Chapter VIII: Introduction (1)

An entry in the diary of Samuel Pepys records how on the 7th of June, 1665, “the hottest day (he says) that ever I felt in my life,” he took water to the Spring Garden at Foxhall and there stayed, pleasantly walking, and spending but sixpence, till nine at night. The garden that he visited was that which formed the nucleus of those Vauxhall Gardens which, seventy or eighty years later, became the most favoured summer resort of pleasure-seeking Londoners. Vauxhall with its great concourse of high and low, its elaborate concerts, its lamps and brightly painted supper-boxes, is far removed from the simple garden in which Mr. Pepys delighted to ramble, but not only Vauxhall, but several other pleasure gardens of the eighteenth century may be traced to comparatively humble beginnings in the period between the Restoration and the reign of Anne.[2]

In the early days of these gardens no charge was made for admission, but a visitor would naturally spend a trifle in cheese-cakes and syllabubs for the ladies, and would order for himself some bottle-ale and such substantial viands as were afforded by the tavern or the master’s dwelling-house attached to the garden. The musical entertainments that afterwards became a feature of the principal gardens were originally of little account. The Wells of Lambeth (1697) and Hampstead (1701) provided a concert of some pretensions, but Mr. Pepys at the Spring Garden was content with the harmony of a harp, a fiddle, and a Jew’s trump.

In some places, however, a Long (or Great) Room was at an early period built for the dancing that generally took place there in the morning or the afternoon; and booths and raffling-shops were set up for the benefit of card-players and gamblers. The quiet charm of a garden was, moreover, sometimes rudely broken by the incursion of gallants like “young Newport” and Harry Killigrew--“very rogues (says Pepys) as any in the town.” At last, about 1730–40, the managers of the principal public gardens found it desirable to make a regular charge for admission: they requested gentlemen “not to smoak on the walks,” sternly prohibited the entrance of servants in livery, and, generally, did their best to exclude improper characters.

The author of the _Sunday Ramble_, a little guide-book of the last century often quoted in this work, visited, or says that he visited, on a single Sunday all the best known gardens near town. But it would have required an abnormally long life and a survey far less hurried to make acquaintance with all the open-air resorts that flourished during the whole, or part, of the eighteenth century. Such a long-lived Rambler who wished to know his gardens at first hand would probably have visited them (as in this volume we invite the reader to do) in five or six large groups, paying little heed to what might seem the pedantry of Parishes and Hundreds.

Beginning in what are now the densely populated districts of Clerkenwell and central London, he would find himself in the open fields and in a region abounding in mineral springs. Islington Spa (1684–1840) and its opposite neighbour Sadler’s Wells (from 1683) had chalybeate springs that claimed to rival the water (“so mightily cry’d up”) of Tunbridge Wells in Kent, and if the water itself was unpalatable, the adjoining pleasure gardens and Long Rooms, with their gay company, tended to make the drinking of medicinal water both pleasant and seductive. At no great distance from Sadler’s Wells were the Wells of Bagnigge (from 1759), the London Spa (from 1685), St. Chad’s Well, and Pancras Wells (from _circ._ 1697); and a walk to Old Street would be rewarded by a plunge in the clear waters of the Peerless Pool, or by a basket of carp and tench caught in the fish pond close by.

Behind the Foundling Hospital there might be found a bowling green; at the Mulberry Garden (Clerkenwell) a skittle-ground and an evening concert; in Rosoman Street, a wonderful grotto and an enchanted fountain[3] and (at the New Wells, _circ._ 1737–1750), a complete “variety” entertainment.

Sunday afternoon, if you did not mind the society of prentices and milliners, might be spent in Spa Fields at the Pantheon tea-house and garden (1770–1776), or at the Adam and Eve Gardens at Tottenham Court.

Farther west lay the Marylebone Bowling Green and Garden, developed in 1738 into the well-known Marylebone Gardens, and in this neighbourhood were several humbler places of entertainment, the Jew’s Harp House, The Queen’s Head and Artichoke, and The Yorkshire Stingo.

Islington and North London were full of rural resorts, the Sunday haunts of the London “cit” and his family. In Penton Street was the renowned White Conduit House, and near it Dobney’s Bowling Green, both visited in early days for their delightful prospects of the distant country. The Three Hats in Islington attracted visitors who wished to see the surprising horsemanship of Sampson and of Johnson “the Irish Tartar.” Canonbury, Highbury, Kentish Town, and Hornsey were pleasant places farther afield.

Still farther north were Belsize House, with its fashionable gambling and racing; the popular Wells of Hampstead, and the Kilburn Wells. The Spaniards, and New Georgia with its maze and mechanical oddities, were Sunday attractions in Hampstead for the good wives and daughters of tradesmen like Zachary Treacle.[4]

Chelsea could boast of at least two gardens in addition to the famous gardens and Rotunda of Ranelagh. In Pimlico was Jenny’s Whim. At Brompton, the Florida (or Cromwell’s) Gardens, a pleasant place, half garden, half nursery, where you could gather cherries and strawberries “fresh every hour in the day.”

London south of the Thames was not less well provided for. Nearly opposite Somerset House were Cuper’s Gardens (_circ._ 1691–1759). Lambeth had its wells and its Spring Garden (Vauxhall Gardens). In St. George’s Fields and Southwark were the mineral springs of the notorious Dog and Duck; the Restoration Spring Gardens, and Finch’s Grotto Gardens. Farther east were the Bermondsey Spa, and the St. Helena Gardens at Rotherhithe.

Such was the geographical distribution of the London pleasure gardens. “A mighty maze--but not without a plan.” Or, at least a clue to their intricacies may be found by arranging them in three groups, each with its distinctive characteristics.

In our first division we may place pleasure resorts of the Vauxhall type, beginning with the four great London Gardens--Cuper’s Gardens, the Marylebone Gardens, Ranelagh, and Vauxhall itself. These were all well-established in popular favour before the middle of the last century, and all depended for their reputation upon their evening concerts, their fireworks,[5] and their facilities for eating and drinking. Ranelagh relied less on the attractions of its gardens than did the other resorts just mentioned. Here the great Rotunda overshadowed the garden, and the chief amusement was the promenade in an “eternal circle” inside the building. Except on gala nights of masquerades and fireworks, only tea, coffee and bread and butter were procurable at Ranelagh; and a Frenchman about 1749 hints at more than a suspicion of dulness in the place when he comments “on s’ennuie avec de la mauvaise musique, du thé, et du beurre.”

Imitations of the principal gardens were attempted in various parts of London. Thus the Mulberry Garden (_circ._ 1742), the Sir John Oldcastle and the Lord Cobham’s Head in Clerkenwell had their fireworks, and their concerts by local celebrities, described in the advertisements as a “Band of the best Masters.” Finch’s Grotto Garden in Southwark (1760–_circ._ 1773), though not a fashionable resort, was illuminated on certain evenings of the week, and provided very creditable concerts, in which performers of some repute occasionally took part. Bermondsey Spa, from about 1784, had, like Vauxhall, its Grand Walk and coloured lamps, and kept its own poet and musical composer (Jonas Blewitt, the organist).[6] Two places called the Temple of Apollo (or Apollo Gardens) and the Temple of Flora, in the Westminster Bridge Road, also endeavoured to acquire something of a Vauxhall tone, at least to the extent of having painted boxes, illuminations and music, and a variety of (imitation) singing-birds. These Temples were set up late in the eighteenth century, and came to a bad end.

To a second division belong the gardens connected with mineral springs. Several of these, as we have already seen, date from the end of the seventeenth century--Islington Spa, Sadler’s Wells, and the Wells of Pancras, Hampstead, and Lambeth. The Dog and Duck, Bagnigge Wells, and other springs did not become well known till the eighteenth century. Such places were usually day resorts, opening early in the morning and providing something in the way of breakfasting, dancing, and music. The waters were advertised, and by many accepted, as Universal Medicines. A rising of the vapours, a scorbutic humour, an inveterate cancer could all be cured (as “eminent physicians” constantly testified) by drinking these unpleasant, but probably harmless, beverages--if possible, on the spot, or at any rate in bottles sent out by the dozen and stamped with the proprietor’s seal. Islington Spa became the vogue in 1733 when the Princess Amelia regularly attended it. The Dog and Duck waters were recommended to Mrs. Thrale by Dr. Johnson, and many cures vouched for by a physician attested the efficacy of the purging and chalybeate Wells of Bagnigge.

But the adventitious attractions of these places had a tendency to obscure their importance as spas. Bagnigge Wells and, to some extent, Islington Spa became after a time little more than tea-gardens. Sadler’s lost sight of its Wells early in the eighteenth century, and relied for profit on the development of the rope-dancing and pantomime in its theatre. The Dog and Duck (St. George’s Spa) became at last a tea-garden and a dancing-saloon which had to be suppressed as the haunt of “the riff-raff and scum of the town.” Finch’s Grotto and Bermondsey Spa, on the other hand, when their springs had ceased to attract, developed (as we have shown) into minor Vauxhalls.

The third division of the London gardens consists of those that were mainly tea-gardens. Many of these though small and unpretending possessed a distinctly rural charm. Such were Highbury Barn, and the Canonbury House tea-gardens, Hornsey with its romantic wood, and Copenhagen House standing alone in the hay-fields. Bagnigge Wells and White Conduit House, the classic tea-gardens of London, were prettily laid out and pleasantly situated, but in their later days became decidedly cockneyfied. The great day at these gardens was Sunday, especially between five and nine o’clock. The amusements were of a simple kind--a game of bowls or skittles, a ramble in the maze, and a more or less hilarious tea-drinking in the bowers and alcoves which every garden provided. In the Long Rooms of Bagnigge Wells, White Conduit House, and the Pantheon the strains of an organ, if the magistrates allowed the performance, might also be enjoyed.

The season at most of the London gardens began in April or May, and lasted till August or September. The principal gardens were open during the week (not, regularly, on Sundays) on three or more days, and those of the Vauxhall type were usually evening resorts. Much depended, it need hardly be said, upon the state of the weather, and sometimes the opening for the season had to be postponed. When the rain came, the fireworks were hopelessly soaked and people took refuge as they could under an awning or a colonnade or in a Great Room. A writer in _The Connoisseur_ of 1755 (May 15th) only too justly remarks that our Northern climate will hardly allow us to indulge in the pleasures of a garden so feelingly described by the poets: “We dare not lay ourselves on the damp ground in shady groves or by the purling stream,” unless at least “we fortify our insides against the cold by good substantial eating and drinking. For this reason the extreme costliness of the provisions at our public gardens has been grievously complained of by those gentry to whom a supper at these places is as necessary a part of the entertainment as the singing or the fireworks.” More than seventy years later Tom Moore (_Diary_, August 21st, 1829) describes the misery of a wet and chilly August night at Vauxhall--the gardens illuminated but empty, and the proprietor comparing the scene to the deserts of Arabia. On this occasion, Moore and his friends supped between twelve and one, and had some burnt port to warm themselves.

The charge for admission at Vauxhall, Marylebone Gardens, and Cuper’s was generally not less than a shilling. Ranelagh charged half-a-crown, but this payment always included “the elegant regale” of tea, coffee, and bread and butter. The proprietors of the various Wells made a regular charge of threepence or more for drinking the water at the springs and pump rooms. At some of the smaller gardens a charge of sixpence or a shilling might be made for admission, but the visitor on entering was presented with a metal check which enabled him to recover the whole or part of his outlay in the form of refreshments.

Vauxhall, Marylebone, Cuper’s, and Ranelagh often numbered among their frequenters people of rank and fashion, who subscribed for season-tickets, but (with the possible exception of Ranelagh) were by no means exclusive or select. The Tea-gardens, and, as a rule, the Wells, had an aristocracy of aldermen and merchants, young ensigns and templars, and were the chosen resorts of the prentice, the sempstress, and the small shop-keeper.

The proprietors of gardens open in the evening found it necessary to provide (or to announce that they provided) for the safe convoy of their visitors after nightfall. Sadler’s Wells advertised “it will be moonlight,” and provided horse patrols to the West End and the City. The proprietor of Belsize House, Hampstead, professed to maintain a body of thirty stout fellows “to patrol timid females or other.” Vauxhall--in its early days usually approached by water--seems to have been regarded as safe, but Ranelagh and the Marylebone Gardens maintained regular escorts.

In the principal gardens, watchmen and “vigilant officers” were always supposed to be in attendance to keep order and to exclude undesirable visitors. Unsparing denunciation of the morals of the chief gardens, such as is found in the lofty pages of Noorthouck, must, I am inclined to think, be regarded as rhetorical, and to a great extent unwarranted. On the other hand, one can hardly accept without a smile the statement of a Vauxhall guide-book of 1753, that “even Bishops have been seen in this Recess without injuring their character,” for it cannot be denied that the vigilant officers had enough to do. There were sometimes scenes and affrays in the gardens, and Vauxhall and Cuper’s were favourite hunting-grounds of the London pickpocket. At the opening Ridotto at Vauxhall (1732) a man stole fifty guineas from a masquerader, but here the watchman was equal to the occasion, and “the rogue was taken in the fact.” At Cuper’s on a firework night a pickpocket or two might be caught, but it was ten to one that they would be rescued on their way to justice by their confederates in St. George’s Fields.

The dubious character of some of the female frequenters of the best known gardens has been necessarily indicated in our detailed accounts of these gardens, though always, it is hoped, in a way not likely to cause offence. The best surety for good conduct at a public garden was, after all, the character of the great mass of its frequenters, and it is obvious that they were decent people enough, however wanting in graces of good-breeding and refinement. Moreover, from the end of the year 1752, when the Act was passed requiring London gardens and other places where music and dancing took place to be under a license, it was generally the interest of the proprietor to preserve good order for fear of sharing the fate of Cuper’s, which was unable to obtain a renewal of its license after 1752, and had to be carried on as a mere tea-garden. The only places, perhaps, at which disreputable visitors were distinctly welcome were those garish evening haunts in St. George’s Fields, the Dog and Duck, the Temples of Flora and Apollo and the Flora Tea-Gardens. All these were suppressed or lost their license before the end of the eighteenth century.

Of the more important gardens, Marylebone and Cuper’s ceased to exist before the close of the last century. Ranelagh survived till 1803 and Vauxhall till 1859. Finch’s Grotto practically came to an end about 1773 and Bermondsey Spa about 1804. Many of the eighteenth-century tea-gardens lasted almost to our own time, but the original character of such places as Bagnigge Wells (closed 1841), White Conduit House (closed 1849), and Highbury Barn (closed 1871) was greatly altered.

During the first thirty or forty years of the nineteenth century numerous gardens, large and small, were flourishing in or near London. Some of these, like Bagnigge Wells, had been well-known gardens in the eighteenth century, while the origin of others, such as Chalk Farm, Camberwell Grove House, the Rosemary Branch Gardens at Islington, or rather Hoxton, the Mermaid Gardens, Hackney, and the Montpelier Gardens, Walworth, may be probably, or certainly, traced to the last century. These last-mentioned places, however, had little or no importance as public gardens till the nineteenth century, and have not been described in the present work.

Many new gardens came into existence, and of these the best known are the Surrey Zoological Gardens (1831–1856); Rosherville (established 1837); Cremorne (_circ._ 1843–1877); and the Eagle Tavern and Gardens (_circ._ 1825–1882), occupying the quiet domain of the old Shepherd and Shepherdess.

The sale of Vauxhall Gardens in August 1859, or perhaps the closing of Highbury Barn in 1871, may be held to mark the final disappearance of the London Pleasure Gardens of the eighteenth century. “St. George’s Fields are fields no more!” and hardly a tree or shrub recalls these vanished pleasances of our forefathers. The site of Ranelagh is still, indeed, a garden, and Hampstead has its spring and Well Walk. But the Sadler’s Wells of 1765 exists only in its theatre, and its gardens are gone, its spring forgotten, and its New River covered in. The public-house, which in London dies hard, has occupied the site, and preserved the name of several eighteenth-century gardens, including the London Spa, Bagnigge Wells, White Conduit House and the Adam and Eve, Tottenham Court, but the gardens themselves have been completely swept away.

Vauxhall, Belsize House, and the Spa Fields Pantheon, none of them in their day examples of austere morality, are now represented by three churches. From the Marylebone Gardens, the Marylebone Music Hall may be said to have been evolved. Pancras Wells are lost in the extended terminus of the Midland Railway, and the Waterloo Road runs over the centre of Cuper’s Gardens. Finch’s Grotto, after having been a burial ground and a workhouse, is now the headquarters of our London Fire Brigade. Copenhagen House with its fields is the great Metropolitan Cattle Market. The Three Hats is a bank; Dobney’s Bowling Green, a small court; the Temple of Apollo, an engineer’s factory, and the sign of the Dog and Duck is built into the walls of Bedlam.

_showing distribution of the_

_London Pleasure Gardens._]

I

CLERKENWELL AND CENTRAL GROUP

ISLINGTON SPA, OR NEW TUNBRIDGE WELLS

A poetical advertisement of the year 1684[7] refers to “the sweet gardens and arbours of pleasure” at this once famous resort, situated opposite the New River Head, Clerkenwell. The chalybeate spring in its grounds was discovered at or shortly before that date, and the proprietor in 1685 is described in the _London Gazette_[8] as “Mr. John Langley, of London, merchant, who bought the rhinoceros and Islington Wells.”

The original name of the Spa was Islington Wells, but it soon acquired (at least as early as 1690) the additional title of New Tunbridge, or New Tunbridge Wells, by which it was generally known until about 1754, when the name of Islington Spa came into use, though the old title, New Tunbridge, was never quite abandoned.[9]

Although the place could not at any period boast of the musical and “variety” entertainments of its neighbour Sadler’s Wells, it soon acquired greater celebrity as a Spa, and from about 1690 to 1700 was much frequented. The gardens at this period[10] were shaded with limes and provided with arbours; and, in addition to its coffee-house, the Spa possessed a dancing-room and a raffling shop.[11] The charge for drinking the water was threepence, and the garden was open on two or three days in the week from April or May till August.

As early as seven o’clock in the morning a few valetudinarians might be found at the Well, but most of the visitors did not arrive till two or three hours later. Between ten and eleven the garden was filled with a gay and, in outward seeming, fashionable throng. The company, however, was extraordinarily mixed. Virtue and Vice; Fashion and the negation of Fashion had all their representatives. Sir Courtly Nice drove up to the gate in his gilt coach, and old Sir Fumble brought his lady and daughter. Modish sparks and fashionable ladies, good wives and their children, mingled with low women and sempstresses in tawdry finery; with lawyers’ clerks, and pert shopmen; with sharpers, bullies, and decoys. A doctor attended at the Well to give advice to the drinkers, not a few of whom came for the serious purpose of benefiting their health.

_Viscount Cobham, &c._

Walker & Equtall Ph Sc]

But the chief attraction was the Walks; the promenade where the beau strutted with his long sword beribboned with scarlet, and ladies fragrant with Powder of Orange and Jessamine discussed one another and the fashions:--

Lord! madam, did you e’er behold
(Says one) a dress so very old?
Sure that commode was made, i’ faith,
In days of Queen Elizabeth;
Or else it was esteemed the fashion
At Charles the Second’s coronation:
The lady, by her mantua’s forebody,
Sure takes a pride to dress like nobody.[12]

Others of more plebeian estate preferred the seclusion of an arbour shaded with climbing shrubs and sycamore, where sweethearts could chat, or, if so minded, enjoy a late breakfast of plum-cake and ale. Older people retired to the coffee-house to smoke and talk politics over their coffee, but the man about town and his female friends were to be found deep at play in the raffling shop, or speculating in the Royal Oak Lottery.[13] Again and again it was the _Board_ that won, while the projector and the man with cogged dice in his pocket looked cynically on. At about eleven a.m. the dancing began. Music for dancing all day long was advertised in 1700 for every Monday and Thursday of the summer season. But the music of that period seems to have been only the harmony of three or four by no means accomplished fiddlers, and it is doubtful if the dancing ever continued beyond the morning and afternoon.

In the early years of the eighteenth century the Spa seems to have gone out of fashion,[14] and in 1714 _The Field Spy_ speaks of it as a deserted place:--

The ancient drooping trees unprun’d appear’d;
No ladies to be seen; no fiddles heard.

The patronage of royal personages at last revived its fortunes. In the months of May and June 1733, the Princess Amelia, daughter of George II., and her sister Caroline came regularly to drink the waters. On some occasions the princesses were saluted by a discharge of twenty-one guns, and the gardens were thronged. On one morning the proprietor took £30, and sixteen hundred people are said to have been present. New Tunbridge Wells once more, for a few years, became the vogue. Pinchbeck, the toyman, prepared a view of the gardens which he sold as a mount for his fans. A song of the time, _The Charms of Dishabille_, which George Bickham illustrated with another view of the gardens, gives a picture of the scene (1733–1738):--

Behold the Walks, a chequer’d shade,
In the gay pride of green array’d;
How bright the sun! the air how still!
In wild confusion there we view
Red ribbons grouped with aprons blue;
Scrapes, curtsies, nods, winks, smiles and frowns,
Lords, milkmaids, duchesses and clowns,
In their all-various dishabille.

The same mixed company thus frequented the Spa as of old, and when my Lord Cobham honoured the garden with a visit, there were light-fingered knaves at hand to relieve him of his gold repeater. The physician who at this time attended at the Well was “Dr.” Misaubin, famous for his pills, and for his design to ruin the University of Cambridge (which had refused him a doctor’s degree) by sending his son to the University of Oxford. Among the habitués of the garden was an eccentric person named Martin, known as the Tunbridge Knight. He wore a yellow cockade and carried a hawk on his fist, which he named Royal Jack, out of respect to the Royal Family.

Fashion probably soon again deserted the Spa; but from about 1750 to 1770 it was a good deal frequented by water-drinkers and visitors who lodged for a time at the Wells. One young lady of good family, who was on a visit to London in June 1753, wrote home to her friends[15] that New Tunbridge Wells was “a very pretty Romantick place,” and the water “very much like Bath water, but makes one vastly cold and Hungary.” A ticket costing eighteenpence gave admission to the public breakfasting[16] and to the dancing from eleven to three. It was endeavoured to preserve the most perfect decorum, and no person of exceptionable character was to be admitted to the ball-room.[17] This invitation to the dance reads oddly at a time when the Spa was being industriously recommended to the gouty, the nervous, the weak-kneed, and the stiff-jointed.[18]

In 1770 the Spa was taken by Mr. John Holland, and from that year, or somewhat earlier, the place was popular as an afternoon tea-garden. The “Sunday Rambler” describes it as genteel, but judging from George Colman’s farce, _The Spleen; or Islington Spa_ (first acted in 1776), its gentility was that of publicans and tradesmen. “The Spa (says Mrs. Rubrick) grows as genteel as Tunbridge, Brighthelmstone, Southampton or Margate. Live in the most social way upon earth: all the company acquainted with each other. Walks, balls, raffles and subscriptions. Mrs. Jenkins of the Three Blue Balls, Mrs. Rummer and family from the King’s Arms; and several other people of condition, to be there this season! And then Eliza’s wedding, you know, was owing to the Spa. Oh, the watering-places are the only places to get young women lovers and husbands!”

In 1777, Holland became bankrupt, and next year a Mr. John Howard opened the gardens in the morning and afternoon, charging the water-drinkers sixpence or threepence, or a guinea subscription. He enriched the place with a bowling-green[19] and with a series of “astronomical lectures in Lent, accompanied by an orrery.” A band played in the morning, and the afternoon tea-drinking sometimes (1784) took place to the accompaniment of French horns.[20] Sir John Hawkins, the author of _The History of Music_, frequented the Spa for his health in 1789. On returning home after drinking the water one day in May (Wednesday 20th, 1789) he complained of a pain in his head and died the next morning of a fever in the brain. “Whether (as a journalist of the time observes) it was owing to the mineral spring being taken when the blood was in an improper state to receive its salubrious effect, or whether it was the sudden visitation of Providence, the sight of the human mind is incompetent to discover.”

The Spa continued to be resorted to till the beginning of the present century when the water and tea-drinking began to lose their attractions. The author of _Londinium redivivum_, writing about 1803,[21] speaks, however, of the gardens with enthusiasm as “really very beautiful, particularly at the entrance. Pedestals and vases are grouped with taste under some extremely picturesque trees, whose foliage (is) seen to much advantage from the neighbouring fields.” At last, about 1810, the proprietor, Howard, pulled down the greater part of the old coffee-house,[22] and the gardens were curtailed by the formation of Charlotte Street (now Thomas Street). At the same time the old entrance to the gardens, facing the New River Head, was removed for the building of Eliza Place.[23] A new entrance was then made in Lloyd’s Row, and the proprietor lived in a house adjoining. A later proprietor, named Hardy, opened the gardens in 1826 as a Spa only. The old Well was enclosed, as formerly, by grotto work and the garden walks were still pleasant. Finally in 1840, the two rows of houses called Spa Cottages were built upon the site of the gardens.

A surgeon named Molloy, who resided about 1840–1842 in the proprietor’s house in Lloyd’s Row, preserved the Well, and by printed circulars invited invalids to drink the water for an annual subscription of one guinea, or for sixpence each visit. In Molloy’s time the Well was contained in an outbuilding attached to the east side of his house. The water was not advertised after his tenancy, though it continued to flow as late as 1860. In the autumn of 1894, the writers of this volume visited the house and found the outbuilding occupied as a dwelling-room of a very humble description. Standing in this place it was impossible to realise that we were within a few feet of the famous Well. A door, which we had imagined on entering to be the door of a cupboard, proved to be the entrance to a small cellar two or three steps below the level of the room. Here, indeed, we found the remains of the grotto that had once adorned the Well, but the healing spring no longer flowed.[24]

Eliza Place was swept away for the formation of Rosebery Avenue, and the two northernmost plots of the three little public gardens, opened by the London County Council on 31 July, 1895,[25] as Spa Green, are now on part of the site of the old Spa. The Spa Cottages still remain, as well as the proprietor’s house in Lloyd’s Row, and beneath the coping-stone of the last-named the passer-by may read the inscription cut in bold letters: ISLINGTON SPA OR NEW TUNBRIDGE WELLS.

[Besides the authorities cited in the text and notes and in
the account in Pinks’s _Clerkenwell_, p. 398, ff., the
following may be mentioned:--_Experimental observations on
the water of the mineral spring near Islington commonly called
New Tunbridge Wells._ London, 1751, 8vo; another ed., 1773,
8vo (the Brit. Mus. copy of the latter contains some newspaper
cuttings); Dodsley’s _London_, 1761, s.v. “Islington”;
Kearsley’s _Strangers’ Guide_, s.v. “Islington”; Lewis’s
_Islington_; _Gent. Mag._ 1813, pt. 2, p. 554, ff.;
advertisements, &c., in Percival’s Sadler’s Wells Collection and
in W. Coll.; Wheatley’s _London_, ii. 268, and iii. p. 199.]

VIEWS.

1. View of the gardens, coffee-house, &c., engraved
frontispiece to Lockman’s poem, _The Humours of New Tunbridge
Wells at Islington_, London, 1734, 8vo (cp. Pinks, 401, note,
and 402).

2. View of the gardens, well, coffee-house, &c., engraved by G.
Bickham, jun., as the headpiece of “The Charms of Dishabille
or New Tunbridge Wells” (Bickham’s _Musical Entertainer_,
1733, &c., vol. i. No. 42).

3. Engravings of the proprietor’s house in Lloyd’s Row;
Cromwell’s _Clerkenwell_, 352; Pinks, 405. The house is
still as there represented.

THE PANTHEON, SPA FIELDS

The Spa Fields Pantheon stood on the south side of the present Exmouth Street, and occupied the site of the Ducking Pond House,[26] a wayside inn, with a pond in the rear used for the sport of duck-hunting.

The Ducking Pond premises having been acquired by Rosoman of Sadler’s Wells, were by him sub-let to William Craven, a publican, who, at a cost of £6,000, laid out a garden and erected on the site of the old inn a great tea-house called the Pantheon, or sometimes the Little Pantheon, when it was necessary to distinguish it from “the stately Pantheon” in Oxford Street, built in 1770–1771, and first opened in January 1772.[27]

The Spa Fields Pantheon was opened to the public early in 1770, and consisted of a large Rotunda, with two galleries running round the whole of the interior, and a large stove in the centre.

The place was principally resorted to by apprentices and small tradesmen, and on the afternoon and evening of Sunday, the day when it was chiefly frequented, hundreds of gaily-dressed people were to be found in the Rotunda, listening to the organ,[28] and regaling themselves with tea, coffee and negus, or with supplies of punch and red port. A nearer examination of this crowded assembly showed that it consisted of journeymen tailors, hairdressers, milliners and servant maids, whose behaviour, though boisterous, may have been sufficiently harmless.

The proprietor endeavoured to secure the strict maintenance of order by selling nothing after ten o’clock in the evening. But his efforts, it would seem, were not entirely successful. “Speculator,” a correspondent of the _St. James’s Chronicle_, who visited the place in May 1772, “after coming from church,” looked down from his vantage-ground in one of the galleries upon what he describes as a dissipated scene. To his observation the ladies constituted by far the greater part of the assembly, and he was shocked more than once by the request, “Pray, Sir, will you treat me with a dish of tea?”

A tavern with tea-rooms for more select parties stood on the east of the Rotunda. Behind the buildings was a pretty garden, with walks, shrubs and fruit trees. There was a pond or canal stocked with fish, and near it neat boxes and alcoves for the tea-drinkers. Seats were dispersed about the garden, the attractions of which were completed by a summer-house up a handsome flight of stone steps, and a statue of Hercules, with his club, on a high pedestal. The extent of the garden was about four acres.

A writer in the _Town and Country Magazine_ for April 1770 (p. 195), speaks contemptuously of the canal “as about the size of a butcher’s tray, where citizens of _quality_ and their spouses come on Sunday to view the amorous flutterings of a duck and drake.” This, however, is the opinion of a fashionable gentleman who goes alternately to Almack’s and Cornelys’s, while Ranelagh (he says) “affords me great relief.”

The career of the Pantheon was brief; for in March 1774 the building and its grounds were announced for sale on account of Craven’s bankruptcy. According to the statement of the auctioneer the place was then in full trade, and the returns almost incredible, upwards of one thousand persons having sometimes been accommodated in the Rotunda. It is uncertain if another proprietor tried his hand, if so he was probably unsuccessful, for the Pantheon was certainly closed as a place of amusement in 1776.

In July 1777 the Rotunda, after having been used for a time as a depot for the sale of carriages, was opened for services of the Church of England under the name of Northampton Chapel. One of the preachers, moralising on the profane antecedents of the place, adopted the text, “And he called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.”

The building was afterwards purchased by the Countess of Huntingdon, and opened in March 1779 under the name of Spa Fields Chapel as a place of worship in her connexion. Various alterations were at that time, and subsequently, made in the building, and a statue of Fame, sounding a trumpet, which had stood outside the Pantheon on the lantern surmounting the cupola was removed. The tavern belonging to the Pantheon, on the east side of the Rotunda, was occupied by Lady Huntingdon as her residence. It was a large house partly covered by branches of jessamine.

The gardens, in the rear of the Rotunda, were converted in 1777 into the Spa Fields burial-ground, which became notorious in 1843 for its over-crowded and pestilential condition, and for some repulsive disclosures as to the systematic exhumation of bodies in order to make room for fresh interments.

Spa Fields Chapel was pulled down in the beginning of 1887, and the present church of the Holy Redeemer was erected on its site, and consecrated for services of the Church of England on 13 October, 1888. Such have been the strange vicissitudes of the Pantheon tea-house and its gardens.

[Pinks’s _Clerkenwell_; Walford, _O. and N. London_; _The Sunday
Ramble_; Tomlins’s _Perambulation of Islington_, p. 158; _Notes
and Queries_, 1st ser. ii. p. 404; _Spa Fields Chapel and its
Associations_, London, 1884.]

VIEWS.

1. View of Northampton or Spa Fields Chapel, with the Countess
of Huntingdon’s house adjoining. Hamilton, del., Thornton
sculp., 1783. Crace, _Cat._ p. 589, No. 43.

2. Exterior of Chapel and Lady Huntingdon’s house, engraving in
Britton’s _Picture of London_, 1829, p. 120.

3. Later views of the Chapel (interior and exterior) engraved in
Pinks’s _Clerkenwell_, pp. 146, 147.

THE LONDON SPA

The London Spa public-house, standing at the corner of Rosoman Street and Exmouth Street, marks the site of a seventeenth-century inn called The Fountain.

A spring of chalybeate water was discovered on the premises of this inn about 1685, and was a special inducement held out to the public by the proprietor, John Halhed, vintner, to visit his house. In August 1685, Halhed, in advertising the virtues of the water, stated that no less an authority than Robert Boyle, the chemist, had adjudged and openly declared it to be the strongest and very best of these late found out medicinal waters. The honest vintner, in giving other local wells their due, maintained that his was equivalent, if not better, in virtue, goodness, and operation, to that of Tunbridge (so mightily cry’d up) or any other water yet known. On 14 July, 1685, the house was solemnly nominated and called the London Spaw, by Robert Boyle, in the presence of “an eminent, knowing, and more than ordinary ingenious apothecary ... besides the said John Halhed and other sufficient men.” The name of the Fountain seems thenceforth to have been superseded by that of the London Spa. In inviting persons of quality to make a trial of the spring, Halhed expressed the wish that the greatness of his accommodation were suitable to the goodness of his waters, although he was not without convenient apartments and walks for both sexes. The poor were to be supplied with the water gratis.

For a few years subsequent to 1714 the place appears to have fallen into neglect; but it afterwards was once more frequented, and in 1720 the author of _May Day_[29] writes:--

Now nine-pin alleys, and now skettles grace,
The late forlorn, sad, desolated place;
Arbours of jasmine fragrant shades compose
And numerous blended companies enclose.

On May-day the milkmaids and their swains danced in the gardens to the music of the fiddler. Holiday folk flocked to test the virtues of the spring, and from this time onwards, the London Spa enjoyed some degree of popularity. In the summer of 1733, _Poor Robin’s Almanack_ records how--

Sweethearts with their sweethearts go
To Islington or London Spaw;
Some go but just to drink the water,
Some for the ale which they like better.

The annual Welsh fair, held in the Spa Field hard by, must have brought additional custom to the tavern, and in 1754 the proprietor, George Dodswell, informed the public that they would meet with the most inviting usage at his hands, and that during the fair there would be the “usual entertainment of roast pork with the oft-famed flavoured Spaw ale.” From this date onwards the London Spa would appear to have been merely frequented as a tavern.[30] The present public-house was built on the old site in 1835.

[The London Spaw, an advertisement, August 1685, folio sheet in
British Museum; Pinks’s _Clerkenwell_.]

VIEWS.

1. A view of the London Spa in Lempriere’s set of views,
1731; Crace, _Cat._ p. 588, No. 41. Cp. Pinks’s
_Clerkenwell_, p. 168.

2. Engraving of the Spa garden, T. Badeslade, inv.; S.
Parker, sculp.; frontispiece to _May Day, or the Origin of
Garlands_, 1720.

THE NEW WELLS, NEAR THE LONDON SPA

Houses in Lower Rosoman Street,[31] Clerkenwell, west side, about one hundred yards from the London Spaw public-house, now occupy the site of this place of amusement.

The New Wells commanded a pleasant prospect of the fields and country beyond; but nothing is known of the medicinal waters, and the prominent feature of the place was a theatre, probably intended to rival Sadler’s Wells, in which entertainments, consisting of dancing, tumbling, music and pantomime were given from 1737 (or earlier[32]) till 1750. The purchase of a pint of wine or punch was generally the passport necessary for admission, and the gardens were open on Sunday as well as on week-day evenings. The entertainments usually began at five o’clock, and concluded about ten. In 1738, there were comic songs and dancing, an exhibition of views of Vauxhall, and a whimsical, chymical and pantomimical entertainment called the _Sequel_.

During the next year (1739) similar entertainments were given, and Mr. Blogg sang the “Early Horn,” and “Mad Tom” with a preamble on the kettledrums by Mr. Baker. At this time the place possessed a kind of Zoological Gardens, for there was then to be seen a fine collection of large rattlesnakes, one having nineteen rattles and “seven young ones,” a young crocodile imported from Georgia, American darting and flying squirrels, “which may be handled as any of our own,” and a cat between the tiger and leopard, perfectly tame, and one of the most beautiful creatures that ever was in England. This show could be seen for a shilling.

In 1740 a Merlin’s Cave was added to the attractions of the gardens (cp. “Merlin’s Cave,” _infra_), and there was displayed a firework representation of the siege of Portobello by Admiral Vernon. On 3 July, 1742,[33] Monsieur and Madame Brila from Paris and their little son, three years old, exhibited several curiosities of balancing, and the two Miss Rayners, rope-dancing. There were songs and dancing; a hornpipe by Mr. Jones of Bath, who played the fiddle as he danced, and an exhibition of views of the newly opened Rotunda at Ranelagh. In June 1744 there was a pantomime, _The Sorceress, or Harlequin Savoyard_; the part of Harlequin being sustained by Mr. Rosoman. A dance of Indians in character concluded an entertainment witnessed by a crowded and “polite” audience of over seven hundred persons. In August of the same year a Mr. Dominique jumped over the heads of twenty-four men with drawn swords; Madam Kerman performed on the tight-rope, danced on stilts, and (according to the advertisements) jumped over a garter ten feet high.

Next came to the Wells (1745) a youthful giant seven feet four inches high, though under sixteen years of age, who occasionally exhibited his proportions on the rope. In 1746 there appeared a Saxon Lady Giantess seven feet high, and the wonderful little Polander, a dwarf two feet ten inches in height, of the mature age of sixty, “in every way proportionable, and wears his beard after his own country’s fashion.” During this year Miss Rayner performed the feat of walking up an inclined rope, one hundred yards long, extending from the stage to the upper gallery, having two lighted flambeaux in her hands.

The same year (1746) witnessed the celebration at Sadler’s Wells and other places of entertainment in London of the victory of the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden. At the New Wells were given representations of the battle, and the storming of Culloden House. Mr. Yeates[34] (or Yates), the manager at this time, in acknowledging his gratification at the applause manifested, regretted that on the appearance of Courage (the character symbolising the Duke of Cumberland) several hearty Britons exerted their canes in such a torrent of satisfaction as to cause considerable damage to his benches. About this period Mrs. Charlotte Charke (the youngest daughter of Colley Cibber the dramatist) appeared at the Wells as Mercury in the play of _Jupiter and Alcmena_.

From 1747 to 1750 the theatre and gardens remained closed, but after having been considerably improved they were re-opened on 16 April, 1750. Towards the close of this year, Hannah Snell made her appearance and went through a number of military exercises in her regimentals. This warlike lady, who had served under the name of James Gray as a marine at the siege of Pondicherry, and who had been several times wounded in action, was one of the first party that forded the river, breast high, under the enemy’s fire. She worked laboriously in the trenches, and performed picket duty for seven nights in succession.

The entertainments at the New Wells appear to have ceased about 1750. In 1752 the proprietor, Yeates, let the theatre to the Rev. John Wesley, and in May of that year, it was converted into a Methodist tabernacle. A few years later the theatre was removed, probably in 1756, when Rosoman Row (now Rosoman Street) was formed.

[Cromwell’s _Clerkenwell_, p. 254; Pinks’s _Clerkenwell_;
newspaper advertisements, W. Coll.].

THE ENGLISH GROTTO, OR GROTTO GARDEN, ROSOMAN STREET

The English Grotto was in existence in 1760, and is described as standing in the fields, near the New River Head. A view of that date[35] represents it as a small wooden building resembling the London Spa. A flag is flying from the roof, and some well-dressed people are seen walking near it. A garden, with a curious grotto and water-works, were probably its only attractions.

It may be conjectured that this English Grotto is identical with the Grotto Garden in Rosoman Street, which was kept in (or before) 1769[36] by a man named Jackson, a successful constructor of grottoes, and contrivances of water-works. In 1769 he advertised the place as his Grand Grotto Garden, and gold and silver fish Repository. In the garden was a wonderful grotto; an enchanted fountain; and a water-mill, invented by the proprietor, which when set to work represented fireworks, and formed a beautiful rainbow. A variety of gold and silver fish, “which afford pleasing ideas to every spectator” might be purchased at this repository. Sixpence was sometimes charged for admission, and a number of people are said to have resorted there daily. The place was still in Jackson’s possession in 1780.

_Circ._ 1760.]

The house and Grotto Garden were at the north-east corner of Lower Rosoman Street (originally Rosoman Row), almost facing the London Spa. About 1800 the house, or its later representative, was No. 35, Lower Rosoman Street, and in its garden were some remains of the wonderful grotto. From the windows there was still a pleasing prospect of the country for many miles. In this house Mr. Pickburn, the printer, first published _The Clerkenwell News_ in 1855, and continued to print the newspaper there until 1862.

[For authorities and views, see notes.]

THE MULBERRY GARDEN, CLERKENWELL

The Mulberry Garden in Clerkenwell, the site of which was afterwards occupied by the House of Detention, was open in 1742, but contrary to the usual practice, the proprietor (W. Body) made no charge for admission, relying for profit on the sale of refreshments.

It was a somewhat extensive garden with a large pond, gravelled walks, and avenues of trees. From the seats placed beneath the shade of a great mulberry tree, probably one of those introduced into England in the reign of James I., the players in the skittle-alley might often be watched at their game. The garden was open from 6 p.m. in the spring and summer, and, especially between 1742 and 1745, was advertised in the newspapers with extravagant eulogy. “Rockhoutt[37] (the proprietor declared) has found one day and night’s Al Fresco in the week to be inconvenient; Ranelagh House, supported by a giant whose legs will scarcely support him[38]; Mary le Bon Gardens, down on their marrow-bones; New wells[39] at low water; at Cuper’s[40] the fire almost out.” The attractions offered were a band of wind and string instruments in an orchestra in the garden and occasional displays of fireworks and illuminations. The proprietor professed (6 April, 1743) to engage British musicians only, maintaining that “the manly vigour of our own native music is more suitable to the ear and heart of a Briton than the effeminate softness of the Italian.” On cold evenings the band performed in the long room. On 2 September, 1742, the proprietor excused himself from a pyrotechnic display on the ground that it was the doleful commemoration of the Fire of London. On 9 August, 1744, there was a special display of fireworks helped out by the instrumental music of the “celebrated Mr. Bennet.” At this fête “honest Jo Baker” beat a Trevally on his side drum as he did before the great Duke of Marlborough when he defeated the French at the Battle of Malplaquet. This entertainment must have been popular, for beyond the sixteen hundred visitors who were able to gain admission, some five hundred others are said to have been turned away. On 25 August, in the same year, another firework display was given, and on this occasion the proprietor condescended to make a charge of twopence per head for admission.

The gardens do not appear to have been advertised between 1745 and 1752, during which period they were probably kept by a Mrs. Bray, who died on 1 March, 1752, “with an excellent good character.” Beyond this, her obituary only records that she “is thought to have been one of the fattest women in London.” In 1752 the gardens were in the hands of Clanfield, the firework engineer of Cuper’s Gardens, who every summer evening provided vocal and instrumental music, from six o’clock, and fireworks at nine.[41] The admission was sixpence with a return of threepence in refreshments.

Fashionable gentlemen appear to have played an occasional game of ninepins or skittles in the Mulberry Garden, but on the whole the place enjoyed only a local celebrity among tradesmen and artisans, and its proprietor, in elegant language,[42] made his appeal to “the honest Sons of trade and industry after the fatigues of a well-spent day,” and invited the Lover and the jolly Bacchanalian to sit beneath the verdant branches in his garden.

Nothing is known of the garden subsequent to 1752. The site was used about 1797 as the exercising ground of the Clerkenwell Association of Volunteers, and the House of Detention (now replaced by a Board School) was subsequently built on it.

[Pinks’s _Clerkenwell_.]

VIEWS.

Two engravings, probably contemporary, showing well-dressed
gentlemen playing at ninepins near the mulberry tree: Guildhall
Library, London (_Catal._ p. 210). One of these views is
engraved in Pinks, p. 128.

SADLER’S WELLS

Towards the close of the seventeenth century there stood on the site of the present Sadler’s Wells Theatre (Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell), a wooden building of a single story erected by Sadler, a surveyor of the highways, as a Music House. The house stood in its own grounds, and the New River flowed past its southern side.

It was in the garden of this house that in 1683 some workmen in Sadler’s employ accidentally unearthed an ancient well, arched over and curiously carved. Sadler, suspecting the water to have medicinal properties, submitted it for analysis to a doctor, who advised him to brew ale with it. This he did with such excellent results that the ale of Sadler’s Wells became, and long remained, famous. In 1684, Dr. Thomas Guidot issued a pamphlet setting forth the virtues of the water which he described as a ferruginous chalybeate, akin to the waters of Tunbridge Wells, though not tasting so strongly of steel and having more of a nitrous sulphur about it. Being neither offensive nor unpleasant to taste, a man was able to drink more of it than of any other liquor. It might be taken with a few carraway comfits, some elecampane, or a little preserved angelica to comfort the stomach. A glass of Rhenish or white wine might also accompany the tonic, and habitual smokers would find it very convenient to take a pipe after drinking.

Sadler lost no time in advertising his Wells,[43] and in preparing for the reception of the water-drinkers. He laid out his garden with flowers and shrubs, and constructed in the centre a marble basin to receive the medicinal water. Posturers, tumblers and rope-dancers, performing at first in the open-air, were engaged. A Mrs. Pearson played on the dulcimer on summer evenings at the end of the Long Walk, and visitors danced to the strains of a band stationed on a rock of shellwork construction. The place soon became popular, and hundreds of people came daily to drink the water.

Epsom and Tunbridge Wells (in Kent) saw in Sadler’s Wells a serious rival to their own spas, and in 1684 a tract was issued protesting against this “horrid plot” laid to persuade people that “Sadler’s Musick House is South-Borrow and Clarkenwell Green Caverley Plain.” Was it possible for water from such a source to “bee effectual as our wonder-working fountains that tast of cold iron, and breathe pure nitre and sulphur”? Audacious and unconscionable Islington should surely be content with its monopoly from time immemorial of the sale of cakes, milk, custards, stewed prunes, and bottled ale. But even if the waters “could be conceited somewhat comparable, where is the air? Where the diversions? Where the conveniences?”