Londoners, derive a certain antiquarian interest from their situation
within the ancient park attached to Canonbury House, the mansion built
by the Priors of St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, for their summer
residence. Houses in Canonbury Place, first erected about 1770, occupy
the site of the old mansion, though a substantial relic still exists in
Canonbury Tower, built in the sixteenth century, and during the last
century let out for summer lodgings to various tenants, the best known
of whom was Oliver Goldsmith.
About 1754 a small ale-house was built by a Mr. Benjamin Collins on the
eastern side of the mansion. This afterwards came into the possession
of James Lane, who made additions to the premises, utilising, it would
seem, a range of tiled outhouses on the east of the house which were
supposed to have originally been its stables.
The place had a good reputation and became much frequented as a
tea-garden under the name of Canonbury House. Lane died in 1783, and
about 1785 the tavern was taken by a Mr. Sutton, who died soon after,
leaving the premises to his wife.
The “Widow Sutton” enlarged the tavern, which was then known as
Canonbury House Tavern (or Canonbury Tavern), laid out a bowling green
and improved the tea-gardens. The house was much used for the dinners
of Societies.
The gardens, which at this time occupied about four acres, were almost
entirely situated within the old park wall of the Priors of St.
Bartholomew’s, and the wall on the east divided them from the open
fields. The old fish-pond of the Priors was also connected.
The _Sunday Ramble_ describes Canonbury House in 1797 as “a place
of decent retreat for tea and sober treatment.” In 1810 an Assembly was
established at the tavern, and about 1811 the grounds consisted of a
shrubbery and bowling green with Dutch-pin and trap-ball grounds and
butts for ball-firing used by the Volunteers. The old tiled outhouses
were used as a bake-house for the pastry and rolls till 1840, when they
were pulled down.
About 1823 the builders had invaded the rural neighbourhood of
Canonbury, but the tea-gardens continued to be frequented as a pleasant
resort till 1843, or later.
At sometime between 1843 and 1866 the Canonbury Tavern was rebuilt. It
now stands on the north side of Canonbury Place, a little to the east
of Canonbury Tower and on the opposite side of the road.
A garden, though not of the old dimensions, is still attached to the
tavern and open to the public during the summer.
[Nichols’s _Canonbury_, 1788, 33; _The Ambulator_, 1st ed. 1774,
s.v. “Canonbury House”; Kearsley’s _Strangers’ Guide_ (1793?),
s.v. “Canonbury or Cambray House”; _A Modern Sabbath_, 1797,
chap. vii.; Nelson’s _Islington_, 252; Brayley’s _Londiniana_,
iii. 269, ff.; _Picture of London_, eds. 1802 and 1829; Lewis’s
_Islington_, p. 310; Timbs’s _Club Life_, 1866, ii. 228.]
VIEWS.
Exterior of Canonbury Tavern (north view), a small engraving
published in 1819 by R. Ackermann (W. Coll.); Crace, _Cat._
p. 602, No. 174.
COPENHAGEN HOUSE
Copenhagen House stood alone on an eminence in the fields, on the
right-hand side of Maiden Lane, the old way leading from Battle Bridge
to Highgate, being about midway between those places.[159]
It is known to have been a house of public entertainment in 1725[160]
and was probably one much earlier, seeing that the oldest part of the
building was in the style of the seventeenth century. “Coopen-hagen” is
marked in a map of 1695.[161]
There are various accounts of the origin of the the name. A Danish
Prince or a Danish Ambassador is said to have resided in the house
during the Great Plague. Or, again, an enterprising Dane is said to
have built the inn for the accommodation of his countrymen who had come
to London in the train of the King of Denmark on his visit to James I.
in 1606.[162] In the early part of the eighteenth century Copenhagen
House is not often mentioned, though the curious Highbury Society[163]
used to assemble here previous to the year 1740, when it began to meet
at Highbury.
[Illustration: South East View _of_ Copenhagen House.
_London: Printed for R. Sayer and J. Bennett, Map and Printsellers,
N^o. 53 Fleet Street, as the Act directs, 20th March, 1783_]
In 1780 a brutal robbery[164] of which the landlady, Mrs. Harrington,
was the victim, attracted attention to the place. A subscription was
opened for her benefit, and visitors came in such numbers that Mr.
Leader, the owner of the House, pulled down the old wooden building
attached to its western end, and built in its stead a long room for
tea-drinking parties, with a large parlour below for drinking and
smoking. There were gardens attached, with the usual accommodation for
skittles and Dutch-pin playing.
Under Mrs. Harrington’s management, Copenhagen House first became
celebrated for its Fives Courts. A young Shropshire woman (afterwards
Mrs. Tomes) who assisted Mrs. Harrington, gave Hone an interesting
little account of the introduction of the game:--“I made the first
fives ball (she said) that was ever thrown up against Copenhagen
House. One Hickman, a butcher at Highgate, a countryman of mine,
used the house, and seeing me ‘country,’ we talked about our country
sports, and amongst the rest, _fives_: I told him we’d have a
game some day. I laid down the stone in the ground myself, and against
he came again, made a ball. I struck the ball the first blow, and he
gave it the second, and so we played; and as there was company they
liked the sport, and it got talked of. This was the beginning of the
_fives-play_, which has since become so famous at Copenhagen
House.”
John Cavanagh (_d._ 1819), the famous Irish fives player, had many
matches at Copenhagen House for wagers and dinners. The wall against
which the combatants played was (says Hone) the same that supported the
kitchen chimney, and when the wall resounded louder than usual, the
cook exclaimed, “Those are the _Irishman’s_ balls,” and the joints
trembled on the spit. Hazlitt, in a pleasant memoir of Cavanagh,[165]
says that he had no equal in the game or second. He had no affectation
in his playing. He was the best up-hill player in the world, and
never gave away a game through laziness or conceit. His “service” was
tremendous, but a peculiarity of his play was that he never volleyed,
though if the ball rose but an inch from the ground he never missed it.
“His eye,” adds Hazlitt, “was certain, his hand fatal, his presence of
mind complete.”
In 1795 the house was kept by Robert Orchard, notorious for his
connexion with the London Corresponding Society, which at that time
held tumultuous meetings in the adjoining Copenhagen Fields. Orchard
was succeeded by a man named Tooth, who gained custom by encouraging
brutal sports. At this time, “on a Sunday morning, the fives ground
was filled by bull-dogs and ruffians, who lounged and drank to
intoxication: so many as fifty or sixty bull-dogs have been seen tied
up to the benches at once, while their masters boozed and made match
after match, and went out and fought their dogs before the house, amid
the uproar of idlers attracted to the ‘bad eminence’ by its infamy.”
There was also a common field, east of the house, wherein bulls were
baited, and this was called the bull-field. At last the magistrates
interfered, and in 1816 Tooth lost his license. The next landlord, a
Mr. Bath, conducted the house respectably, and refused admittance to
the bull-dogs. The bull-field was afterwards used for the harmless
purpose of cow-keeping.
From about this period (1816–1830) Copenhagen House was a favourite
Sunday tea-garden with the middle-classes[166] who flocked there,
especially in the summer-time during the hay harvest in the fields
around.[167] Although the builders were making their way up to
Copenhagen House from London on the south, it still commanded an
extensive view of the metropolis and western suburbs, with the heights
of Hampstead and Highgate, “and the rich intervening meadows.” In
1841[168] the tavern and tea-gardens were still in existence, and the
space between them and Highgate was still open fields. Attached to the
house at that time was a well known cricket ground.[169]
About 1852 the Corporation of London purchased Copenhagen House with
its grounds and adjacent fields to the extent of about seventy-five
acres, and began to build there the present Metropolitan Cattle Market,
between the York and Caledonian Roads, which was opened in 1855. The
old tavern (pulled down in 1853[170]) and tea-gardens were thus swept
away, and their site is approximately marked by the Great Clock Tower
in the market.[171]
[Hone’s _Every Day Book_, i. 858, ff.; Nelson’s _Islington_;
Lewis’s _Islington_; Larwood and Hotten, _Signboards_, 435, 436;
Walford, ii. 275, 276, 283; v. 374; Tomlins’s _Perambulation of
Islington_, 204, 205.]
VIEWS.
1. Copenhagen House, Islington, as it appeared in 1737, sepia
drawing by Bernard Lens. Crace, _Cat._ p. 604, No. 191.
2. South-east view of Copenhagen House, printed for R. Sayer and
J. Bennett, 20 March, 1783 (W. Coll.); the woodcut in Lewis’s
_Islington_, p. 283, is derived from this.
3. Copenhagen House, Islington. J. Swaine del. 1793; J. Swaine,
sculp. 1854. Woodcut (W. Coll.).
4. There are several views of Copenhagen House in the nineteenth
century, see _e.g._ Hone’s _Every Day Book_, i. 858;
Cromwell’s _Islington_, p. 204; Crace, _Cat._ p. 605,
Nos. 194, 196 (views of 1853).
5. “The Grand Meeting of the Metropolitan Trades’ Unions in the
Copenhagen Fields on Monday, April 21, 1834.” Coloured engraving
by Geo. Dorrington (W. Coll.). This shows Copenhagen House and
an enormous concourse in the fields.
HIGHBURY BARN
Highbury Barn Tavern with its gardens is, like the Canonbury House
Tavern and gardens, rooted in a respectable antiquity, for it stood on
the site of Highbury Barn[172] which formed part of the farm attached
to the old country seat[173] of the Prior of the Knights of St. John of
Jerusalem.
Highbury Barn (the tavern) was originally a small cake and ale
house which was in existence at least as early as 1740[174]. It was
occasionally (about 1768) honoured by a visit from Oliver Goldsmith on
one of his Shoemaker’s holidays. Goldsmith and three or four of his
friends would leave his Temple chambers in the morning and proceed by
the City Road and through the fields to Highbury Barn, where at one
o’clock they enjoyed a dinner of two courses and pastry, at the cost
of tenpence a head including the waiter’s penny. The company then to
be met with at the inn consisted of Templars and literary men, and a
citizen or two retired from business. At about six, Goldsmith and his
party adjourned to the White Conduit House for tea, and ended the day
with supper at the Globe or Grecian.
The trade of the place greatly increased under the management of Mr.
Willoughby, who, dying in December 1785, was succeeded by his son. The
younger Willoughby (landlord 1785–1818?)[175] laid out the gardens,
bowling green and trap-ball ground.[176] A large barn belonging to
the neighbouring Highbury Farm (or Grange) was incorporated with the
premises and fitted up suitably for a Great Room. Here a monthly
assembly subscribed to in the neighbourhood was held in the spring
and winter and monster dinner-parties of clubs and societies were
accommodated. In 1800 a company of eight hundred persons sat down to
dinner, and seventy geese were to be seen roasting on the fire. Three
thousand people were accommodated at the Licensed Victuallers’ Dinner
in 1841.
About 1793 the garden commanded an extensive prospect, and as late as
1842 Highbury could be described as “a beautifully situated hamlet.”
[Illustration: HIGHBURY BARN IN 1792.]
In 1818 the property was purchased by the former proprietor of the
Grove House, Camberwell, and Highbury Barn was much resorted to as
a Sunday tea-garden (_circ._ 1823–1830). The place then passed
(before 1835) into the hands of John Hinton (previously landlord of
the Eyre Arms, St. John’s Wood) who with his son Archibald Hinton,
ultimately the sole proprietor, gave new life to the place and made
Highbury Barn a kind of North London Cremorne. By about 1854 the number
of monster dinner-parties and bean-feasts had much fallen off, and on
Whit-Monday of that year Hinton opened his establishment for musical
entertainments with a performance by the band of the Grenadier Guards.
A license for dancing was granted in October 1856, and in July 1858 a
Leviathan dancing platform, with an orchestra at one end, was erected
in the grounds. It was open to the sky with the exception of one side,
which consisted of a roofed structure of ornamental ironwork. The whole
platform occupied four thousand feet. A standard of gas lamps in the
centre of the platform and lamps placed round its railing lit up the
place in the evening, when the gardens were frequented by large masses
of people. In a more secluded part of the gardens was an avenue of
trees, flanked by female statues, each holding a globular gas lamp.
About 1858 the admission was sixpence, and at this time Highbury Barn
was much frequented on Sunday evenings, when little parties might be
seen on the lawn before the Barn or in the bowers and alcoves by its
side. The gardens occupied five acres.
Archibald Hinton gave up possession in 1860; and in 1861 Edward
Giovanelli opened Highbury Barn, after having improved the grounds
and erected a spacious hall for a ball and supper room. In 1862 Miss
Rebecca Isaacs and Vernon Rigby were the principal singers, and Leotard
the gymnast was engaged for the summer season. On 20 May 1865 the
Alexandra Theatre was opened in the grounds, but the entertainments
in the gardens were also continued. “The splendid Illuminations”
were boldly advertised, and Blondin (1868), Natator the man-frog,
and the Siamese Twins were engaged (1869). The riotous behaviour,
late at night, of many frequenters of the gardens caused annoyance
to the neighbours, who regularly opposed the renewal of the license.
In October 1870 the dancing license was refused, and next season Mr.
E. T. Smith took the place of Giovanelli as manager, but the license
being again refused in October 1871, Highbury Barn was finally closed.
The flowerbeds became choked with grass and weeds, and nightshade
luxuriated around the dismantled orchestra. By the spring of 1883 the
place had been covered with buildings, and a large public-house, the
Highbury Tavern (No. 26, Highbury Park N.), on part of the old site,
alone commemorates this once popular resort.
[Nelson’s _Islington_; Cromwell’s _Islington_; Lewis’s
_Islington_; Tomlins’s _Perambulation of Islington_; Kearsley’s
_Strangers’ Guide_; Walford, ii. 273. ff.; Forster’s _Life of
Goldsmith_, bk. iv. chap. 2; _Picture of London_, 1802, 1823 and
1829; Ritchie’s _Night-side of London_ (1858); _Era Almanack_,
1871, pp. 3, 4; M. Williams’s _Some London Theatres_, 1883, p.
33, ff.; newspaper cuttings and bills, W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
1. Highbury Barn (gabled buildings), an etching from a drawing
by B. Green, 1775 (W. Coll.).
2. Highbury Assembly House, near Islington, kept by Mr.
Willoughby, 1792, print published in 1792 by Sayer (W. Coll.;
also Crace. _Cat._ p. 603, No. 182).
3. “Highbury Barn, Islington,” engraving published May 1, 1819,
for R. Ackermann.
4. Highbury Barn (exterior) (_circ._ 1835), engraving in
Cromwell’s _Islington_, p. 247, J. and H. S. Storer, del.
et. sc.
5. “The Leviathan Platform, Highbury Barn,” woodcut in
_Illustrated London News_, July 1858.
6. Two views of “The Gardens, Highbury Barn Tavern”
(_circ._ 1851), in Tallis’s _Illustrated London_, ed.
Gaspey.
THE DEVIL’S HOUSE, HOLLOWAY.
This place, in spite of its unpromising name, deserves a brief notice
as a quiet summer resort of Londoners.
The Devil’s House was a moated timber building which originally formed
the manor-house of Tolentone (afterwards Highbury) Manor. It stood on
the east of Devil’s Lane, previously (before 1735) called Tallington or
Tollington Lane, and now known as the Hornsey Road. It was within two
fields of Holloway Turnpike.[177]
There was a tradition that the house was a retreat of Claude Duval’s,
and the house and Lane were sometimes known as “Duval’s.” There is,
however, no direct evidence to connect the famous highwayman with the
house, and Duval’s House may be considered as a popular corruption
of Devil’s House. In a survey of Highbury Manor made in 1611, this
house already bears the name of “Devil’s House in Devil’s Lane” and
is described as being at that date an old building “with a mote, and
a little orchard within.” In the Islington Survey of 1735, it appears
as “Devol’s House,” an apparent compromise between the fiend and the
highwayman.
It is not known to have been a place of entertainment till 1767 when
the landlord,[178] who attempted to change the name to the Summer
House, offered to London anglers and pedestrians the attraction of
“tea and hot loaves, ready at a moment’s notice, and new milk from the
cows grazing in the pleasant meadows adjoining.” The house was still
encompassed with a wide moat crossed by a bridge, and there was an
orchard with a canal. The garden which surrounded the house was well
laid out, and the water was stocked with abundance of tench and carp.
The place was still occupied and used as an inn in 1811,[179] though
about that time the landlord nearly filled up the moat with earth.
The house was in existence in 1849 (or later),[180] being on the east
of the Hornsey Road near the junction with the Seven Sisters’ Road.
[Lysons’s _Environs_ (1795), “Islington,” p. 127, note; Nelson’s
_Islington_, 133, 173; Lewis’s _Islington_, pp. 67, 279, 280;
Larwood and Hotten, _Signboards_, 294, 295, quoting a letter
signed H. G., 25 May, 1767, in the _Public Advertiser_, which
describes the place at that period; Walford, ii. 275; Tomlins’s
_Perambulation of Islington_, pp. 31, 32.]
VIEWS.
1. A view of the house, gardens and bridge appears in Walford,
v. 378, “Claude Duval’s House in 1825.”
2. Devil’s or Du Val’s House, Holloway, a sepia drawing by C. H.
Matthews (1840); Crace, _Cat._ p. 604, No. 190.
HORNSEY WOOD HOUSE.
Hornsey Wood House was situated on the summit of rising ground on
the east of Hornsey and at the entrance to Hornsey Wood. It began to
be frequented about the middle of the last century,[181] and in the
earlier years of its existence aspired to be “a genteel tea-house,”
though unpretending in appearance. On popular holidays, such as
Whit-Sunday, its long room might be seen crowded as early as nine
or ten in the morning with a motley assemblage of “men, women and
children eating rolls and butter and drinking of tea at an extravagant
price.”[182]
The pleasures of Hornsey Wood House were of an unsophisticated
kind--unlimited tea-drinking, a ramble in the wood, and a delightful
view of the surrounding country. An excursion to Little Hornsey
to drink tea was a favourite with London citizens’ wives and
daughters.[183] Hone remembered the old Hornsey Wood House, as it
stood (apparently before 1800), “embowered and seeming a part of the
Wood.” It was at that time kept by two sisters, Mrs. Lloyd and Mrs.
Collier, and these aged dames were usually to be found before their
door on a seat between two venerable oaks, wherein swarms of bees hived
themselves.
Soon after their death (before 1800?) the house was pulled down and
the proprietor expended £10,000 in improvements and in erecting the
roomy brick building known as Hornsey Wood Tavern. The tea-gardens were
enlarged and a lake formed, for the benefit of those who wished for a
little angling or boating. To effect these improvements, a romantic
part of the wood was destroyed, but the remaining portion still
continued an attraction. About 1835 the “lower order of citizens” as T.
Cromwell (_Islington_, p. 138) calls them, used to go “palming” to
the wood on Palm Sunday. All through the present century Hornsey Wood
House (or Tavern) was a favourite Sunday resort of Londoners.
In 1866 at the time of the formation of Finsbury Park, the house was
pulled down and its site and that of the gardens and the Wood must be
looked for in the Park, which was opened as a public recreation ground
in 1869.
[_The Idler_, No. 15, July 1758; Dodsley’s _London_, 1761; _Low
Life_ (1764), p. 46; _Sunday Ramble_, 1776 and 1797; Kearsley’s
_Strangers’ Guide_; Lambert’s _London_, iv. 274; _Picture of
London_, eds. 1802, 1823 and 1829; Hone’s _Every Day Book_, i.
759, ff.; Lewis’s _Islington_, pp. 190, 282; J. F. Murray’s
_World of London_, 1845, ii. p. 82, ff.; Walford, v. 430, ff.;
_Illustrated London News_, 14 August, 1869; J. H. Lloyd’s
_Highgate_, 1888.]
VIEWS.
1. An engraving of old Hornsey Wood House &c., in Lewis’s
_Islington_, p. 282.
2. There are many views of the later Hornsey Wood House (or
Tavern), _e.g._ one engraved in Walford, v. 426, and there
assigned to the year 1800. This is substantially the same as
one (undated) in Hone’s _Every Day Book_, i. 759. Hone,
_ib._ 761, also gives a woodcut of the Lake. There is an
engraving of the house of 1809, published by J. Cundee (W.
Coll.), and there are views of it of a later date; _e.g._
an engraving in Cromwell’s _Islington_, p. 138.
THE SPRING GARDEN, STOKE NEWINGTON.
This Spring Garden is marked in Warner’s _Survey of Islington_,
1735, rather to the south of Newington Green. About 1753 the tavern
connected with the garden was taken by W. Bristow, who advertised the
place as an afternoon tea-garden, appending to his advertisement the
note “beans in perfection for any companies.”[184]
It is mentioned in _Low Life_, 1764 as resorted to on Whit-Sunday
evening by Londoners of the lower classes. Cromwell in his
_Islington_ (p. 199) published in 1835, speaks of the tavern and
tea-gardens as existing “within memory.”
THE BLACK QUEEN COFFEE-HOUSE AND TEA-GARDENS, SHACKLEWELL.
The Black Queen Coffee-house situated on Shacklewell Green had attached
to it a bowling green and tea-gardens planted with fruit trees, yews,
limes, and poplars. It is said to have been resorted to by “genteel
company,” but little is known of it, except that in 1793 (when in
possession of a Mr. Moore) the lease was advertised to be sold by
auction (13th September, 1793).
[_The Daily Advertiser_ for 3 September, 1793.]
IV
HAMPSTEAD GROUP
HAMPSTEAD WELLS
The outlet of the once famous spring of Hampstead is at the present
time to be found on the north side of Well Walk, and the water now
trickles out slowly into a basin, which forms part of a modern
fountain. The earliest mention of the spring occurs in the time of
Charles II. when one Dorothy Rippin appears to have made some profit by
the sale of the water, as she issued a halfpenny token which has on its
obverse the words, DOROTHY RIPPIN AT THE WELL IN HAMSTED, and
a representation of a well and bucket.[185] The well was in 1698 on the
estate of Susanna Noel and her son Baptist, third Earl of Gainsborough,
and was given by them conjointly on 20th December of that year,
together with six acres of land, for the benefit of the Hampstead poor.
A tablet on the present fountain records this gift.
The first to draw attention to the medicinal value of the water, was a
well-known physician, Dr. Gibbons,[186] who in the early part of the
eighteenth century described it as being as fully efficacious as any
chalybeate water in England.
In April 1700 the water was advertised as being of the same nature
and virtue as that at Tunbridge Wells, and was sold by Phelps, an
apothecary, at the Eagle and Child in Fleet Street, for threepence a
flask. It was also obtainable from the lessee of the Wells at the Black
Posts, King Street, near the Guildhall; at Sam’s Coffee House, Ludgate
Hill, and at several other places in the City.
From this time there grew up around the spring various places of
entertainment--a tavern[187] and coffee room, a bowling green and
raffling shops, and, as will be presently seen, a chapel.