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.