was in existence soon after the Restoration, and in 1668 was visited by
Pepys.[286] It was intended, says Brown, “as a musical summer-house for
the entertainment of quality where they might meet and ogle one another
... but the ladies of the town finding it as convenient a rendezvous
for their purpose ... dash’d the female quality out of countenance
and made them seek a more retired conveniency” for their “amorous
intrigues.” Queen Mary (II.) once paid it a visit, and the proprietor
endeavoured to re-christen it The Royal Diversion. It continued,
however, to be popularly known as The Folly, and already in 1700 had
ceased to have any quality to boast of, at least among its female
frequenters.
[Illustration: “THE FOLLY,” BEFORE _circ._ 1720.]
Thomas Brown describes a visit that he made about 1700. Rowing up to
the side in a boat he found himself scrutinised by a crowd of women
both young and old, and (as he puts it) “of all sorts and sizes.”
Some of these ladies were dancing and tripping airily about the deck,
and some tattling to their beaux; but many of the company, including
certain long-sworded bullies, were crowded into the boxes in the saloon
where they sat, smoking, and drinking burnt brandy. “In short, it was
such a confused scene of folly, madness and debauchery” that Thomas
Brown, by no means a squeamish person, stepped again into his boat
“without drinking.”
The Folly in its later days was occasionally visited by people who at
least worked honestly for their living, and the draper’s apprentice,
when his shop was shut, would row up with his sweetheart for an
evening’s amusement at this curious haunt.[287]
The Folly was in existence till 1720, and perhaps for more than thirty
years later, but the character of its frequenters, and the gambling
that took place at what was known as its Golden Gaming Table, at last
led to its suppression as a public resort. It was suffered to fall into
such decay that its material was burnt for fire-wood.
Near that part of the river where the Folly was usually moored the
famous Chinese junk was anchored about 1848, and visited by thousands
of sight-seers.[288]
[Thomas Brown’s _Amusements Serious and Comical_, Part ii.
“The Thames”; Wheatley’s _London Past and Present_, “Folly”;
E. Hatton’s _New View of London_, 1708, ii. 785; Wilkinson’s
_Londina_, vol. i. No. 88; also vol. ii. “Cuper’s Gardens”;
Walford, iii. 290; Larwood and Hotten, _History of Signboards_,
509; manuscript notes, &c. in “Public Gardens” collection in
Guildhall Library, London.]
VIEWS.
1. A view of Whitehall from the water, showing the Folly
Musick House on the Thames. Engraved in Wilkinson’s _Londina
Illustrata_, vol. i. No. 88, from a drawing taken about the
time of James II. “in the possession of Thomas Griffiths, Esq.”
2. The Southern Front of Somerset House with its extensive
Gardens, &c., showing the Folly. A drawing by L. Knyff, about
1720, engraved by Sawyer Junior, and published (1808) in J.
T. Smith’s sixty additional plates to his _Antiquities of
Westminster_. This is copied, with a short account of the
Folly, in E. W. Brayley’s _Londiniana_ (1829), vol. iii.
130, 300. It is substantially the same as the view on a larger
scale engraved by Kip in Strype’s _Stow_, 1720, ii. bk. 4,
p. 105. Cp. also an engraving (W. Coll.) “Somerset House, La
Maison de Somerset.” L. Knyff del. I. Kip sc. undated, before
1720?
BELVEDERE HOUSE AND GARDENS, LAMBETH
Belvedere House and Gardens were near Cuper’s Gardens,[289] but a
little higher up the river (south side). They were opposite York
Buildings in the Strand, and extended from the present Belvedere Road
(then called Narrow Wall) to the water’s edge. Some modern writers
speak of the gardens as a place of public entertainment in the reign of
Queen Anne, but there seems no evidence of this, and in 1719 or 1720
the premises were in the possession of a Mr. English (or England), who
at that time sold them to the Theobald family. In 1757, Belvedere House
was the private residence of Mr. James Theobald.
In the early part of 1781, “the house called Belvedere” was taken by
one Charles Bascom, who opened it as an inn, with the added attractions
of “pleasant gardens and variety of fish-ponds.” He professed in his
advertisements, to accommodate his guests with choice wines and with
eating of every kind in season, after the best manner, especially with
“the choicest river-fish which they may have the delight to see taken.”
The gardens could not have been open later than 1785, for in that year
part of the ground was turned into the Belvedere (timber) Wharf, and
part was occupied by the machinery of the Lambeth water-works.
[Advertisement in _The Freethinker_ for April 28, 1781, quoted
in Wilkinson’s _Londina_, vol. ii. “Cuper’s Gardens,” _notes_,
and in Nichols’s _Lambeth_, Nichols’s _Bibl. Top. Brit._ ii.
Appendix, 158; map in Strype’s _Stow_ (1720), vol. ii. book 6,
p. 83, Appendix; Manning and Bray, _Surrey_, iii. 467; Brayley
and Mantell, _Surrey_, iii. 393; Howard’s _Historical Anecdotes
of some of the Howard Family_, 106; Wheatley’s _London P. and
P._ s.v. “Belvedere Road.”]
RESTORATION SPRING GARDENS, ST. GEORGE’S FIELDS
The Restoration Tavern was in existence in the early part of the reign
of Charles II.[290] In 1714 there was a new cock-pit in its grounds
and a great match of cock fighting was announced to take place there;
“two guineas a battle, and twenty guineas the odd battle” all the week,
beginning at four o’clock. The races and popular sports then frequent
in St. George’s Fields probably brought additional custom to the house.
In the gardens of the tavern was a purging spring which was
advertised[291] in 1733 as already well-known for the cure of all
cancerous and scorbutic humours. About the same year a second spring
was discovered, a chalybeate “of the nature of Piermont Water but
superior.” The water was obtainable every day at the gardens,[292]
and was declared to “far exceed” the water at the neighbouring Dog
and Duck. Dr. Rendle says that it must have been the mere soakage of
a swamp, but whatever may have been the virtues of the spring it was
probably before long eclipsed by its rival at the Dog and Duck, though
the Restoration was in existence in 1755 and perhaps for some years
later.
In 1771 the garden, or at any rate about an acre of it, was taken by
William Curtis,[293] the author of _Flora Londinensis_, who formed
a Botanical Garden there which was afterwards open to subscribers
until 1789, when the botanist removed to another garden in the more
salubrious air of Brompton.
Restoration Garden is marked in the map in Stow’s _Survey_, 1755,
as abutting on the western side of Angel Street (a continuation of the
Broad Wall), southern end. In a map of the Surrey side of the Thames
showing the proposed roads from Blackfriars Bridge (circ. 1768) the
ground is marked as “Public House Gardens” and “Gardens.” The Half-way
House from the Borough to Westminster Bridge is marked immediately
south of the gardens; and still further south is the Westminster Bridge
Road, the end east of the Asylum. St. Saviour’s Union, Marlborough
Street (near the New Cut), is now near the site.
[Rendle and Norman, _Inns of Old Southwark_ (1888), pp.
367, 368; and see Notes.]
THE FLORA TEA GARDENS (OR MOUNT GARDENS),
WESTMINSTER BRIDGE ROAD
The Flora Tea Gardens (or Mount Gardens), were on the right hand side
of the Westminster Bridge Road going towards the Obelisk, and opposite
the Temple of Flora. They were in existence about 1796–7. The gardens
were well kept and contained “genteel paintings.” They were open on
week-days and on Sundays till about 11 p.m., and the admission was
sixpence.
Among the frequenters were democratic shopmen, who might be heard
railing against King and Church, and a good many ladies respectable and
the reverse. The “Sunday Rambler” (1796–7) describes the company as
very orderly, but at some time before 1800 the place was suppressed on
account of dissolute persons frequenting it.
Some small cottages were then built in the middle of the garden, which
retained a rural appearance till shortly before 1827, when several rows
of houses, “Mount Gardens,” were erected on the site.
[The Flora Tea Gardens described in _A Modern Sabbath_ (1797),
chap. viii., are evidently identical with the Mount Gardens
mentioned by Allen (_Lambeth_, 335), though he does not mention
their alternative name (cp. Walford, vi. 389). Allen (_loc.
cit._) is the authority for the suppression of the gardens.]
THE TEMPLE OF FLORA
The Temple of Flora stood hard by the Temple of Apollo, in the middle
of Mount Row on the left hand side of Westminster Bridge Road, going
towards the Obelisk, and was separated by Oakley Street from the Apollo
Gardens (Temple of Apollo). Concerts were given every evening in the
season, and the place is described as “beautifully fitted up with
alcoves and exotics.”
In the hot house was “an elegant statue of Pomona,” a transparency
of Flora, and at the lower end of the garden, a natural cascade and
fountain. “The entrance and the gardens,” were advertised in July
1789 as being formed by the proprietor into an exact imitation of the
admired Temple of Flora, which he had constructed at the Grand Gala at
Ranelagh.
Some special entertainments were given in June and July in honour
of the King’s recovery, and the Grand Temple of Flora, an “elegant
and ingenious imitation of Nature in her floral attire,” was then
illuminated with nearly a thousand variegated lamps amid wreaths
of flowers twining round pillars “made in imitation of Sienna
marble.” Fireworks and water-works were also displayed; a large
star of lamps was suspended above the cascade, and (in the absence
of nightingales) “a variety of singing birds” were imitated. The
admission for these special entertainments was one shilling, and the
gardens were illuminated from eight till the closing time at eleven.
Light refreshments were served consisting of orgeat, lemonade,
“confectionary,” strawberries and cream.
There is evidence[294] that in the first few years of its existence
(1788–1791) the place was visited by some people of good position, but
it afterwards became the haunt of dissolute characters and of young
apprentices.[295] The author of _A Modern Sabbath_ describes
(_circ._ 1796) the boxes in the gardens as “neatly painted” like
most of the company who were to be seen there about ten in the evening.
The admission appears to have been now reduced to sixpence.
In 1796 the proprietor, a man named Grist, was indicted for keeping the
place as a disorderly house, and was ordered (May 30) to be confined
for six months in the King’s Bench Prison,[296] and in all probability
the Temple of Flora was then finally closed.
Mme. Lamotte, the heroine of the famous Diamond Necklace affair,
ended her strange career (23 August, 1791) in her house near the
Temple of Flora, a place of amusement that, it is likely enough, she
frequented.[297]
[_A Modern Sabbath_ (1797), chap. viii.; _Public Advertiser_,
2 July, 1789 (fêtes of June and July); Brayley and Mantell,
_Surrey_, iii. 399; Allen’s _Lambeth_, 321.]
APOLLO GARDENS (OR TEMPLE OF APOLLO)
These gardens were on the left hand side of the Westminster Bridge Road
going from Westminster to the Obelisk, and were situated nearly where
the engineering factory of Messrs. Maudslay, Sons and Field now stands
and opposite the present Christ Church Congregational Chapel.[298]
Walter Claggett, the proprietor (at one time a lessee of the
Pantheon[299] in Oxford Street) opened the place in October 1788 with
an entertainment given in the concert room, which is described as a
fine building with “a kind of orrery in the dome, displaying a pallid
moon between two brilliant transparencies.” In this building was an
orchestra containing a fine-toned organ, and in the opening concert,
given before nearly one thousand three hundred people, a band of about
seventy instrumental and vocal performers took part, the organist being
Jonathan Battishill.
Previous to the opening for the season in April 1790, the gardens were
much altered and a room was arranged for large dinner parties. In the
gardens were a number of “elegant pavilions or alcoves” ornamented with
the adventures of Don Quixote and other paintings.
In 1792 (May-July) there was music every evening and fantoccini were
exhibited. In this year the concerts took place in a covered promenade
described as the Grand Apollonian Promenade. Mr. Flack, junior, was the
leader of the band; Mr. Costelow the organist, and the vocalists were
Mr. Binley, Miss Wingfield, Mrs. Leaver, and Mrs. Iliff, the last-named
one of the Vauxhall singers in 1787. New overtures, &c., “composed by
Messrs. Haydn and Pleyel since their arrival in this Kingdom” were
advertised for performance.
The season began in April or May, and the visitor on entering at five
o’clock or later, paid a shilling or sixpence (1792) receiving in
exchange a metal check entitling him to refreshments. No charge was
made for the concert. At about nine o’clock many persons who had “come
on” from other public places visited the Apollo for hot suppers, and
the gardens and promenade were illuminated, sometimes with two thousand
lamps. The proprietor prided himself on “the superior excellence of
the Music and Wines.” He boasted, moreover, of the patronage of the
nobility and gentry, and vaunted the “chastity and dignity” of the
place, though it was probably owing to the presence of some of these
late arriving visitors that the Apollo Gardens speedily acquired an
unenviable reputation.
In 1792 the place was known to be a resort of cheats and pickpockets.
We hear of one Elizabeth Smith, a smartly dressed young woman, about
eighteen, being charged in 1792 at the Guildhall with “trepanning a
Miss Ridley,” a beautiful girl ten years of age, whom she had taken
with her to the Apollo and the Dog and Duck, and left crying on
Blackfriars Bridge, after stealing her fine sash.
The Apollo was suppressed by the magistrates, probably about 1793.[300]
The proprietor himself became bankrupt; the orchestra was removed to
Sydney Gardens, Bath;[301] and the Temple of Apollo fell into a ruinous
state and its site was eventually built upon.
[A collection of newspaper cuttings relating to London, &c.
(section, Apollo Gardens) in Guildhall Library, London (_Catal._
ii. 546); “Public Gardens” collection (newspaper cuttings, &c.)
in Guildhall Library (_Catal._ ii. 761); Brayley and Mantell,
_Surrey_, iii. 399; Allen’s _Lambeth_, 319; Walford, vi. 343,
389; _A Modern Sabbath_, chap. viii.]
VIEWS.
There appear to be no extant views. The site may be ascertained
from Horwood’s _Plan_, 1799; and from Willis’s _Plan_, 1808. In
the Crace Coll. (_Cat._ p. 122, No. 69) are “Two drawn plans
of a plot of land called the Apollo Gardens, lying next the
Westminster Bridge Road to the Obelisk,” by T. Chawner.
DOG AND DUCK, ST. GEORGE’S FIELDS
(ST. GEORGE’S SPA)
The Dog and Duck was in existence as a small inn as early as 1642.[302]
In its vicinity were three or four ponds in which, no doubt, the brutal
sport of hunting ducks with spaniels was at one time practised,[303]
and near the place were mineral springs whose properties were known as
early as 1695, though the water does not appear to have been advertised
for sale till about 1731,[304] when the Dog and Duck had taken to
itself the imposing sub-title of St. George’s Spaw. At this time the
water was sold at the pump for fourpence a gallon, and was stated to be
recommended by eminent physicians for gout, stone, king’s evil, sore
eyes, and inveterate cancers. A dozen bottles could be had at the Spa
(_circ._ 1733–1736) for a shilling.
From about 1754 till 1770 the water was in considerable repute, and
new buildings appear to have been erected for the accommodation
of visitors. There was a long room for breakfasting (1754), a
bowling-green, and a swimming-bath (1769) two hundred feet long and
nearly one hundred feet broad. Tea and coffee were to be had in
the afternoon. At this period people of good position seem to have
frequented the Spa or to have sent for the water. We find Miss Talbot
writing about the place to Mrs. Carter, and Dr. Johnson suggested the
use of the water to Mrs. Thrale.[305]
The proprietors issued (1760) to subscribers an admission ticket
handsomely struck in silver with a portrait of Lazare Rivière, the
famous Professor of Medicine, on its obverse.[306]
The _St. James’s Chronicle_ ranked the water with that of
Tunbridge, Cheltenham, and Buxton.
Physicians of repute described its curative properties, and affirmed
it to be excellent for cutaneous afflictions and for cancer which it
would certainly arrest, even if it did not cure. This water, which
was advertised as an aperient (Epsom Salts being also kept on the
premises), came at a much later date--1856--under the observation of
Dr. Rendle, the historian, and, as it happened, the Officer of Health
in that year for the Parish of St. George’s, Southwark. Rendle procured
an analysis of water from the superficial well, formerly the spring,
on the site of the old Dog and Duck and was forced to describe it as
“a decidedly unsafe water” containing impurities, eighty grains per
gallon, chiefly alkaline chlorides, sulphates and nitrates, gypsum and
carbonate of lime, with a little phosphoric acid.
But we return to the year 1770, about which time the Dog and Duck took
a new lease of life. A temporary circus established in St. George’s
Fields by Sampson, of The Three Hats, Islington, was the cause of much
additional custom being brought to the tavern, and Mrs. Hedger who
kept the house was obliged to send for her son who was then a youth
in a stable-yard at Epsom. Young Hedger soon saw the possibilities
of the place. He gradually improved the premises and in a few years
was making a large income from the tavern and its tea-garden, which
was much frequented, especially on Sundays.[307] The garden was well
laid out and contained “a pretty piece of water” doubtless one of the
old ducking ponds, and at one time a band played in the garden for
the delectation of the week-day visitors. At night, the long room was
brilliantly lighted for the company who assembled to dance, drink,
and listen to the strains of the organ. Under Hedger, however, the
character of the company went from bad to worse. The “rowdy” delights
of the Dog and Duck are indicated, though probably with an exaggerated
coarseness, in Garrick’s Prologue to “The Maid of the Oaks” acted at
Drury Lane in 1775:--
St. George’s Fields, with taste and fashion struck,
Display Arcadia at the Dog and Duck,
And Drury misses here in tawdry pride,
Are there “Pastoras” by the fountain side;
To frowsy bowers they reel through midnight damps,
With Fauns half drunk, and Dryads breaking lamps.[308]
In about ten years the Dog and Duck had become a place of assignation
and the haunt of “the riff-raff and scum of the town.” One of its
frequenters, Charlotte Shaftoe, is said to have betrayed seven of her
intimates to the gallows. At last, on September 11, 1787, the Surrey
magistrates refused to renew the license. Hedger, like the Music Hall
managers of our own time, was not easily beaten. He appealed to the
City of London, and two City justices claiming to act as justices in
Southwark, renewed the license seven days after its refusal by the
County magistrates. The legality of the civic jurisdiction in Surrey
was tried in 1792 before Lord Kenyon and other judges, who decided
against it. The license of the Dog and Duck was then made conditional
on its being entirely closed on Sundays.[309]
In 1795 the bath and the bowling-green were advertised as attractions
and the water might be drunk on the usual terms of threepence each
person. About 1796 the place was again open on Sundays, but the license
was lost. This difficulty the proprietor surmounted by engaging a
Freeman of the Vintners Company, who required no license, to draw the
wine that was sold on the premises. The “Sunday Rambler” who visited
the place (_circ._ 1796) one evening about ten o’clock found a
dubious company assembled. He recognised a bankrupt banker and his
mistress; a notorious lady named Nan Sheldon; and another lady attired
in extreme fashion and known as “Tippy Molly,” though once she had been
a modest Mary Johnson. De Castro (_Memoirs_), with a certain touch
of pathos, describes the votaries of the Dog and Duck in its later
days as “the children of poverty, irregularity and distress.”[310]
It would, indeed, be easy to moralise on the circumstance that the
place was soon to become the inheritance of the blind and the lunatic.
In or before 1799 the Dog and Duck was suppressed, and the premises,
after having been used as a public soup-kitchen, became in that year
the establishment of the School for the Indigent Blind, an institution
which remained there till 1811.
[Illustration: “LABOUR IN VAIN” (ST. GEORGE’S SPA IN BACKGROUND,
1782.)]
Meanwhile, the enterprising Hedger, had made a good use of his profits
by renting (from about the year 1789) a large tract of land in St.
George’s Fields at low rates from the managers of the Bridge House
Estate. The fine for building was £500, but Hedger immediately paid
this penalty, and while sub-letting a portion of the ground, ran up on
the rest a number of wretched houses which hardly stood the term of his
twenty-one years’ lease. From this source he is said to have derived
£7,000 a year. He died in the early part of the present century,[311]
having obtained the title of The King of the Fields, and the reputation
of a “worthy private character.” He left his riches to his eldest son,
whom the people called the Squire.
The Dog and Duck was pulled down in 1811 for the building of the
present Bethlehem Hospital, the first stone of which was laid on
18 April, 1812. The old stone sign of the tavern, dated 1716, and
representing a spaniel holding a duck in its mouth, and the Arms of
the Bridge House Estate, was built into the brick garden-wall of the
Hospital where it may still be seen close to the actual site of the
once notorious Dog and Duck.
[Trusler’s _London Adviser_ (1786), pp. 124, 164; Fores’s _New
Guide_ (1789), preface, p. vi; Allen’s _London_, iv. 470, 482,
485; _A Modern Sabbath_, 1797, chap. viii.; Wheatley’s _London
P. and P._ s.v. “St. George’s Fields” and “Dog and Duck”;
Humphreys’s _Memoirs of De Castro_ (1824), 126, ff.; Manning and
Bray, _Surrey_, iii. 468, 554, 632, 701; Allen’s _Lambeth_, p.
7, 347; _Gent. Mag._ 1813, pt. 2, 556; Rendle and Norman, _Inns
of Old Southwark_, p. 368, ff.; Walford, vi. 343, 344, 350–352,
364; Larwood and Hotten, _Signboards_, 196, 197; _Notes and
Queries_, 1st ser. iv. 37; newspaper cuttings in W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
1. The old Dog and Duck Tavern, copied from an old drawing 1646,
water-colour drawing by T. H. Shepherd, Crace, _Cat._ p.
646. No. 27.
2. The Dog and Duck in 1772. A print published 1772. Crace,
_Cat._ p. 646, No. 28.
3. Woodcut of exterior, 1780, in Chambers’s _Book of Days_,
ii. 74.
4. “Labour in Vain, or Fatty in Distress” (St. George’s Spa in
the background), print published by C. Bowles, 1782, Crace,
_Cat._ p. 647, No. 35, and W. Coll.
5. Engraving of the exterior, 1788 (W. Coll.).
6. Interior of the Assembly Room. A stipple engraving, 1789,
reproduced in Rendle and Norman, _Inns of Old Southwark_,
373.
7. Sign of Dog and Duck, engraved in Walford, vi. 344; cp.
Crace, _Cat._ p. 646, No. 32, and Rendle and Norman,
_Inns of Old Southwark_, p. 369.
THE BLACK PRINCE, NEWINGTON BUTTS
The Black Prince at Newington Butts possessed, about 1788, a pleasant
garden frequented for trap-ball playing. There is a view (W. Coll.) of
the tavern and garden printed for C. Bowles, 22 Sept., 1788.
[Illustration: THE BLACK PRINCE, NEWINGTON BUTTS, 1788.]
LAMBETH WELLS
In the last century Lambeth Marsh and the fields in the neighbourhood
were a favourite resort of Londoners for running-matches and outdoor
sports, and the Lambeth Wells offered the special attractions of music
and mineral water-drinking. The Wells (opened to the public before
1697) were situated in Three Coney Walk, now called Lambeth Walk, and
consisted of two springs, distinguished as the Nearer and Farther Well.
The water was sent out to St. Thomas’s Hospital and elsewhere at a
penny a quart, and the poor had it free.
The usual charge for admission for drinking the waters was threepence,
including the music, which, about 1700, began at seven in the morning,
and was continued on three days of the week till sunset, and on other
days till two. The season began in the spring, usually on Easter Monday.