cannot honestly call them poetry--of the Canterbury pilgrims is the
Tabard, in the Borough. Its history must be pretty familiar to most
people. It originally was the property of William of Ludegarsale, of
whom the Tabard and the adjoining house, which the Abbots made their
town residence, were purchased in 1304 by the Abbot and convent of Hyde,
near Winchester. The pilgrimage to Canterbury is said to have taken
place in 1383. Henry Bailly, Chaucer's host of the Tabard at that time,
was a representative of the Borough of Southwark in Parliament during
the reign of two Kings, Edward III. and Richard II. After the
dissolution of the monasteries, the Tabard and the Abbot's house were
sold by Henry VIII. to John Master and Thomas Master; the Tabard
afterwards was in the occupation of one Robert Patty, but the Abbot's
house, with the stable and garden belonging thereto, were reserved to
the Bishop Commendator, John Saltcote, alias Casson, who had been the
last Abbot of Hyde, and who surrendered it to Henry VIII., and who
afterwards was transferred to the See of Salisbury. The original Tabard
was in existence as late as the year 1602. On a beam across the road,
whence swung the sign, was inscribed: 'This is the inn where Sir Jeffry
Chaucer and the nine-and-twenty pilgrims lay in their journey to
Canterbury, ANNO 1383.' On the removal of the beam the inscription was
transferred to the gateway. The house was repaired in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, and from that period probably dated the fireplace,
carved oak panels, and other portions spared by the fire of 1676, which
were still to be seen at the beginning of this century. In this fire
some six hundred houses had to be destroyed to arrest the progress of
the flames, and as the Tabard stood nearly in the centre of this area,
and was mostly built of wood, there can be no doubt that the old inn
perished. It was, however, soon rebuilt, and as nearly as possible on
the same spot; but the landlord changed the sign from the Tabard to the
Talbot; there is, nevertheless, little doubt that the inn as it remained
till 1874, when it was demolished, with its quaint old timber galleries,
with two timber bridges connecting their opposite sides, and which
extended to all the inn buildings, and the no less quaint old chambers,
was the immediate successor of the inn commemorated by Chaucer.
According to an old view published in 1721, the yard is shown as
apparently opening to the street; but in a view which appeared in the
_Gentleman's Magazine_ of September, 1812, the yard seems enclosed. A
sign, painted by Blake, and fixed up against the gallery facing you as
you entered the yard, represented Chaucer and his merry company setting
out on their journey. There was a large hall called the Pilgrims' Hall,
dating of course from 1676, but in course of time it was so cut up to
adapt it to the purpose of modern bedrooms, that its original condition
was scarcely recognisable. There are various views of the old inn in
the Crace collection: one without date, one of 1780, another of 1810,
another of 1812 (the _Gentleman's Magazine_ print), one of 1831, and yet
another of 1841. The site is now occupied by a public-house in the
gin-palace style, which presumes to call itself the Old Tabard.
In Piccadilly, No. 75, there formerly stood on part of the site for so
short a time occupied by Clarendon House (1664-1683) the Three Kings
tavern. At the gateway to the stables there were seen two Corinthian
pilasters, which originally belonged to Clarendon House. The stable-yard
itself presented the features of the old galleried inn-yard, and it was
the place from which the first Bath mail-coach was started. Later, Mr.
John Camden Hotten, and afterwards Messrs. Chatto and Windus, carried on
their publishing business on this spot.
In the seventeenth century the Three Nuns was the sign of a well-known
coaching and carriers' inn in Aldgate, which gave its name to Three Nuns
Court close by. The yard, as usual, was galleried, but within recent
years the inn was pulled down and rebuilt in the form of a modern hotel.
Near this inn was the dreadful pit in which, during the Plague of 1665,
not less than 1,114 bodies were buried in a fortnight, from September 6
to 20.
The Criterion Restaurant and Theatre stands on the site of an old inn,
the White Bear, which for a century and more was one of the busiest
coaching-houses in connection with the West and South-West of England.
In this house Benjamin West, the future President of the Royal Academy,
put up on his arrival in London from America. Here died Luke Sullivan,
the engraver of some of Hogarth's most famous works. The inn yard had
galleries to two sides of the bedchambers on the second floor, connected
by a bridge across.
We must once more return to Southwark, for besides the inns already
mentioned as existing in that locality, there was another famous one,
namely, the White Hart. It had the largest inn sign except the Castle in
Fleet Street. Much maligned Jack Cade and some of his followers put up
at this inn during their brief possession of London in 1450. The
original inn which sheltered them remained standing till 1676, when it
was burnt down in the great fire already mentioned. It was rebuilt, and
was in existence till a few years ago, when it was pulled down. It
consisted of several open courts, the inner one having handsome
galleries on three sides to the first and second floors. There are two
views of it, taken respectively in 1840 and 1853, in the Crace
collection, and it was in the yard of this inn that Mr. Pickwick first
encountered Sam Weller.
The White Lion, in St. John Street, Clerkenwell, was originally an inn
frequented by drovers and carriers, and covered a good deal of ground;
but before its demolition it had already been greatly reduced in size,
the gateway leading into the yard having been built up and formed into
an oil-shop. Inserted in the front wall was the sign in stone relief,
representing a lion rampant, painted white, and with the date 1714. A
house on the other side of the central portion also seems to have formed
part of the original White Lion. The gate just mentioned led into a yard
similar to those attached to other ancient inns. There were, in the
east front of the inn, strong wooden beams, which no doubt supported the
erection over the gateway, and that there was a yard surrounded by a
gallery is proved by the remains of door openings in the upper parts of
the back walls of the premises, which had been bricked up. At one time
a bowling-green was attached to the tavern, and by the side of it a
pond, in which Anthony Joyce, the cousin of Pepys, drowned himself. He
was a tavern keeper, and kept the Three Stags in Holborn, which was
burnt down in 1666. Pepys records in his Diary, under September 5 of
that year: 'Thence homeward ... having ... seen Anthony Joyce's house on
fire.' The loss incurred by the fire preyed on Joyce's mind, and is
supposed to have led him to commit the rash act.
Here we will close our selection, which embraces all the most important
galleried taverns once existing in London. Their disappearance is much
to be regretted, though with the requirements of modern travellers it
was scarcely to be avoided. But they formed picturesque features of
London, which has so very few of them, especially as regards hotels,
which in their modern style remind us only of slightly decorated
barracks, if they are not perfectly hideous, as, for instance, the
architectural nightmare in Victoria Street. But there are plenty of
people yet who delight in old-fashioned houses and surroundings--the
revival of stage-coaches is proof of it. A galleried tavern with modern
improvements would, we fancy, not be a bad spec.
*II.--OLD LONDON TEA-GARDENS.*
Names are often misleading. Mr. Coward is a fierce fire-eater; Mr.
Gentle's family tremble when they hear his footsteps on the pavement on
his return home from his office, for they know that immediately on his
entrance he will kick up a row with every one of them; whilst Mr. Lion
lives in awe of his termagant better, or worse, half. We are led into
these reflections by the term 'tea-gardens.' It sounds so very
innocent; it calls up visions of honest citizens, surrounded by their
wives and olive-branches, enjoying, amid idyllic scenes of rural
beauties, their fragrant bohea, bread-and-butter, cream and sillabub.
But the vision is delusive. Noorthouck, who wrote about 1770, when the
tea-gardens were most abundant and flourishing, speaks of them thus:
'The tendency of these cheap catering places of pleasure just at the
skirts of this vast town is too obvious to need further explanation;
they swarm with loose women and with boys whose morals are depraved, and
their constitutions ruined, before they arrive at manhood. Indeed, the
licentious resort to the tea-drinking gardens was carried to such excess
every night that the magistrates lately thought proper to suppress the
organs in their public rooms; it is left to their cool reflection
whether this was discharging all the duty they owe to the public.'
Certes, the remedy seems hardly adequate when the grand jury of
Middlesex, as far back as 1744, had complained of 'advertisements
inviting and seducing not only the inhabitants, but all other persons,
to several places kept apart for the encouragement of luxury,
extravagance, idleness, and other wicked illegal purposes, which go on
with impunity to the destruction of many families, to the great
dishonour of the kingdom, especially at a time when we are involved in
an expensive war, and so much overburdened with taxes of all sorts,'
etc. With such an indictment before them, the magistrates must have
been wooden-headed indeed if they thought to stop the evil by forbidding
the playing of organs at such places. And the evil must have been not
only serious, but widespread, seeing there were upwards of thirty of
these tea-gardens around London. But our object is not to preach a
sermon on the wickedness of the world, but to describe the places where
it was practised. We begin with Bagnigge Wells tea-gardens.
Who now, wandering about dreary King's Cross, unacquainted with the
history of the place, would believe that this was once a picturesque
rural spot? But such it was, and here Nell Gwynne had a summer
residence amidst fields and on the banks of the River Fleet, then a
clear stream, occasionally flooding the locality. The ground on which
the house, a gabled building, stood was then called Bagnigge Vale.
Early in the eighteenth century the house was converted into a place of
public entertainment, in consequence of the timely discovery on the spot
of two wells, one of which was said to be purging and the other
chalybeate, and the water of which was sold at threepence a glass or at
eightpence by the gallon. But one of the wells seems to have been known
by the name of Black Mary's Well or Hole, which may have been a
corruption of Blessed Mary's Well, or due to the alleged fact that a
black woman leased the well. The gardens, it seems, were largely
patronized, hundreds of persons visiting them in the morning to drink
the waters, and on summer afternoons to drink tea, and something
stronger, too. The grounds were ornamented with curious shrubs and
flowers, a small round fish-pond, in the centre of which was a fountain,
representing Cupid bestriding a swan, which spouted the water up to a
great height. The Fleet flowed through a part of the gardens, and was
crossed by a bridge. Two prints are extant (reproduced in Pinks's
'Clerkenwell'), showing the gardens as they were in 1772 and again early
in the present century. But in December, 1813, the gardens came to
grief; the whole of the furniture and fittings were sold by auction by
order of the assignees of Mr. Salter, the tenant, a bankrupt. The
fixtures and fittings were described as comprising the erection of a
temple, a grotto, alcoves, arbours, boxes, green-house, large lead
figures, pumps, cisterns, sinks, counters, beer machine, stoves,
coppers, shrubs, 200 drinking tables, 350 forms, 400 dozen bottled ale
[which shows that tea was not the only drink consumed there], etc. The
house itself remained standing till 1844, when it was demolished; the
Phoenix brewery afterwards occupied the site, which is now covered with
dreary streets. All that reminds you now of the gardens is a stone
tablet set into the wall of a dull house in the neighbourhood, which
shows a grotesque head and the inscription: 'This is Bagnigge House,
neare the Finder a Wakefield, 1680.' It may be added that at the time
the gardens were in existence the place was environed with hills and
rising ground, every way but to the south, and consequently screened
from the inclemency of the more chilling winds. Primrose Hill rose
westward; on the north-west were the more distant elevations of
Hampstead and Highgate; on the north and north-east were pretty sharp
ascents to Islington. But the ground, which, as shown then, was in a
deep hollow, has in modern times been considerably raised above the
former level, and no vestige remains of the gardens or the springs. But
the gardens were so famous in their day as to cause their name to be
adopted by a similar establishment in a totally different direction.
Towards the end of the last century the New Bagnigge Wells tea-gardens
were opened at Bayswater. Whether these were identical with the new
Bayswater tea-gardens mentioned in a London guide we have not been able
to ascertain, but probably they were. Sir John Hill, born about 1716,
had a house in the Bayswater Road, in whose grounds he cultivated the
medicinal plants from which he prepared his tinctures, balsams, and
water-dock essence, and though the profession called him a charlatan and
a quack, he must have been a learned botanist. His 'Vegetable System'
extends to twenty-six folio volumes. His garden is now covered by the
long range of mansions called Lancaster Gate, but towards the close of
the last century the site was opened to the public as tea-gardens. The
grounds were spacious, and contained several springs of fine water lying
close to the surface. The Bayswater Bagnigge Wells was opened as a
public garden as late as 1854, shortly after which time, the visitors
having grown less and less, it was shut up, and eventually seized by the
land-devouring speculating builder.
The similarity of names has carried us from the north of London to the
west, but as the former locality, in consequence of its natural
features, always was a favourite one for tea-gardens, we will return to
it. On the top of the hill we referred to as rising from Bagnigge Wells
to Islington there stood, where the Belvedere Tavern now stands, a house
of entertainment known as Busby's Folly, so called after its owner, one
Christopher Busby, whose name is spelt Busbee on a token, 'White Lion at
Islington, 1668,' of which he was the landlord. Why the cognomen of
Folly was given to it is not very apparent, since, to judge by the
prints extant, there was nothing foolish about the building. But it
appears that then, as it is now, it was customary to call any house
which was not constructed according to a tasteless, unimaginative
builder's ideas a Folly; at Peckham there was Heaton's Folly. From
Busby's Folly the Society of Bull Feathers' Hall used to commence their
march to Islington to claim the toll of all gravel carried up Highgate
Hill, to which they asserted a right in a tract published by them and
entitled 'Bull Feather Hall; or, the Antiquity and Dignity of Horns
amply shown. London, 1664.' Busby's Folly retained its name till 1710,
after which it was called Penny's Folly, and here men with learned
horses, musical glasses, and similar shows entertained the public. The
gardens were extensive, and about 1780 the house seems to have been
rebuilt and christened Belvedere Tavern, which name it still bears.
Close to it was another tavern known as Dobney's, and which originally
was called Prospect House, because in those days, standing as it did on
the top of what was then styled Islington Hill, it really commanded a
fine prospect north and south. In 1770 Prospect House was taken for a
school, but soon reopened as the Jubilee Tea-Gardens, in commemoration
of the jubilee got up at Stratford-on-Avon by Garrick in honour of
Shakespeare, and the interior of the bowers was painted with scenes from
his plays. In 1772 one Daniel Wildman here performed 'several new and
amazing experiments never attempted by any man in this or any other
kingdom before. He rides, standing upright, one foot on the saddle and
the other on the horse's neck, with a curious mask of bees on his head
and face ... and by firing a pistol makes one part of the bees march
over a table and the other swarm in the air and return to their proper
hive again.' He also advertised that he was prepared to supply the
nobility and gentry with any quantity of bees from one stock in the
common or newly-invented hives. In 1774 the gardens fell into a ruinous
condition, but there were still two handsome tea-rooms. In 1780 the
house was converted into a discussion and lecture room, but the
speculation did not answer; the place was cleared, and about 1790
houses, known as Winchester Place, were erected on it. But a portion of
the gardens remained open till 1810, when that also disappeared, and the
only remains on the site of this once famous tea-garden is a mean court
in Penton Street called Dobney's Court. The Prospect House to which the
gardens belonged still stands behind the present Belvedere Tavern, but
there is no sign of antiquity about it.
In 1683 the well known as Sadler's Well was discovered, and Sadler's
Musick-House, as it was originally called, thenceforth became Sadler's
Well. But as it was, as its name implied, rather a house for musical
entertainment than a tea-garden, and as its history is pretty well
known, we pass it by to speak of a well adjoining it, namely, Islington
Wells or Spa, or New Tunbridge Wells.
This well was already in repute when the well on Sadler's land was
discovered, and as the two wells were contiguous, the Spa was frequently
mistaken for Sadler's. About the year 1690 it was advertised that the
Spa would open for drinking the medicinal waters. In 1700 there was
'music for dancing all day long every Monday and Thursday during the
summer season; no masks to be admitted.' A few years later the Spa
became fashionable, being patronized by ladies of such position as Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu. In 1733 the Princesses Amelia and Caroline,
daughters of George II., came daily in the summer and drank the waters;
in fact, such was the concourse of nobility and others that the
proprietor took upwards of thirty pounds in a morning. Whenever the
Princesses visited the Spa they were saluted with a discharge of
twenty-one guns, and in the evening there was a bonfire. Ned Ward
described the place:
'Lime trees were placed at a regular distance,
And scrapers were giving their awful assistance.'
It also furnished a title to a dramatic trifle, by George Colman, called
'The Spleen, or Islington Spa,' acted at Drury Lane in 1776. The
proprietor, Holland, failing, the Spa was sold to a Mr. Skinner in 1778,
and the gardens were reopened every morning for drinking the waters, and
in the afternoon for tea. The subscription for the season was one
guinea; non-subscribers drinking the waters, sixpence each morning. At
the beginning of this century part of the garden was built on, and about
1840 what remained was covered by two rows of cottages, called Spa
Cottages. At present there is at the corner of Lloyd's Row a small
cottage with the inscription on it, 'Islington Spa, or New Tunbridge
Wells.'
The Islington Spa must not be confounded with a similar neighbouring
establishment in Spa Fields, adjoining Exmouth Street. The locality was
originally called Ducking Pond Fields. Hunting ducks with dogs was one
of the barbarous amusements our ancestors delighted in. The
public-house to which the pond belonged was taken down in 1770, and on
its site was erected the Pantheon, built in imitation of the Oxford
Street Pantheon. It was a large round building, with a statue of Fame
on the top of it. Internally it had two galleries and a pit, and in the
winter it was warmed by a stove, having fireplaces all round, the smoke
from which was carried away under the floor. To the building was
attached an extensive garden, disposed in fancy walks, and having on one
side of it a pond, at one end of which was a statue of Hercules, at the
other end stood a summer-house for company to sit in. There were also
boxes of alcoves all round the gardens, and two tea-rooms in the main
building itself. The place was well patronized, the company usually
consisting, as described in the _Sunday Ramble_, of some hundreds of
persons of both sexes, the greater part of which, notwithstanding their
gay appearance, were evidently neither more nor less than journeymen
tailors, hair-dressers, and other such people, attended by their proper
companions, milliners, mantua-makers, and servant-maids, besides other
and more objectionable characters of the female sex. According to a
letter addressed to the _St. James's Chronicle_, 1772, the Pantheon was
a place of 'infamous resort,' the writer declaring that of all the
tea-houses in the environs of London, the most exceptional he ever had
occasion to be in was the Pantheon. He was particularly annoyed at
being frequently asked by the Cyprian nymphs swarming in the place to be
treated with 'a dish of tea.' He ought to have heard the requests of
our modern Cyprians! The place, however, did not prosper; the Rotunda
had been built by a Mr. Craven; whilst it was being erected Mrs. Craven
visited it, and was so overcome by the gloomy thoughts that troubled her
mind that she gave vent to tears, and remarked to a friend of hers: 'It
is very pretty, but I foresee that it will be the ruin of us, and one
day or other be turned into a Methodist meeting-house.' The lady had a
prophetic mind, for in 1774 her husband became bankrupt, and the
Pantheon, 'with its four acres of garden, laid out in the most agreeable
and pleasing style, refreshed with a canal abounding with carp, tench,
etc., and commanding a pleasing view of Hampstead, Highgate, and the
adjacent country,' were sold by auction, and finally closed in 1776.
The Rotunda, as foreseen by Mrs. Craven in 1779, became one of the
chapels of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, under the name of Spa Fields
Chapel. It is now replaced by the Episcopal Church of the Holy
Redeemer.
To the south of the Pantheon, in Bowling Green Lane, stood, in the
middle of the last century, the Cherry Tree Public House and Gardens,
with their bowling-green. The gardens took their name from the large
number of trees bearing that fruit which grew there. There were
subscription grounds for the game of nine-pins, knock-'em-downs, etc.,
and the house was much resorted to by the inhabitants of Clerkenwell.
But there was yet another well in this locality, which seems to have
been a very solfatara for springs, for near King's Cross there was a
chalybeate spring, known as St. Chad's Well, supposed to be useful in
cases of liver attacks, dropsy, and scrofula. St. Chad[#] was the
founder of the See and Bishopric of Lichfield, and was cured of some
awful disease by drinking the waters of this well, wherefore his name
was given to it. He died about 673, and in those days the names of
saints were as commercially valuable in starting a well or other natural
or unnatural phenomenon as the names of lords are on modern business
prospectuses. And St. Chad brought lots of custom to the well, for as
late as the last century eight or nine hundred persons a morning used to
come and drink these waters. Nay, fifty years ago they drew visitors to
themselves and the gardens surrounding the well. On a post might be
seen an octagonal board, with the legend, 'Health preserved and
restored.' Further on stood a low, old-fashioned, comfortable-looking,
large-windowed dwelling, and frequently there might also be seen
standing at the open door an ancient dame, in a black bonnet, a clean
blue cotton gown, and a checked apron. She was the Lady of the Well.
The gardens might be visited and as much water drunk as you pleased for
L1 1s. per year, 9s. 6d. quarterly, 4s. 6d. monthly, and 1s. 6d. weekly.
A single visit and a large glassful of water cost 6d. The water was
warmed in a large copper, whence it was drawn off into the glass. The
charge of 6d. was eventually reduced to 3d. There was a spacious and
lofty pump-room and a large house facing Gray's Inn Road, but all that
now remains is the remembrance of the well in the name of a narrow
passage, called St. Chad's Place, closed at its inner end by an
old-fashioned cottage with green shutters.
[#] He is a saint in the English calendar, and his day is March 2.