EARLY in the eighteenth century, in the days when the London archers shot at rovers {48a} in the Finsbury fields, there stood near Hoxton Bridge (at the meeting of the parishes of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, and St. Mary, Islington) an ‘honest ale-house’ named the Rosemary Branch, {48b} which was doubtless ofttimes visited by the thirsty archer for a mug of beer and a game of shovel-board. The place has no history for many years, though in 1764 it emerges for a moment in a newspaper paragraph: {48c} ‘On Sunday night [August 5], about eight o’clock, as a Butcher and another man were fighting near the Rosemary Branch, the Butcher received an unlucky blow on the side of his ribs, which killed him on the spot. The cause of the quarrel was this: Some boys having a skiff with which they were sailing in a pond near the aforesaid place, the Butcher endeavouring to take it from them, a well-dressed man that was passing expostulated with the man, and putting the question to him, how he should like to be served so if he was in the lads’ stead? On which the Butcher struck the gentleman, who defended himself, and gave the deceased a blow on the temple, and another under his heart, of which he died. His body was carried to Islington Churchyard for the Coroner to sit on it, and yesterday the said gentleman was examined before the sitting Justices at Hicks’s Hall touching the said affair, and admitted to bail.’ In 1783 the old inn was demolished, or was, at any rate, absorbed in the premises of some white-lead manufacturers, who erected (1786–1792) two mills—conspicuous as _wind_mills—in the vicinity. A new tavern was built in front of the mills, with small grounds—about three acres—attached to it. The Rosemary Branch was now frequented as a tea-garden, one of the attractions being ‘the pond near the aforesaid place,’ which was used for boating and skating till, to the disgust of the Sunday visitors, it suddenly dried up about the year 1830.