OLD PYE STREET AND THE RAGGED SCHOOL.
the spurge, the willow herb, the wild parsley, are enumerated; they contained ponds and streams; in the streams grew watercress, always a favorite “sallet” of the people; in the ponds there were ducks—the Westminster boys used to hire dogs to worry the ducks; it is not stated who paid for those ducks. On the north side of the Fields was St. James’s Park, with its decoy and Rosamond’s Pond, a rectangular pool lying across what is now Birdcage Walk, opposite the Wellington Barracks. Later on, market gardens were laid out in these low-lying meadows.
BLACK DOG ALLEY. WESTMINSTER.
Tournaments were held in the Fields—not the ordinary exercises or displays of the tilt yard, but the grander occasions, as in 1226 at the coronation of Queen Eleanor. Here, in the same reign, but later, the Prior of Beverley entertained the Kings and Queens of England and Scotland, the King’s son, and many great Lords, in tents erected on the field.
Executions were carried out in the Fields, as when was taken Margaret Gourdemains, “a witch of Eye beside Westminster,”—was it Battersea (“Peter’s Ey”)? or was it Chelsea (“Shingle Ey”)?—“whose sorcerie and witchcraft Dame Eleanour Cobham had long time used, and by her medicines and drinks enforced the Duke of Gloucester to love her and after to wed her.” Necromancers were punished here. In the reign of Edward III. a man was taken practicing magic with a dead man’s hand, and carried to Tothill, where his dead man’s hand was burned before his face.