At Kilburn, Sadler’s Wells or Kupers?[206]
About 1773 Kilburn Wells began to be more widely known, and the proprietor’s advertisement of 17 July in that year announced that the water was then in the utmost perfection, the gardens enlarged and greatly improved, and the house and offices “repainted and beautified in the most elegant manner.” The Great Room was described as specially adapted for “the use and amusement of the politest companies” who might require it for music, dancing, or entertainments. “This happy spot is equally celebrated for its rural situation, extensive prospects, and the acknowledged efficacy of its waters; is most delightfully situated on the site of the once famous Abbey of Kilburn on the Edgware Road, at an easy distance, being but a morning’s walk from the metropolis, two miles from Oxford Street; the footway from Marybone across the fields still nearer. A plentiful larder is always provided, together with the best of wines and other liquors. Breakfasting and hot loaves.”
An account of the medicinal water drawn up by the usual “eminent physician” was given away to visitors, and in one of the rooms was a long list of the diseases said to have been cured. Tn 1792 Godfrey Schmeisser made a careful analysis of the water. It was a mild purgative, milky in appearance, and had a bitterish saline taste. The use of the water for curative purposes appears to have ceased in the early part of the present century (before 1814), but the Old Bell, or Kilburn Wells as the place was generally denominated, enjoyed popularity as a tea-garden as late as 1829.[207]
About 1863 the Old Bell was pulled down, and the present Bell public-house erected on the spot. A brick reservoir long enclosed the spring, but some years ago it was demolished and built over. It stood immediately behind the Bank at the corner of Belsize Road.
[Thorne’s Environs of London; Lambert’s London, iv. 288; Howitt’s Northern Heights; Baines’s Hampstead; Park’s Hampstead; Walford, v. 245, ff.]
VIEWS.
1. The Bell Inn, Kilburn, 1750 (Walford, v. 246).
2. The Bell Inn, Kilburn, from a mezzotint, 1789, reproduced in Baines’s Hampstead.
3. View of the Old Bell Inn at Kilburn on the Edgware Road. Rathbone del. Prestal sculp. 1789. Crace, Cat. p. 670, No. 76.
4. An engraved handbill, describing the waters, at the top of which is a print of the Long Room, by F. Vivares; mentioned in Park’s Hampstead, p. xxxi*, additions.