South East View _of_ Copenhagen House.
_London: Printed for R. Sayer and J. Bennett, Map and Printsellers, N^o. 53 Fleet Street, as the Act directs, 20th March, 1783_]
In 1780 a brutal robbery[164] of which the landlady, Mrs. Harrington, was the victim, attracted attention to the place. A subscription was opened for her benefit, and visitors came in such numbers that Mr. Leader, the owner of the House, pulled down the old wooden building attached to its western end, and built in its stead a long room for tea-drinking parties, with a large parlour below for drinking and smoking. There were gardens attached, with the usual accommodation for skittles and Dutch-pin playing.
Under Mrs. Harrington’s management, Copenhagen House first became celebrated for its Fives Courts. A young Shropshire woman (afterwards Mrs. Tomes) who assisted Mrs. Harrington, gave Hone an interesting little account of the introduction of the game:--“I made the first fives ball (she said) that was ever thrown up against Copenhagen House. One Hickman, a butcher at Highgate, a countryman of mine, used the house, and seeing me ‘country,’ we talked about our country sports, and amongst the rest, _fives_: I told him we’d have a game some day. I laid down the stone in the ground myself, and against he came again, made a ball. I struck the ball the first blow, and he gave it the second, and so we played; and as there was company they liked the sport, and it got talked of. This was the beginning of the _fives-play_, which has since become so famous at Copenhagen House.”
John Cavanagh (_d._ 1819), the famous Irish fives player, had many matches at Copenhagen House for wagers and dinners. The wall against which the combatants played was (says Hone) the same that supported the kitchen chimney, and when the wall resounded louder than usual, the cook exclaimed, “Those are the _Irishman’s_ balls,” and the joints trembled on the spit. Hazlitt, in a pleasant memoir of Cavanagh,[165] says that he had no equal in the game or second. He had no affectation in his playing. He was the best up-hill player in the world, and never gave away a game through laziness or conceit. His “service” was tremendous, but a peculiarity of his play was that he never volleyed, though if the ball rose but an inch from the ground he never missed it. “His eye,” adds Hazlitt, “was certain, his hand fatal, his presence of mind complete.”
In 1795 the house was kept by Robert Orchard, notorious for his connexion with the London Corresponding Society, which at that time held tumultuous meetings in the adjoining Copenhagen Fields. Orchard was succeeded by a man named Tooth, who gained custom by encouraging brutal sports. At this time, “on a Sunday morning, the fives ground was filled by bull-dogs and ruffians, who lounged and drank to intoxication: so many as fifty or sixty bull-dogs have been seen tied up to the benches at once, while their masters boozed and made match after match, and went out and fought their dogs before the house, amid the uproar of idlers attracted to the ‘bad eminence’ by its infamy.”
There was also a common field, east of the house, wherein bulls were baited, and this was called the bull-field. At last the magistrates interfered, and in 1816 Tooth lost his license. The next landlord, a Mr. Bath, conducted the house respectably, and refused admittance to the bull-dogs. The bull-field was afterwards used for the harmless purpose of cow-keeping.
From about this period (1816–1830) Copenhagen House was a favourite Sunday tea-garden with the middle-classes[166] who flocked there, especially in the summer-time during the hay harvest in the fields around.[167] Although the builders were making their way up to Copenhagen House from London on the south, it still commanded an extensive view of the metropolis and western suburbs, with the heights of Hampstead and Highgate, “and the rich intervening meadows.” In 1841[168] the tavern and tea-gardens were still in existence, and the space between them and Highgate was still open fields. Attached to the house at that time was a well known cricket ground.[169]
About 1852 the Corporation of London purchased Copenhagen House with its grounds and adjacent fields to the extent of about seventy-five acres, and began to build there the present Metropolitan Cattle Market, between the York and Caledonian Roads, which was opened in 1855. The old tavern (pulled down in 1853[170]) and tea-gardens were thus swept away, and their site is approximately marked by the Great Clock Tower in the market.[171]
[Hone’s _Every Day Book_, i. 858, ff.; Nelson’s _Islington_; Lewis’s _Islington_; Larwood and Hotten, _Signboards_, 435, 436; Walford, ii. 275, 276, 283; v. 374; Tomlins’s _Perambulation of Islington_, 204, 205.]
VIEWS.
1. Copenhagen House, Islington, as it appeared in 1737, sepia drawing by Bernard Lens. Crace, _Cat._ p. 604, No. 191.
2. South-east view of Copenhagen House, printed for R. Sayer and J. Bennett, 20 March, 1783 (W. Coll.); the woodcut in Lewis’s _Islington_, p. 283, is derived from this.
3. Copenhagen House, Islington. J. Swaine del. 1793; J. Swaine, sculp. 1854. Woodcut (W. Coll.).
4. There are several views of Copenhagen House in the nineteenth century, see _e.g._ Hone’s _Every Day Book_, i. 858; Cromwell’s _Islington_, p. 204; Crace, _Cat._ p. 605, Nos. 194, 196 (views of 1853).
5. “The Grand Meeting of the Metropolitan Trades’ Unions in the Copenhagen Fields on Monday, April 21, 1834.” Coloured engraving by Geo. Dorrington (W. Coll.). This shows Copenhagen House and an enormous concourse in the fields.
HIGHBURY BARN
Highbury Barn Tavern with its gardens is, like the Canonbury House Tavern and gardens, rooted in a respectable antiquity, for it stood on the site of Highbury Barn[172] which formed part of the farm attached to the old country seat[173] of the Prior of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.
Highbury Barn (the tavern) was originally a small cake and ale house which was in existence at least as early as 1740[174]. It was occasionally (about 1768) honoured by a visit from Oliver Goldsmith on one of his Shoemaker’s holidays. Goldsmith and three or four of his friends would leave his Temple chambers in the morning and proceed by the City Road and through the fields to Highbury Barn, where at one o’clock they enjoyed a dinner of two courses and pastry, at the cost of tenpence a head including the waiter’s penny. The company then to be met with at the inn consisted of Templars and literary men, and a citizen or two retired from business. At about six, Goldsmith and his party adjourned to the White Conduit House for tea, and ended the day with supper at the Globe or Grecian.
The trade of the place greatly increased under the management of Mr. Willoughby, who, dying in December 1785, was succeeded by his son. The younger Willoughby (landlord 1785–1818?)[175] laid out the gardens, bowling green and trap-ball ground.[176] A large barn belonging to the neighbouring Highbury Farm (or Grange) was incorporated with the premises and fitted up suitably for a Great Room. Here a monthly assembly subscribed to in the neighbourhood was held in the spring and winter and monster dinner-parties of clubs and societies were accommodated. In 1800 a company of eight hundred persons sat down to dinner, and seventy geese were to be seen roasting on the fire. Three thousand people were accommodated at the Licensed Victuallers’ Dinner in 1841.
About 1793 the garden commanded an extensive prospect, and as late as 1842 Highbury could be described as “a beautifully situated hamlet.”
[Illustration: HIGHBURY BARN IN 1792.]
In 1818 the property was purchased by the former proprietor of the Grove House, Camberwell, and Highbury Barn was much resorted to as a Sunday tea-garden (_circ._ 1823–1830). The place then passed (before 1835) into the hands of John Hinton (previously landlord of the Eyre Arms, St. John’s Wood) who with his son Archibald Hinton, ultimately the sole proprietor, gave new life to the place and made Highbury Barn a kind of North London Cremorne. By about 1854 the number of monster dinner-parties and bean-feasts had much fallen off, and on Whit-Monday of that year Hinton opened his establishment for musical entertainments with a performance by the band of the Grenadier Guards.
A license for dancing was granted in October 1856, and in July 1858 a Leviathan dancing platform, with an orchestra at one end, was erected in the grounds. It was open to the sky with the exception of one side, which consisted of a roofed structure of ornamental ironwork. The whole platform occupied four thousand feet. A standard of gas lamps in the centre of the platform and lamps placed round its railing lit up the place in the evening, when the gardens were frequented by large masses of people. In a more secluded part of the gardens was an avenue of trees, flanked by female statues, each holding a globular gas lamp. About 1858 the admission was sixpence, and at this time Highbury Barn was much frequented on Sunday evenings, when little parties might be seen on the lawn before the Barn or in the bowers and alcoves by its side. The gardens occupied five acres.
Archibald Hinton gave up possession in 1860; and in 1861 Edward Giovanelli opened Highbury Barn, after having improved the grounds and erected a spacious hall for a ball and supper room. In 1862 Miss Rebecca Isaacs and Vernon Rigby were the principal singers, and Leotard the gymnast was engaged for the summer season. On 20 May 1865 the Alexandra Theatre was opened in the grounds, but the entertainments in the gardens were also continued. “The splendid Illuminations” were boldly advertised, and Blondin (1868), Natator the man-frog, and the Siamese Twins were engaged (1869). The riotous behaviour, late at night, of many frequenters of the gardens caused annoyance to the neighbours, who regularly opposed the renewal of the license. In October 1870 the dancing license was refused, and next season Mr. E. T. Smith took the place of Giovanelli as manager, but the license being again refused in October 1871, Highbury Barn was finally closed. The flowerbeds became choked with grass and weeds, and nightshade luxuriated around the dismantled orchestra. By the spring of 1883 the place had been covered with buildings, and a large public-house, the Highbury Tavern (No. 26, Highbury Park N.), on part of the old site, alone commemorates this once popular resort.
[Nelson’s _Islington_; Cromwell’s _Islington_; Lewis’s _Islington_; Tomlins’s _Perambulation of Islington_; Kearsley’s _Strangers’ Guide_; Walford, ii. 273. ff.; Forster’s _Life of Goldsmith_, bk. iv. chap. 2; _Picture of London_, 1802, 1823 and 1829; Ritchie’s _Night-side of London_ (1858); _Era Almanack_, 1871, pp. 3, 4; M. Williams’s _Some London Theatres_, 1883, p. 33, ff.; newspaper cuttings and bills, W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
1. Highbury Barn (gabled buildings), an etching from a drawing by B. Green, 1775 (W. Coll.).
2. Highbury Assembly House, near Islington, kept by Mr. Willoughby, 1792, print published in 1792 by Sayer (W. Coll.; also Crace. _Cat._ p. 603, No. 182).
3. “Highbury Barn, Islington,” engraving published May 1, 1819, for R. Ackermann.
4. Highbury Barn (exterior) (_circ._ 1835), engraving in Cromwell’s _Islington_, p. 247, J. and H. S. Storer, del. et. sc.
5. “The Leviathan Platform, Highbury Barn,” woodcut in _Illustrated London News_, July 1858.
6. Two views of “The Gardens, Highbury Barn Tavern” (_circ._ 1851), in Tallis’s _Illustrated London_, ed. Gaspey.
THE DEVIL’S HOUSE, HOLLOWAY.
This place, in spite of its unpromising name, deserves a brief notice as a quiet summer resort of Londoners.
The Devil’s House was a moated timber building which originally formed the manor-house of Tolentone (afterwards Highbury) Manor. It stood on the east of Devil’s Lane, previously (before 1735) called Tallington or Tollington Lane, and now known as the Hornsey Road. It was within two fields of Holloway Turnpike.[177]
There was a tradition that the house was a retreat of Claude Duval’s, and the house and Lane were sometimes known as “Duval’s.” There is, however, no direct evidence to connect the famous highwayman with the house, and Duval’s House may be considered as a popular corruption of Devil’s House. In a survey of Highbury Manor made in 1611, this house already bears the name of “Devil’s House in Devil’s Lane” and is described as being at that date an old building “with a mote, and a little orchard within.” In the Islington Survey of 1735, it appears as “Devol’s House,” an apparent compromise between the fiend and the highwayman.
It is not known to have been a place of entertainment till 1767 when the landlord,[178] who attempted to change the name to the Summer House, offered to London anglers and pedestrians the attraction of “tea and hot loaves, ready at a moment’s notice, and new milk from the cows grazing in the pleasant meadows adjoining.” The house was still encompassed with a wide moat crossed by a bridge, and there was an orchard with a canal. The garden which surrounded the house was well laid out, and the water was stocked with abundance of tench and carp. The place was still occupied and used as an inn in 1811,[179] though about that time the landlord nearly filled up the moat with earth.
The house was in existence in 1849 (or later),[180] being on the east of the Hornsey Road near the junction with the Seven Sisters’ Road.
[Lysons’s _Environs_ (1795), “Islington,” p. 127, note; Nelson’s _Islington_, 133, 173; Lewis’s _Islington_, pp. 67, 279, 280; Larwood and Hotten, _Signboards_, 294, 295, quoting a letter signed H. G., 25 May, 1767, in the _Public Advertiser_, which describes the place at that period; Walford, ii. 275; Tomlins’s _Perambulation of Islington_, pp. 31, 32.]
VIEWS.
1. A view of the house, gardens and bridge appears in Walford, v. 378, “Claude Duval’s House in 1825.”
2. Devil’s or Du Val’s House, Holloway, a sepia drawing by C. H. Matthews (1840); Crace, _Cat._ p. 604, No. 190.
HORNSEY WOOD HOUSE.
Hornsey Wood House was situated on the summit of rising ground on the east of Hornsey and at the entrance to Hornsey Wood. It began to be frequented about the middle of the last century,[181] and in the earlier years of its existence aspired to be “a genteel tea-house,” though unpretending in appearance. On popular holidays, such as Whit-Sunday, its long room might be seen crowded as early as nine or ten in the morning with a motley assemblage of “men, women and children eating rolls and butter and drinking of tea at an extravagant price.”[182]
The pleasures of Hornsey Wood House were of an unsophisticated kind--unlimited tea-drinking, a ramble in the wood, and a delightful view of the surrounding country. An excursion to Little Hornsey to drink tea was a favourite with London citizens’ wives and daughters.[183] Hone remembered the old Hornsey Wood House, as it stood (apparently before 1800), “embowered and seeming a part of the Wood.” It was at that time kept by two sisters, Mrs. Lloyd and Mrs. Collier, and these aged dames were usually to be found before their door on a seat between two venerable oaks, wherein swarms of bees hived themselves.
Soon after their death (before 1800?) the house was pulled down and the proprietor expended £10,000 in improvements and in erecting the roomy brick building known as Hornsey Wood Tavern. The tea-gardens were enlarged and a lake formed, for the benefit of those who wished for a little angling or boating. To effect these improvements, a romantic part of the wood was destroyed, but the remaining portion still continued an attraction. About 1835 the “lower order of citizens” as T. Cromwell (_Islington_, p. 138) calls them, used to go “palming” to the wood on Palm Sunday. All through the present century Hornsey Wood House (or Tavern) was a favourite Sunday resort of Londoners.
In 1866 at the time of the formation of Finsbury Park, the house was pulled down and its site and that of the gardens and the Wood must be looked for in the Park, which was opened as a public recreation ground in 1869.
[_The Idler_, No. 15, July 1758; Dodsley’s _London_, 1761; _Low Life_ (1764), p. 46; _Sunday Ramble_, 1776 and 1797; Kearsley’s _Strangers’ Guide_; Lambert’s _London_, iv. 274; _Picture of London_, eds. 1802, 1823 and 1829; Hone’s _Every Day Book_, i. 759, ff.; Lewis’s _Islington_, pp. 190, 282; J. F. Murray’s _World of London_, 1845, ii. p. 82, ff.; Walford, v. 430, ff.; _Illustrated London News_, 14 August, 1869; J. H. Lloyd’s _Highgate_, 1888.]
VIEWS.
1. An engraving of old Hornsey Wood House &c., in Lewis’s _Islington_, p. 282.
2. There are many views of the later Hornsey Wood House (or Tavern), _e.g._ one engraved in Walford, v. 426, and there assigned to the year 1800. This is substantially the same as one (undated) in Hone’s _Every Day Book_, i. 759. Hone, _ib._ 761, also gives a woodcut of the Lake. There is an engraving of the house of 1809, published by J. Cundee (W. Coll.), and there are views of it of a later date; _e.g._ an engraving in Cromwell’s _Islington_, p. 138.
THE SPRING GARDEN, STOKE NEWINGTON.
This Spring Garden is marked in Warner’s _Survey of Islington_, 1735, rather to the south of Newington Green. About 1753 the tavern connected with the garden was taken by W. Bristow, who advertised the place as an afternoon tea-garden, appending to his advertisement the note “beans in perfection for any companies.”[184]
It is mentioned in _Low Life_, 1764 as resorted to on Whit-Sunday evening by Londoners of the lower classes. Cromwell in his _Islington_ (p. 199) published in 1835, speaks of the tavern and tea-gardens as existing “within memory.”
THE BLACK QUEEN COFFEE-HOUSE AND TEA-GARDENS, SHACKLEWELL.
The Black Queen Coffee-house situated on Shacklewell Green had attached to it a bowling green and tea-gardens planted with fruit trees, yews, limes, and poplars. It is said to have been resorted to by “genteel company,” but little is known of it, except that in 1793 (when in possession of a Mr. Moore) the lease was advertised to be sold by auction (13th September, 1793).
[_The Daily Advertiser_ for 3 September, 1793.]
IV
HAMPSTEAD GROUP
HAMPSTEAD WELLS
The outlet of the once famous spring of Hampstead is at the present time to be found on the north side of Well Walk, and the water now trickles out slowly into a basin, which forms part of a modern fountain. The earliest mention of the spring occurs in the time of Charles II. when one Dorothy Rippin appears to have made some profit by the sale of the water, as she issued a halfpenny token which has on its obverse the words, DOROTHY RIPPIN AT THE WELL IN HAMSTED, and a representation of a well and bucket.[185] The well was in 1698 on the estate of Susanna Noel and her son Baptist, third Earl of Gainsborough, and was given by them conjointly on 20th December of that year, together with six acres of land, for the benefit of the Hampstead poor. A tablet on the present fountain records this gift.
The first to draw attention to the medicinal value of the water, was a well-known physician, Dr. Gibbons,[186] who in the early part of the eighteenth century described it as being as fully efficacious as any chalybeate water in England.
In April 1700 the water was advertised as being of the same nature and virtue as that at Tunbridge Wells, and was sold by Phelps, an apothecary, at the Eagle and Child in Fleet Street, for threepence a flask. It was also obtainable from the lessee of the Wells at the Black Posts, King Street, near the Guildhall; at Sam’s Coffee House, Ludgate Hill, and at several other places in the City.
From this time there grew up around the spring various places of entertainment--a tavern[187] and coffee room, a bowling green and raffling shops, and, as will be presently seen, a chapel.
The chief building was the Great Room situated on the south side of Well Walk, about one hundred yards from the East Heath. It was a large house lit with long windows, and within its walls took place concerts and dances for the amusement of the Wells visitors up to 1733. The first recorded entertainment was given therein 1701 (18 August), when there was a “consort” of both vocal and instrumental music by the “best masters.” The performance began at ten o’clock in the morning, and dancing took place in the afternoon. The tickets for the dancing cost sixpence, and one shilling was charged for the concert. In September of the same year, another concert was given at eleven o’clock, at which one Jemmy Bowen sang and two men performed on the violin. There was dancing in the afternoon as usual. These performances were continued every Monday during the season. “Very good music for dancing all day long” was announced for 12 May, 1707, and on 22 July, 1710, a girl of nine, a pupil of Mr. Tenoe, sang several operatic songs, and this performance began at five for the “conveniency of gentlemen’s returning.” The admission was two shillings and sixpence.
[Illustration: _A View of y^e Long Room at Hampstead from the Heath._ | _Vue de la Chambre longue à Hampstead du Côté de la Colline._]
In the vicinity of the Great Room, stood Sion Chapel,[188] where couples on presenting a license and the sum of five shillings could be married at any time. A clergyman was always in attendance, and if the newly married would take their wedding dinner in the garden of the tavern nothing beyond the license was required. In 1716 the chapel was referred to as a “private and pleasure place” where many persons of the best fashion were married. It may be suspected, however, that the marriages were often, like those at the Fleet and Mayfair, irregular, and that the license was occasionally dispensed with.
During the first ten or twenty years of the eighteenth century, Hampstead Wells presented a gay and varied scene. When tired of the music and dancing in the Great Room, the visitor could adjourn to the bowling green, or to the raffling shops, where the cards were flying and the dice rattling, while fine gentlemen lost their money with “ease and negligence.” There was the promenade in Well Walk beneath the avenue of limes, or a stroll might be taken on the breezy Heath. Court ladies were there “all air and no dress”; city ladies all dress and no air, and country dames with “broad brown faces like a Stepney bun.” Citizens like Mr. Deputy Driver in the comedy[189] came down from town, perhaps to find their ladies coquetting with a beau, or retired to picquet with some brisk young Templar. “This Hampstead’s a charming place,” exclaims Arabella the citizen’s wife: “To dance all night at the Wells; be treated at Mother Huff’s,[190] have presents made one at the raffling shops, and then take a walk in Cane Wood with a man of wit that’s not over rude.”
With this gay and fashionable throng there mingled company of a lower class, such as the Fleet Street sempstresses who danced minuets “in their furbeloe scarfs” and ill-fitting clothes. By about 1724 the more rakish and disreputable element had become predominant.[191] Bad characters came from London in “vampt up old cloaths to catch the apprentices.” Lord Lovemore might still court his “mimic charmer”[192] there, but modest people did not care to join the company on the walks. The playing and dicing were kept up as formerly, but gentlemen no longer lost with ease and negligence, and one sharper tried to cheat another. In 1733 the Great Room was converted into an Episcopal Chapel and was used for church services until 1849. In 1869 the West Middlesex Volunteers occupied the building. About 1880 it was demolished, and to-day a modern red brick house in Well Walk (erected in 1892), and the entrance to Gainsborough Gardens occupy the site. A tablet on the house testifies that the “Old pump room” (_i.e._ Great Room) once stood on the spot.
In 1734 Dr. John Soame published a pamphlet in which he extolled with somewhat suspicious optimism the virtues of the neglected spring, recommending the water for cutaneous affections and nervous disorders. According to Soame, the spring[193] then threw off water at the rate of five gallons in four minutes, and could be made to throw a stream upwards to a height of at least twelve feet. “The Beautys of Hampstead,” a song of this period, extols the “Chrystal bub’ling Well,”[194] but the water-drinking does not appear again to have become the vogue, though as a place of amusement the Wells still enjoyed some degree of popularity. Another assembly-house, known as the Long Room, took the place of the old Great Room. This was a substantial red brick building of one storey. The ground floor consisted of an entire room with two small ante-rooms, one on either side of the entrance, used for tea-parties and card-playing. The floor above was divided up into rooms, where a cosy supper or a game of cards might be enjoyed. The house (probably built, in part, in the seventeenth century) still exists, and is to be found on the opposite side to the old Great Room, about a hundred yards further down Well Walk, going from the Heath. It is now a private residence called Weatherall House. It was in the Long Room that the Hampstead Balls took place of the kind described by Frances Burney. Here Evelina[195] was worried by Beau Smith, and refused the offers of “inelegant and low-bred” partners, who “begged the favour of hopping a dance” with her. Samuel Rogers (_Table Talk_) says that in his youth (_circ._ 1783) the Hampstead Assemblies were frequented by “a great deal of good company,” and that he himself danced four or five minuets there in one evening.
In 1802 a surgeon named John Bliss published a treatise, in which, without success, he endeavoured once more to awaken an interest in the medicinal properties of the Well. Mr. Keates, consulting chemist to the Metropolitan Board of Works, in recent times stated that it was a distinctly chalybeate water containing sufficient iron to render it capable of producing marked therapeutic effects. It was extremely pure, and in general character, though with a larger proportion of iron, resembled that of Tunbridge Wells.[196]
[Dodsley’s _London_ (1761); _Ambulator_, 1774; Kearsley’s _Strangers’ Guide_ (1793?); Walford, v. 467, ff.; Thorne’s _Environs of London_ (1876), 281; Sir Gilbert Scott’s _Proposed Destruction of the Well Walk_ (Hampstead, 1879), with plan of Well Walk; Park’s _Hampstead_; Baines’s _Hampstead_.]
VIEWS.
1. The Pump-room, Well Walk (_i.e._ Great Room), since, the Episcopal Chapel, in Baines’s _Hampstead_, from a drawing by Blanche Cowper Baines, after E. H. Dixon.
2. The old Well Walk, Hampstead, about 1750 (Walford, v. 463).
3. A view of “Ye Long Room at Hampstead from the Heath.” Chatelain del. et sculp. 1752 (W. Coll.).
4. Well Walk, engraving in Howitt’s _Northern Heights_, from a photograph.
5. Well Walk in 1870 in Baines’s _Hampstead_, from a sketch by Walter Field.
THE SPANIARDS
The old Spaniards inn, still standing on the north side of the road between the upper and lower Heath of Hampstead, deserves a brief mention, seeing that about the middle of the eighteenth century or earlier, it had attached to it a curious garden laid out by one William Staples, who was probably the keeper of the inn.[197]
A contemporary account describes how “out of a wild and thorny wood full of hills, valleys, and sandpits,” the ingenious Mr. Staples “hath now made pleasant grass and gravel walks, with a mount, from the elevation whereof the beholder hath a prospect of Hanslope steeple in Northamptonshire, within eight miles of Northampton; of Langdon hill, in Essex, full sixty miles east,” and of other eminences, the visibility of which was perhaps less mythical.
The walks and plats were ornamented with a number of curious devices picked out with pebble stones of variegated colours. There were over forty of these quaint designs, such as the sun in its glory, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the Tower of London, the grand colossus of Rhodes, the pathway of all the planets, the spire of Salisbury, Adam and Eve, the shield of David, the Egyptian pyramids, and an Egyptian sphinx: an odd association of things earthly and celestial.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century the Spaniards was much resorted to, especially on Sundays.[198] During the Gordon Riots of 1780, its landlord, Giles Thomas, is said to have arrested the progress of the mob bent on the destruction of Caen Wood House, Lord Mansfield’s residence, hard by, through rolling out his beer barrels into the road, and setting them abroach, thus gaining time to summon the military for the defence of the house.
[Illustration: SOUTH VIEW OF THE SPANIARDS, 1750.]
In the present century, though the mount and the pebbled plots had disappeared, the Spaniards gardens were rendered attractive by a bowling-green, and by pleasant arbours and parterres: it was resorted to by many a party of tea-drinkers like that of Mr. Raddle, Mrs. Bardell and her friends.[199]
[Park’s _Hampstead_; Baines’s _Hampstead_; Walford, v. 445, ff.; Thorne’s _Environs of London_, 1876.]
VIEWS.
1. The south view of the Spaniards (showing the garden as laid out by Staples) near Hampstead (Chatelain del., J. Roberts sculp. 1750, W. Coll., reproduced in Chambers’s _Book of Days_, ii. 71).
2. The Spaniards Tavern, Hampstead, Middlesex, drawn and engraved for Dugdale’s _England and Wales_.
3. View of the inn as at present, Walford, v. 445.
4. “View of a skittle ground at Hampstead” (either the Spaniards or Jack Straw’s Castle), Woodward’s _Eccentric Excursions_, coloured print, pl. iv. p. 14 (1796).
NEW GEORGIA
New Georgia was situated in Turner’s Wood to the north-east of the Spaniards tavern, Hampstead, and at the northern extremity of the road opposite the western lodge of Caen Wood. It was a wooden cottage, two storeys high, irregularly constructed, and standing in a wilderness and garden laid out “in a delightful romantic taste.” The proprietor, Robert Caston, built the cottage in 1737, and opened New Georgia to the public.
He was his own architect, builder, and gardener, and probably compared his labours to those of the founders of the American colony of Georgia established in 1733. An inscription on the cottage explained the origin of New Georgia as follows:--“I Robert Caston, begun this place in a wild wood, stubbed up the wood, digged all the ponds, cut all the walks, made all the gardens, built all the rooms, with my own hands; nobody drove a nail here, laid a brick or a tile, but myself, and thank God for giving me such strength, being sixty-four years of age when I begun it.”
Tea was supplied in the cottage or the gardens, but the chief attractions were a number of mechanical oddities set in motion in the garden and in the various little rooms into which the house was divided. London shopkeepers, like Zachary Treacle,[200] often made their way to the place on Sunday afternoons, and were diverted by reptiles that darted forth when a board or spring was trodden upon, by a chair that collapsed when sat upon, and by various contrivances of water-works.
The more boisterous, who on other Sundays delighted in a roll down the hill in Greenwich Park, found amusement in thrusting their heads into the New Georgia pillory to receive in that position the kisses of the ladies. A thickly-planted maze was another source of diversion.
The place does not appear to have been frequented after about 1758, and was subsequently (before 1795)[201] enclosed in the estate of Lord Mansfield.
[_Gent. Mag._ 1748, vol. 18, 109; _The Connoisseur_, No. 26, 25 July, 1754; _The Idler_, No. 15, 22 July, 1758; Lysons’s _Environs_, ii. 527; Lambert’s _London_ (1806), iv. 255; Park’s _Hampstead_; Prickett’s _Highgate_, 72, ff. Walford, v. 446.]
VIEWS.
New Georgia is clearly marked in Rocque’s Survey, 1745, but there appear to be no views.
BELSIZE HOUSE
Belsize House was a large Elizabethan mansion, modified in the time of Charles II. Pepys, who visited it in 1668 (17 August) when it was the residence of Lord Wotton, describes its gardens as “wonderful fine: too good for the house the gardens are, being, indeed, the most noble that ever I saw, and brave orange and lemon trees.”[202]
The house was a private residence until 1720, when it was converted into a place of public amusement, under the management of a Welshman named Howell. At this time it was a somewhat imposing structure, with wings, and a tower in the centre. The entrance was by a door placed between the wings, and also by an external staircase at one wing.
The inaugural entertainment took place about April, 1720, and consisted of an “uncommon solemnity of music and dancing.” The place was usually open from 6 a.m. till 8 p.m., without charge for admission. The Park, Wilderness and Garden, about a mile in circumference, were advertised (about 1721?), as being wonderfully improved and filled with a variety of birds, “which compose a most melodious and delightful harmony.” Those who wished for an early stroll in the park could “breakfast on tea or coffee as cheap as at their own chambers.” As the journey from London was not unattended with risks, twelve stout fellows (afterwards increased to thirty), completely armed, were announced as “always at hand to patrol timid females or other.”
[Illustration: BELSIZE HOUSE AND PARK.]
Belsize became a fashionable rendezvous. In July 1721 the Prince and Princess of Wales, attended by several persons of rank, dined at the house, and were entertained with hunting and other diversions. In June, 1722, on the occasion of a wild deer hunt, three or four hundred coaches brought down the “Nobility and Gentry” from town. Athletic sports were introduced, and the proprietor gave a plate of several guineas to be run for by eleven footmen (1721). Gambling and intrigue were the less wholesome results of this influx of the nobility and gentry. In May 1722 the Justices took steps to prevent the unlawful gaming, while in the same year “A serious Person of Quality” published a satire called _Belsize House_, in which he undertook to expose “the Fops and Beaux who daily frequent that Academy,” and also the “characters of the women who make this an exchange for assignations.”
This house, which is a nuisance to the land Doth near a park and handsome garden stand Fronting the road, betwixt a range of trees Which is perfumed with a Hampstead breeze. The Welsh Ambassador has many ways Fool’s pence, while summer season holds, to raise. For ’tis not only chocolate and tea, With ratafia, bring him company. Nor is it claret, Rhenish wine or sack The fond and rampant Lords and Ladies lack Or ven’son pasty for a certain dish With several varieties of fish; But hither they and other chubs resort To see the Welsh Ambassador make sport, Who in the art of hunting has the luck To kill in fatal corner tired buck, The which he roasts and stews and sometimes bakes, Whereby His Excellency profit makes. He also on another element Does give his choused customers content With net or angling rod, to catch a dish Of trouts or carp or other sorts of fish.
The Welsh Ambassador was the nickname of the proprietor, James Howell, an enterprising though not very reputable person, who had once been imprisoned for some offence in Newgate.
Races[203] and similar amusements continued for several years to be provided, and music was performed every day during the season. In the spring of 1733 (31 May) a race was advertised for ponies twelve hands six inches high. The length of the race was six times round the course; “Mr. Treacle’s black pony,” which distinguished itself by winning the plate at Hampstead Heath in the previous year, being excluded.
In 1736 a fat doe was advertised to be hunted to death by small beagles, beginning at nine in the morning, and sportsmen were invited to bring their own dogs, if “not too large.” In the same year (16 September) a boys’ race was run, beginning at three o’clock, six times round the course: a prize of one guinea was given to the winner, and half a guinea to the second runner. “Each person to pay sixpence coming in, and all persons sitting on the wall or getting over will be prosecuted.”
For an afternoon in August 1737, there was announced a running match six times round the park, between “the Cobler’s Boy and John Wise the Mile-End Drover,” for twenty guineas. In 1745 there were foot-races in the park, and this is the last notice we have of Belsize as a place of amusement.
The mansion falling into a ruinous state[204] was pulled down at the close of the eighteenth century (before 1798), and a large, plainly-built house was erected in its stead. From 1798–1807 this new Belsize House was tenanted by the Right Hon. Spencer Perceval and others. In the autumn of 1853 the house was pulled down (cp. _The Illustrated London News_ for 9th September, 1854, p. 239), and the buildings of the Belsize Estate were subsequently erected on the site of the Park.
The present Belsize Avenue (on the west side of Haverstock Hill) is the representative of a beautiful avenue of elms, which originally led up to the old Belsize House, the site of which was near the present St. Peter’s Church.
[Palmer’s _St. Pancras_, 227, ff.; Baines’s _Hampstead_; Walford v. 494, ff.; Howitt’s _Northern Heights_; Lambert’s _London_, 1806, iv. 256; Thorne’s _Environs of London_, s.v. “Hampstead”; Park’s _Hampstead_; newspaper advertisements, W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
1. Old Belsize House. A view on a Belsize House advertisement, _circ._ 1721? and a view by Maurer, 1750; cp. Howitt’s _Northern Heights_ and C. Knight’s _Old England_, ii. fig. 2404.
2. Belsize House in 1800 (Walford, v. 492).
KILBURN WELLS
The spring known as Kilburn Wells was situated in the Abbey Field near the site of the old Kilburn Priory, and in the rear of the Bell Tavern. It attracted public notice about the middle of the last century;[205] and some endeavours were made, probably by the proprietor of the Bell, to bring Kilburn Wells into vogue: at any rate, in 1752 it is referred to as a place in some respects akin to Sadler’s Wells:--
Shall you prolong the midnight ball With costly supper at Vaux Hall, And yet prohibit earlier suppers At Kilburn, Sadler’s Wells or Kupers?[206]
About 1773 Kilburn Wells began to be more widely known, and the proprietor’s advertisement of 17 July in that year announced that the water was then in the utmost perfection, the gardens enlarged and greatly improved, and the house and offices “repainted and beautified in the most elegant manner.” The Great Room was described as specially adapted for “the use and amusement of the politest companies” who might require it for music, dancing, or entertainments. “This happy spot is equally celebrated for its rural situation, extensive prospects, and the acknowledged efficacy of its waters; is most delightfully situated on the site of the once famous Abbey of Kilburn on the Edgware Road, at an easy distance, being but a morning’s walk from the metropolis, two miles from Oxford Street; the footway from Marybone across the fields still nearer. A plentiful larder is always provided, together with the best of wines and other liquors. Breakfasting and hot loaves.”
An account of the medicinal water drawn up by the usual “eminent physician” was given away to visitors, and in one of the rooms was a long list of the diseases said to have been cured. Tn 1792 Godfrey Schmeisser made a careful analysis of the water. It was a mild purgative, milky in appearance, and had a bitterish saline taste. The use of the water for curative purposes appears to have ceased in the early part of the present century (before 1814), but the Old Bell, or Kilburn Wells as the place was generally denominated, enjoyed popularity as a tea-garden as late as 1829.[207]
About 1863 the Old Bell was pulled down, and the present Bell public-house erected on the spot. A brick reservoir long enclosed the spring, but some years ago it was demolished and built over. It stood immediately behind the Bank at the corner of Belsize Road.
[Thorne’s _Environs of London_; Lambert’s _London_, iv. 288; Howitt’s _Northern Heights_; Baines’s _Hampstead_; Park’s _Hampstead_; Walford, v. 245, ff.]
VIEWS.
1. The Bell Inn, Kilburn, 1750 (Walford, v. 246).
2. The Bell Inn, Kilburn, from a mezzotint, 1789, reproduced in Baines’s _Hampstead_.
3. View of the Old Bell Inn at Kilburn on the Edgware Road. Rathbone del. Prestal sculp. 1789. Crace, _Cat._ p. 670, No. 76.
4. An engraved handbill, describing the waters, at the top of which is a print of the Long Room, by F. Vivares; mentioned in Park’s _Hampstead_, p. xxxi*, additions.
V
CHELSEA GROUP
RANELAGH HOUSE AND GARDENS
§ 1. _Origin of Ranelagh_
About the year 1690 Richard, Viscount (afterwards Earl of) Ranelagh, Paymaster-General of the Forces, built for himself on the east side of Chelsea Hospital a private residence known as Ranelagh House, and laid out a garden. In 1691[208] the house is described as “very fine within, all the rooms being wainscotted with Norway oak,” and the garden plats and walks were “curiously kept and elegantly designed.” Bowack in 1705 says that the gardens were “esteemed to be the best in England, the size considered.” Here Lord Ranelagh lived till his death in 1712.
In 1733 the property was sold, and at that time Lacy, patentee of Drury Lane Theatre, made arrangements for forming Ranelagh into a place of public amusement. Nothing decisive was done till 1741, when a large circular building, the famous Rotunda (at first generally called the Amphitheatre), was erected in the Ranelagh grounds by William Jones, architect to the East India Company.[209]
The capital for the undertaking was furnished by a few shareholders, and was divided into thirty-six shares of £1,000 each. The principal shareholder and manager was Sir Thomas Robinson, Bart., M.P., whose gigantic form was for many years familiar to all frequenters of the Rotunda: a writer of 1774 calls him its Maypole and Garland of Delights.[210]
The Rotunda and Gardens were first opened on 5 April, 1742, with a public breakfast, and a visit to Ranelagh became the vogue. Of the early fortunes of the place the best chronicler is Horace Walpole. On April 22, 1742, he writes to Mann:--“I have been breakfasting this morning at Ranelagh Garden: they have built an immense amphitheatre, with balconies full of little ale-houses: it is in rivalry to Vauxhall and costs above twelve thousand pounds.”[211]
On May 26[212] he again describes the “vast amphitheatre, finely gilt, painted and illuminated; into which everybody that loves eating, drinking, staring, or crowding, is admitted for twelvepence.” In 1744,[213] Mr. Walpole goes “every night constantly” to Ranelagh, “which has totally beat Vauxhall.” “Nobody goes anywhere else; everybody goes there. My Lord Chesterfield is so fond of it, that he says he has ordered all his letters to be directed thither.” “The floor is all of beaten princes”; “you can’t set your foot without treading on a Prince or Duke of Cumberland.” In 1748,[214] “Ranelagh is so crowded, that going there t’other night in a string of coaches, we had a stop of six and thirty minutes.”
In 1745 Mr. Thomas Gray had written to a friend[215] that he had no intention of following the stream to Ranelagh, and he touched a weak spot in the delights of the London Pleasure Gardens--the uncertainty of the London weather. “I have never been at Ranelagh Gardens since they were opened.... They do not succeed: people see it once, or twice, and so they go to Vauxhall. Well, but is it not a very great design, very new, finely lighted? Well, yes, aye, very fine truly, so they yawn and go to Vauxhall, and then it’s too hot, and then it’s too cold, and here’s a wind and there’s a damp.” But in August 1746 we find Gray declaring[216] that his evenings lately have been chiefly spent at Ranelagh and Vauxhall.
Other literary people, at least as interesting, as Walpole’s Dukes and Princes, frequented Ranelagh. The learned Mrs. Carter was there in 1748, and found the gardens very pleasant on a June evening, though she did not relish such “tumultary torchlight entertainments.” Goldsmith and Reynolds used to go there together about 1771, and Dr. Johnson “often went to Ranelagh,” which he deemed, as the Rev. Dr. Maxwell apologetically observes, “a place of innocent recreation.”
§ 2. _The Rotunda_
The guide-books abound with architectural details of the Ranelagh Rotunda.[217] A sufficient idea of its general appearance may be gained by glancing at some of the contemporary prints and by noticing a few salient features. Writers of the time compare it to “the Pantheon at Rome”: the Londoner of to-day will think rather of the British Museum Reading Room which it resembled in size and, to some extent, in general appearance. The circumference was 555 feet and the internal diameter 150 feet. It was entered by four Doric porticoes opposite one another, and the interior architecture corresponded with the exterior.
On the exterior was an arcade encircling the building, and above this arcade was a gallery reached by steps placed at the porticoes.
In the interior was a circle of fifty-two[218] boxes, separated by wainscotting. Each box had its “droll painting” and its bell-lamp with candles; and in each seven or eight people could be accommodated with refreshments. Benches covered with red baize were dispersed about the area, and the plaster floor was covered with matting.
Above the circle of boxes was a gallery containing a similar range of boxes which were entered by folding-doors from the gallery outside the building. The Rotunda was lighted by sixty windows, and the chief material used in its construction was wood.
The ceiling was painted an olive colour, with a rainbow round the extremity, and there hung from it numerous chandeliers, each ornamented with a gilt crown and containing crystal bell-lamps of candles. When all the candles were lighted, the sight, we are told, was “very glorious.”
In the centre of the building was a remarkable square erection supporting the roof, and made up of pillars and arches elaborately decorated. This “grand and elegant structure” was nothing more or less than a fireplace containing a chimney and an open fire. On cold days in February and March the best place was “one of the hot blazing red-cloth benches” by the fire. This fireplace structure had originally contained the orchestra, but after a few years the orchestra was, for acoustic reasons, moved to the side of the Rotunda. Behind the orchestra was an organ by Byfield, set up in 1746.[219]
[Illustration:
_The Inside View of the Rotunda in Renelagh Gardens with the Company at Breakfast._
_Vue de la Compagnie à Dejeuner dans la Rotonde au Mellieux des Jardines de Renelagh._
THE ROTUNDA AT RENELAGH, _circ._ 1751.]
Johnson declared that “the _coup d’œil_” of Ranelagh was “the finest thing he had ever seen.”[220] When Johnson first entered Ranelagh and its brilliant circle, it gave, as he told Boswell,[221] “an expansion and gay sensation” to his mind, such as he had never experienced anywhere else. Miss Lydia Melford, in _Humphry Clinker_, wrote about Ranelagh to her ‘dear Willis’ with an enthusiasm less restrained, and without Dr. Johnson’s moralising comment:--“Alas, Sir, these are only _struggles_ for happiness.” “Ranelagh (she writes) looks like the enchanted palace of a genio, adorned with the most exquisite performances of painting, carving, and gilding, enlightened with a thousand golden lamps that emulate the noonday sun; crowded with the great, the rich, the gay, the happy and the fair; glittering with cloth of gold and silver, lace, embroidery, and precious stones. While these exulting sons and daughters of felicity tread this round of pleasure, or regale in different parties, and separate lodges, with fine imperial tea and other delicious refreshments, their ears are entertained with the most ravishing delights of music, both instrumental and vocal.”
§ 3. _The entertainments and the company._
The usual charge for admission was half a crown,[222] which always included the ‘regale’ of tea, coffee and bread and butter. Foote called Ranelagh the Bread and Butter Manufactory, and, except on ball nights, no other refreshments seem to have been procurable.
The place was usually open on three days in the week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.[223] The regular season for the evening concerts and garden-promenade began at Easter, but the Rotunda was often open in February, or earlier, for the dances. In the early days of Ranelagh the public breakfastings and the morning concerts at twelve were a constant feature. About 1754 the proprietors of Ranelagh were refused a license for music, and the breakfasting took place that year without concerts: these breakfasts and morning concerts do not appear to have been subsequently renewed.
The evening concerts (from May 1742, onwards) generally began, at 6.30 or 7. Between the Acts the company walked in the gardens to the music of horns and clarinets, and a garden-orchestra was erected about 1764. The gardens were illuminated, but fireworks did not become a prominent feature till about 1767.
The gardens themselves were somewhat formally laid out. There were several gravel walks, shaded by elms and yews; a flower-garden, and “a beautiful octagon grass plat.” The principal walk led from the south end of Ranelagh House to the bottom of the gardens, where there was a circular Temple of Pan. At night the walks were prettily lit with lamps attached to the trees. There was also a canal with a Temple indifferently described as the Chinese House and the Venetian Temple.
[Illustration: _The Chinese House, the Rotunda, & the Company in Masquerade in RENELAGH GARDENS_]
In its earliest as well as in its latest days masquerades attracted many to the Rotunda and the gardens, but the chief diversion was the promenade in the Rotunda. A guide-book of 1793 states that “walking round the Rotundo” was “one of the pleasures of the place.” We hear much at all periods of “the circular labour” of the company and “the ring of folly.”[224] Matthew Bramble found one half of the company “following one another’s tails in an eternal circle like asses in an olive mill while the other half are drinking hot water under the denomination of tea.” Mr. Bramble exacted much from places of amusement, but it is to be suspected from other testimonies that there was an atmosphere of dulness, a note of ennui, about the ordinary diversions of this fashionable rendezvous. “There’s your famous Ranelagh (says ‘Evelina’) that you make such a fuss about; why what a dull place is that!” A Frenchman describing Ranelagh about 1800--foreigners were always expected to visit it--calls it “le plus insipide lieu d’amusement que l’on ait pu imaginer,” and even hints at Dante’s Purgatory. Another Frenchman writing much earlier, _circ._ 1749, briefly comments “on s’ennuie avec de la mauvaise musique, du thé et du beurre.”
Samuel Rogers (_Table Talk_), who must have known Ranelagh from about 1786 till its close, was struck by the solemnity of the whole thing: “all was so orderly and still that you could hear the whishing sound of the ladies’ trains as the immense assembly walked round and round the room.” An “affray” of the kind familiar at Vauxhall and not infrequent at Marylebone was practically unknown at Ranelagh. On May 6th, 1752, Dr. John Hill was caned in the Rotunda by an angry gentleman, and the newspapers and caricaturists were momentarily excited, chiefly because Hill’s injuries were supposed to be a sham. One almost welcomes a scene at Ranelagh. On the 12th of May, 1764, four footmen were charged before Sir John Fielding with riotous behaviour at Ranelagh House, “hissing several of the nobility, relative to their not giving or suffering vails to be taken, pelting several gentlemen with brick-bats and breaking the windows.”[225]
Throughout its career of more than a hundred and sixty years, Ranelagh fairly maintained its position as a fashionable resort, but at all periods the company was a good deal mixed. Philomides, “a gentleman of sprightly wit, and very solid judgment,” has described[226] the frequenters of the place four or five years after it was first opened. My Lord (he says) was sure to meet his tailor there, and Statira would see her toyman “cursing himself for letting this Statira have a service of very fine Dresden china, which she assured him her Lord would pay for immediately.” The ubiquitous Templar was easily recognised--a pert young fellow in a fustian frock, and a broad-brimmed hat “in an affected impudent cock.” There was an Oxford scholar, a political pamphleteer and a spruce military spark smelling of lavender water. A coxcomb just returned from his travels was more absurd. He had set up as virtuoso, and brought home a headless Helen and a genuine ‘Otho’ coined at Rome two years ago. He might now be heard talking Italian in a loud voice and “pronouncing the word Gothic fifty times an hour.”
In 1760 a fashionable lady complains that there were too many tradesmen’s wives at Ranelagh. But compared with Vauxhall it was fashionable, at least according to a lady’s maid in “High Life Below Stairs” (_circ._ 1759, Act I. sc. 2):--
_Lady Charlotte’s Maid_: Well, I say it again, I love Vauxhall.
_Lady Bab’s Maid_: Oh, my stars! Why, there is nobody there but filthy citizens--_Runelow_ for _my_ money.
[Illustration: THE ATTACK ON DR. JOHN HILL AT RANELAGH, 6 MAY, 1752.]
From about 1774 it was considered fashionable to arrive at the Rotunda about 11 P.M., one hour after the concert was over. In 1777, according to Walpole, the company did not arrive till twelve. “The people of the true ton,” says the satirical “Harlequin in Ranelagh,”[227] (1774), “come in about eleven, stare about them for half an hour, laugh at the other fools who are drenching and scalding themselves with coffee and tea ... despise all they have seen, and then they trail home again to sup.” The citizens, on the other hand, came to stare at the great, at the Duke of Gloucester or Lady Almeria Carpenter, or whoever it might be. They came to see how the great folks were dressed, how they walked and how they talked. Some worthy men were compelled by their wives to wear swords, and in the circling promenade found it hard “to adjust the spit to the humour of those behind and before” them. The ‘Harlequin’ enlarges on some unpleasant characters who haunted Ranelagh, Baron H----g (for instance), who trails about like a wounded worm, and Lord C----y who “runs his nose under every bonnet.” It is not to be denied that Ranelagh, though on the whole decorous, had a tolerable reputation as a place of assignation.
§ 4. _Annals of Ranelagh 1742–1769._
From this general sketch of Ranelagh and its frequenters, we may pass on to some details of its amusements year by year.
The principal performer at the concerts in the earliest days (1742–_circ._ 1760) was the well-known actor and vocalist Beard, who was considered by Dibdin to be, “taken altogether, the best English singer.” Giulia Frasi, young and interesting, with her “sweet clear voice,” was heard in 1751 and 1752. Michael Festing at first led the band, and was succeeded (about 1752) by Abram Brown, a performer who (according to Burney) had “a clear, sprightly and loud tone, with a strong hand,” but who was deficient in musical knowledge and feeling. Parry, the Welsh harper (1746), and Caporale, the violoncello player, were also among the earlier performers.[228]
At first, choruses from oratorios (this was still the case in 1763) were a feature of the concerts, but the performances soon came to differ little from those of Vauxhall and Marylebone. In 1754 an entertainment of recitation, with a procession, was given under the name of Comus’s Court. In 1757 “Acis and Galatea” was performed for the benefit of the Marine Society. On 10 June, 1763[229] Bonnell Thornton’s ‘Burlesque Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day’ was performed, “adapted (by Burney) to the antient British music, viz.: the salt-box, the Jew’s-harp, the marrow-bones and cleavers, the hum-strum or hurdy-gurdy, etc., etc.” The performers sang the recitative, airs and choruses in masquerade dresses, and the salt-box song was especially successful. The fun must have been rather forced, though Johnson, who read the Ode when printed, “praised its humour,” seemed much diverted with it, and repeated the lines:--
In strains more exalted the salt-box shall join, And clattering and battering and clapping combine; With a rap and a tap while the hollow side sounds, Up and down leaps the flap, and with rattling rebounds.
In 1762–1764 the principal singer was the Italian Tenducci,[230] whose voice, according to Miss Lydia Melford, was “neither man’s nor woman’s; but it is more melodious than either, and it warbled so divinely, that while I listened I really thought myself in Paradise.”
On 29 June, 1764, Mozart, then eight years old, performed on the harpsichord and organ several of his own compositions. On 12 May, 1767,[231] Catches and Glees were rendered with instrumental parts by Arne, an addition considered necessary on account of the size of the Rotunda. This was stated to be the first public performance of the kind in England.
In 1769 Dibdin was a singer of ballads, and on 12 May of this year there was a Jubilee Ridotto, an event at which we may pause to recall some of the earlier masquerades and balls which, from time to time, enlivened the routine of Ranelagh.
The most famous of these entertainments was the “Grand Jubilee Masquerade, in the Venetian taste,” that took place on Wednesday, 26 April, 1749, to celebrate the proclamation of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. The Masquerade (says Horace Walpole[232]) “had nothing Venetian in it, but was by far the best understood and prettiest spectacle I ever saw; nothing in a fairy tale ever surpassed it.... It began at three o’clock; at about five, people of fashion began to go; when you entered, you found the whole garden filled with masks and spread with tents, which remained all night very commodely. In one quarter was a Maypole dressed with garlands, and people dancing round it to a tabor and pipe, and rustic music, all masked, as were all the various bands of music that were disposed in different parts of the garden; some like huntsmen with French-horns, some like peasants, and a troop of harlequins and scaramouches in the little open temple on the mount. On the canal was a sort of gondola, adorned with flags and streamers, and filled with music, rowing about. All round the outside of the amphitheatre were shops, filled with Dresden china, Japan, &c., and all the shopkeepers in mask. The amphitheatre was illuminated, and in the middle was a circular bower, composed of all kinds of firs in tubs, from twenty to thirty feet high; under them, orange trees, with small lamps in each orange, and below them all sorts of the finest auriculas in pots; and festoons of natural flowers hanging from tree to tree. Between the arches, too, were firs, and smaller ones in the balconies above. There were booths for tea and wine, gaming-tables, and dancing, and about two thousand persons. In short, it pleased me more than the finest thing I ever saw.”
Later masquerades, though attended by fashionable people, were less select, as appears, for example, from an advertisement which a gentleman inserted in the _Public Advertiser_ of 8 March, 1753[233]:--“This is to inform the Lady that was in a wite mask, red Beard and Ey’s at the last Masquereade but one, in a brown and silver flora Pethecoat and head-dress, remarkable gentle, very finely maid, who lost her company and walked with several masks, perticuler with one, who in raptorous heared her declare a dislike to gameing and the intention of Maskquerdes ... on which he asked, wathere single or ingaged, and under whos care that Night? the lady pointing to a tall gentleman in black and a bag wigg, said his, my Brother.” His intentions were honourable, and he begged to see her face. In reply, “she repetted Part out of the Orphin ‘Trust not a man’; said he had taken notice enough of her to know her again; bid him look sharp at the next Makquered, at wich and all other Places he as been dispionted of seeing her; he therefore hops (if not ingaged) will get her Brother or some Friend to call on him” as he feels assured he could be happy for life with her.
On the occasion of the Jubilee Ridotto on 12 May, 1769, the gardens and the Chinese House were illuminated. “A large sea-horse stuck full of small lamps floated on the Canal, and had a very agreeable aspect.” A favourite Ranelagh ‘serenata,’ Dibdin’s ‘Ephesian Matron,’ was performed at ten, and the Rotunda and gardens were gradually filled by a brilliant company. The Dukes of York and Cumberland were there, and one of the prettiest characters was “a rural nymph in rose-coloured sattin, trimmed with silver.” The tickets, which cost a guinea, included the supper. Unfortunately, the wine and sweetmeats were not immediately forthcoming, and some gentlemen broke open the wine cellar and helped themselves. Sir Thomas Robinson, to make things pleasant, thereupon sent a general invitation to the company to sup with him. The dancing began at twelve, and was continued till four, a comparatively early hour at Ranelagh masquerades.
§ 5. _Later history of Ranelagh, 1770–1805._
A “Gentleman in Town,” writing in _The Town and Country Magazine_ for April 1770 (p. 195) to his friend in the country, enlarges on the fashionable assemblages to be then seen at Ranelagh three times a week. And we may note that about this time the tradesmen advertised their silver Ranelagh silks and Ranelagh waistcoats in gold, silver and colours. The sweet voice of “the lovely Mrs. Baddeley” was then to be heard in the Rotunda, and she sang (in the autumn, 1770) in “The Recruiting Sergeant,” together with Mrs. Thompson, Dibdin, and Bannister.[234]
The garden concerts, and the fireworks, and transparent pictures in a building in the grounds had by this time become prominent features of the place.[235]
The event of 1775 was the Ranelagh Regatta and Ball,[236] which took place on June 23rd. Early in the afternoon of that day the whole river from London Bridge to Millbank was covered with pleasure boats, and scaffold erections were to be seen on the banks, and even on the top of Westminster Hall. Gambling tables lined the approaches to Westminster Bridge: men went about selling indifferent liquor, Regatta songs and Regatta cards. The river banks now resembled a great fair, and the Thames itself a floating town. Wild calculations fixed the number of the spectators at 200,000, or “at least” three millions. At 7.30 a cannon signalled the start of the racing-boats, and about 8.30, when the prizes had been awarded, the whole procession began to move “in a picturesque irregularity towards Ranelagh.” The Directors’ barge, with its band playing and gold REGATTA ensign flying, led the way, and the fortunate persons who had ball-tickets landed at Ranelagh Stairs at nine o’clock.
Dancing took place in the Temple of Neptune, a temporary octagon erection in the grounds. Mrs. Cornelys had been given seven hundred guineas (it is said) to supply the supper, and it is lamentable to reflect that the supper was “indifferent, and the wine very scarce.” However, there was a great company: the Duke of Gloucester, the Duke of Northumberland, Lord North, the Duchess of Devonshire, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Garrick, Colman, Samuel Foote. A band of two hundred and forty instrumentalists, under Giardini, performed in the Rotunda, and there was singing by Vernon and Reinhold, including the cheering ballad:--
Ye lords and ye ladies who form this gay throng, Be silent a moment, attend to our song, And while you suspend your fantastical round, Come, bless your sweet stars that you’re none of you drowned.
[Illustration: ADMISSION TICKET, BY CIPRIANI AND BARTOLOZZI.]
From this time (1775) till about 1790 the concerts continued as usual, but Ranelagh seems during the period to have suffered a certain eclipse. In May 1788 the shares are said to have fallen from their par value (£1,000) to £900. Ranelagh was “voted a bore with the fashionable circles,” and its distance from town began to be considered an obstacle.
About 1791, however, its fortunes revived, and numerous masquerades, sometimes lasting till six or eight in the morning, and firework displays (chiefly by Caillot and by Rossi and Tessier) remained a feature of Ranelagh till its close.
Henry Angelo (_Reminiscences_, ii. _p._ 3 _f._), speaking of its later days, declares that it was frequented by “the élite of fashion.” The gentlemen wore powder, frills and ruffles, and had gold-headed canes. “Cropped heads, trousers or shoe-strings” were not to be seen there. The men used to buy in the ante-room myrtles, hyacinths and roses, not to wear themselves, but for presentation to the ladies.
A masquerade of 1792 (14 February) was attended by Mrs. Jordan, “supported” (as the newspapers said) “between the friendly arms of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Clarence.” Mr. Petit was good as a man walking in his sleep with a candle, and amid the usual crowd of harlequins, sailors and flower-girls, “a monkey of the largest size was offensively dexterous.”[237] At another masquerade this year (16 May) a Guy Faux, a ‘Bath Maccarony,’ an African Princess, and three or four Romps attracted attention.
On May 7th, 1792, the exhibition called Mount Etna was introduced and remained popular at Ranelagh for several years. A special building with a scene designed by G. Marinari, ‘painter to the Opera,’ was prepared for it in the gardens. The idea was evidently borrowed from Torré’s Forge of Vulcan, the great attraction at the Marylebone Gardens some twenty years earlier. The scene represented Mount Etna and the Cavern of Vulcan with the ‘Cyclops’ forging the armour of Mars, “as described (the advertisements add) in the Aeneid of Virgil.” To an accompaniment of music “compiled from Gluck, Haydn, Giardini, and Handel,” we see the ‘Cyclops’ going to work. “The smoke thickens, the crater on the top of Etna vomits forth flames, and the lava rolls dreadful along the side of the mountain. This continues with increasing violence till there is a prodigious eruption, which finishes with a tremendous explosion.”
On June 27th, 1793, the Chevalier D’Eon fenced in the Rotunda with M. Sainville, and received the congratulations of the Prince of Wales and Mrs. Fitzherbert.[238]
In 1797 (April) there was an enjoyable masquerade, at which there reigned (we are told) “good nature and pleasant hilarity, without riot”: all this, in spite of a crowd of imaginary Dutch skippers, lunatics, coachmen, quack doctors and watercress girls.
At a concert in 1798 (June) Incledon and Madame Mara sang. In 1799 a January masquerade was diversified by a drawing for fifty twelfth cakes as prizes for the masks.
The Directors now began to offer prizes for regattas and volunteer shooting-matches, and a few splendid entertainments mark the closing years of Ranelagh.
On 2 June, 1802, Boodle’s Club gave an elegant dance at which the ladies “wore white and silver, ornamented with laurel”--and diamonds, and amused themselves by drawing prizes of trinkets in a Lottery Booth. On the 28 June (1802) the Picnic Society gave an “afternoon breakfast,” and at five o’clock Garnerin, the French aeronaut, and Captain Sowden ascended in a balloon from the gardens.[239]
On 23 September (1802) Mr. Thomas Todd descended into a reservoir of water twenty-five feet deep, prepared for him in the gardens. His awkward diving-tub, and his dress of leather and metal excited the laughter of spectators born too early to know the diver of the Polytechnic. Nor is this praiseworthy experiment to be counted among the splendid entertainments of Ranelagh, for Mr. Todd was “misfitted by his coppersmith,” forgot to take down his lamp, and did not remain under water more than five minutes.[240]
On 1 June, 1803, a ball in commemoration of the Installation of the Knights of the Bath took place and proved one of the finest of the entertainments. Yet these were only ‘struggles for happiness,’ and attempts to galvanise a nearly lifeless Ranelagh. The unending promenade, with its sentimental songs and elegant regale of tea and coffee, had ceased to attract, and the lamp-hung trees, the Chinese House and the music on the Canal had lost their ancient charm. On 8 July, 1803, the Rotunda of Ranelagh was opened for the last time as a place of amusement.
On 30 September, 1805, the proprietors gave directions for the demolition of Ranelagh House and the Rotunda; the furniture was sold by auction shortly afterwards, and the buildings were removed. The organ was bought for Tetbury Church, Gloucestershire, where it remained till 1863, when it was purchased by a builder.
The Ranelagh grounds had extended from the old Burial Ground (east of Chelsea Hospital) to the rivermarshes on the south, and the Chelsea Bridge Road now crosses their eastern boundary. When the buildings were removed the grounds were, by degrees, purchased of the shareholders by General Richard R. Wilford to add to his property adjoining. A poet of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ in June 1807 laments the Fall of Ranelagh, and the site already overgrown with weeds. The foundation walls of the Rotunda and the arches of some of the cellars could, however, be traced as late as 1813, and part of the site was a favourite playground for Chelsea children. By 1826, the Ranelagh grounds had become by purchase the property of Chelsea Hospital and were parcelled out into allotments. The ground is, at the present time, once more a ‘Ranelagh Garden,’ in which the public are admitted, as the old advertisements would say, “to walk gratis.”
All traces of Ranelagh have been thus obliterated, and a London historian (Jesse, _London_, iii, 420) on visiting the site in 1871, could find as its memorial only a single avenue of trees with one or two of the old lamp-irons--the ‘firetrees’ of the early advertisements--still attached.
[From the numerous authorities, the following may be selected:--_Gent. Mag._ 1742, 418, ff.; _Ranelagh House: a Satire in prose_, London, 1747 (W. Coll.); Dodsley’s _London_, 1761; Sir John Fielding’s _Brief Description of London_, 1776; Burney’s _Hist. of Music_, iv. 668, ff.; Kearsley’s _Strangers’ Guide_ (1793?); Lysons’s _Environs_, Supplement, p. 120; Faulkner’s _Chelsea_, ii. 299, ff.; Blanchard in _The Era Almanack_, 1870; Grove’s _Dict. of Music_, art. “Ranelagh House,” by W. H. Husk; L’Estrange’s _Village of Palaces_, ii. 296; Walford, v. 76, ff.; Austin Dobson’s _Eighteenth Century Vignettes_, 2nd ser. p. 263, ff.; collections relating to Ranelagh in British Museum and Guildhall libraries, and a large series of cuttings from newspapers, magazines, &c., W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
A good representative series of the principal early views of Ranelagh is in the Crace Collection (_Catal._ p. 164; pp. 312–314). The site is well marked in Horwood’s Plan A, 1794.
STROMBOLO HOUSE AND GARDENS, CHELSEA
Strombolo House[241] was a minor place of entertainment, dating from 1762, or earlier, with tea-gardens and “a fine fountain”[242] attached to it. The gardens[243] are said to have been most frequented about 1788. They were open chiefly in the afternoons of week-days and Sundays for tea-drinking during the summer season. The house, opposite the famous Royal Bun House, Chelsea, in Jew’s Row (now Pimlico Road), was still standing in 1829, when Faulkner’s _Chelsea_ (second edition) was published, but it appears to have been disused as a place of amusement long before that date.
The ground was afterwards occupied by the Orange Tavern and tea-gardens to which was attached the Orange Theatre, a small private playhouse, where local geniuses performed (1831–32). St. Barnabas Church, Pimlico, built 1848–1850, standing off the south side of Pimlico Road (entrance in Church Street) is now nearly on the site.
[O’Keefe’s _Recollections_, i. p. 88; Faulkner’s _Chelsea_, ii. p. 357; Davis’s _Knightsbridge_ (1859), p. 263; Wheatley’s _London P. and P._ s.v. “Strombello”; Timbs’s _Club Life_ (1866), ii. p. 260.]
STAR AND GARTER TAVERN AND GARDENS, CHELSEA
In the grounds attached to the Star and Garter Tavern in the Five Fields between Chelsea and Pimlico,[244] displays of fireworks and horsemanship took place in 1762 (July-September) to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Wales, and the visit of the chiefs of the Cherokee Indians[245] who were duly exploited by the proprietor. Carlo Genovini, an Italian artificer, exhibited stars and moving suns, a guilloche of a varied coloured rose, reprises of water cascades and many pyrotechnic devices, together with the Temple of Liberty, a machine thirty-two feet long and forty high “painted in a theatrical manner” with Britannia triumphant over the portico. The fireworks began at eight or nine and the tickets were usually half-a-crown.
On other evenings at seven o’clock Thomas Johnson, the well-known equestrian, performed feats with two and three horses similar to those undertaken by him at the Three Hats, Islington. The admission was one shilling. The proprietor of the Star and Garter also kept the neighbouring Dwarf’s Tavern, with Coan, “the jovial Pigmy,” as Major Domo,[246] and to this place visitors were invited to adjourn after the fireworks, there to sup on “a most excellent ham, some collared eels, potted beef, etc., with plenty of sound old bright wine and punch like nectar.”[247]
[Faulkner’s _Chelsea_, ii. 354–356, where further details of the fireworks and horsemanship may be found; Davis’s _Knightsbridge_, p. 264.]
JENNY’S WHIM, PIMLICO
St. George’s Row, near Ebury Bridge, formerly called The Wooden Bridge or Jenny’s Whim Bridge, marks the site of Jenny’s Whim, a tavern and pleasure-garden popular in the last century.
Jenny’s Whim is said to have been established as a place of amusement by a firework artificer and theatrical machinist, in the reign of George II. About 1750 it appears to have been a good deal frequented during the day-time, and people of rank and fashion occasionally visited it. Walpole once encountered Lord Granby “arrived very drunk from Jenny’s Whim,” where he “had dined with Lady Fanny [Seymour] and left her and eight other women and four other men playing at Brag.”
A writer in _The Connoisseur_ comparing it in 1755 with Ranelagh and Vauxhall, describes it, however, as a resort of “the lower sort of people,” rather than of the quality.
[Illustration: _A West VIEW OF Chelsea BRIDGE ... Un VUE du Pont de Chelsea du COTE du ‘Vest._
SHOWING JENNY’S WHIM, 1761.]
The gardens possessed, in addition to the usual bowers, alcoves and prim flowerbeds, a bowling-green, a grotto, a cock-pit and a ducking pond. In the centre was a large fish pond. Mechanical devices, similar to those at New Georgia, Hampstead, attracted many visitors. A Harlequin, a Mother Shipton, or some terrific monster, started up in the recesses of the garden when an unsuspected spring was trodden upon, and huge fish and mermaids rose at intervals from the water of the pond.
The admission about 1755 appears to have been sixpence.
Before the close of the eighteenth century, the popularity of the place had declined, though it was still frequented as a summer tea-garden, and by 1804 Jenny’s Whim had become a mere public-house. The house, a red brick building with lattice work, containing a large room originally used for breakfasting parties, continued in existence for many years, and was not pulled down till 1865.
[Walford, v. 45., ff.; Walpole’s _Letters_, ii. 212, 23 June, 1750; _The Connoisseur_, No. 68, 15 May, 1755; _Low Life_, 1764; Davis’s _Knightsbridge_, 253, ff.; _Notes and Queries_, 3rd ser. viii. 166; Angelo’s _Picnic_ (1834), s.v.]
VIEWS.
1. The north front of Jenny’s Whim Bridge and the Old Public House at the foot of the Bridge, water colour drawing, 1761. Crace, _Cat._ p. 311, No. 58.
2. “A west view of Chelsea Bridge” (showing Jenny’s Whim). Boreman pinx. Lodge sculp. (1761), W. Coll.; Crace, _Cat._ p. 311, No. 59 (cp. Walford, v. 43).
CROMWELL’S GARDENS,
Afterwards FLORIDA GARDENS, BROMPTON
Cromwell’s Gardens consisted of grounds immediately adjoining (and perhaps at one time belonging to) Hale House, Brompton, a mansion popularly known as Cromwell House from a tradition, seemingly unfounded, that the Protector or his family had once resided there. Some of the entrance tickets of Cromwell’s Gardens consisted of rude imitations of Oliver’s pattern-shillings, and had his effigy on the obverse.
The Gardens were in existence at least as early as 1762,[248] and in 1776 they are described as frequented by fashionable gentlemen of Kensington and the West End, and by various ladies who were apparently not always of irreproachable character. Brompton was then and long afterwards in the midst of gardens and nurseries, and was noted for its salubrious air. Cromwell’s Gardens were within a pleasant rural walk from the Park, Chelsea and Knightsbridge. The grounds were neatly kept: there were “agreeable” arbours for drinking tea and coffee, and in one part of the garden trees, curiously cut, surrounded an elevated grass plat. Their retired situation rendered them (in the opinion of the “Sunday Rambler”) “well adapted for gallantry and intrigue.”
Music of some kind seems to have been provided, and at one time equestrian performances in the open air were exhibited by Charles Hughes, the well-known rider, who in 1782 founded with Dibdin the Royal Circus, afterwards the Surrey Theatre. The admission was sixpence,[249] and the gardens were open at least as late as nine at night.[250]
In 1781 (or 1780) the gardens were in the hands of Mr. R. Hiem, a German florist, who grew his cherries, strawberries, and flowers there. About that time he changed the name to Florida Gardens,[251] erected a great room for dining in the centre of the gardens, and opened the place to the public at a charge of sixpence. A bowling-green was formed and a band (said to be subscribed for by the nobility and gentry) played twice a week during the summer. An air-balloon and fireworks were announced for 10 September, 1784. It was a pleasant place where visitors could gather flowers, and fruit “fresh every hour in the day,” and take the light refreshment of tea, coffee, and ice creams, or wine and cyder if they preferred it. Hiem specially recommended his Bern Veckley as “an elegant succedaneum for bread and butter, and eat by the Noblesse of Switzerland.” However, like many proprietors of pleasure-gardens, he subsequently became bankrupt, between 1787 and 1797 (?).
Maria, Duchess of Gloucester, having procured a lease (before September 1797)[252] of the place, built there a villa, at first called Maria Lodge, then Orford Lodge, at which she died in 1807. Shortly after 1807 the premises consisting of about six acres were purchased by the Rt. Hon. George Canning, who changed the name of the house to Gloucester Lodge, and lived there for many years.
The house was pulled down about 1850 and the ground let on building leases. Part of Courtfield Road, Ashburn Place, and perhaps other streets, occupy the site of Gloucester Lodge which stood immediately south of the present Cromwell Road, and west of Gloucester Road near the point where the Gloucester Road intersects Cromwell Road.
[_Sunday Ramble_ (1776); _A Modern Sabbath_ (1797), chap. vii.; Faulkner’s _Kensington_ (1820), pp. 438, 441; Lysons’s _Environs_, supplement to first ed. (1811), p. 215; Wheatley, _London P. and P._ s.v. “Cromwell House” and “Gloucester Lodge”; Fores’s _New Guide_ (1789), preface, p. vi.; _The Public Advertiser_, 10 July, 1789; _The Morning Herald_, 7 July, 1786; and newspaper cuttings in W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
There seem to be no views of the Cromwell and Florida Gardens. There is a view of the garden front of Gloucester Lodge in Jerdan’s _Autobiography_ (1852), vol. ii. frontispiece.
VI
SOUTH LONDON GROUP
BERMONDSEY SPA GARDENS
The Bermondsey Spa Gardens owe such celebrity as they attained to the enterprise of their founder and proprietor, Thomas Keyse, a self-taught artist, born in 1722, who painted skilful imitations of still life and exhibited pictures at the Royal Academy. About 1765 he purchased the Waterman’s Arms, a tavern in Bermondsey, together with some waste ground adjoining, and opened the place as a tea-garden, exhibiting there a collection of his own pictures. At that time, and for several years in the present century, Bermondsey was surrounded by open country.
About 1770 a chalybeate spring was discovered in the grounds, and Keyse’s establishment thereupon acquired the name of the Bermondsey Spa Gardens. Keyse was a cheery, ingenious landlord, remarkable among other things for his preparation of cherry-brandy. In 1784 he obtained a license for music from the Surrey magistrates, and spent £4,000 in improvements. The gardens (covering not less than four acres) were opened during the summer months on week-day evenings and Sundays, and the price of admission on week-days was a shilling. Each visitor was, however, given on entering a metal check,[253] which was exchanged for refreshments to the extent of sixpence. On special occasions the admission was half-a-crown or three shillings.
In the gardens were the usual arbours and benches for tea-drinking. The space before the orchestra was about a quarter of the size of that at Vauxhall, and on the north-east of the garden was a lawn of about three acres. A row of trees leading from the entrance to the picture gallery was hung at night with lamps of red, blue, green, and white, in humble imitation of the Grand Walk at Vauxhall.[254]
Jonas Blewitt, one of the most distinguished organists of the latter half of the eighteenth century, composed the music of many songs for the entertainments at the Spa.[255] The Spa poets were Mr. J. Oakman and Mr. Harriss. Songs of hunting, drinking, and seafaring took their turn with ditties full of what may be described as sprightly sentiment. The other music[256] consisted of burlettas, duets, and interludes, performed by vocalists of only local fame. In a burletta called the ‘Friars,’ certain nuns who had been forced by wicked guardians to take the veil, make their escape with the assistance of two friars. These reverend men, after singing an anacreontic song, divide the gold which the ladies have given them as their reward, and the whole concludes with a chorus. The words of the burlettas and songs were printed in little books, sold for sixpence at the bar and in the exhibition room.[257]
An occasional display of fireworks took place, and the gardens and a cascade (introduced about 1792) were illuminated.[258] From time to time there was a representation of the Siege of Gibraltar by means of fireworks, transparencies and bomb shells.[259] The apparatus for the Siege, which was designed by Keyse himself, was set up in a field divided from the lawn by a sunk fence, the rock being fifty feet high and two hundred feet long. The blowing up of the floating batteries and the sinking of boats in ‘fictitious water’ were (we are assured) ‘so truly represented as to give a very strong idea of the real Siege.’
A permanent attraction was the Gallery of Paintings, an oblong room described as being about the same size as W. M. Turner’s studio in Queen Anne’s Street. Here were exhibited Keyse’s pictorial reproductions of a Butcher’s Shop and a Greengrocer’s Stall and many other paintings, including a Vesuvius, and a candle that looked as if it were really lighted.
On the whole, the Bermondsey Spa appears to have been a respectable, though hardly fashionable, resort, which brought its proprietor a moderate income and supplied harmless, if not very exalted, means of recreation.
It being not unnecessary to provide for the safe convoy of the visitors after nightfall, Keyse inserted the following advertisement in the newspapers:--“The Spa Gardens, in Grange Road, Bermondsey, one mile [the distance is rather understated] from London Bridge; for the security of the public the road is lighted and watched by patroles every night, at the sole expense of the proprietor.” The lighting and patrolling were probably somewhat mythical, but no doubt the announcement served to reassure the timid.
J. T. Smith, the author of _A Book for a Rainy Day_, has left a graphic description of a visit that he paid on a bright July evening of 1795. The popularity of the gardens was then waning, and on entering he found no one there but three idle waiters. A board with a ruffled hand within a sky-blue painted sleeve directed him to the staircase which led “To the Gallery of Paintings,” and he made a solitary tour of the room.
The rest of the visit may be described in Smith’s own words. “Stepping back to study the picture of the ‘Greenstall,’ I ask your pardon,’ said I, for I had trodden upon some one’s toes. ‘Sir, it is granted,’ replied a little, thick-set man, with a round face, arch look, and closely-curled wig, surmounted by a small three-cornered hat put very knowingly on one side, not unlike Hogarth’s head in his print of the ‘Gates of Calais.’ ‘You are an artist, I presume; I noticed you from the end of the gallery, when you first stepped back to look at my best picture. I painted all the objects in this room from nature and still life.’ ‘Your Greengrocer’s Shop,’ said I, ‘is inimitable; the drops of water on that savoy appear as if they had just fallen from the element. Van Huysum could not have pencilled them with greater delicacy.’ ‘What do you think,’ said he, ‘of my Butcher’s Shop?’ ‘Your pluck is bleeding fresh, and your sweetbread is in a clean plate.’ ‘How do you like my bull’s eye?’ ‘Why, it would be a most excellent one for Adams or Dollond to lecture upon. Your knuckle of veal is the finest I ever saw.’ ‘It’s young meat,’ replied he; ‘anyone who is a judge of meat can tell that from the blueness of its bone.’ ‘What a beautiful white you have used on the fat of that Southdown leg! or is it Bagshot?’ ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘my solitary visitor, it is Bagshot: and as for my white, that is the best Nottingham, which you or any artist can procure at Stone & Puncheon’s, in Bishopsgate Street Within.’ ‘Sir Joshua Reynolds,’ continued Mr. Keyse, ‘paid me two visits. On the second, he asked me what white I had used; and when I told him, he observed, ‘It’s very extraordinary, sir, how it keeps so bright. I use the same.’ ‘Not at all, sir,’ I rejoined: ‘the doors of this gallery are open day and night; and the admission of fresh air, together with the great expansion of light from the sashes above, will never suffer the white to turn yellow. Have you not observed, Sir Joshua, how white the posts and rails on the public roads are, though they have not been repainted for years; that arises from constant air and bleaching.’ ‘Come,’ said Mr. Keyse, putting his hand upon my shoulder, ‘the bell rings, not for prayers, nor for dinner, but for the song.’
“As soon as we had reached the orchestra, the singer curtsied to us, for we were the only persons in the gardens. ‘This is sad work,’ said he, ‘but the woman must sing, according to our contract.’ I recollect that the singer was handsome, most dashingly dressed, immensely plumed, and villainously rouged; she smiled as she sang, but it was not the bewitching smile of Mrs. Wrighten, then applauded by thousands at Vauxhall Gardens. As soon as the Spa lady had ended her song, Keyse, after joining me in applause, apologised for doing so, by observing that as he never suffered his servants to applaud, and as the people in the road (whose ears were close to the cracks in the paling to hear the song) would make a bad report if they had not heard more than the clapping of one pair of hands, he had in this instance expressed his reluctant feelings. As the lady retired from the front of the orchestra, she, to keep herself in practice, curtsied to me with as much respect as she would had Colonel Topham been the patron of a gala-night. ‘This is too bad,’ again observed Mr. Keyse, ‘and I am sure you cannot expect fireworks!’ However, he politely asked me to partake of a bottle of Lisbon, which upon my refusing, he pressed me to accept of a catalogue of his pictures.”
Keyse died in his house at the Gardens on 8 February, 1800[260] and his pictures were subsequently sold by auction. His successors in the management of the Bermondsey Spa failed to make it pay,[261] and it was closed about 1804.[262] The Site, now in Spa Road, was afterwards built upon.
[Lysons’s _Environs_, vol. i. (1792), p. 558; Smith’s _Book for a Rainy Day_, p. 135, ff. under “1795”; G. W. Phillips’s _History and Antiquities of Bermondsey_, 1841, pp. 84, 85; _Dict. Nat. Biog._ art. “Keyse”; Walford, vi. 128, 129; _Histories of Surrey_; E. L. Blanchard in the _Era Almanack_ for 1870, p. 18; Rendle and Norman’s _Inns of Old Southwark_, pp. 394–396; _A Modern Sabbath_ (1797), chap. ix.; Kearsley’s _Strangers’ Guide to London_ (1793?); Fores’s _New Guide_ (1789), preface, p. vi.; _Picture of London_, 1802, p. 370, where “the pictures of the late Mr. Keys” are mentioned; “Public Gardens” Coll. in Guildhall Library, London; _Description of some of the Paintings in the Perpetual Exhibition at Bermondsey Spa_, Horselydown (_circ._ 1785?) 8vo. (W. Coll.). Song-books (words only) of Bermondsey Spa, W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
A pen and ink sketch of Bermondsey Spa and a portrait of Keyse were in J. H. Burn’s Collection, and at his sale at Puttick’s were bought by Mr. Gardner (_Notes and Queries_, 6th ser. i. 506).
ST. HELENA GARDENS, ROTHERHITHE
These gardens were opened in 1770, and in May 1776 music and dancing were advertised to take place there in the evenings. Towards the close of the century the Prince of Wales (George IV.) and various fashionable people are said to have occasionally visited the place. St. Helena’s was a good deal frequented as a tea-garden during the first thirty years of the nineteenth century,[263] chiefly by the dockyard population of the neighbourhood. In 1831 fireworks and other entertainments were introduced on the week-day evenings and the place was for some years styled the Eastern Vauxhall. In 1832 the gardens occupied about five acres and a half, and in this year the performers advertised included Mr. G. R. Chapman “from the Adelphi and Astley’s” as organist and musical director, Mrs. Venning, “from the Nobility’s Concerts,” Miss Wood, “the Infant Prodigy, only six years of age,” and Miss Taylor who performed “many difficult airs on that delightful instrument, the Musical Glasses.” Concerts, dancing and other amusements continued till about 1869 when the gardens appear to have been closed.
[Illustration: _S^t. Helena Tavern and Tea Gardens._
_Rotherhithe._]
In 1874, the gardens passed into the hands of Messrs. W. H. and J. R. Carter who erected an orchestra and a dancing platform, and provided music and fireworks for an admission of sixpence. The gardens had fallen into a neglected state, but the walks were once more well laid out, and the old chestnut trees, the elms and planes were still standing.
[Illustration: ORCHESTRA AND DANCING-PLATFORM, ST. HELENA GARDENS, _circ._ 1875.]
The gardens ceased to exist in 1881 and were eventually built over.[264] The site was to the west of Deptford Lower Road, and just south of Corbett’s Lane and the present St. Helena Road. St. Katharine’s Church (consecrated 18 October, 1884) in Eugenia Road (south of St. Helena Road) stands on part of the site.
[Newspaper cuttings, W. Coll.; and see notes.]
VIEWS.
1. The entrance to the St. Helena Tavern and tea-garden, water-colour drawing, signed R. B. 7 June, 1839 (W. Coll.).
2. Admission ticket in white metal. Size 1·5 inch. Nineteenth century, _circ._ 1839? (British Museum). _Obverse_: View of the entrance to the tavern and gardens (similar to No. 1); in foreground, two posts supporting semi-circular board inscribed “St. Helena Tavern and Tea Gardens. Dinners dress’d”: in exergue, “Rotherhithe.” _Reverse_: “Refreshment to the value of sixpence” within floral wreath.
3. Lithographed poster of the St. Helena Gardens, _circ._ 1875, showing the orchestra, dancing-platform, and gardens illuminated at night (W. Coll.).
FINCH’S GROTTO GARDENS
Finch’s Grotto Gardens situated on the western side of St. George’s Street, Southwark, near St. George’s Fields,[265] derived their name from Thomas Finch, a Herald Painter, who, having inherited from a relation a house and garden, opened both for the entertainment of the public in the spring of 1760. The garden possessed some lofty trees, and was planted with evergreens and shrubs. In the centre was a medicinal spring over which Finch constructed a grotto, wherein a fountain played over artificial embankments and formed “a natural and beautiful cascade.” The spring enjoyed some local celebrity, and was recommended to his patients by a doctor named Townshend, who resided in the Haymarket and afterwards in St. George’s Fields. In our own time Dr. Rendle has described the water as “merely the filtered soakage of a supersaturated soil,” which could be obtained almost anywhere in Southwark.
A subscription ticket of a guinea entitled the holder to such benefits, as Finch’s spring conferred and gave admission to the evening entertainments that were introduced from about 1764. The ordinary admission was a shilling, raised on special nights to two shillings. The gardens were open on Sunday when sixpence was charged, though the visitor was entitled for his money to tea, half a pint of wine, cakes, jelly or cyder.
[Illustration: ADMISSION TICKET, FINCH’S GROTTO.]
An orchestra containing an organ by Pike, of Bloomsbury, stood in the garden, and there was another orchestra attached to a large octagonal music-room decorated with paintings and festoons of flowers. This Octagon Room was used for occasional balls and for the promenade and concert on wet evenings.
The place appears to have been respectably conducted, but there is little evidence that it was ever a modish resort, in spite of the assertion of the country-bred Mrs. Hardcastle[266] that no one could “have a manner that has never seen the Pantheon, the Grotto Gardens, the Borough and such places where the nobility chiefly resort.”[267]
The vocal and instrumental concerts which took place every evening in the season (May-September) were of a creditable though not very ambitious character. About fifteen hundred persons are said to have been present on some of the Freemasons’ nights and on the benefit nights of the performers.
[Illustration: _M^{rs}. Baddely._]
Numerous singers and instrumentalists were engaged,[268] of whom the best known are Robert Hudson the organist, Miss Snow and Thomas Lowe. Sophia Snow, the daughter of Valentine Snow, sergeant trumpeter to the King, married Robert Baddeley the comedian, who introduced her to the stage at Drury Lane in 1765. As Mrs. Baddeley, she became notorious for her beauty and intrigues. She had some powers as an actress in genteel comedy and her melodious voice made her popular at Ranelagh (from 1770) and Vauxhall.
Lowe was the well-known tenor singer of Vauxhall and lessee of Marylebone Gardens from 1763 to 1768. Becoming bankrupt in 1768, he was glad to accept engagements at the humbler Finch’s Grotto. He was announced to sing in August 1769, and appeared under the designation of Brother Lowe at one of the Freemasons’ Concerts at the Grotto.
Finch died on October 23, 1770, and his successor, a Mr. Williams, advertised the place as Williams’s Grotto Gardens. The concerts were continued and among the musical entertainments were Bates’s “The Gamester” (1771) and Barnshaw’s “Linco’s Travels.”[269]
The programmes of entertainments under Finch and Williams included concertos on the organ, pieces for horns and clarionets, Handel’s Coronation Anthem, an Ode to Summer with music by Brewster, and songs, such as “Thro’ the Wood, Laddie”; “Water parted from the Sea”; “Oh what a charming thing is a Battle”; “British Wives”; “O’er Mountains and Moorlands”; “Cupid’s Recruiting Sergeant” (with drum and fife accompaniment); “Swift Wing’d Vengeance,” from Bates’s Pharnaces; “Shepherds cease your soft complainings;” a satirical song on Garrick’s Stratford Jubilee; “Hark, hark, the joy inspiring horn”; “The Season of Love,” sung by Mr. Dearle, (1765):--
Bright Sol is return’d and the Winter is o’er, O come then, Philander, with Sylvia away.[270]
Fireworks were occasionally displayed, and when a ball was given, the place was illuminated at a cost of about five pounds, and horns and clarionets played till twelve in the garden. In 1771 and 1772 a grand transparent painting forty feet wide and thirty high, with illuminations, was displayed. Over the centre arch of this masterpiece was a medallion of Neptune supported by Tritons: on each side were two fountains “with serpents jetting water, representing different coloured crystal.” On one wing was Neptune drawn by sea-horses; on the other, Venus rising from the sea; and the back arches showed a distant prospect of the sea. In June 1771 a representation was given “of the famous Fall of Water call’d Pystill Rhiader near the seat of Sir Watkin Williams Wynne, Bart., in Denbighshire.”
Apparently these entertainments failed to pay the proprietor and in 1773 (?) he pulled down the grotto over the spring and rooted up the shrubs to form a skittle ground in connection with the tavern, which still continued to be carried on.
About 1777 the “messuages and lands known as the Grotto Gardens” were purchased for the parish of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, part of the ground being used for the erection of a workhouse and part for a Burial Ground (consecrated in 1780). In 1799 the Workhouse was sold to Mr. John Harris, hat manufacturer, and M.P. for Southwark in 1830, who used it as his manufactory and residence. Some relics of the old Grotto were to be found many years after the closing of the Gardens, notably the Octagon Room, which was converted into a mill and at one time used as the armoury of the Southwark Volunteers.
In 1824 “a very large and old mulberry tree” was standing at the end of a long range of wooden tea-rooms formerly belonging to the gardens and converted into inferior cottages. Behind the cottages was a water-course derived from Loman’s Pond dividing them from a field, once part of the gardens, though only occupied at that time by dust and rubbish.
The tavern attached to the Gardens continued to be carried on under the sign of the Grotto till 28 May, 1795, when it was destroyed by fire. The new tavern erected in its place bore the sign of The Goldsmith’s Arms, and afterwards of the “Old Grotto new reviv’d.”
In the front of this house was inserted a stone bearing the inscription:--
Here Herbs did grow And Flowers sweet, But now ’tis call’d Saint George’s Street.[271]
This building was removed for the formation of the present Southwark Bridge Road in 1825 and a public house named The Goldsmith’s Arms--still standing--was built on the western side of the new road, more upon the site of the old Grotto Gardens. The main site of the gardens is now occupied by the large red-brick building, which forms the headquarters of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade.
[Wilkinson’s _Londina Illustrata_, vol. ii., “Finch’s Grotto Gardens”; Manning and Bray’s _Surrey_, iii. 591; Brayley and Mantell’s _Surrey_, v. 371; Rendle and Norman’s _Inns of Old Southwark_, 360–364; Walford, vi. 64; newspaper cuttings, W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
The only view is one of the second tavern published in Wilkinson’s _Londina Illustrata_, 1825:--
“South-east view of the Grotto, now the Goldsmith’s Arms in the Parish of St. George’s, Southwark.” This shows the inscription: “Here Herbs did grow.”
CUPER’S GARDENS
Cuper’s Gardens, a notable resort during the first half of the last century, owe their name and origin to Boyder Cuper, who rented, in the parish of Lambeth on the south side of the Thames opposite Somerset House, a narrow strip of meadow land surrounded by water-courses.
About 1691 or earlier he opened the place as a pleasure garden with agreeable walks and arbours and some good bowling-greens. As an old servant of the Howard family he obtained the gift of some of the statues that had been removed when Arundel House in the Strand was pulled down. These, though mutilated and headless, appeared to the proprietor to give classic distinction to his garden, and they remained there till 1717, when his successor, a John Cuper, sold these ‘Arundel Marbles’ for £75.[272]
During the first twenty or thirty years of the last century, Cuper’s was a good deal frequented in the summer-time. A tavern by the waterside, called The Feathers, was connected with the grounds.
It is not certain that music and dancing were provided at this period, and the company appears to have consisted chiefly of young attorneys’ clerks and Fleet Street sempstresses, with a few City dames, escorted by their husbands’ ’prentices, who (perhaps after paying a visit to the floating ‘Folly’) sat in the arbours singing, laughing, and regaling themselves with bottle-ale.[273]
The place was popularly known as Cupid’s Gardens, and is even thus denominated in maps of the last century. This name is preserved in the traditional song, once very popular, “’Twas down in Cupid’s Garden”:--
’Twas down in Cupid’s Garden For pleasure I did go, To see the fairest flowers That in that garden grow: The first it was the jessamine, The lily, pink and rose, And surely they’re the fairest flowers That in that garden grows.[274]
In 1738 the tavern and gardens were taken by Ephraim Evans, a publican who had kept the Hercules Pillars opposite St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street. During his tenancy (1738–1740) he improved the gardens and erected an orchestra in which was set up an organ by Bridge. A band played from six till ten and Jones, the blind Welsh harper, was engaged to perform selections from Handel and Corelli. The admission was then and thenceforward one shilling, and the gardens were opened on Sunday free of charge.[275] It was announced that care would be taken to keep out bad company and that no servant in livery would be admitted to walk in the garden.
[Illustration: VIEW OF THE SAVOY, SOMERSET HOUSE AND THE WATER ENTRANCE TO CUPER’S GARDEN.
_From a picture in the Collection of_
THE REV^D. PHILIP DUVAL, D.D. & F.A.S.]
There was a back way to the gardens leading from St. George’s Fields, and watchmen were appointed “to guard those who go over the fields late at night.” The favourite approach, however, was by water, and the visitors landed at Cuper’s Stairs, a few yards east of the present Waterloo Bridge. The season lasted from April or May till the beginning of September.
Evans died on 14 October, 1740,[276] but the tavern and gardens were carried on by his widow. It was under the spirited management of the widow Evans that Cuper’s Gardens especially flourished, and her advertisements figure frequently in the newspapers (1741–1759). ‘The Widow,’ as she was called, presided at the bar during the evening and complimentary visitors described her as “a woman of discretion” and “a well-looking comely person.” By providing good music and elaborate fireworks, she attracted a good deal of fashionable patronage. The Prince and Princess of Wales visited the place and some of Horace Walpole’s friends,[277] Lord Bath and Lord Sandys, for instance, both of whom had their pockets picked there. The well-dressed sharper was, in fact, by no means unknown at Cuper’s. One night in 1743 a man was caught stealing from a young lady a purse containing four guineas, and while being taken by a constable to Lambeth was rescued by a gang of thieves in St. George’s Fields. On the whole, Cuper’s was looked upon as a decidedly rakish place at which a prudent young lady was not to be seen alone with a gentleman.[278]
For the evening concert of 16 June, 1741, Mrs. Evans announced “a new grand concerto for the organ by the author, Mr. Henry Burgess, junior, of whom it may be said without ostentation that he is of as promising a genius and as neat a performer as any of the age.” Composers better known to fame than Mr. Henry Burgess, junior, were also represented. The programme, for instance, of one July evening in 1741 consisted of “The Overture in Saul, with several grand choruses composed by Mr. Handel”; the eighth concerto of Corelli; a hautboy concerto by Sig. Hasse; “Blow, blow thou wintry wind,” and other favourite songs composed by the ingenious Mr. Arne, and the whole concluded with a new grand piece of music, an original composition by Handel, called ‘Portobello,’ in honour of the popular hero, Admiral Vernon, “who took Portobello with six ships only.” On other occasions there were vocal performances (1748–1750) by Signora Sibilla and by Master Mattocks. The Signora was Sibilla Gronamann, daughter of a German pastor and the first wife of Thomas Pinto, the violinist. She died in or before 1766. Mattocks, who had “a sweet and soft voice,” was afterwards an operatic actor at Covent Garden. Mrs. Mattocks sang at the gardens in 1750.
After the concert, at half-past nine or ten, a gun gave the signal for the fireworks for which the place was renowned.
On 18 July, 1741, the Fire Music from Handel’s opera, “Atalanta,” was given, the fireworks consisting of wheels, fountains, large sky-rockets, “with an addition of the fire-pump, &c., made by the ingenious Mr. Worman, who originally projected it for the opera” when performed in 1736. The _Daily Advertiser_ for 28 June, 1743, announced that “this night will be burnt the Gorgon’s head ... in history said to have snakes on her hair and to kill men by her looks, such a thing as was never known to be done in England before.” For another night (4 September, 1749) the entertainment was announced to conclude with “a curious and magnificent firework, which has given great satisfaction to the nobility, wherein Neptune will be drawn on the canal by sea-horses and set fire to an Archimedan (_sic_) worm and return to the Grotto.”
In 1746 (August 14) there was a special display to celebrate “the glorious victory obtained over the rebels” by the Duke of Cumberland, consisting of emblematic figures and magnificent fireworks, with “triumphant arches burning in various colours.” In 1749 (May) there was a miniature reproduction with transparencies and fireworks of the Allegorical Temple that had been displayed in the Green Park on 27 April, 1749, to commemorate the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. At the opening of the gardens on April 30 for the season of 1750, the edifice from which the fireworks were displayed was altered “into an exact model of that at the Hague, made on account of the General Peace.”
The season of 1752, practically the last at Cuper’s, lasted from May till near the end of September. The principal vocalist was Miss Maria Bennett.[279] The fireworks and scenic effects were novel and elaborate. A song commemorating the Prince of Wales’s birthday was “shown curiously in fireworks in the front of the machine.” The fireworks building, when the curtain was withdrawn, disclosed a perspective view of the city of Rhodes--sea, buildings, and landscape, with a model of the Colossus, from under which Neptune issued forth and set fire to a grand pyramid in the middle of the canal. Dolphins spouted water; water-wheels and rockets threw up air-balloons and suns blazed on the summit of the building.
On one occasion the crowd near the fireworks was so great that a gentleman took up his position in a tree, and when St. George and the Dragon came to a close engagement and the clockwork began to move the arms of St. George to pierce the Dragon, he let go his hands to clap like the rest and fell headlong upon the bystanders.[280]
The ‘Inspector’ of the _London Daily Advertiser_ took his friend the old Major, to Cupid’s Gardens (as they were still called) on a pleasant August evening in this year. The Major was delighted with all he saw. “Now I like this. I am always pleased when I see other people happy: the folks that are rambling about among the trees there; the jovial countenances of them delight me ... here’s all the festivity and all the harmless indulgence of a country wake.”[281]
The country wake element was in evidence late in the evening, and constables stationed at the gate had occasionally to interfere. One night, for instance, a pretty young woman, accompanied by a friend, promenaded the gardens dressed as a man wearing a long sword. No small sensation was caused in the miscellaneous company, which included a physician, a templar, a berouged old lady and her granddaughter, and the sedate wife of a Cheapside fur-seller. “A spirited young thing with a lively air and smart cock of her hat” passed by. “Gad,” said she, as she tripped along, “I don’t see there’s anything in it; give us their cloathes and we shall look as sharp and as rakish as they do.” “What an air! what a gate! what a tread the baggage has!” exclaimed another.
But the days of Cuper’s were numbered. In the early part of 1752 the statute-book had been dignified by the addition of 25 George II., cap. 36, entitled, “An Act for the better preventing thefts and robberies and for regulating places of public entertainment and punishing persons keeping disorderly houses.” By section 2 of this enactment it was required that every house, room, garden, or other place kept for public dancing or music, &c., within the cities of London and Westminster, or twenty miles thereof, should be under a licence. The Act took effect from December 1, 1752, and the necessary licence for the season of 1753 was refused to the management of Cuper’s Gardens. The widow Evans complained bitterly that she was denied the liberty of opening her gardens, a misfortune attributed by her to the malicious representations of ill-meaning persons, but which was really owing, no doubt, to the circumstance that Cuper’s was degenerating into the place which Pennant says he remembered as the scene of low dissipation. Meanwhile Mrs. Evans threw open the grounds (June 1753) as a tea-garden in connection with the Feathers, and the walks were “kept in pleasant order.”
In the summer of 1755 entertainments of the old character were revived, but they were advertised as fifteen private evening concerts and fireworks, open only to subscribers, a one guinea ticket admitting two persons. It is to be suspected that the subscription was mythical, and was a mere device to evade the Act. However, a band was engaged, and on June 23 loyal visitors to Cuper’s commemorated the accession of King George to the throne by a concert and fireworks. Clitherow, who had been the engineer of Cuper’s fireworks from 1750 (or earlier), was again employed, but had to publish in the newspapers a lame apology for the failure of the Engagement on the Water on the night of August 2 (1755), a failure which he explained was not due to his want of skill but “owing to part of the machinery for moving the shipping being clogg’d by some unaccountable accident, and the powder in the ships having unfortunately got a little damp.”
From 1756–1759 Cuper’s Gardens were again used as the tea-garden of the Feathers. There was no longer a Band of Musick but (as the advertisements express it) “there still remains some harmony from the sweet enchanting sounds of rural warblers.”
The last recorded entertainment at the place was a special concert given on August 30, 1759 by “a select number of gentlemen for their own private diversion,” who had “composed an ode alluding to the late decisive action of Prince Ferdinand.” Any lady or gentleman inspired by Prussian glory was admitted to this entertainment on payment of a shilling.
For several years the gardens remained unoccupied, but from about 1768 three acres of them were leased to the firm of Beaufoy, the producers of British wines and vinegar. The orchestra, or rather the edifice used from 1750 for the fireworks, was utilised for the distillery. Dr. Johnson once passed by the gardens: “Beauclerk, I, and Langton, and Lady Sydney Beauclerk, mother to our friend, were one day driving in a coach by Cuper’s Gardens which were then unoccupied. I, in sport, proposed that Beauclerk, and Langton, and myself, should take them, and we amused ourselves with scheming how we should all do our parts. Lady Sydney grew angry and said, ‘An old man should not put such things in young people’s heads.’ She had no notion of a joke, sir; had come late into life, and had a mighty unpliable understanding.”[282]
[Illustration: PLAN OF CUPER’S GARDENS.]
J. T. Smith[283] tells us that he walked over the place when occupied by the Beaufoys, and saw many of the old lamp-irons along the paling of the gardens, humble reminders of the days when the walks of Cuper’s Gardens were “beautifully illuminated with lamp-trees in a grand taste, disposed in proper order.” In 1814 part of the ground was required for making the south approach to Waterloo Bridge. The “fireworks” building and the rest of Messrs. Beaufoys’ works were then taken down and the Waterloo Road, sixty feet in width, was cut through the three acres, thus passing through the centre of Cuper’s Gardens which had extended up to the site of the present St. John’s Church (built in 1823) opposite Waterloo Station.
The Royal Infirmary for Children and Women erected in 1823 on the eastern side of the Waterloo Road stands on (or rather _over_) the centre of the site of the gardens. The Feathers was used during the building of the bridge for the pay-table of the labourers, and when it was taken down (about 1818?) its site was occupied by a timber-yard, close to the eastern side of the first land-arch of the Waterloo Bridge.
The public-house now called the Feathers, standing near the Bridge and rising two stories above the level of the Waterloo Road was built by the proprietor of the old Feathers in 1818.
[Wilkinson’s _Londina Illustrata_, vol. ii. “Cuper’s Gardens,” Public Gardens Coll. in Guildhall Library, London (newspaper cuttings, &c.); Charles Howard’s _Historical Anecdotes of the Howard Family_ (1769), 98, ff.; Pennant’s _Account of London_, 3rd ed. 1793, 32–34; _Musical Times_, February 1894, 84, ff.; Hone’s _Every Day Book_, i. 603; E. Hatton’s _New View of London_, 1708, ii. 785; Lysons’s _Environs_, 1792, i. 319, 320; Walford, vi. 388, 389; _The Observator_, March 10, 1702-3; newspaper cuttings, W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
1. View of the Savoy, Somerset House, and the water entrance to Cuper’s Gardens, engraved by W. M. Fellows, 1808, in J. T. Smith’s _Antiquities of Westminster_, from a painting (done in 1770, according to Crace, _Cat._ 188, No. 219) by Samuel Scott.
2. Woodcuts in Walford, vi. 391, showing entrance to the gardens (the back entrance) and the “orchestra” during the demolition of the buildings; cp. _ib._ 390. Walford also mentions, _ib._ p. 388, a view showing the grove, statues, and alcoves, of the gardens.
3. Water-colour drawings of Beaufoys’ and Cuper’s in 1798 and in 1809 (Crace, _Cat._ 648, Nos. 49, 50).
4. Wilkinson, _Lond. Illust._ (1825), vol. ii. gives three views, Pl. 155, view of the Great Room as occupied for Beaufoys’ manufactory, with a plan of the gardens; Pl. 156, another similar view; Pl. 157, view of the old Feathers Tavern.
“THE FOLLY” ON THE THAMES
Close by Cuper’s Stairs (where the visitors to Cuper’s Gardens landed) and opposite Somerset House, there was generally moored during the summer months a sort of castellated house-boat, notorious as The Folly.[284]
It consisted of a strong barge on which was a deck platform, surrounded by a balustrade, and contained a saloon provided with large windows and divided into boxes and compartments. At each of the four angles of the deck was a turret, giving the whole something of the appearance of a floating castle.
This “whimsical piece of architecture” (as Thomas Brown calls it)[285] was in existence soon after the Restoration, and in 1668 was visited by Pepys.[286] It was intended, says Brown, “as a musical summer-house for the entertainment of quality where they might meet and ogle one another ... but the ladies of the town finding it as convenient a rendezvous for their purpose ... dash’d the female quality out of countenance and made them seek a more retired conveniency” for their “amorous intrigues.” Queen Mary (II.) once paid it a visit, and the proprietor endeavoured to re-christen it The Royal Diversion. It continued, however, to be popularly known as The Folly, and already in 1700 had ceased to have any quality to boast of, at least among its female frequenters.
[Illustration: “THE FOLLY,” BEFORE _circ._ 1720.]
Thomas Brown describes a visit that he made about 1700. Rowing up to the side in a boat he found himself scrutinised by a crowd of women both young and old, and (as he puts it) “of all sorts and sizes.” Some of these ladies were dancing and tripping airily about the deck, and some tattling to their beaux; but many of the company, including certain long-sworded bullies, were crowded into the boxes in the saloon where they sat, smoking, and drinking burnt brandy. “In short, it was such a confused scene of folly, madness and debauchery” that Thomas Brown, by no means a squeamish person, stepped again into his boat “without drinking.”
The Folly in its later days was occasionally visited by people who at least worked honestly for their living, and the draper’s apprentice, when his shop was shut, would row up with his sweetheart for an evening’s amusement at this curious haunt.[287]
The Folly was in existence till 1720, and perhaps for more than thirty years later, but the character of its frequenters, and the gambling that took place at what was known as its Golden Gaming Table, at last led to its suppression as a public resort. It was suffered to fall into such decay that its material was burnt for fire-wood.
Near that part of the river where the Folly was usually moored the famous Chinese junk was anchored about 1848, and visited by thousands of sight-seers.[288]
[Thomas Brown’s _Amusements Serious and Comical_,