White Conduit House was for some years kept by Mr. Christopher Bartholomew, at one time worth 50,000_l._ He had some fortunate hits in the State Lottery, and celebrated his good fortune by a public breakfast in his gardens. He was known to spend upwards of 2000 guineas a day for insurance: fortune forsook him, and he passed the latter years of his life in great poverty, partly subsisting on charity. But his gambling propensity led him, in 1807, to purchase with a friend a sixteenth of a lottery-ticket, which was drawn a prize of 20,000_l._, with his moiety of which he purchased a small annuity, which he soon sold, and died in distress, in 1809. Bagnigge Wells, on the banks of the Fleet brook, between Clerkenwell and old St. Pancras church, was another tavern of this class. We remember its concert-room and organ, its grottoes, fountain and fishpond, its trim trees, its grotesque costumed figures, and its bust of Nell Gwynne to support the tradition that she had a house here. A comedy of the seventeenth century has its scene laid at the Saracen's Head, an old hostelrie, which in Queen Mary's reign had been hallowed by secret Protestant devotion, and stood between River Lane and the City Road. Highbury Barn, upon the site of the barn of the monks of Canonbury, was another noted tavern.[46] Nearly opposite Canonbury Tower are the remains of a last-century tea-garden; and in Barnsbury is a similar relic. And on the entrance of a coppice of trees is Hornsey Wood House, a tavern with a delightful prospect. Islington abounds in chalybeate springs, resembling the Tunbridge Wells water; one of which was rediscovered in 1683, in the garden of Sadler's music-house, subsequently Sadler's Wells Theatre; and at the Sir Hugh Myddelton's Head tavern was formerly a conversation-picture with twenty-eight portraits of the Sadler's Wells Club. In Spa Fields, was held "Gooseberry Fair," where the stalls of gooseberry-fool vied with the "threepenny tea-booths," and the beer at "my Lord Cobham's Head," which denotes the site of the mansion of Sir John Oldcastle, the Wickliffite, burnt in 1417. FOOTNOTE: [46] Canonbury Tavern was in the middle of the last century a small ale-house. It was taken by a Mr. Lane, who had been a private soldier: he improved the house, but its celebrity was gained by the widow Sutton, who kept the place from 1785 to 1808, and built new rooms, and laid out the bowling-green and tea-gardens. An Assembly was first established here in the year 1810. Nearly the entire premises, which then occupied about four acres, were situated within the old park wall of the Priory of St. Bartholomew; it formed, indeed, a part of the eastern side of the house; the ancient fish-pond was also connected with the grounds. The Tavern has been rebuilt. COPENHAGEN HOUSE. This old suburban tavern, which stood in Copenhagen Fields, Islington, was cleared away in forming the site of the New Cattle Market.