Site of LOWER REGENT STREET, FROM PICCADILLY CIRCUS, WITH
“Bull and Mouth.” CARLTON HOUSE AND SCREEN.
And then for the stranger there is such a pleasant commingling of the old and the new at this point. The wilds of Soho, with its historic Square, its streets that defy the most exact logical definition, its church, its memories of Dr. Manette and the sweet Lucy; Leicester Square where once was a royal palace, and the homes of Reynolds, and Hunter, and Hogarth, and our one and only Sir Isaac; and where the Empire, and the Alhambra (awhile the home of that most dreary Panopticon) compete nightly with all the bravery of illumination and gigantic “chuckers out.”
In Regent Street, which had its genesis in the Prince Regent’s desire for a fine thoroughfare between Carlton House and his residence in Regent’s Park, and the making of which did away with as much dirt and squalor as Shaftesbury Avenue has attempted to do in our own day, Nash’s magnificent sweep is now, alas! interrupted by Mr. Norman Shaw’s splendid “Piccadilly Hotel,” the elevation of which shows the design adopted for the rebuilding of the Quadrant. The once famous colonnade has long since disappeared; but in the Haymarket, the Theatre, and Fribourg’s delightful old shop still show what it once looked like. And then with these we have the dernier cri of His Majesty’s Theatre, the Tube railway station, and the roar of the motor ’bus.
If we can but escape from these leviathans of the road, let us beat a hasty retreat from beneath Cupid’s bended bow and outstretched leg, and make our way back by Piccadilly to Stewart’s corner, from whence we first started on our perambulation.
At the Circus we are nearly on the site of that famous gaming-house, known as Pickadilla Hall, of which the earliest mention appears to have occurred in 1623, when it was in the possession of one Robert Baker, whose widow sold it to that somewhat notorious Colonel Panton, who was associated with Titus Oates, and whose name survives in Panton Street. He it was who built Panton Square, where the Comedy Theatre now stands, in one of the houses of which, in 1762, the Ambassador of Morocco cut off his servant’s head because the latter had displeased his sable Excellency in some trivial matter, with the result that the resentful envoy and his retinue received a sound thrashing from an infuriated mob which got wind of the circumstance.
PICCADILLY EAST.
Even in those early days a good deal of trouble was taken to keep Piccadilly, that is, as far as Sackville Street (for the remaining portion was then known as Portugal Street or the “way to Reading”), well paved, and free from contamination in other ways, as Evelyn’s Diary and Burton’s Parliamentary Journals attest.
By a plan, dated 1720, we can see that then, as now, several small alleys led into, what in the plan is termed German Street. There was on the south side Salter’s Court, and—appropriately as being in the vicinity of Pickadilla Hall—Fleece Yard; and Eagle Street and King’s Arms Yard between St. James’s Church and Duke Street. On the north side Shug Lane is given as on part of the site of Regent Street, and leading to “Marybone Street”; Bear Alley, a few steps further west, probably where stood “The White Bear,” formerly known as the “Fleece” Inn, one of the busiest of the old coaching houses, and dating from the middle of the 17th century. Here West, the painter, stayed on his arrival in London from America; and Luke Sulivan and Chatelain, the engravers, both died, the latter only having taken lodgings here on the previous night. And Magget’s Lane is given beyond Air Street and close to Swallow Street.
THE “WHITE BEAR” (FORMERLY THE “FLEECE” INN), PICCADILLY.