The Criterion Restaurant and Theatre stands on the site of an old inn, the White Bear, which for a century and more was one of the busiest coaching-houses in connection with the West and South-West of England. In this house Benjamin West, the future President of the Royal Academy, put up on his arrival in London from America. Here died Luke Sullivan, the engraver of some of Hogarth's most famous works. The inn yard had galleries to two sides of the bedchambers on the second floor, connected by a bridge across.
We must once more return to Southwark, for besides the inns already mentioned as existing in that locality, there was another famous one, namely, the White Hart. It had the largest inn sign except the Castle in Fleet Street. Much maligned Jack Cade and some of his followers put up at this inn during their brief possession of London in 1450. The original inn which sheltered them remained standing till 1676, when it was burnt down in the great fire already mentioned. It was rebuilt, and was in existence till a few years ago, when it was pulled down. It consisted of several open courts, the inner one having handsome galleries on three sides to the first and second floors. There are two views of it, taken respectively in 1840 and 1853, in the Crace collection, and it was in the yard of this inn that Mr. Pickwick first encountered Sam Weller.
The White Lion, in St. John Street, Clerkenwell, was originally an inn frequented by drovers and carriers, and covered a good deal of ground; but before its demolition it had already been greatly reduced in size, the gateway leading into the yard having been built up and formed into an oil-shop. Inserted in the front wall was the sign in stone relief, representing a lion rampant, painted white, and with the date 1714. A house on the other side of the central portion also seems to have formed part of the original White Lion. The gate just mentioned led into a yard similar to those attached to other ancient inns. There were, in the east front of the inn, strong wooden beams, which no doubt supported the erection over the gateway, and that there was a yard surrounded by a gallery is proved by the remains of door openings in the upper parts of the back walls of the premises, which had been bricked up. At one time a bowling-green was attached to the tavern, and by the side of it a pond, in which Anthony Joyce, the cousin of Pepys, drowned himself. He was a tavern keeper, and kept the Three Stags in Holborn, which was burnt down in 1666. Pepys records in his Diary, under September 5 of that year: 'Thence homeward ... having ... seen Anthony Joyce's house on fire.' The loss incurred by the fire preyed on Joyce's mind, and is supposed to have led him to commit the rash act.
Here we will close our selection, which embraces all the most important galleried taverns once existing in London. Their disappearance is much to be regretted, though with the requirements of modern travellers it was scarcely to be avoided. But they formed picturesque features of London, which has so very few of them, especially as regards hotels, which in their modern style remind us only of slightly decorated barracks, if they are not perfectly hideous, as, for instance, the architectural nightmare in Victoria Street. But there are plenty of people yet who delight in old-fashioned houses and surroundings—the revival of stage-coaches is proof of it. A galleried tavern with modern improvements would, we fancy, not be a bad spec.
II.—OLD LONDON TEA-GARDENS.
Names are often misleading. Mr. Coward is a fierce fire-eater; Mr. Gentle's family tremble when they hear his footsteps on the pavement on his return home from his office, for they know that immediately on his entrance he will kick up a row with every one of them; whilst Mr. Lion lives in awe of his termagant better, or worse, half. We are led into these reflections by the term 'tea-gardens.' It sounds so very innocent; it calls up visions of honest citizens, surrounded by their wives and olive-branches, enjoying, amid idyllic scenes of rural beauties, their fragrant bohea, bread-and-butter, cream and sillabub. But the vision is delusive. Noorthouck, who wrote about 1770, when the tea-gardens were most abundant and flourishing, speaks of them thus: 'The tendency of these cheap catering places of pleasure just at the skirts of this vast town is too obvious to need further explanation; they swarm with loose women and with boys whose morals are depraved, and their constitutions ruined, before they arrive at manhood. Indeed, the licentious resort to the tea-drinking gardens was carried to such excess every night that the magistrates lately thought proper to suppress the organs in their public rooms; it is left to their cool reflection whether this was discharging all the duty they owe to the public.' Certes, the remedy seems hardly adequate when the grand jury of Middlesex, as far back as 1744, had complained of 'advertisements inviting and seducing not only the inhabitants, but all other persons, to several places kept apart for the encouragement of luxury, extravagance, idleness, and other wicked illegal purposes, which go on with impunity to the destruction of many families, to the great dishonour of the kingdom, especially at a time when we are involved in an expensive war, and so much overburdened with taxes of all sorts,' etc. With such an indictment before them, the magistrates must have been wooden-headed indeed if they thought to stop the evil by forbidding the playing of organs at such places. And the evil must have been not only serious, but widespread, seeing there were upwards of thirty of these tea-gardens around London. But our object is not to preach a sermon on the wickedness of the world, but to describe the places where it was practised. We begin with Bagnigge Wells tea-gardens.
Who now, wandering about dreary King's Cross, unacquainted with the history of the place, would believe that this was once a picturesque rural spot? But such it was, and here Nell Gwynne had a summer residence amidst fields and on the banks of the River Fleet, then a clear stream, occasionally flooding the locality. The ground on which the house, a gabled building, stood was then called Bagnigge Vale. Early in the eighteenth century the house was converted into a place of public entertainment, in consequence of the timely discovery on the spot of two wells, one of which was said to be purging and the other chalybeate, and the water of which was sold at threepence a glass or at eightpence by the gallon. But one of the wells seems to have been known by the name of Black Mary's Well or Hole, which may have been a corruption of Blessed Mary's Well, or due to the alleged fact that a black woman leased the well. The gardens, it seems, were largely patronized, hundreds of persons visiting them in the morning to drink the waters, and on summer afternoons to drink tea, and something stronger, too. The grounds were ornamented with curious shrubs and flowers, a small round fish-pond, in the centre of which was a fountain, representing Cupid bestriding a swan, which spouted the water up to a great height. The Fleet flowed through a part of the gardens, and was crossed by a bridge. Two prints are extant (reproduced in Pinks's 'Clerkenwell'), showing the gardens as they were in 1772 and again early in the present century. But in December, 1813, the gardens came to grief; the whole of the furniture and fittings were sold by auction by order of the assignees of Mr. Salter, the tenant, a bankrupt. The fixtures and fittings were described as comprising the erection of a temple, a grotto, alcoves, arbours, boxes, green-house, large lead figures, pumps, cisterns, sinks, counters, beer machine, stoves, coppers, shrubs, 200 drinking tables, 350 forms, 400 dozen bottled ale [which shows that tea was not the only drink consumed there], etc. The house itself remained standing till 1844, when it was demolished; the Phoenix brewery afterwards occupied the site, which is now covered with dreary streets. All that reminds you now of the gardens is a stone tablet set into the wall of a dull house in the neighbourhood, which shows a grotesque head and the inscription: 'This is Bagnigge House, neare the Finder a Wakefield, 1680.' It may be added that at the time the gardens were in existence the place was environed with hills and rising ground, every way but to the south, and consequently screened from the inclemency of the more chilling winds. Primrose Hill rose westward; on the north-west were the more distant elevations of Hampstead and Highgate; on the north and north-east were pretty sharp ascents to Islington. But the ground, which, as shown then, was in a deep hollow, has in modern times been considerably raised above the former level, and no vestige remains of the gardens or the springs. But the gardens were so famous in their day as to cause their name to be adopted by a similar establishment in a totally different direction. Towards the end of the last century the New Bagnigge Wells tea-gardens were opened at Bayswater. Whether these were identical with the new Bayswater tea-gardens mentioned in a London guide we have not been able to ascertain, but probably they were. Sir John Hill, born about 1716, had a house in the Bayswater Road, in whose grounds he cultivated the medicinal plants from which he prepared his tinctures, balsams, and water-dock essence, and though the profession called him a charlatan and a quack, he must have been a learned botanist. His 'Vegetable System' extends to twenty-six folio volumes. His garden is now covered by the long range of mansions called Lancaster Gate, but towards the close of the last century the site was opened to the public as tea-gardens. The grounds were spacious, and contained several springs of fine water lying close to the surface. The Bayswater Bagnigge Wells was opened as a public garden as late as 1854, shortly after which time, the visitors having grown less and less, it was shut up, and eventually seized by the land-devouring speculating builder.
The similarity of names has carried us from the north of London to the west, but as the former locality, in consequence of its natural features, always was a favourite one for tea-gardens, we will return to it. On the top of the hill we referred to as rising from Bagnigge Wells to Islington there stood, where the Belvedere Tavern now stands, a house of entertainment known as Busby's Folly, so called after its owner, one Christopher Busby, whose name is spelt Busbee on a token, 'White Lion at Islington, 1668,' of which he was the landlord. Why the cognomen of Folly was given to it is not very apparent, since, to judge by the prints extant, there was nothing foolish about the building. But it appears that then, as it is now, it was customary to call any house which was not constructed according to a tasteless, unimaginative builder's ideas a Folly; at Peckham there was Heaton's Folly. From Busby's Folly the Society of Bull Feathers' Hall used to commence their march to Islington to claim the toll of all gravel carried up Highgate Hill, to which they asserted a right in a tract published by them and entitled 'Bull Feather Hall; or, the Antiquity and Dignity of Horns amply shown. London, 1664.' Busby's Folly retained its name till 1710, after which it was called Penny's Folly, and here men with learned horses, musical glasses, and similar shows entertained the public. The gardens were extensive, and about 1780 the house seems to have been rebuilt and christened Belvedere Tavern, which name it still bears. Close to it was another tavern known as Dobney's, and which originally was called Prospect House, because in those days, standing as it did on the top of what was then styled Islington Hill, it really commanded a fine prospect north and south. In 1770 Prospect House was taken for a school, but soon reopened as the Jubilee Tea-Gardens, in commemoration of the jubilee got up at Stratford-on-Avon by Garrick in honour of Shakespeare, and the interior of the bowers was painted with scenes from his plays. In 1772 one Daniel Wildman here performed 'several new and amazing experiments never attempted by any man in this or any other kingdom before. He rides, standing upright, one foot on the saddle and the other on the horse's neck, with a curious mask of bees on his head and face ... and by firing a pistol makes one part of the bees march over a table and the other swarm in the air and return to their proper hive again.' He also advertised that he was prepared to supply the nobility and gentry with any quantity of bees from one stock in the common or newly-invented hives. In 1774 the gardens fell into a ruinous condition, but there were still two handsome tea-rooms. In 1780 the house was converted into a discussion and lecture room, but the speculation did not answer; the place was cleared, and about 1790 houses, known as Winchester Place, were erected on it. But a portion of the gardens remained open till 1810, when that also disappeared, and the only remains on the site of this once famous tea-garden is a mean court in Penton Street called Dobney's Court. The Prospect House to which the gardens belonged still stands behind the present Belvedere Tavern, but there is no sign of antiquity about it.
In 1683 the well known as Sadler's Well was discovered, and Sadler's Musick-House, as it was originally called, thenceforth became Sadler's Well. But as it was, as its name implied, rather a house for musical entertainment than a tea-garden, and as its history is pretty well known, we pass it by to speak of a well adjoining it, namely, Islington Wells or Spa, or New Tunbridge Wells.
This well was already in repute when the well on Sadler's land was discovered, and as the two wells were contiguous, the Spa was frequently mistaken for Sadler's. About the year 1690 it was advertised that the Spa would open for drinking the medicinal waters. In 1700 there was 'music for dancing all day long every Monday and Thursday during the summer season; no masks to be admitted.' A few years later the Spa became fashionable, being patronized by ladies of such position as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. In 1733 the Princesses Amelia and Caroline, daughters of George II., came daily in the summer and drank the waters; in fact, such was the concourse of nobility and others that the proprietor took upwards of thirty pounds in a morning. Whenever the Princesses visited the Spa they were saluted with a discharge of twenty-one guns, and in the evening there was a bonfire. Ned Ward described the place: