‘Where ‘prenticed youth enjoy the Sunday feast,
And City matrons boast their Sabbath rest,
Where unfledged Templars first as fops parade,
And new-made ensigns sport their first cockade.’
Later it became a mere cockney tea-garden, and gradually declined, till in Lewis’s ‘History of Islington,’ 1842, it is described as almost a ruin. Shortly afterwards it was closed and dismantled, and now all trace of it has disappeared, save the name, which has been appropriated by a modern tavern at the corner of King’s Cross Road (formerly Bagnigge Wells Road) and Pakenham Street, and a curious stone tablet surmounted by a grotesque head, of which I here give an illustration.
This is now to be seen built into the wall between two modern houses—Nos. 61 and 63, King’s Cross Road—probably near the north-western limit of the garden. It is mentioned by Dr. Bevis in 1760 as having been ‘over an old Gothic portal taken down about three years ago, and now replaced over the door from the high-road to the house.’ At that time, I believe, the grotesque head was added. About thirty years ago, as may be learned from a letter in the Builder, January, 1863, the doorway was pulled down and the stone fixed where one may still see it, in front of the houses built on the site. I was glad to find this stone still in existence; it is worth rescuing from oblivion. The inscription runs as follows: ‘This is Bagnigge House neare the Pinder a Wakefielde 1680.’
The latter place, thus referred to, was an old country tavern in the Gray’s Inn Road. Mr. Wheatley says it was on the west side, and that the small houses between Harrison Street and Cromer Street, till recently called Pindar Place, occupied the site; and, confirming his statement, it is shown in Strype’s map on the west side of ‘the road to Hamstead.’ The modern public-house with this sign is on the east side. Tom Brown, in his ‘Comical View of London and Westminster,’ published in 1705, gives us a pleasant glimpse of the then surroundings—of a stile near Lamb’s Conduit, and ‘a milkmaid crossing the fields to Pinder of Wakefield.’ There is mention of it immediately after the Great Fire, by Aubrey. When the inscription was first put up, Bagnigge House and the Pinder of Wakefield were probably next-door neighbours, though their sites are now separated by a dreary wilderness of bricks and mortar. Palmer, in his ‘History of St. Pancras,’ records that in 1724 the Pinder of Wakefield was destroyed in a hurricane, the landlord’s two daughters being buried in the ruins. The word Pinder, equivalent to pinner or penner, was applied to the keeper of the public pen or pound for the confinement of stray cattle. George a-Green, or the Pinder of the town of Wakefield, is the subject of a prose romance supposed to be as old as the time of Queen Elizabeth. He (so runs the legend), with his back to a thorn and his foot to a stone, thrashed no less a foe than Robin Hood.
Before quitting this branch of my subject, I will say a few words about a former health-resort within a stone’s throw of the old Pinder of Wakefield. On the east side of Gray’s Inn Road, near the upper end, by the King’s Cross Station on the Metropolitan Railway, is a shabby-looking passage called St. Chad’s Row, which, turning to the north, runs into King’s Cross Road, and here is the site of the well named after St. Chad or St. Ceadda, who founded the bishopric of Lichfield, and died in 672. In Laurie and Whittle’s map of 1800, the extension of Gray’s Inn Road northwards is called St. Chad’s Road. The well, however, as far as I can ascertain, was not particularly ancient—or, if so, the early records are lost. Hone describes it in his ‘Everyday Book’ in the following prophetic words: ‘St. Chad’s Well is near Battle Bridge. The miraculous water is aperient, and was some years ago quaffed by the bilious and other invalids, who flocked thither in crowds.... A few years and it will be with its waters as with the water of St. Pancras’ Well, which is enclosed in the garden of a private house near old St. Pancras Churchyard.’
The garden attached to St. Chad’s Well seems in the last century to have been famous for its tulips; at least, if one may believe an advertisement in my possession, which has the date 1779. It speaks of ‘The largest and richest collection of early Dutch tulips ever yet seen in Great Britain, now in bloom, with many fine double hyacinths of various colours raised by Van Hawsen, to be had of Richard Morris at St. Chad’s Wells, Battle Bridge, near London; the lowest prices marked in the catalogue, which may be had as above, and the flowers seen gratis. No person admitted with a dog. Seedsmen and gardeners will be furnished wholesale with Duke Vantol, Claremond, and many other sorts of early tulips at the Dutch prices, and with the usual discount: the grand present Auricula at 1s. per pot: Gold and Silver Fish cheap.’ Mr. Pinks gives the particulars of the sale by auction of St. Chad’s Well on September 14, 1837. It seems that there was then a brick house facing Gray’s Inn Lane, having a pump-room and a large garden at the back. The water appears to have been still sold three years afterwards, when a pamphlet was issued setting forth ‘the characteristic virtues of the Saint Chad’s Wells aperient and alterative springs.’
