A Book for a Rainy Day; or, Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766-1833Smith, John Thomas
History
A Book for a Rainy Day; or, Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766-1833
Smith, John Thomas
Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 18th century; Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
From Capper’s farm were several straggling houses; but the principal part
of the ground to the “King’s Head,” at the end of the road, was unbuilt
upon. The “Old King’s Head” forms a side object in Hogarth’s beautiful
and celebrated picture of the “March to Finchley,” which may be seen with
other fine specimens of art in the Foundling Hospital, for the charitable
donation of one shilling.
I shall now recommence on the left-hand side of the road, noticing that
on the front of the first house, No. 1, in Oxford Street, near the
second-floor windows, is the following inscription cut in stone: OXFORD
STREET, 1725. In Aggas’s plan of London, engraved in the beginning of the
reign of Queen Elizabeth, the commencement of this street is designated
“The Waye to Uxbridge”; farther on in the same plan the highway is called
“Oxford Road.” Hanway Street, better known by the vulgar people under
the name of HANOVER YARD, was at this time the resort of the highest
fashion for mercery and other articles of dress. The public-house, the
sign of the “Blue Posts,” at the corner of Hanway Street, in Tottenham
Court Road, was once kept by a man of the name of Sturges, deep in the
knowledge of chess, upon which game he published a little work, as is
acknowledged on his tombstone in St. James’s burial-ground, Hampstead
Road.[55] From the “Blue Posts” the houses were irregularly built to a
large space called Gresse’s Gardens, thence to Windmill Street, strongly
recommended by physicians for the salubrity of the air. The premises
occupied by the French charity children were held by the founders of the
Middlesex Hospital, which were established in 1755, where the patients
remained until the present building was erected in Charles Street.
Colvill Court, parallel with Windmill Street northward, was built in
1766; and Goodge Street,[56] farther on, was, I conjecture, erected
much about the same time. Mr. Whitefield’s chapel was built in 1754,
upon the site of an immense pond, called THE LITTLE SEA. This pond, so
called, is inserted in Pine and Tinney’s plan of London, published in
1742, and also in the large one issued by the same persons in 1746.[57]
Beyond the chapel[58] the four dwellings, then called “Paradise Row,”
almost terminated the houses on that side. A turnstile opened into
Crab-tree Fields.[59] They extended to the “Adam and Eve” public-house,
the original appearance of which Hogarth has also introduced into his
picture of the “March to Finchley.” It was at this house that the famous
pugilistic skill of Broughton and Slack was publicly exhibited, upon an
uncovered stage, in a yard open to the North Road.[60]
[Illustration: GEORGE WHITEFIELD
“Fain would I die preaching.”]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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