Part 11

The Oxford Arms stood south of Warwick Square and the College of Physicians, and is mentioned in a carrier's advertisement of 1672. Edward Bartlet, an Oxford carrier, started his coaches and waggons thence three times a week. He also announced that he kept a hearse to convey 'a corps' to any part of England. The Oxford Arms had a red-brick facade, of the period of Charles II., surmounting a gateway leading into the yard, which had on three sides two rows of wooden galleries with exterior staircases, the fourth side being occupied by stabling, built against a portion of old London Wall. This house was consumed in the great fire, but was rebuilt on the former plan. The house always belonged to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, and the houses of the Canons Residentiary adjoin the Oxford Arms on the south, and there is a door from the old inn into one of the back-yards of the residentiary houses, which is said to have been useful during the riots of 1780 for facilitating the escape of Roman Catholics from the fury of the mob, by enabling them to pass into the residentiary houses; for which reason, it is said by a clause always inserted into the leases of the inn, it is forbidden to close up the door. John Roberts, the bookseller, from whose shop most of the libels and squibs on Pope were issued, lived at the Oxford Arms.

The Queen's Head was another of the Southwark inns. Its inner yard had galleries on one side only, one to the first and another to the second floor. Like all others, the yard was approached by a high gateway from the street, and another under the building between the outer and inner yards.

At Knightsbridge there stood till about 1865, when it was pulled down, the Rose and Crown, anciently called the Oliver Cromwell. It was one of the oldest houses in the High Street, Knightsbridge, having been licensed above three hundred years. The Protector's bodyguard is said to have been stationed in it, and an inscription to that effect was, till shortly before its demolition, painted on the front. This is merely legendary, but there are grounds for not entirely rejecting the tradition. In 1648 the Parliament army was encamped in that neighbourhood; Fairfax's headquarters were for a while at Holland House. There was a house not far from the inn called Cromwell House, and at Kensington there still exists a charity called Cromwell's Gift, originally a sum of L45, but, having been invested in land in the locality, of great value now. Cromwell House was also known as Hale House; a portion of the South Kensington Museum now occupies the site.

To return to the Rose and Crown. Two sides of the yard had a gallery to the first floor, but it was of the poorest description. There were no elegant banisters, the lower part of the gallery was closed up with boards of the roughest kind, about breast high, and irregularly nailed on to the posts supporting the roof. Two water-colour drawings, dated 1857, showing the exterior of the house and the yard, are in the Crace collection. Corbould painted this inn under the title of the 'Old Hostelrie at Knightsbridge,' exhibited in 1849; but he transferred its date to 1497, altering the house according to his fancy. In 1853 the inn had a narrow escape from destruction by fire. Before its final demolition it had been much modernized, though leaving enough of its original characteristics to testify to its antiquity and former importance. The Royal Oak at Vauxhall was an old inn with a galleried yard. It was taken down circa 1812 to make the road to Vauxhall Bridge, then in course of construction.

One of the oldest of galleried inns in London was the Saracen's Head, on Snow Hill. In 1377 the fraternity founded in St. Botolph's Church, Aldersgate, in honour of the Body of Christ and of the saints Fabian and Sebastian, were the proprietors of the Saracen's Head inn. In the reign of Richard II. they granted a lease of twenty-one years to John Hertyshorn of the Saracen's Head, with appurtenances, consisting of two houses adjoining on the north side, at the yearly rent of ten marks. In the reign of Henry VI. Dame Joan Astley (some time nurse to that King) obtained a license to refound the fraternity in honour of the Holy Trinity. In the reign of Edward VI. it was suppressed, and its endowments, valued at L30 per annum, granted to William Harris. The antiquity of the inn was thus beyond question. Stow, describing this neighbourhood, mentions it as 'a fair large inn for receipt of travellers.' The courtyard had to the last many of the characteristics of an old English inn: there were galleries all round leading to the bedrooms, and a spacious gateway through which the mail-coaches used to pass in and out. It was at this inn that Nicholas Nickleby and his uncle waited on Squeers, the schoolmaster of Dotheboys Hall. It was demolished in 1863, when the Holborn Valley improvements were undertaken. A view of the inn as it appeared in 1855 is in the Crace collection.

As there were many inns on the Southwark side of London Bridge for the reasons given when we spoke of the King's Head, so for the same reason a number of inns, some of which we have already mentioned, were on the northern side of the bridge. Besides those already named, there was the Spread Eagle, in Gracechurch Street. The original building had perished in the great fire, but the inn was rebuilt after it. It had the usual yard and galleries to the two floors. At first only a carriers' inn, it became famous as a coaching-house, the mails and principal stage-coaches for Kent and other southern counties arriving and departing from here. It was long the property of John Chaplin, cousin of William Chaplin, of the firm of Chaplin and Horne. The inn was taken down in 1865; the plot of ground which it occupied contained 12,600 feet, and was sold for L95,000.

The Swan with Two Necks is a curious sign, variously explained. It is supposed to mean the swan with two nicks or notches cut into swans' bills, so that each owner might know his. But these nicks being so small as not to be discernible on an inn sign hung high up, there seems no sense in referring to them. More likely two swans swimming side by side, and the neck of one of them protruding beyond that of the other, took some artist's fancy, and induced him to produce the illusion in a picture. However, the origin of the sign does not concern us, but the inn with that sign. There was a famous one in what was Lad Lane, and is now Gresham Street. It was for a century and more the head coach-inn and booking-office for the North. Its courtyard was of great size; the galleries were of somewhat irregular arrangement, there being one only at the back, communicating at one end with a lower and an upper gallery on one side, whilst on the other side there was a gallery unconnected with the others, and which also was wider and more elaborately decorated than the others. A view of it appeared in the _Illustrated London News_, December 23, 1865.

An inn which has been rendered famous by Chaucer's rhymed tales--we cannot honestly call them poetry--of the Canterbury pilgrims is the Tabard, in the Borough. Its history must be pretty familiar to most people. It originally was the property of William of Ludegarsale, of whom the Tabard and the adjoining house, which the Abbots made their town residence, were purchased in 1304 by the Abbot and convent of Hyde, near Winchester. The pilgrimage to Canterbury is said to have taken place in 1383. Henry Bailly, Chaucer's host of the Tabard at that time, was a representative of the Borough of Southwark in Parliament during the reign of two Kings, Edward III. and Richard II. After the dissolution of the monasteries, the Tabard and the Abbot's house were sold by Henry VIII. to John Master and Thomas Master; the Tabard afterwards was in the occupation of one Robert Patty, but the Abbot's house, with the stable and garden belonging thereto, were reserved to the Bishop Commendator, John Saltcote, alias Casson, who had been the last Abbot of Hyde, and who surrendered it to Henry VIII., and who afterwards was transferred to the See of Salisbury. The original Tabard was in existence as late as the year 1602. On a beam across the road, whence swung the sign, was inscribed: 'This is the inn where Sir Jeffry Chaucer and the nine-and-twenty pilgrims lay in their journey to Canterbury, ANNO 1383.' On the removal of the beam the inscription was transferred to the gateway. The house was repaired in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and from that period probably dated the fireplace, carved oak panels, and other portions spared by the fire of 1676, which were still to be seen at the beginning of this century. In this fire some six hundred houses had to be destroyed to arrest the progress of the flames, and as the Tabard stood nearly in the centre of this area, and was mostly built of wood, there can be no doubt that the old inn perished. It was, however, soon rebuilt, and as nearly as possible on the same spot; but the landlord changed the sign from the Tabard to the Talbot; there is, nevertheless, little doubt that the inn as it remained till 1874, when it was demolished, with its quaint old timber galleries, with two timber bridges connecting their opposite sides, and which extended to all the inn buildings, and the no less quaint old chambers, was the immediate successor of the inn commemorated by Chaucer. According to an old view published in 1721, the yard is shown as apparently opening to the street; but in a view which appeared in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ of September, 1812, the yard seems enclosed. A sign, painted by Blake, and fixed up against the gallery facing you as you entered the yard, represented Chaucer and his merry company setting out on their journey. There was a large hall called the Pilgrims' Hall, dating of course from 1676, but in course of time it was so cut up to adapt it to the purpose of modern bedrooms, that its original condition was scarcely recognisable. There are various views of the old inn in the Crace collection: one without date, one of 1780, another of 1810, another of 1812 (the _Gentleman's Magazine_ print), one of 1831, and yet another of 1841. The site is now occupied by a public-house in the gin-palace style, which presumes to call itself the Old Tabard.

In Piccadilly, No. 75, there formerly stood on part of the site for so short a time occupied by Clarendon House (1664-1683) the Three Kings tavern. At the gateway to the stables there were seen two Corinthian pilasters, which originally belonged to Clarendon House. The stable-yard itself presented the features of the old galleried inn-yard, and it was the place from which the first Bath mail-coach was started. Later, Mr. John Camden Hotten, and afterwards Messrs. Chatto and Windus, carried on their publishing business on this spot.

In the seventeenth century the Three Nuns was the sign of a well-known coaching and carriers' inn in Aldgate, which gave its name to Three Nuns Court close by. The yard, as usual, was galleried, but within recent years the inn was pulled down and rebuilt in the form of a modern hotel. Near this inn was the dreadful pit in which, during the Plague of 1665, not less than 1,114 bodies were buried in a fortnight, from September 6 to 20.

The Criterion Restaurant and Theatre stands on the site of an old inn, the White Bear, which for a century and more was one of the busiest coaching-houses in connection with the West and South-West of England. In this house Benjamin West, the future President of the Royal Academy, put up on his arrival in London from America. Here died Luke Sullivan, the engraver of some of Hogarth's most famous works. The inn yard had galleries to two sides of the bedchambers on the second floor, connected by a bridge across.

We must once more return to Southwark, for besides the inns already mentioned as existing in that locality, there was another famous one, namely, the White Hart. It had the largest inn sign except the Castle in Fleet Street. Much maligned Jack Cade and some of his followers put up at this inn during their brief possession of London in 1450. The original inn which sheltered them remained standing till 1676, when it was burnt down in the great fire already mentioned. It was rebuilt, and was in existence till a few years ago, when it was pulled down. It consisted of several open courts, the inner one having handsome galleries on three sides to the first and second floors. There are two views of it, taken respectively in 1840 and 1853, in the Crace collection, and it was in the yard of this inn that Mr. Pickwick first encountered Sam Weller.

The White Lion, in St. John Street, Clerkenwell, was originally an inn frequented by drovers and carriers, and covered a good deal of ground; but before its demolition it had already been greatly reduced in size, the gateway leading into the yard having been built up and formed into an oil-shop. Inserted in the front wall was the sign in stone relief, representing a lion rampant, painted white, and with the date 1714. A house on the other side of the central portion also seems to have formed part of the original White Lion. The gate just mentioned led into a yard similar to those attached to other ancient inns. There were, in the east front of the inn, strong wooden beams, which no doubt supported the erection over the gateway, and that there was a yard surrounded by a gallery is proved by the remains of door openings in the upper parts of the back walls of the premises, which had been bricked up. At one time a bowling-green was attached to the tavern, and by the side of it a pond, in which Anthony Joyce, the cousin of Pepys, drowned himself. He was a tavern keeper, and kept the Three Stags in Holborn, which was burnt down in 1666. Pepys records in his Diary, under September 5 of that year: 'Thence homeward ... having ... seen Anthony Joyce's house on fire.' The loss incurred by the fire preyed on Joyce's mind, and is supposed to have led him to commit the rash act.

Here we will close our selection, which embraces all the most important galleried taverns once existing in London. Their disappearance is much to be regretted, though with the requirements of modern travellers it was scarcely to be avoided. But they formed picturesque features of London, which has so very few of them, especially as regards hotels, which in their modern style remind us only of slightly decorated barracks, if they are not perfectly hideous, as, for instance, the architectural nightmare in Victoria Street. But there are plenty of people yet who delight in old-fashioned houses and surroundings--the revival of stage-coaches is proof of it. A galleried tavern with modern improvements would, we fancy, not be a bad spec.

*II.--OLD LONDON TEA-GARDENS.*

Names are often misleading. Mr. Coward is a fierce fire-eater; Mr. Gentle's family tremble when they hear his footsteps on the pavement on his return home from his office, for they know that immediately on his entrance he will kick up a row with every one of them; whilst Mr. Lion lives in awe of his termagant better, or worse, half. We are led into these reflections by the term 'tea-gardens.' It sounds so very innocent; it calls up visions of honest citizens, surrounded by their wives and olive-branches, enjoying, amid idyllic scenes of rural beauties, their fragrant bohea, bread-and-butter, cream and sillabub. But the vision is delusive. Noorthouck, who wrote about 1770, when the tea-gardens were most abundant and flourishing, speaks of them thus: 'The tendency of these cheap catering places of pleasure just at the skirts of this vast town is too obvious to need further explanation; they swarm with loose women and with boys whose morals are depraved, and their constitutions ruined, before they arrive at manhood. Indeed, the licentious resort to the tea-drinking gardens was carried to such excess every night that the magistrates lately thought proper to suppress the organs in their public rooms; it is left to their cool reflection whether this was discharging all the duty they owe to the public.' Certes, the remedy seems hardly adequate when the grand jury of Middlesex, as far back as 1744, had complained of 'advertisements inviting and seducing not only the inhabitants, but all other persons, to several places kept apart for the encouragement of luxury, extravagance, idleness, and other wicked illegal purposes, which go on with impunity to the destruction of many families, to the great dishonour of the kingdom, especially at a time when we are involved in an expensive war, and so much overburdened with taxes of all sorts,' etc. With such an indictment before them, the magistrates must have been wooden-headed indeed if they thought to stop the evil by forbidding the playing of organs at such places. And the evil must have been not only serious, but widespread, seeing there were upwards of thirty of these tea-gardens around London. But our object is not to preach a sermon on the wickedness of the world, but to describe the places where it was practised. We begin with Bagnigge Wells tea-gardens.

Who now, wandering about dreary King's Cross, unacquainted with the history of the place, would believe that this was once a picturesque rural spot? But such it was, and here Nell Gwynne had a summer residence amidst fields and on the banks of the River Fleet, then a clear stream, occasionally flooding the locality. The ground on which the house, a gabled building, stood was then called Bagnigge Vale. Early in the eighteenth century the house was converted into a place of public entertainment, in consequence of the timely discovery on the spot of two wells, one of which was said to be purging and the other chalybeate, and the water of which was sold at threepence a glass or at eightpence by the gallon. But one of the wells seems to have been known by the name of Black Mary's Well or Hole, which may have been a corruption of Blessed Mary's Well, or due to the alleged fact that a black woman leased the well. The gardens, it seems, were largely patronized, hundreds of persons visiting them in the morning to drink the waters, and on summer afternoons to drink tea, and something stronger, too. The grounds were ornamented with curious shrubs and flowers, a small round fish-pond, in the centre of which was a fountain, representing Cupid bestriding a swan, which spouted the water up to a great height. The Fleet flowed through a part of the gardens, and was crossed by a bridge. Two prints are extant (reproduced in Pinks's 'Clerkenwell'), showing the gardens as they were in 1772 and again early in the present century. But in December, 1813, the gardens came to grief; the whole of the furniture and fittings were sold by auction by order of the assignees of Mr. Salter, the tenant, a bankrupt. The fixtures and fittings were described as comprising the erection of a temple, a grotto, alcoves, arbours, boxes, green-house, large lead figures, pumps, cisterns, sinks, counters, beer machine, stoves, coppers, shrubs, 200 drinking tables, 350 forms, 400 dozen bottled ale [which shows that tea was not the only drink consumed there], etc. The house itself remained standing till 1844, when it was demolished; the Phoenix brewery afterwards occupied the site, which is now covered with dreary streets. All that reminds you now of the gardens is a stone tablet set into the wall of a dull house in the neighbourhood, which shows a grotesque head and the inscription: 'This is Bagnigge House, neare the Finder a Wakefield, 1680.' It may be added that at the time the gardens were in existence the place was environed with hills and rising ground, every way but to the south, and consequently screened from the inclemency of the more chilling winds. Primrose Hill rose westward; on the north-west were the more distant elevations of Hampstead and Highgate; on the north and north-east were pretty sharp ascents to Islington. But the ground, which, as shown then, was in a deep hollow, has in modern times been considerably raised above the former level, and no vestige remains of the gardens or the springs. But the gardens were so famous in their day as to cause their name to be adopted by a similar establishment in a totally different direction. Towards the end of the last century the New Bagnigge Wells tea-gardens were opened at Bayswater. Whether these were identical with the new Bayswater tea-gardens mentioned in a London guide we have not been able to ascertain, but probably they were. Sir John Hill, born about 1716, had a house in the Bayswater Road, in whose grounds he cultivated the medicinal plants from which he prepared his tinctures, balsams, and water-dock essence, and though the profession called him a charlatan and a quack, he must have been a learned botanist. His 'Vegetable System' extends to twenty-six folio volumes. His garden is now covered by the long range of mansions called Lancaster Gate, but towards the close of the last century the site was opened to the public as tea-gardens. The grounds were spacious, and contained several springs of fine water lying close to the surface. The Bayswater Bagnigge Wells was opened as a public garden as late as 1854, shortly after which time, the visitors having grown less and less, it was shut up, and eventually seized by the land-devouring speculating builder.