“Our poet had an uncle named William Plumbe, who resided at North End, Fulham, having married the widow of John Gresham, the second son of Sir John Gresham, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1547, and which lady was the only daughter and heir of Edward Dormer of Fulham. Here it was, while visiting his uncle, that Sylvester formed the attachment which is the subject of his poem (see the folio edition of his works, 1621). Uncle Plumbe had been a widower; and from monuments which exist, or existed, in the parish church of Fulham, appears to have departed this life on the 9th February, 1593–4, aged sixty. In the previous May, his widow had lost her son Edmund (or Edward) Gresham, at the age of sixteen; and seriously touched by the rapid proofs of mortality within her house, from which the hand of death had within twelve months removed both a husband and a child, made preparations for her own demise by recording her intention to repose beside their remains: and to her husband’s memory she raised, in Fulham Church, a monument ‘of alabaster, inlaid and ornamented with various-coloured marble,’ leaving a space after her name for the insertion of the date of her death and age, which appear never to have been supplied.” The arms of “Dormer, impaled with Gresham,” we are told remain, “those of Plumbe are gone.” Sylvester’s “Triumph of Faith” is consecrated “to the grateful memory of the first kind fosterer of our tender Muses, by my never sufficiently honoured dear uncle, W. Plumb, Esq.” It is not our intention to linger over the recollections connected with the age of Elizabeth in Fulham Fields or at North End, although there can be no doubt that a little research might bring some curious local particulars to light connected with the history of the literature, the drama, and the fine arts of that period, The gardens here provide the London markets with a large supply of vegetables. A very primitive form of draw-well was common here, consisting of a pole, balanced horizontally on an upright, the bucket being affixed to a rope at one end. [Picture: Draw-well] The pole is pulled downward for the bucket to descend the well, and when filled, is raised by the weight of wood attached to the opposite end of the pole. This mode of raising water is still in use in the East, and Wilkinson, in his ‘Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians,’ Series I. vol. ii. p. 4, has engraved representations of this machine, from paintings on the walls of Thebes, of the time of the Pharaohs. [Picture: Cottage in Fulham Fields] In “Fulham Fields” are still standing many old cottages, inhabited by market-gardeners. A sketch, taken in 1844, of one of the best examples then existing, is here given as a specimen.