[229] After great falls of snow or heavy rains, the Fleet frequently overflowed the Pancras valley and the Bagnigge Wells Road, rendering them impassable in places.
[230] The Holborn Bars are removed, but the posts stand.
[231] These latter buildings, or part of them, I am told, are still in being, and used for their original purpose.
[232] A celebrated house, much frequented by the wits. This mention of Nando’s Coffee-house reminds me that it figures in one of the amusing papers in the Tatler (No. 180), which Steele had started in 1709. In this paper the public are informed that ‘a coach runs daily from Nando’s Coffee House to Mr. Tiptoe’s Dancing School’; and then is added by way of postscript, ‘Dancing shoes not exceeding four inches height in the heels, and periwigs not exceeding three feet in length, are carried in the coach box gratis,’ a satire upon the high heels and exaggerated wigs then in vogue.
[233] There was, I am told, an old weather-boarded house opposite the Wells Tavern called Willow House, which remained till some twenty years ago, when its site, and that of its large garden, were built upon, and six or more houses were erected there. This was probably the type of the early houses in Well Walk.
[234] There was a coach running in 1708.
[235] See Haydn’s ‘Dictionary of Dates.’
[236] Bank Holidays, though in the near future, had not been inaugurated when this was first written.
[237] Gibson, who published his additions to Camden at the Black Swan, Paternoster Row, 1695, tells us that Mr. Pittiver found what he calls cluster-headed goldy-locks (Ranunculus bulbosus?) in going from Mother Huffs’ to Highgate. Mother Huffs’ would seem to have been situated pretty near the Spaniards Inn, and was in all likelihood a tea-drinking house.
[238] The murderer of a Mr. Posto.