3. The “Belvidere Gardens at the present time” (circ. 1860?), Pinks, p. 532.
THE CASTLE INN AND TEA-GARDENS, COLEBROOKE ROW, ISLINGTON
The Castle Inn is mentioned in 1754 as a Sunday resort of the London “cit.,” who frequented it in the evening to smoke his pipe and obtain the light refreshment of cyder and heart-cakes. The house must have stood nearly alone till 1768, when the oldest portion of the street called Colebrooke Row was built. The Castle Inn, with its tea gardens, was then the last house but one at the northern end of the Row.[156] A pleasant nursery garden occupied, till about 1822, six acres of the ground in the rear of Colebrooke Row.
The inn and tea gardens were still in existence about 1772, but the house had ceased to be a place of public entertainment at the time when Nelson published his Islington, i.e. 1811.
[The Connoisseur, No. 26 (1754); Nelson’s Islington (1811), p. 385; Lewis’s Islington (1842), pp. 351, 352.]
THREE HATS, ISLINGTON
The Three Hats was a picturesque old inn standing in the Upper Street, Islington, a few doors from the corner of the Liverpool Road and on the site of the present Islington branch of the London and County Bank.
It first became known as a place of amusement in 1758, when, in the field adjoining, Thomas Johnson, “the Irish Tartar,” one of the earliest equestrian performers in England, made his début. He galloped round the field standing first on one horse, then on a pair, then on three horses. At one time he rode the single horse standing on his head, but as this posture “gave pain to the spectators” he discontinued it. His feats seem to have been of a simpler kind than those afterwards performed by the rider Price at Dobney’s in 1767. One of Johnson’s performances at the Three Hats (17 July, 1766) took place in the presence of the Duke of York and of about five hundred spectators.
In the spring of 1767 Johnson was succeeded by the equestrian Sampson, who announced his appearance at five o’clock at a commodious place built in a field adjoining the Three Hats. “A proper band of music” was engaged for this entertainment. In the summer of this year Sampson introduced his wife into his entertainment, and inserted the following advertisement in the Public Advertiser for 23 July: “Horsemanship at Dingley’s, Three Hats, Islington. Mr. Sampson begs to inform the public that besides the usual feats which he exhibits, Mrs. Sampson, to diversify the entertainment and prove that the fair sex are by no means inferior to the male, either in courage or agility, will this and every evening during the summer season perform various exercises in the same art, in which she hopes to acquit herself to the universal approbation of those ladies and gentlemen whose curiosity may induce them to honour her attempt with their company.”
