Blest Conduit House! what raptures does it yield;
And hail, thou wonder of a Chelsea field!
Yet Zucker still amazingly surpasses
Your Conduit-house, your pigmy, and your asses.[155]
Penny’s Folly was afterwards pulled down and the Belvidere tavern came into existence about 1780.
In the early part of the present century, and probably twenty years earlier, the Belvidere possessed a bowling green, and a large garden, with many trees and plenty of accommodation for tea-drinking parties. The chief attraction was a large racket-court. The garden and racket-court continued to be frequented till 1860 or later. In 1876, the Belvidere was rebuilt and is now used as a public-house, the garden, or part of it, being occupied by the pianoforte works of Messrs. Yates.
[Pinks’s Clerkenwell, 531–533; Tomlins’s Perambulation of Islington, 40, 41, 163, 164; Picture of London, 1802, p. 370.]
VIEWS.
1. South front of Busby’s Folly, one of C. Lempriere’s Set of Views, 1731 (woodcut in Pinks, p. 530); cp. woodcut in Tomlins’s Perambulation of Islington, p. 164, and a water-colour drawing by C. H. Matthews in Crace, Cat. p. 606, No. 212.
2. The Belvidere Gardens, early in the present century, woodcut in Cromwell’s Clerkenwell (1828), p. 414, J. and H. S. Storer del. et sculp. (copied in Pinks, p. 531).