Chapter XI: Introduction (4)

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.

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.”

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.

_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.”

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.

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.

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.”