Between this house, and Bagnigge Wells, was Bagnigge Wash, or Marsh, and Black Mary's Wells, or Hole. The etymology of this place is contested. In the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1813, part ii. p. 557, in an "Account of various Mineral Wells near London," is the following: "Lastly, in the same neighbourhood, may be mentioned the spring or conduit on the eastern side of the road leading from Clerken Well to Bagnigge Wells, and which has given name to a very few small houses as _Black Mary's Hole_. The land here was, formerly, called Bagnigg Marsh, from the river Bagnigg,[34] which passes through it. But, in after-time, the citizens resorting to drink the waters of the conduit, which then was leased to one Mary, who kept a black Cow, whose milk the gentlemen and ladies drank with the waters of the Conduit, from whence, the wits of that age used to say, 'Come, let us go to Mary's black hole.' However, Mary dying, and the place degenerating into licentiousness, about 1687, Walter Baynes Esqre, of the Inner Temple, enclosed the Conduit in the manner it now is, which looks like a great oven. He is supposed to have left a fund for keeping the same in perpetual repair. The stone with the inscription was carried away during the night about ten years ago. The water (which formerly fed two ponds on the other side of the road) falls into the old Bagnigge river." This etymon, however, is contested in a pamphlet called _An experimental enquiry concerning the Contents, Qualities, Medicinal Virtues of the two Mineral Waters of_ Bagnigge Wells, &c., by John Bevis, M.D. This pamphlet was originally published in 1767, but I quote from the third edition of 1819. "At what time these waters were first known cannot be made out with any degree of evidence. A tradition goes that the place of old was called Blessed Mary's Well; but that the name of the Holy Virgin having, in some measure, fallen into disrepute after the Reformation, the title was altered to Black Mary's Well, as it now stands upon Mr. Rocque's map, and then to Black Mary's Hole; though there is a very different account of these latter appellations; for there are those who insist they were taken from one Mary Woolaston, whose occupation was attending at a well, now covered in, on an opposite eminence, by the footway from Bagnigge to Islington to supply the soldiery, encamped in the adjacent fields, with water. But waving such uncertainties, it may be relied on for truth, that a late proprietor, upon taking possession of the estate, found two wells thereon, both steaned in a workmanlike manner; but when, or for what purpose, they were sunk, he is entirely ignorant." But Black Mary's Hole, during the first half of the last century, had a very queer reputation. There was a little public-house with the sign of "The Fox at Bay," which probably had something to do with the numerous highway robberies that occurred thereabouts.