London's
Tea Gardens
An essay by William B Boulton
Visit
page one, two,
three, four, five,
six, seven,
eight, nine,
ten, eleven
Like
many other of the north London pleasure gardens, it owed its
origin to the discovery of a spring of " chalybeate"
water, and a year or so after tbat event there is mention of
one of its early proprietors in the London Gaiette (1685), "Mr.
John Langley of London, merchant, who bought the Rhinoceros
and Islington Wells." For the ten years following it had
quite a vogue as a watering-place, and became the frequent theme
of the poets of Grub Street, who were employed to sing its praises.
When the eighteenth century opened Islington Spa was a fine
going concern; to the medicinal attractions of its waters were
added the amusements of a tea garden, and the amenities of the
place, like those of many others, began to expand in sympathy
with the more generous views of life then becoming common among
Londoners. Ned Ward will tell you of its lime trees, its coffee-house,
its dancing saloon, its raffling shop, and its gaming tables.
A tame doctor was kept on the premises to administer the waters,
which were supplementary now to the pleasures of music, dancing,
and the promenade. Islington Spa became a great place of popular
resort, where city madams, sempstresses, and clerks could rub
shoulders on occasion with people of a higher rank, and its
arbours were much affected by city apprentices and their sweethearts
with a weakness for plum cake.
Other
less desirable visitors followed, as was usually the case in
these public places-sharpers, frail women, and pickpockets,
and even on occasion gentlemen of the road. They took my Lord
Cobham's watch from him there about the middle of the century,
and doings at the play-tables were not above suspicion.
Like
many of its competitors Islington Spa had varying fortunes until,
in 1733, in the month of May, it occurred to the Princesses
Caroline and Amelia to attend regularly and take its waters.
These royal ladies were duly saluted with twenty-one guns, and
all London flocked to the gardens to see a real princess. Their
visit brought sudden prosperity to the place; the proprietor,
it was said, took £30 of a morning in entrance money alone,
and Mr. Pinchbeck, the toyseller, seizing the psychological
moment, did a large trade in fans bearing a representation of
the place, which may still be found in collections of those
interesting objects.
It
was in that very year that Mr. George Bickham, jun., made a
very pretty drawing of Islington Spa, and engraved it at the
head of a copy of verses set to music, which celebrate some
of the charms of the society which gathered there. The engraving
shows the company taking the waters in a very quaint and delightful
courtyard and garden, and assisted by a contemporary letter
from a young lady who was there soon after we can revive the
pleasures which such places afforded for our ancestors, and
measure the gulf between the Islington of that day and this.
"New Tunbridge Wells is a very pretty and romantick place,"
says the letter, "and the water much like Bath water, but
makes one vastly cold and hungary." It made Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu giddy and sleepy, it seems, but her ladyship left it
on record that she derived much benefit from its use.
Even
as late as 1803 we learn from Malcolm, in that valuable work
of his where are preserved so many interesting particulars of
the life of the century which had just closed, that "the
gardens were very beautiful, particularly at the entrance. Pedestals
and vases are grouped under some extremely picturesque trees,
whose foliage is seen to much advantage from the neighbouring
fields." We do not doubt it; a garden of any sort of a
century old has a beauty of its own, but there is pathos for
a Londoner in the thought that such a picture existed in Clerkenwell
during the present century. The beginning of the end, however,
came soon after. Charlotte Street, afterwards Thomas Street,
arose on part of the site in 1810, and Eliza Street was built
over the original entrance, a new one being made from Lloyd's
Row.
The
gardens, thus curtailed, struggled on till 1840, when the end
came by the building of two rows of houses, known as Spa Cottages.
The well itself was enclosed in an outhouse of the dwelling
of a former proprietor, and its waters, were offered at sixpence
a quart by an enterprising surgeon. It seems almost incredible
that they continued to run until the year 1860. But all interested
in the past of this enormous County of London will be grateful
to Mr. Philip Norman and Mr. Warwick Wroth, who visited the
spot independently in 1894, and after "a search in the
outhouse discovered a cellar containing the old spring, dry,
indeed, but still surrounded by the remains of its grotto, its
steps, and its balustrade, the relics of its better days.
A
similar institution, which proved a formidable rival to Islington
Spa, was the famous gardens of Bagnigge, opened by a Mr. Hughes
in 1759, in grounds which are now covered by the Phoenix Brewery,
a little north of Clerkenwell Police Court, and by part of the
great building yard of the Messrs. Cubitt in the Gray's Inn
Road. There were traditions of merrymaking about this pleasant
spot long before Mr. Hughes made his venture.
Bagnigge
House, which gave its name to the gardens and wells, was a country
residence of Nell Gwynn, where King Charles the Second and his
brother James delighted at times to take breakfast with that
lady. Mr. Hughes appears to have discovered the capabilities
of the place quite by accident. As a great amateur of gardening
he was much troubled by the difficulty of growing his pansies
and carnations, and in seeking for the cause he discovered that
their roots were beset by the percolations of two springs of
water.
Analyses
of these waters disclosed the fact that one was "a chalybeate
of a ferruginous character, with an agreeable subacid tartness,
apt to produce a kind of giddiness, and afterwards a propensity
to sleep if exercise be not interposed." Thus Dr. Bevis,
the analyst and adviser to Mr. Hughes. The other, we learn on
the same authority, was a "carthartic, which left a distinguishable
brackish bitterness on the palate," and three half pints
were sufficient for most people.
The
ingenious Mr. Hughes sank wells to collect these health - giving
streams, ran pipes into an ornamental dome supported on pillars
in the classic taste, which he called the Temple, and provided
Londoners with a new spa or watering place-just as George the
Third mounted the throne of his grandfather.
Such
was the origin of Bagnigge Wells, a place of resort for the
true-bred cockney for half a century. Nell Gwynn's dining-room,
the banqueting-hall of Bagnigge House, a room of a generous
spaciousness nearly eighty feet by forty, provided a pump-room
or promenade. The old gardens were laid out with clipped hedges
of yew; formal walks ran between alleys of box and holly; there
were arbours covered with sweetbrier and honeysuckle for tea-drinking;
ponds containing gold fish, then not often seen; a fountain
with Cupid bestriding a swan, and leaden statues of Phyllis
and Corydon - perhaps those very figures which today give a
quaint interest to one of the galleries of South Kensington.
The
Fleet River, crossed by three rustic bridges, divided the gardens
into two unequal parts, the eastern and smaller portion being
devoted to people whose tastes were less modish than those of
the patrons of the pump-room. Here pleasant seats were provided
on the banks of the stream for such" as chuse to smoake
or drink cyder, ale, etc., which are not permitted in other
parts of the garden."
The
severity of the formal garden too, as we read, declined upon
the eastern bank of the Fleet and melted away into the pleasing
rusticity of willows, elder bushes, burdock and water plants,
which were well known to artists seeking opportunity for the
study of natural foliage.
Carry
on to page five
