The ’prentice beaux and belles, I ween,
Fatigued with heat, with dust half-poisoned,
To Dobney’s strolling, or Pantheon,
Their tea to sip or else regale,
As on their way they shall agree on,
With syllabubs or bottled ale.[152]
In 1780, we hear of lectures and debates taking place in the house; but in 1781 “the lease and trade of the Shakespeare Tavern and Jubilee Gardens, formerly called Dobney’s Bowling Green,” were offered for sale by auction. At that time, according to the auctioneer’s advertisement, Dobney’s consisted of a dwelling house, a building containing a bake-house, kitchens, &c., with an adjoining erection comprising two spacious rooms, capable of dining near two hundred people each, a trap-ball ground, bowling green and “extensive gardens properly laid out.”
The place, however, ceasing to be frequented, the ground was, about 1790, partly built over with the houses forming Winchester Place. The gardens, or a part of them, remained until 1810, when they disappeared.[153] Dobney’s Court, an alley on the east side of Penton Street, now occupies a small part of the original site.
[Pinks’s Clerkenwell; Nelson’s Islington; Lewis’s Islington; Sunday Ramble; Tomlins’s Perambulation of Islington, pp. 160, 187; Memoirs of De Castro, p. 29.]