A Walk from London to FulhamCroker, Thomas Crofton
History
A Walk from London to Fulham
Croker, Thomas Crofton
London (England) -- Description and travel
Mr. Faulkner’s ‘History of Kensington,’ published in 1820, and in which
parish the portion of Little Chelsea on the north side of the Fulham Road
stands, mentions the residence of Sir Bartholomew Shower, an eminent
lawyer, in 1693; Sir Edward Ward, lord chief baron of the Exchequer, in
1697; Edward Fowler, lord bishop of Gloucester, in 1709, who died at his
house here on the 26th August, 1714; and Sir William Dawes, lord bishop
of Chester, in 1709, who, I may add, died Archbishop of York in 1724.
But in Mr. Faulkner’s ‘History of Chelsea,’ published in 1829, nothing
more is to be found respecting Sir Bartholomew Shower than that he was
engaged in some parochial law proceedings in 1691. Sir Edward Ward’s
residence is unnoticed. The Bishop of Gloucester, who is said to have
been a devout believer in fairies and witchcraft, is enumerated among the
inhabitants of Paradise Row, Chelsea (near the hospital, and full a mile
distant from _le petit Chelsey_); and Sir William Dawes, we find from
various entries, an inhabitant of the parish between the years 1696 and
1712, but without “a local habitation” being assigned to him. All this
is very unsatisfactory to any one whose appetite craves after map-like
accuracy in parish affairs.
Bowack, in 1705, mentions that
“At Little Chelsea stands a regular handsome house, with a noble
courtyard and good gardens, built by Mr. Mart, now inhabited by Sir
John Cope, Bart., a gentleman of an ancient and honourable family,
who formerly was eminent in the service of his country abroad, and
for many years of late in Parliament, till he voluntarily retired
here to end his days in peace.”
And here Sir John Cope died in 1721. Can he have been the father of the
“Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye wauking yet,
Or are ye sleeping, I would wit?
O haste ye, get up, for the drums do beat;
O fye, Cope! rise up in the morning!”
—of the Sir John Cope who was forced to retreat from Preston Pans in “the
’45,” and against whom all the shafts of Jacobite ribaldry have been
levelled?
Faulkner says that this house, which was “subsequently occupied by the
late Mr. Duffield as a private madhouse, has been pulled down, and its
site is now called Odell’s Place, a little eastward of Lord
Shaftesbury’s;” that is to say, opposite to Manor Hall, and Sir John
Cope’s house was not improbably the residence of two distinguished naval
officers, Sir James Wishart and Sir John Balchen. The former was made an
admiral, and knighted by Queen Anne in 1703, and appointed one of the
lords of the Admiralty, but was dismissed from the naval service by
George I. for favouring the interests of the Pretender, and died at
Little Chelsea on the 30th of May, 1723. In the ‘Daily Courant,’ Monday,
July 15, 1723, the following advertisement appears:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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