The London pleasure gardens of the eighteenth centuryWroth, Warwick William
History
The London pleasure gardens of the eighteenth century
Wroth, Warwick William
London (England) -- History -- 18th century; Parks -- England -- London -- History
It is mentioned in _Low Life_, 1764 as resorted to on Whit-Sunday
evening by Londoners of the lower classes. Cromwell in his
_Islington_ (p. 199) published in 1835, speaks of the tavern and
tea-gardens as existing “within memory.”
THE BLACK QUEEN COFFEE-HOUSE AND TEA-GARDENS, SHACKLEWELL.
The Black Queen Coffee-house situated on Shacklewell Green had attached
to it a bowling green and tea-gardens planted with fruit trees, yews,
limes, and poplars. It is said to have been resorted to by “genteel
company,” but little is known of it, except that in 1793 (when in
possession of a Mr. Moore) the lease was advertised to be sold by
auction (13th September, 1793).
[_The Daily Advertiser_ for 3 September, 1793.]
IV
HAMPSTEAD GROUP
HAMPSTEAD WELLS
The outlet of the once famous spring of Hampstead is at the present
time to be found on the north side of Well Walk, and the water now
trickles out slowly into a basin, which forms part of a modern
fountain. The earliest mention of the spring occurs in the time of
Charles II. when one Dorothy Rippin appears to have made some profit by
the sale of the water, as she issued a halfpenny token which has on its
obverse the words, DOROTHY RIPPIN AT THE WELL IN HAMSTED, and
a representation of a well and bucket.[185] The well was in 1698 on the
estate of Susanna Noel and her son Baptist, third Earl of Gainsborough,
and was given by them conjointly on 20th December of that year,
together with six acres of land, for the benefit of the Hampstead poor.
A tablet on the present fountain records this gift.
The first to draw attention to the medicinal value of the water, was a
well-known physician, Dr. Gibbons,[186] who in the early part of the
eighteenth century described it as being as fully efficacious as any
chalybeate water in England.
In April 1700 the water was advertised as being of the same nature
and virtue as that at Tunbridge Wells, and was sold by Phelps, an
apothecary, at the Eagle and Child in Fleet Street, for threepence a
flask. It was also obtainable from the lessee of the Wells at the Black
Posts, King Street, near the Guildhall; at Sam’s Coffee House, Ludgate
Hill, and at several other places in the City.
From this time there grew up around the spring various places of
entertainment--a tavern[187] and coffee room, a bowling green and
raffling shops, and, as will be presently seen, a chapel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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