John Cavanagh (_d._ 1819), the famous Irish fives player, had many matches at Copenhagen House for wagers and dinners. The wall against which the combatants played was (says Hone) the same that supported the kitchen chimney, and when the wall resounded louder than usual, the cook exclaimed, “Those are the _Irishman’s_ balls,” and the joints trembled on the spit. Hazlitt, in a pleasant memoir of Cavanagh,[165] says that he had no equal in the game or second. He had no affectation in his playing. He was the best up-hill player in the world, and never gave away a game through laziness or conceit. His “service” was tremendous, but a peculiarity of his play was that he never volleyed, though if the ball rose but an inch from the ground he never missed it. “His eye,” adds Hazlitt, “was certain, his hand fatal, his presence of mind complete.” In 1795 the house was kept by Robert Orchard, notorious for his connexion with the London Corresponding Society, which at that time held tumultuous meetings in the adjoining Copenhagen Fields. Orchard was succeeded by a man named Tooth, who gained custom by encouraging brutal sports. At this time, “on a Sunday morning, the fives ground was filled by bull-dogs and ruffians, who lounged and drank to intoxication: so many as fifty or sixty bull-dogs have been seen tied up to the benches at once, while their masters boozed and made match after match, and went out and fought their dogs before the house, amid the uproar of idlers attracted to the ‘bad eminence’ by its infamy.” There was also a common field, east of the house, wherein bulls were baited, and this was called the bull-field. At last the magistrates interfered, and in 1816 Tooth lost his license. The next landlord, a Mr. Bath, conducted the house respectably, and refused admittance to the bull-dogs. The bull-field was afterwards used for the harmless purpose of cow-keeping. From about this period (1816–1830) Copenhagen House was a favourite Sunday tea-garden with the middle-classes[166] who flocked there, especially in the summer-time during the hay harvest in the fields around.[167] Although the builders were making their way up to Copenhagen House from London on the south, it still commanded an extensive view of the metropolis and western suburbs, with the heights of Hampstead and Highgate, “and the rich intervening meadows.” In 1841[168] the tavern and tea-gardens were still in existence, and the space between them and Highgate was still open fields. Attached to the house at that time was a well known cricket ground.[169]