“the good Lord Cobham,” was situated in Cold Bath Fields, and on the
west side of Coppice Row, now Farringdon Road, at the point where it
was joined by Cobham Row.
It was first opened in 1728 (about April), and in its garden there was
then “a fine canal stocked with very good carp and tench fit to kill,”
and anglers were invited to board at the house. It was advertised to
be let or sold in 1729, and little is heard of it till 1742 when it
possessed a large garden with a “handsome grove of trees,” and gravel
walks, and claimed to sell the finest, strongest and most pleasant
beer in London at threepence a tankard. Some vocal and instrumental
music was at this time provided in the evening, and the walks were
illuminated.
In 1744 a good organ was erected in the chief room of the inn and the
landlord, Robert Leeming, for one of his concerts in 1744, announced
Mr. Blogg and others to sing selections from the Oratorios of “Saul”
and “Samson”; a concerto on the organ by Master Strologer and the
Coronation Anthem of Mr. Handel. After the concert came a ball, the
price of admission to the whole entertainment being half-a-crown. For
July 20th of the same year there was announced “a concert of musick
by the best Masters,” for the benefit of a reduced citizen, followed
by the display of a “set of fireworks by several gentlemen lovers
of that curious art--Rockets, line ditto, Katherine wheels, and many
other things; likewise will be shewn the manner of Prince Charles’s
distressing the French after he passed the Rhine.” The concerts do not
appear to have been given after this period but the Cobham’s Head long
continued to exist as a tavern, and is marked in Horwood’s Plan of 1799.
[Illustration: SUMMER AMUSEMENT.]
In December 1811 it was sold by auction, being described at that time
as a roomy brick building with a large yard behind, probably all that
was left of the gardens. About 1860 during the operations for the
Metropolitan Railway the Cobham’s Head was inundated by the bursting of
a New River Main, and was so much injured by the undermining for the
Railway that it had to be vacated.
[Pinks’s _Clerkenwell_; Wheatley’s _London P. and P._, “Coppice
Row.”]
“SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE” TAVERN AND GARDENS.
The Sir John Oldcastle Tavern was situated in Cold Bath Fields on the
west side of Coppice Row, and was on the same side of the road as
the Lord Cobham’s Head, but rather nearer to Bagnigge Wells. It was
originally a wayside inn, but during the first half of the eighteenth
century became a well-known tavern. In 1707 (July 18th) the Clerkenwell
Archers held their annual dinner there, and frequented it for some
years.
In the rear of the house were extensive gardens, well planted with
trees; and from 1744 to 1746 these were open during the summer for
evening entertainments. A band “of the best Masters” played from five
o’clock till nine; the walks were lit with lamps, and fireworks were
displayed at the close of the evening. The admission was sixpence,
including refreshments. In July 1746 concerts of vocal and instrumental
music were announced, at which the chief vocalist, Mr. Blogg, sang such
songs as “Come, Rosalind,” “Observe the fragrant blushing Rose” and
“The Happy Pair.”[62]
In 1753 a Smallpox Hospital was erected on part of the Oldcastle
estate, but the Sir John Oldcastle, immediately adjacent, was left
standing till 1762 when, being in a ruinous condition, it was pulled
down.
[Pinks’s _Clerkenwell_; Larwood and Hotten, _History of
Signboards_, p. 97; Tomlins’s _Perambulation of Islington_, p.
172; _Low Life_ (1764), p. 81; _The Field Spy_ (London, 1714);
Ashton’s _The Fleet_, p. 117.]
VIEWS.
South view of the Sir John Oldcastle in Lempriere’s Set of
Views, 1731.
ST. CHAD’S WELL, BATTLE BRIDGE.
The site of St. Chad’s Well, a mineral spring and garden at Battle
Bridge, is now partly occupied by St. Chad’s Place, a small street
turning out of the Gray’s Inn Road (east side) and lying between the
King’s Cross Station (Metropolitan Railway) and the Home and Colonial
Schools.
About the middle of the eighteenth century the Well was in considerable
repute, at least in the neighbourhood, and is said to have been
visited in the morning by hundreds of people who paid threepence for
the privilege of drinking. A hamper of two dozen bottles could be
bought for £1. At that time the gardens attached to the Well were very
extensive, and abounded with fruit trees, shrubs, and flowers.
During the last ten or twenty years of the eighteenth century few
visitors frequented the Well;[63] though we hear of it again about
1809, as being much resorted to by the lower classes of tradesmen on
Sundays.
In the early part of the nineteenth century it had a few visitors of
note. Sir Allan Chambré, the judge, used to visit the Well, and Munden,
the comedian, when living at Kentish Town, drank the water three
times a week. Mr. Mensall, the master of the Gordon House Academy at
Kentish Town, used to march his young gentlemen to St. Chad’s once a
week in order to save in doctor’s bills. John Abernethy, the surgeon,
was also a visitor. When Hone visited the place in 1825, the Spring of
St. Chad was once more almost deserted. Hone found a faded inscription
“St. Chad’s Well,” placed over a pair of wooden gates, one of which
(to quote his description) “opens on a scene which the unaccustomed
eye may take for the pleasure-ground of Giant Despair. Trees stand as
if made not to vegetate, clipped hedges seem willing to decline, and
nameless weeds straggle weakly upon unlimited borders.” “On pacing the
garden alleys, and peeping at the places of retirement, you imagine
the whole may have been improved and beautified for the last time by
some countryman of William III.” “If you look upwards you perceive
painted on an octagon board ‘Health Restored and Preserved.’ Further
on, towards the left stands a low, old-fashioned, comfortable-looking
large-windowed dwelling, and ten to one but there also stands at the
open door an ancient, ailing female in a black bonnet, a clean coloured
cotton gown, and a check apron; ... this is the Lady of the Well.”
In September 1837 the dwelling-house, spring and garden were put up to
auction by their proprietor, a Mr. Salter. The next proprietor, William
Lucas, finding that the celebrity of the waters had for a number of
years past been confined chiefly to the neighbourhood, issued in 1840 a
pamphlet and hand-bills in which the water was described as perfectly
clear when fresh drawn, with a slightly bitter taste. It was composed
of sulphate of soda and magnesia in large quantities, and of a little
iron held in solution by carbonic acid. The waters were recommended
as a universal medicine, being “actively purgative, mildly tonic and
powerfully diuretic.” The Pump-room was opened at 5 a.m., and the
price of admission was threepence, or one guinea a year. By this time
the old garden had been considerably curtailed by the formation of St.
Chad’s Place, and by letting out (1830) a portion as a timber yard. But
it was more carefully kept, and a new and larger pump-room had been
built in 1832. A fore-court adjoined the Gray’s Inn Road, and next to
it were the dwelling-house and pump-room. Beyond them was the garden
which on the north was joined by the backs of the houses in Cumberland
Row, and on the south by the timber-yard.
The pump-room was still in existence in 1860,[64] but was removed about
that time during the operations for the new Metropolitan Railway.
[Pinks’s _Clerkenwell_, pp. 504–506; Kearsley’s _Strangers’
Guide_ s.v. “Battlebridge”; Lysons’s _Environs_, iii. (1795),
p. 381; Lambert’s _London_, iv. 295; Hughson’s _London_, vi. p.
366; _Gent. Mag._ 1813, pt. 2, p. 557; Cromwell’s _Islington_,
p. 156, ff.; Hone’s _Every Day Book_, i. 322, ff.; E. Roffe’s
_Perambulating Survey of St. Pancras_, p. 13; Palmer’s _St.
Pancras_, p. 75; Clinch’s _Marylebone, and St. Pancras_;
Ashton’s _The Fleet_, p. 49.]
VIEWS.
1. St. Chad’s Well, a view from the garden. Water colour drawing
by T. H. Shepherd, 1850. Crace, _Cat._ 583, No. 81.
2. Plan annexed to the auctioneer’s particulars and conditions
of sale of St. Chad’s Well, 1837 (_see_ Pinks, p. 506).
BOWLING GREEN HOUSE, NEAR THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL
The Bowling Green House, a tavern with a large bowling green attached
to it on the south, was situated at the back of the Foundling Hospital,
and south of the New Road. A lane turning out of Gray’s Inn Lane led
to it. It is first mentioned in 1676,[65] and it afterwards gained
notoriety as a resort of gamesters. On a day in March, 1696, the
house was suddenly surrounded by soldiers and constables, who seized
and conveyed before a Justice of the Peace every person found on the
premises. Some of the offenders had to pay a fine of forty shillings
apiece.[66]
In the course of years, the character of the place changed, and in
1756 the proprietor, Joseph Barras,[67] announced that he had greatly
altered and fitted up the Bowling Green House[68] in a “genteel
manner.” The Bowling Green was declared to be in exceeding fine
order, and coffee, tea, and hot loaves were to be had every day. J.
P. Malcolm[69] says that the Bowling Green House was for many years a
quiet country retreat, but shortly before 1811 it was removed, and Judd
Street, Tonbridge Street, &c., began to cover the space south of New
Road. Hastings Street and part of Tonbridge Street appear to be on the
site.
[Authorities cited in the notes.]
ADAM AND EVE TEA GARDENS, TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD
The premises of the Adam and Eve stood at the north-west extremity
of Tottenham Court Road, at the lower end of the road leading to
Hampstead, and occupied the site of the manor-house of the ancient
manor of Tottenhall or Tottenham.
The Adam and Eve Tavern is known to have been in existence under that
sign in 1718.[70] Already in the seventeenth century Tottenham Court
is mentioned as a place of popular resort, one of “the City out-leaps”
(Broome, _New Academy_, 1658). George Wither (_Britain’s
Remembrancer_, 1628) speaks of the London holiday-makers who
frequented it:--
“And Hogsdone, Islington and Tottenham Court,
For cakes and cream had then no small resort.”
In 1645 Mrs. Stacye’s maid and two others (as the Parish books of St.
Giles in the Fields record) were fined one shilling apiece for the
enormity of “drinking at Tottenhall Court on the Sabbath daie.”[71]
In Wycherley’s _Gentleman Dancing-master_ (1673) a ramble to Totnam
Court is mentioned together with such fashionable diversions as a visit
to the Park, the Mulberry Garden, and the New Spring Garden (_i.e._
Vauxhall).
In the succeeding century Tottenham Court Fair and the “Gooseberry
Fair” doubtless brought many a customer to the Adam and Eve, and in the
spring-time, as Gay expresses it, “Tottenham fields with roving beauty
swarm.” The Adam and Eve then possessed a long room, with an organ, and
in its spacious gardens in the rear and at the side of the house were
fruit-trees and arbours for tea-drinking parties. There were grounds
for skittles and Dutch-pins, and in the fore-court which was shadowed
by large trees, tables and benches were placed for the visitors. At
one time it could boast the possession of a monkey, a heron, some wild
fowl, some parrots, and a small pond for gold fish.
Vincent Lunardi, the first man in England to make a balloon ascent,[72]
made an unexpected appearance at the Adam and Eve Gardens on 13 May,
1785. He had ascended from the Artillery Ground about one o’clock, but
the balloon, being overcharged with vapour, descended in about twenty
minutes in the Adam and Eve Gardens. “He was immediately surrounded by
great numbers of the populace, and though he proposed re-ascending,
they were not to be dissuaded from bearing him in triumph on their
shoulders.”[73]
[Illustration: ... _et se Protinus æthereà tollit inastra
via_.
VINCENT LUNARDI ESQ^r.
_Secretary to the Neapolitan Ambassador and the first aerial
Traveller in the English Atmosphere Sept^r. 15. 1784._
Publish’d Oct^r 5^th 1784 by John Bell British Library Strand]
Towards the end of the eighteenth century[74] the Adam and Eve began
to be hemmed in by buildings; by Brook Street (now Stanhope Street)
on the west, and by Charles Street (now Drummond Street, western
end) on the north. The gardens however appear to have retained their
old dimensions,[75] and at that time extended as far north as Charles
Street.[76]
The thousands of honest holiday-makers who visited the gardens had,
however, towards the end of the eighteenth century, been replaced by a
motley crew of highwaymen, footpads and low women,[77] and in the early
years of the present century (before 1811) the magistrates interfered:
“the organ was banished, the skittle grounds destroyed, and the gardens
dug up for the foundation of Eden Street.”
About 1813 the Adam and Eve Tavern and Coffee House, once more
respectably conducted, was a one-storied building. Part of it fronted
the New (Euston) Road, while an archway in the Hampstead Road led to
the other parts of the premises. A detached gabled building, originally
part of the domestic offices of the old Tottenhall Manor House, was
still standing at this time and was used as a drinking parlour in
connection with the Adam and Eve. Six small houses and shops also
adjoined the tavern and brought the proprietor about £25 each a year in
rent, though they are said to have been partly constructed out of the
boxes in the old tea-gardens.
The large public-house called the Adam and Eve, which now stands on the
old site at the corner of the Euston and Hampstead Roads, was built in
1869.
Near the Adam and Eve was the Cold Bath in the New Road. It was in
existence in 1785, when it was advertised[78] as in fine order for the
reception of ladies and gentlemen. The bath was situated in the midst
of a pleasant garden, and was constantly supplied by a spring running
through it. The water was described as serviceable to persons suffering
from nervous disorders and dejected spirits.
[Wilkinson’s _Londina illust._, i. “Tottenhall,” Nos. 92,
93; Hone’s _Year Book_, p. 47, cp. p. 317; Walford, iv. 477;
v. 303 ff.; Palmer’s _St. Pancras_, p. 204, ff.; Larwood and
Hotten, _Signboards_, 257, 258; Brayley’s _Londiniana_, ii. p.
165; Cunningham’s _London_ (1850), “Tottenham Court Road”; F.
Miller’s _St. Pancras_, p. 161; Wheatley’s _London_, “Tottenham
Court Road” and “Adam and Eve.”]
VIEWS.
1. The scene of Hogarth’s March to Finchley (see Nichols’s
_Hogarth_, i. 155, ff.) is laid at the Tottenham Court
Turnpike, at the south end of the Hampstead Road. On the right
is the King’s Head tavern, and on the left the Adam and Eve.
The sign of Adam and Eve appears on a post in the road, and
Hogarth has inscribed it “Tottenham Court Nursery,” in allusion
to Broughton’s amphitheatre for boxing that existed here
(_see_ Walford, v. 304).
2. Two views in Wilkinson’s _Londina_, i. “Remains of the
Manor House denominated the lordship of Toten-hall, now vulgarly
called Tottenham Court, and occupied by the Adam and Eve Tea
House and Gardens.” Shepherd del., Wise sculp. (published 1813).
Beneath this is a plan of the vicinity marking Eden Street, ii.
Part of the Adam and Eve coffee rooms, Hampstead Road, J. Carter
del., Wise sculp. (published 1811).
3. A woodcut in Hone’s _Year Book_, p. 47, of the Adam and
Eve (before 1825), substantially the same as Wilkinson’s second
view. The views in Wilkinson and Hone show the Adam and Eve
in its altered condition after the proprietor Greatorex (end
of eighteenth century?) had made an addition to the tavern,
fronting the New Road.
THE PEERLESS POOL
The Peerless Pool should, in strictness, be described in a history of
sports and pastimes, but as a pleasant summer resort, an oasis in the
regions of Old Street and the City Road, it must be allowed a place in
the present volume.
In ground immediately behind St. Luke’s Hospital (built 1782–84), Old
Street, was one of the ancient London springs which had formed, by its
overflowings, a dangerous pond, referred to,[79] as early as 1598,
as the “clear water called Perillous Pond, because divers youths by
swimming therein have been drowned.”
In the seventeenth century it was apparently resorted to for the
favourite amusement of duck-hunting: “Push, let your boy lead his water
spaniel along, and we’ll show you the bravest sport at Parlous Pond”
(Middleton’s _Roaring Girl_, 1611).
In 1743, William Kemp, a London jeweller, who had derived benefit from
his plunges in its water, took the Parlous Pond in hand. He embanked
it, raised the bottom, changed its name to Peerless Pool, and opened
it to subscribers as a pleasure bath. In the adjacent ground, of which
he held the lease, he introduced other attractions: in particular he
constructed a fish-pond, 320 feet long, 90 feet broad, and 11 feet
deep, and stocked it with carp, tench, and other fish. The high banks
of this were thickly covered with shrubs, and on the top were walks
shaded by lime trees. To the east of the fish-pond was a Cold Bath
(distinct from the Pool) 36 feet long and 18 feet broad,[80] supplied
by a spring. The Peerless Pool itself as contrived by Kemp was an
open-air swimming-bath, 170 feet long, more than 100 feet broad, and
from 3 to 5 feet deep. It was nearly surrounded by trees, and the
descent was by marble steps to a fine gravel bottom, through which the
springs that supplied the pool came bubbling up. The entrance was from
a bowling-green on the south side, through a marble saloon (30 feet
long) which contained a small collection of light literature for the
benefit of subscribers to the Pool. Adjoining this were the dressing
boxes.
The place became, from about the middle of the eighteenth century,
a favourite resort of London anglers and swimmers, and many London
merchants and persons of good position were among the subscribers. An
annual payment of one guinea entitled subscribers to the use of the
baths, and to the diversion of “angling and skating at proper seasons.”
Occasional visitors paid two shillings each time of bathing.
[Illustration: THE PLEASURE BATH, PEERLESS POOL, CITY ROAD.
TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION.
PLEASURE BATH
£. _s._ _d._
Month 0 9 0
Two Months 0 16 0
Year 1 1 0
Single Bathe }
with Towels } 0 1 0
and Box }
Ditto without 0 0 6
COLD BATH
£. _s._ _d._
Month 0 10 0
Two Months 0 17 0
Year 1 10 0
Single Bathe 0 1 0
THE PLEASURE BATH OF PEERLESS POOL,
The largest in England, is situated in the immediate
neighbourhood of the heart of the City, within Ten minutes’
direct walk of the Bank and Exchange. (vide plan.) Surrounded
by trees and shrubberies, open to the air, although
entirely screened from observation, and most ample in its
dimensions--=170= FEET in length, by =108= in
breadth--it offers to the Bather the very advantages he would
least expect to find at so short a distance from the centre of
the metropolis. Its depth, which increases gradually from 3 feet
6 inches to 4 feet 8 inches, is such as to afford free scope to
the Swimmer, while it precludes all fear of accident to any,
and the temperature of the water rises to a height sufficient
to ensure all the comfort and luxury of Bathing, without the
risk of injury to health, from a too violent contrast with the
external air.
THE COLD BATH,
THIRTY-SIX feet by EIGHTEEN, is the largest
of its kind in London, and both Baths are entirely supplied by
Springs, which are constantly overflowing.
* * * * *
_The City Road is the line from all parts of the_ WEST
END _to the City. Omnibuses pass both ways nearly every
minute throughout the day._
1, Bath Buildings Entrance--2, Baldwyn Street Entrance--3, Cold
Bath--4, Pleasure Bath--5, Dressing Boxes--6, Shrubberies.
BILL OF PEERLESS POOL. _Circ._ 1846.]
About 1805 Mr. Joseph Watts (father of Thomas Watts, the well-known
Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum) obtained a lease of
the place from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital at a rental of £600 per
annum, and eventually saw his way to a profit by building on part of
the ground. He drained the fish-pond which lay due east and west, and
built the present Baldwin Street on the site. The old-fashioned house
inhabited by Kemp, which stood in a garden and orchard of apple and
pear trees overlooking the west end of the fish-pond, Watts pulled
down, erecting Bath Buildings on the spot.[81] The pleasure bath and
the cold bath he, however, continued to open to the public at a charge
of one shilling, and Hone gives a pleasant description of it as it was
(still in Watts’s proprietorship) in 1826. “Its size,” he says, “is the
same as in Kemp’s time, and trees enough remain to shade the visitor
from the heat of the sun while on the brink.” “On a summer evening it
is amusing to survey the conduct of the bathers; some boldly dive,
others ‘timorous stand,’ and then descend, step by step, ‘unwilling and
slow’; choice swimmers attract attention by divings and somersets, and
the whole sheet of water sometimes rings with merriment. Every fine
Thursday and Saturday afternoon in the summer, columns of blue-coat
boys, more than three score in each, headed by their respective
beadles, arrive, and some half strip themselves ere they reach their
destination; the rapid plunges they make into the Pool, and their
hilarity in the bath, testify their enjoyment of the tepid fluid.”
The Pool was still frequented in 1850,[82] but at a later time was
built over. Its name is kept locally in remembrance by Peerless Street,
the second main turning on the left of the City Road, just beyond Old
Street, in coming from the City. This street was formerly called
Peerless Row, and formed the northern boundary of the ground laid out
by Kemp.[83]
[Maitland’s _Hist. of London_, i. p. 84, ff.; Dodsley’s
_London_, “Peerless Pool”; Noorthouck’s _London_, p. 756, ff.;
Trusler’s _London Adviser_ (1786), p. 124; Hone’s _Every Day
Book_, i. p. 970, ff.; Pennant’s _London_, p. 268; Wheatley’s
_London P. and P._ iii. s.v.; newspaper cuttings, &c., W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
1. Two woodcuts (pleasure bath and fish-pond) from drawings,
_circ._ 1826, by John Cleghorn in Hone’s _Every Day
Book_ (cited above).
2. View of Peerless Pool Bath and Gardens in 1848; coloured
drawing by Read. Crace, _Cat._, p. 608, No. 9.
3. The Pleasure Bath, Peerless Pool. An advertisement bill with
woodcut of the bath, surrounded by trees and shrubberies, and a
plan of the vicinity (1846?), W. Coll.; cp. Crace, _Cat._,
p. 608, No. 8.
THE SHEPHERD AND SHEPHERDESS, CITY ROAD
The Shepherd and Shepherdess ale-house stood on or near the site
afterwards occupied by the well-known Eagle Tavern in the City Road and
Shepherdess Walk.
It was built at some time before 1745, and its gardens were frequented
in the last century by visitors, who regaled themselves with cream,
cakes and furmity. Invalids sometimes stayed at the Shepherd and
Shepherdess[84] to benefit by the pure air of the neighbourhood. The
City Road (opened in 1761) was cut through the meadow-grounds that
surrounded the inn. The place gradually lost its rural isolation, but
it is found enumerated among the tea-gardens resorted to by Londoners
of the “middling classes” in the first quarter of the nineteenth
century.
The Shepherd and Shepherdess appears to have been pulled down about
1825, at which time Thomas Rouse built on or near its site the Eagle
Tavern (rebuilt 1838) which formed the nucleus of the famous Eagle
establishment with its Grecian saloon and theatre, its gardens and
dancing pavilion. The tavern, grounds and theatre were purchased by
“General” Booth in 1882, and have since been occupied by the Salvation
Army.[85]
[Larwood and Hotten, _Signboards_, 352, 353; _Picture of
London_, 1802 and 1823; Walford, ii. 227, 274.]
THE SPRING GARDEN, STEPNEY
This Spring Garden was situated a little distance to the north of the
Mile End Road and its eastern side abutted on what is now Globe Road.
It was in existence at least as early as 1702, and at that period seems
to have been sometimes known as the Jews’ Spring Garden,[86] probably
because it was owned or frequented by some of the wealthy Jews who
at that time and long afterwards resided in Goodman’s Fields and the
neighbourhood. There was a tavern attached to the gardens, the keeper
of which, in 1743, was a Mr. Dove Rayner,[87] described as a man of
“agreeable mirth and good humour.”