In May, 1760, a poetical description of White Conduit House appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine. A description of the old place, in 1774, presents a general picture of the tea-garden of that period: "It is formed into walks, prettily disposed. At the end of the principal one is a painting which seems to render it (the walk) in appearance longer than it really is. In the centre of the garden is a fish-pond. There are boxes for company, curiously cut into hedges, adorned with Flemish and other paintings. There are two handsome tea-rooms, and several inferior ones." To these were added a new dancing and tea-saloon, called the Apollo Room. In 1826, the gardens were opened as a minor Vauxhall; and here the charming vocalist, Mrs. Bland, last sang in public. In 1832, the original tavern was taken down, and rebuilt upon a much larger plan: in its principal room 2000 persons could dine. In 1849, these premises were also taken down, the tavern rebuilt upon a smaller scale, and the garden-ground let on building leases.
Cricket was played here by the White Conduit Club, as early as 1799; and one of its attendants, Thomas Lord, subsequently established the Marylebone Club.
White Conduit House was for some years kept by Mr. Christopher Bartholomew, at one time worth 50,000l. He had some fortunate hits in the State Lottery, and celebrated his good fortune by a public breakfast in his gardens. He was known to spend upwards of 2000 guineas a day for insurance: fortune forsook him, and he passed the latter years of his life in great poverty, partly subsisting on charity. But his gambling propensity led him, in 1807, to purchase with a friend a sixteenth of a lottery-ticket, which was drawn a prize of 20,000l., with his moiety of which he purchased a small annuity, which he soon sold, and died in distress, in 1809.
Bagnigge Wells, on the banks of the Fleet brook, between Clerkenwell and old St. Pancras church, was another tavern of this class. We remember its concert-room and organ, its grottoes, fountain and fishpond, its trim trees, its grotesque costumed figures, and its bust of Nell Gwynne to support the tradition that she had a house here.
A comedy of the seventeenth century has its scene laid at the Saracen's Head, an old hostelrie, which in Queen Mary's reign had been hallowed by secret Protestant devotion, and stood between River Lane and the City Road.
Highbury Barn, upon the site of the barn of the monks of Canonbury, was another noted tavern.[46] Nearly opposite Canonbury Tower are the remains of a last-century tea-garden; and in Barnsbury is a similar relic. And on the entrance of a coppice of trees is Hornsey Wood House, a tavern with a delightful prospect.
Islington abounds in chalybeate springs, resembling the Tunbridge Wells water; one of which was rediscovered in 1683, in the garden of Sadler's music-house, subsequently Sadler's Wells Theatre; and at the Sir Hugh Myddelton's Head tavern was formerly a conversation-picture with twenty-eight portraits of the Sadler's Wells Club. In Spa Fields, was held "Gooseberry Fair," where the stalls of gooseberry-fool vied with the "threepenny tea-booths," and the beer at "my Lord Cobham's Head," which denotes the site of the mansion of Sir John Oldcastle, the Wickliffite, burnt in 1417.