London Pleasure Gardens.
I
CLERKENWELL AND CENTRAL GROUP
ISLINGTON SPA, OR NEW TUNBRIDGE WELLS
A poetical advertisement of the year 1684[7] refers to “the sweet gardens and arbours of pleasure” at this once famous resort, situated opposite the New River Head, Clerkenwell. The chalybeate spring in its grounds was discovered at or shortly before that date, and the proprietor in 1685 is described in the London Gazette[8] as “Mr. John Langley, of London, merchant, who bought the rhinoceros and Islington Wells.”
The original name of the Spa was Islington Wells, but it soon acquired (at least as early as 1690) the additional title of New Tunbridge, or New Tunbridge Wells, by which it was generally known until about 1754, when the name of Islington Spa came into use, though the old title, New Tunbridge, was never quite abandoned.[9]
Although the place could not at any period boast of the musical and “variety” entertainments of its neighbour Sadler’s Wells, it soon acquired greater celebrity as a Spa, and from about 1690 to 1700 was much frequented. The gardens at this period[10] were shaded with limes and provided with arbours; and, in addition to its coffee-house, the Spa possessed a dancing-room and a raffling shop.[11] The charge for drinking the water was threepence, and the garden was open on two or three days in the week from April or May till August.
As early as seven o’clock in the morning a few valetudinarians might be found at the Well, but most of the visitors did not arrive till two or three hours later. Between ten and eleven the garden was filled with a gay and, in outward seeming, fashionable throng. The company, however, was extraordinarily mixed. Virtue and Vice; Fashion and the negation of Fashion had all their representatives. Sir Courtly Nice drove up to the gate in his gilt coach, and old Sir Fumble brought his lady and daughter. Modish sparks and fashionable ladies, good wives and their children, mingled with low women and sempstresses in tawdry finery; with lawyers’ clerks, and pert shopmen; with sharpers, bullies, and decoys. A doctor attended at the Well to give advice to the drinkers, not a few of whom came for the serious purpose of benefiting their health.
Richard Temple
Viscount Cobham, &c.