Prelates, and princes, and lieges, and kings, Hail for the bellman, who tinkles and sings, Bouche of the highest and lowliest ones, ‘Smoking hot, piping hot, Chelsea buns!’ Like the home of your birth, or the scent of a flower, Or the blush of the morning on field or bower, There’s a charm in the sound which nobody shuns, Of ‘Smoking hot, piping hot, Chelsea buns!’ This bunhouse had become so famous, not only throughout London, but for several miles round it, that not to visit Chelsea on Good Friday, and purchase some of the “rare buns,” was considered as unaccountable amongst a certain class—such as the servants of the nobility and gentry, shopmen, mechanics, and apprentices—as it would have been for them to acknowledge that they had never heard of Greenwich Fair. But this part of Chelsea, and the adjoining “Five Fields,” now Eaton and Belgrave Squares, actually did represent a minor Greenwich Fair. From my own personal observation I should say, provided the weather was favourable, there were generally on Good Fridays nearly 200,000 persons collected in the immediate neighbourhood. It was a fair to all intents and purposes. In the “Five Fields” there were drinking booths, swings, gingerbread stalls, nine-pins being played, gaming, and all the other vicious “entertainments” which annually disgraced the metropolis in former times. Such was the pressure of the immense crowd at the bunhouse, from about three o’clock in the morning till five in the afternoon, that the only mode of supplying the demand for buns was by obtaining them through apertures in the shutters. The bunhouse, however, was very respectably conducted, and such scenes as I have described were only to be witnessed on the day previously named—a day set apart to commemorate the most momentous event, as regards its consequences, in the history of the world. * * * * * There were many things very attractive at the original bunhouse. In it was a collection of pictures, models, grotesque, figures, and modern antiques. In a conspicuous position were two leaden figures of grenadiers of 1745; a plaster figure of William, Duke of Cumberland; a painting of the King and Queen seated; a model of the bunhouse, and of the exploits of a bottle conjurer. This celebrated building was pulled down some years since, and with it the olden charm fled. * * * * *