THE QUEEN’S HEAD AND ARTICHOKE
In the neighbourhood of the Marylebone Gardens were a few much humbler places of entertainment, standing in what in the last century was a rural district; the Queen’s Head and Artichoke, the Jew’s Harp house and, farther west, the Yorkshire Stingo.
The Queen’s Head and Artichoke was in Marylebone Park, nearly opposite Portland Road, and about five hundred yards from the north side of the New Road (Marylebone Road). It was a small and picturesque old inn, standing in a meadow to which a footpath led, and displaying a portrait of Queen Elizabeth as its sign. Tradition attributed the building of the house to a gardener of the Queen, and the curious combination of the sign was believed to have something to do with this. The inn is marked in Rocque’s map of 1745, and it probably then possessed, as it did at the beginning of the present century, a ground for skittles and “bumble-puppy,” and shady bowers, in which cream, tea and cakes were served.
It was pulled down about 1811, and the Colosseum afterwards occupied part of the site. A new tavern was then built near the site of the old inn, and this is probably identical with the public-house called the Queen’s Head and Artichoke, which is now No. 30 Albany Street, east side.
[Gent. Mag. 1819, pt. 2, p. 401; Larwood and Hotten, Hist. of Signboards, pp. 311, 312; Walford, v. p. 255; Smith, Book for a
Rainy Day; Wheatley, London P. and P., s.v. “Jew’s Harp,” and “Albany Street”; Hone’s Year Book, p. 318; Clinch’s Marylebone, pp. 40 and 45.]
VIEWS.
1. A water-colour drawing by Findlay, 1796. Crace, Cat. p. 569, No. 104; cp. an engraving of the inn in Walford, v. p. 258, and a small sketch in Clinch’s Marylebone, p. 45 (dated 1796).
2. An engraving published in Gent. Mag. 1819, pt. 2, p. 401; reproduced in Clinch’s Marylebone, facing p. 40.