Inscriptions -- England -- London; London (England) -- Antiquities; Signs and signboards
Lysons, Halliwell Phillipps, and others, have confused the mineral
spring discovered by Sadler with a mineral spring of greater celebrity
called the New Tunbridge Wells; but, though near each other, they
were quite distinct. In 1699 a narrative poem was published under the
title of ‘A Walk to Islington, with a Description of New Tunbridge
Wells and Sadler’s Musick House,’ in which the fame of the wells is
ascribed to its medicinal water, and that of the music-house to such
good cheer as cheesecakes, custards, bottled ale and cider, and the
diversions of singing and dancing. An article in the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_ for December, 1813, puts the matter beyond a doubt; and
their relative positions are clearly marked in Horwood’s map of 1799.
New Tunbridge Wells, or the Islington Spa (really, of course, in the
parish of Clerkenwell), was a spring of chalybeate water in a garden,
the entrance to which until 1810 was opposite the New River Head on
the south side; No. 6, Eliza Place marked the site. This street, a
continuation west of Myddleton Place, has, like it, been absorbed by
Rosebery Avenue. The spa was open to the public before 1685, as is
proved by a curious advertisement in the _London Gazette_ of September
24 in that year: ‘Whereas Mr. John Langley, of London, Merchant, who
bought the Rhinoceros and Islington Wells, has been represented by
divers of his malicious adversaries to be a person of no estate or
reputation, nor able to discharge his debts; which evil practices have
been on purpose to ruin and destroy his reputation,’ etc. The character
of the company soon after this may be judged from a burlesque poem,
published in 1691; it contains the lines which head this chapter.
In 1700 there was ‘music for dancing all day long, every Monday and
Thursday during the summer season. No mask to be admitted.’ A few
years later the spa became fashionable, being patronized by ladies of
such position as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. It was at its zenith in
1733, when the Princesses Amelia and Caroline, daughters of George
II., came daily in the summer and drank the waters. At this time, as
we learn from the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, ‘Such was the concourse of
nobility and others that the proprietor took above £30 in a morning.
On the birthday of the Princesses, as they passed through the Spa
Field (which was generally filled with carriages), they were saluted
with a discharge of 21 guns, a compliment which was always paid them
on their arrival; and in the evening there was a great bonfire, and
the guns were discharged several times.’ Islington Spa continued with,
on the whole, declining fortune throughout the rest of the eighteenth
century. Soon afterwards it was found necessary to curtail the garden,
and a great part of the old coffee-room was pulled down. About the year
1810, the old entrance being closed, a new one was made in Lloyd’s Row;
and finally, in 1840, what remained of the garden was altogether done
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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