11. View of Bagnigge Wells Gardens, 1828, engraving in Cromwell’s Clerkenwell, p. 414; reproduced in Pinks, p. 567.
12. A collection of manuscript notes, sketches and drawings, relating to Bagnigge Wells in its later days, made by Anthony Crosby. (Guildhall Library, London.)
13. “Residence of Nell Gwynne, Bagnigge Wells.” An engraving, C. J. Smith, sc. 1844; Crace, Cat., p. 583, No. 88; Pinks, p. 559.
“LORD COBHAM’S HEAD.”
The Lord Cobham’s (or Cobham’s) Head, named after Sir John Oldcastle “the good Lord Cobham,” was situated in Cold Bath Fields, and on the west side of Coppice Row, now Farringdon Road, at the point where it was joined by Cobham Row.
It was first opened in 1728 (about April), and in its garden there was then “a fine canal stocked with very good carp and tench fit to kill,” and anglers were invited to board at the house. It was advertised to be let or sold in 1729, and little is heard of it till 1742 when it possessed a large garden with a “handsome grove of trees,” and gravel walks, and claimed to sell the finest, strongest and most pleasant beer in London at threepence a tankard. Some vocal and instrumental music was at this time provided in the evening, and the walks were illuminated.
In 1744 a good organ was erected in the chief room of the inn and the landlord, Robert Leeming, for one of his concerts in 1744, announced Mr. Blogg and others to sing selections from the Oratorios of “Saul” and “Samson”; a concerto on the organ by Master Strologer and the Coronation Anthem of Mr. Handel. After the concert came a ball, the price of admission to the whole entertainment being half-a-crown. For July 20th of the same year there was announced “a concert of musick by the best Masters,” for the benefit of a reduced citizen, followed by the display of a “set of fireworks by several gentlemen lovers of that curious art—Rockets, line ditto, Katherine wheels, and many other things; likewise will be shewn the manner of Prince Charles’s distressing the French after he passed the Rhine.” The concerts do not appear to have been given after this period but the Cobham’s Head long continued to exist as a tavern, and is marked in Horwood’s Plan of 1799.
SUMMER AMUSEMENT.
In December 1811 it was sold by auction, being described at that time as a roomy brick building with a large yard behind, probably all that was left of the gardens. About 1860 during the operations for the Metropolitan Railway the Cobham’s Head was inundated by the bursting of a New River Main, and was so much injured by the undermining for the Railway that it had to be vacated.