Towards the end of the thirties there stood in the King’s Road, Chelsea, between the present Radnor Street and Shawfield Street, a deserted mansion known as the Manor-House. It was spacious, if not lofty, and had apparently nothing to do with the two historical manor-houses of Chelsea. [25a] For some years it had been unoccupied; its windows were broken, its railings rusty, and weeds luxuriated in its front-garden.
Manor-House Garden, Chelsea, circa 1809
Behind the house there had once been a fine garden and orchard, and groves of fruit-trees still bore mulberries, apples, and pears, which were the natural prey of the Chelsea youth. [25b] The mansion had some reputation as a haunted house, and at nightfall unearthly sounds were heard by passers-by, which possibly proceeded from the depredators of the orchard. But one day in the autumn of 1837 some workmen were observed on the premises, and it became difficult to get access to the orchard.
The old Manor-House was, in truth, in process of transformation. A certain Mr. Richard Smith, described as ‘a pleasant, portly gentleman,’ and said to have made money by an official connexion with Crockford’s Club, had taken the place in hand. The suburbs—or, at least, the suburb of Chelsea—were destitute of public baths, and Mr. Smith proposed to supply the want by erecting on the site of the house, or near it, a capacious building. His baths were opened in 1838, and the popular orchard was utilized as a garden promenade, which he provided with an orchestra and a room for concerts and dancing. In imitation of the panoramas of the Surrey Zoological Gardens, the ‘Taking of Fort Bhurtpore’ was reproduced in the grounds, and the fireworks and crackers of Professor Tumour rendered the capture of the fortress by the English a lifelike spectacle.
Admission Tickets, New Ranelagh, Pimlico, circa 1812
The place was a good deal advertised in 1838 and 1839, and well puffed in papers like The Town; but it was not a success. A frank critic, who was well acquainted with the ‘New Vauxhall,’ as the proprietor named it, says that the company ‘consisted chiefly of local sweethearts,’ who preferred to treat each other to apples and pears snatched from the branches rather than expend superfluous cash in shilling goblets of hot negus. The concerts took place on three evenings in the week, and some ‘grand galas’ and ‘night fêtes’ were announced. On certain days the boys from the Military School close by promenaded the grounds with their band; but neither the concerts nor the baths were acceptable, and in 1840 Smith discontinued the concerts, and built a small theatre on part of the orchard. ‘The Royal Manor-House Theatre’ could hold an audience of 500 paying 2s. and 1s. The Green Room was the emptied tank of the swimming-bath. The first lessee was Charles Poole, previously manager of the Chichester Theatre, and the plays light one-act pieces. Poole soon got into money difficulties, and Smith made a curious application to Edward Leman Blanchard, the well-known dramatic critic, for his assistance. Blanchard was then hardly twenty, but he managed to keep the theatre open for nearly a year. The company had not been quite disbanded, and contained good material. Thus, Mr. A. Sidney (afterwards the well-known actor Alfred Wigan) was ready to sing sentimental songs between the acts. Signor Plimmeri, a clever posturer and man-monkey, and Richard Flexmore (later the famous clown) were also available, and the younger members of the Smith family formed a troupe of four supernumeraries. Blanchard produced a farce of his own—Angels and Lucifers—which ran for thirty-one representations, and himself appeared at one entrance as the hero and at another as the comic countryman. The theatre apparently closed in 1841, [28a] and Smith proceeded in a businesslike way to build Radnor Street on the grounds, with a public-house (the Commercial Tavern, 119, King’s Road) at the corner, which is still standing. [28b]
Admission Ticket, New Ranelagh, Pimlico, 1809
[‘Some Managerial Memories,’ by E. L. Blanchard in the Theatre Annual for 1886, reprinted in Blanchard’s Life, i., p. 20 f.; Era Almanack, 1870, p. 18; newspaper advertisements, etc.; Bell’s Life, May 3, 1840.]
The Great Exhibition of 1851 was indirectly responsible for the existence in Kensington of two short-lived institutions—a circus and a restaurant. They are rather outside our subject, but, as having something of an open-air character, may be briefly described.
In the autumn of 1850 William Batty, a famous circus proprietor, acquired some land within five minutes’ walk of the new world-wonder, the ‘Crystal Palace,’ and erected thereon an elliptical-roofed pavilion which accommodated many thousands of spectators, and had a large arena open to the sky.
The Royal Hippodrome was opened in May, 1851, with a French troupe brought over from the Hippodrome at Paris. The performances generally took place in the evening, and the lowest price of admission was sixpence. Two brass bands of a rather blatant character enlivened the proceedings. Favourite features of the entertainment were a Roman chariot race and a ‘triumphal race of the Roman Consuls,’ who were represented by the three brothers Debach, each guiding six horses. Why Roman Consuls should race is not explained, and probably did not matter. Another excitement of the evening was the Barbary Race of twelve unmounted horses, who dashed headlong to the goal with distended nostrils and eyes of fire. Other attractions were balloon ascents [30] and F. Debach’s journey on the Arienne Ball up and down a narrow inclined plank.
The Hippodrome closed with the Exhibition, and only lived for one other season, in 1852. Subsequently, and in the sixties, it was used as a riding-school. The site lay nearly opposite the broad walk of Kensington Gardens, between part of Victoria Road and Victoria Walk and the present Palace Gate. De Vere Gardens mainly occupy the site.
[Newspapers: John Bull, September, 1850, p. 582; Theatrical Journal, 1851; views of the Hippodrome in Illustrated London News for 1851.]
The founder of the restaurant, of which, it was hoped, the Great Exhibition would make the fortune, was Alexis Soyer, the former chef of the Reform Club, one of the best-known cooks—though by no means the greatest—of the classic ages of dining. Soyer was a man of inventive genius and resource, but one who (as the author of the Art of Dining dryly remarked) ‘was more likely to earn immortality by his soup-kitchen than by his soup.’ [31]
In the early part of 1851 he took Gore House, the famous home of Lady Blessington at Kensington, and fantastic skill and showy decoration soon made the old-fashioned stucco-fronted building the wonder of a London as yet unfamiliar with palatial restaurants. The newspapers and a prospectus printed on satin paper with green-tinted edges announced the advent of ‘Soyer’s Universal Symposium,’ a single ticket for which was to cost a guinea, and a family ticket—your family might consist of five—three guineas. Every room in the house was provided with a seductive name: the Blessington Temple of the Muses; the Salle des Noces de Danae; the glittering Roscaille of Eternal Snow; the Bower of Ariadne; and the Celestial Hall of Golden Lilies.
The Grand Staircase had its walls painted with a ‘Macédoine of all Nations,’ a monstrous medley of animals, politicians, and artists, the chef d’œuvre of George Augustus Sala, who for a time acted as Soyer’s assistant.
The Cabinet de Toilette à la Pompadour (Lady Blessington’s boudoir) led to the Danae saloon, which was embossed in gold and silver with showers of ‘tears’ or ‘gems.’ The Bower of Ariadne was painted with vines and Italian landscapes, and the Celestial Hall was in the Chinese taste.
The garden—a delightful adjunct to a London restaurant—contained some fine trees, walnut and mulberry trees among them, which had been the pride of the good William Wilberforce when he lived in Gore House, before the coming of the gorgeous Countess. The meadow or ‘park’ of the domain—really a grazing-meadow hired from a Kensington cow-keeper—was adroitly styled the Pré d’Orsay, and here was erected the Encampment of All Nations, which was the public dining-hall, 400 feet long, ‘with a monster tablecloth, 307 feet long, of British manufacture.’
The garden, reached by flights of steps from the back of the house, had natural beauties of its own—Lady Blessington’s great rose-tree and Wilberforce’s thick-foliaged trees, Soyer added fountains and statuary, a grotto of Ondine, a little pavilion of many-hued stalactites with a crystal roof, and a statue of Hebe dispensing ambrosial liquors through the shafts of the temple. Here also stood the Baronial Hall, a building (not unsuggestive of Rosherville) 100 feet long, with a stained-glass roof. It was hung with pictures by Soyer’s wife (Emma Jones), and with the more interesting crayon portraits by Count d’Orsay. The American Bar and the Ethiopian Serenaders were perhaps more suited to Cremorne.
The Symposium opened on May 1, 1851, and the Metropolitan Sanitary Association and other festively inclined societies began to banquet in its halls. The average attendance was 1,000 a day, and the takings amounted to £21,000; but none the less the great chef was £7,000 out of pocket, and the Symposium closed suddenly and for ever on October 14, 1851. There had, in fact, been many complaints of bad dinners and imperfect management. It is not easy—or was not in those days—to provide simultaneously sightseers’ luncheons and dinners for epicures. Even at this remote period, and without aspiring to the Bower of Ariadne, one is appalled at the idea of dining in an Encampment of All Nations at a table 307 feet long. The roasting of a bullock whole, which took place in the Pré d’Orsay on May 31, no doubt brought many shillings to the treasury, but was reminiscent of Battersea Fields or of a Frost Fair on the Thames.
In February, 1852, the place was dismantled, and the Hall and the Encampment were sold by auction. The Gore estate was purchased the same year by the Commissioners of the Exhibition, and the grounds in later years formed part of those of the Royal Horticultural Society. [33]
[Volant and Warren, Memoirs of Alexis Soyer; Davis’s Knightsbridge, p. 142; Walford, Old and New London, v., p. 118 f.; Illustrated London News, May 10 and 17, 1851 (views of the garden and the Baronial Hall); ‘Gore House,’ a water-colour by T. H. Shepherd, circa 1850, in Kensington Public Library; Timbs’s Clubs, quoting Sala’s account from Temple Bar Magazine.]
This was a race-course of some two and a half miles in circuit. In 1837 a Mr. John Whyte had turned his attention to the slopes of Notting Hill, and to the Portobello meadows west of Westbourne Grove, and prepared a course, not for golf, but for horse-racing and steeple-chasing, with the accompaniments of a training-ground and stables for about eighty horses.
The Hippodrome was opened on June 3, 1837. The public were admitted for a shilling, and those who could not enter the carriage enclosure mounted a convenient hill from which a splendid view of the racing—also of much adjacent country—could be obtained. No gambling-booths or drinking-booths were permitted, but iced champagne, or humbler beverages were to be obtained on this eminence. Lord Chesterfield and Count d’Orsay were the first stewards, and the Grand Duke of Russia, the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Brunswick, and many noble personages, condescended to visit this London Epsom, to which gay marquees and ‘splendid equipages’ lent éclat on a race-day.
These races were held for four years, and were duly recorded in Bell’s Life, with the usual details of horse, owner, and jockey. Cups of fifty and a hundred guineas were offered. The proceedings generally began at two, and on one occasion lasted till nine.
One drawback to the selectness of the Hippodrome (and the proprietor’s profits) was a path across the enclosure through which the public had a right-of-way. The footpath people seem, as a rule, to have been orderly enough, but gipsies, ‘prigs,’ and hawkers did not neglect the opportunity of mingling with the nobility and gentry. In March, 1838, an attempt was made in Parliament to block this footpath by a measure entitled the Notting Hill Enclosure Bill; but this harmless title was speedily perceived to conceal an attempt to legalize horse-racing in London. ‘Strong public feeling’ (particularly strong in Bayswater and Notting Hill) was excited, and many reasons, wise and foolish, were urged against the measure. One objection was that the young ladies in the boarding-schools of Kensington would be unable to take their usual walks abroad. On the other hand—so different are points of view—a writer in the Sporting Magazine declared that the Hippodrome was ‘a necessary of London life, of the absolute need of which we were not aware until the possession of it taught us its permanent value.’ A reading of the Bill passed the Commons early in 1838 by a majority of 26, but by September the Notting Hill Enclosure Bill had been quietly dropped. Next year the proprietor enclosed his course so as to exclude the obnoxious path, but at a considerable sacrifice of space. The last race was run in June, 1841. The proprietor had lost heavily, not so much, perhaps, through mismanagement as on account of a fatal defect in the course, which had a strong clay soil, and was so damp that it could only be used for training horses during part of the year.
The Hippodrome, Bayswater (Notting Hill), circa 1838
In 1845 a Mr. J. Connop, described as ‘the lessee of the Hippodrome,’ made his appearance in the Insolvent Debtors’ Court. He owed a trifle of £67,000, though, of course, there were the usual assets of £10,000, if only the property ‘be properly worked.’ The potent name of Ladbroke appears in these proceedings as the ground-landlord.
A good idea of the course can be gained from the accompanying plan, published in 1841. It will be found that Ladbroke Terrace and Norland Square roughly define its lower limits. Ladbroke Grove, Lansdown Road, and Clarendon Road now cut through it northwards. The ‘hill for pedestrians’ is crowned by St. John’s Church (built 1845) in Lansdown Crescent and Ladbroke Grove.
Part of the course was preserved as late as 1852 with some rough turf and a few hedges, at which adventurous lady-riders practised their horses.
[Newspaper notices; Bell’s Life, John Bull, etc.; plan and view of the Hippodrome (W.); Walford, Old and New London, v., p. 182; Loftie’s Kensington, p. 267 f.]
Plan of the Hippodrome, Notting Hill, 1841
In the twenties this was still a rural inn, with sloping, red-tiled roof and dormer windows, standing quite alone. [37a] A visitor coming from Paddington Green passed to it by a quiet field-path—the Bishop’s Walk, now Bishop’s Road—through a region of pleasant pastures and hedgerow elms. A weeping ash and the sign of the Boscobel Oak stood on a green in front of the house, and there were benches for the wayfarer and a tea-garden.
In 1837, with the advent of the Great Western Railway, all these country surroundings began to disappear, and the fields were soon cut up for roads. The house was now brought forward so as to stand nearer the road, and the tea-gardens were sold for building. [37b] The present Royal Oak public-house, standing more forward than its predecessor, is 89, Bishop’s Road and No. 1, Porchester Road.
A Welsh landlord (apparently in the early twenties) named Davies paid a £50 rent, which he could not get back by catering for his few local customers, chiefly nurserymen. At the present day the property is said to have changed hands for £24,000.
[Henry Walker, in the Bayswater Annual for 1885; also in the Paddington, Kensington, and Bayswater Chronicle for May 31, 1884, with a woodcut from a drawing of the Royal Oak in 1825. Cf. Rutton in Home Counties Magazine, ii., p. 21.]
In the thirties and forties the Bayswater district was full of small tea-gardens, one of which, the Princess Royal, [38] ‘opposite Black Lion Lane, now called Queen’s Road,’ may be mentioned. It was kept in the forties by James Bott, previously of the Archery Tavern, Bayswater. Mr. Bott had a bowling-green and tea-rooms, an elegant fish-pond well stocked with gold and silver fish, and ‘an extensive archery ground, 185 feet long, and wide enough for two sets of targets.’ His advertisements hold out two special attractions—one that any gentleman fond of archery might practise there from nine o’clock in the morning till two in the afternoon for ten shillings a year; the other that the grounds led by the nearest way to the Kensal Green Cemetery.
This was a favourite tea-garden from the latter part of the eighteenth century till the fifties. An inn, originally called the White House, had long existed near the foot of Primrose Hill, and probably first gained custom by its proximity to the hill, which (about 1797) is described [39] as a ‘very fashionable’ Sunday resort of the modern citizens, who usually ‘lead their children there to eat their cakes and partake of a little country air’—a truly idyllic performance. Chalk Farm had also its more martial customers, for towards the close of the eighteenth century the St. Pancras Volunteers used to march thither to fire at a target at the foot of the hill for a silver cup. The duels, moreover, for which a field adjoining the inn was notorious began at least as early as 1790, and lasted till the twenties. As they are hardly to be reckoned among the amusements of the place, I need not record their painful details. The famous interrupted duel of Tom Moore and Francis Jeffrey—when ‘Bow Street myrmidons stood laughing by’—occurred in 1806. Byron treats it as ludicrous, but the meeting was not without its pathos. ‘What a beautiful morning it is!’ said Jeffrey, on seeing his opponent. ‘Yes,’ answered Moore; ‘a morning made for better purposes.’ To which Jeffrey’s only response was ‘a sort of assenting sigh.’ Another famous duel took place on February 16, 1821, by moonlight, between John Scott, the editor of the London Magazine, and Mr. Christie. Scott was badly wounded, and was carried on a shutter to the tavern, where he died in a fortnight. This was practically the last of the Chalk Farm duels, [40a] and, curiously enough, it is the London Magazine [40b] that about a year later furnishes a long and most philosophical account of the tea-drinking at this very garden. What the writer notices is the seriousness of the ordinary frequenter of the garden, who drinks and smokes with no approach to the least flexibility of limb or feature. There are three plain citizens sitting stolidly in one alcove without uttering a word. In another box, over a glass of punch, are a prim tradesman and his wife and a sickly-looking little boy, who wants to play with the other children on the lawn, but who is not allowed to ‘wenture upon the nasty vet grass.’ The same observer also notes the occasionally successful efforts of the Cockney sportsmen to shoot wretched sparrows let out of a box at twenty yards’ distance.
In the thirties the aspect was more cheerful, with pony-races, rifle-shooting, [40c] and the contests of the Cumberland and Westmorland wrestlers for silver tankards and snuffboxes.
The tavern (the successor of an older building) was pulled down in 1853, and the present public-house—No. 89, Regent’s Park Road—was built. The open fields which formerly led from this site to the slopes of Primrose Hill are now covered by houses at the back and front of the present building, and the row of tall houses in Primrose Hill Road would effectively shut out the view, even if the tavern had still preserved its garden. A water-colour drawing of about 1830 shows Chalk Farm without any building intervening between itself and its grassy mount. One side of the tavern is provided with many windows, and a veranda looks towards the hill, and close by is the flower-garden. At the back of the house are fields and a road leading to the lower slopes.
[Authorities in Palmer’s St. Pancras, p. 287; Picture of London, 1802–1846; Miller’s St. Pancras, p. 201; Walford, Old and New London, v. 289 f.; newspapers.
Views: Water-colour, circa 1830, showing Primrose Hill and the tavern (W.); drawing by Matthews, 1834, Crace Cat., p. 671, No. 89; drawing by T. H. Shepherd, 1853, ibid., p. 569; Partington’s Views of London, ii. 181; a view in Dugdale’s England and Wales, and water-colour drawings from this.]
This tavern on the New River, between Highbury and Hornsey Wood House, was well known to Cockney visitors from early in the nineteenth century till its demolition about 1867. [42]
It was famous for its tea and hot rolls, but still more for its excellent pies made of eels, which were popularly supposed to be natives of Hugh Myddelton’s stream, though they came in reality from the coast of Holland. Unambitious anglers of the Sadler’s Wells type frequented the river near here, and on popular holidays in the twenties and thirties ‘the lower order of citizens’ (as an Islington historian politely calls them) had breakfast at the Eel-Pie House on their way to gather ‘palms’ in Hornsey Wood or more distant regions. The house had a pleasant garden till its latest days, but little in the way of gala nights or ballooning.
In the strenuous era of prize-fighting even this quiet place was not without its excitements. Thus, we read that on one day in January, 1826, a wrestling-match was announced between Ned Savage and another. Savage’s opponent (Mr. Pigg) was not forthcoming, and the ‘fancy coves,’ not to be disappointed, retired to a large room in the Sluice House, and soon formed a temporary ring with the forms and tables. A dog-fight and a rat-killing match were then exhibited, and, something ‘of a more manly character’ being called for, a purse was collected, and Bill Webb of Newport Market and (an unnamed) Jack Tar were soon engaged. ‘About twenty rounds were fought; both men received heavy punishment, and both showed fair game qualities.’ The sailor’s courage was particularly admired, but he, alas! had to strike his colours, and Bill Webb ‘pocketed the blunt.’
[Picture of London, 1802, and later dates; Cromwell’s Islington. The Morning Chronicle, October 17, 1804, announces the sale of the ‘old Eel-Pie House’ (already evidently well known), together with ‘20 acres of rich meadow land’ adjoining.
There are several views showing in the foreground the wooden Sluice House standing over the river, and close behind it the Eel-Pie (or Sluice) House Tavern; in the distance, Hornsey Wood House (on the site of the present Finsbury Park). There is a drawing by Mr. H. Fancourt of the Eel-Pie House Gardens, made in 1867, and kindly presented to the writer.]
This garden in the present Highgate Road had a brief existence circa 1858–1865, under the management of Edward Weston, the proprietor of Weston’s (afterwards the Royal) Music Hall in Holborn. A good deal was crowded into a small space, for besides the choice flowers, shrubs, and fruit-trees, there was a conservatory, a cascade, a racquet-court, a small dancing-platform and orchestra, and a panorama 1,600 feet long, representing ‘the sea-girt island of Caprera, the home of the Italian Liberator’ (Garibaldi). This encircled the garden, and was lit at night by variegated gas-jets, stated—but the garden illuminator always exaggerates—to be 100,000 in number. The admission was usually only sixpence.
Some of the entertainers of the Polytechnic Institution were engaged to combine instruction with amusement, and Mr. A. Sylvester exhibited there his patent optical illusion called—though hardly by Mr. Weston’s patrons—the Kalospinthechromokrene. [44a]
There were complaints about the way in which this miniature Cremorne was conducted, and the Sunday opening was particularly objected to by its respectable neighbours. It appears to be the unnamed ‘Retreat’ which James Greenwood in one of his books describes in scathing terms. [44b] Thus, when the Midland Railway Company appeared on the scene, there were many who welcomed its purchase of Mr. Weston’s pleasure-garden. In October, 1866, the trees, orchestra, gas-fittings, tea-cups, and everything belonging to the place, were sold off by auction.
The Retreat was in Fitzroy Place, the entrance being between the present houses numbered 93 and 97, Highgate Road.
[Article in St. Pancras Guardian for January 3, 1902, by ‘P.’ (Mr. R. B. Prosser); newspaper advertisements; Walford, Old and New London, v., p. 320; Greenwood’s Wilds of London.]
A farthing token of the seventeenth century, issued ‘at the Maremaid Taverne in Hackeny,’ [46a] is a humble relic of the early days of this place, which stood on the west side of the High Street.
The assembly-room, connected with the tavern by a covered way, and the extensive grounds, were much frequented during the last century till the forties. The grounds consisted of an upper and lower bowling-green—one of them sometimes used for archery—and an umbrageous ‘dark walk’ encompassing the kitchen-garden, which was on the west side of the brook which divided the grounds.
Ballooning was for many years a feature of the place, especially in the thirties. [46b] In September, 1837, Mrs. Graham tried an experiment with two parachutes: one, a model of Garnerin’s, was found to oscillate greatly when released from the balloon; the other, Cocking’s parachute, descended slowly and steadily. A month earlier (August 9, 1837) Mrs. Graham had delighted the frequenters of the Mermaid Tea-Gardens by an ascent in the ‘Royal Victoria,’ accompanied by Mrs. W. H. Adams and Miss Dean. A lithograph of the time shows these ladies, ‘the only three female aeronauts that ever ascended alone,’ in their best dresses, cheerfully waving flags to the people below.
An ascent made by Sadler in his ‘G. P. W.’ (George, Prince of Wales) balloon on August 12, 1811, caused great local excitement. Crowds poured in from Greenwich, Deptford, and Woolwich, and the road became so blocked that even ‘families of distinction could not approach within a mile of the tavern.’ Some fortunate parishioners ascended the tower of the church, and a jolly tar got astride of the Mermaid sign. In front of the house an abnormal assemblage of fat men and still fatter women jostled and pushed and tumbled one over another in a way that delighted the coarse caricaturists of the period. Sadler’s companion was a naval officer, Lieutenant (or Captain) Paget, who paid a hundred guineas for his seat in the car. As the balloon rose, Mr. Paget was ‘for some minutes deprived of the power of expression and incapable of communicating his sensations’ to his fellow-traveller, but he did all that was necessary by keeping quiet and waving a flag to the spectators. An hour and a quarter passed, and a descent was then made near Tilbury Fort, and the travellers, who had started at a quarter to three, returned to Hackney at a few minutes after nine. [47]
The old tavern was pulled down at the end of the thirties, and several houses were built on its site. The assembly-room and gardens continued in existence for many years later, but are now also built over.
[Picture of London, 1802–1846; newspapers; Robinson’s Hackney (1842), i., p. 149 f.
There are several contemporary prints of Sadler’s ascent of August 12, 1811, one a coloured caricature published by Thomas Tegg, ‘Prime Bang-up at Hackney; or, A Peep at the Balloon.’ Rowlandson’s ‘Hackney Assembly, 1812 (1802)’ caricatures the dancing.]
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 windmills—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.
John Cavanagh, the fives player (died 1819), whose exploits have been commemorated by William Hazlitt, sometimes found his way to the Rosemary Branch, though most of his matches took place in the neighbourhood at Copenhagen House. By trade he was a house-painter, and one day, putting on his best clothes, he strolled up to the gardens for an afternoon holiday. A stranger proposed to Cavanagh a match at fives for half a crown and a bottle of cider. The match began—7, 8, 10, 13, 14 all. Each game was hotly contested, but Cavanagh somehow just managed to win. ‘I never played better in my life,’ said the stranger, ‘and yet I can’t win a game. There, try that! That is a stroke that Cavanagh could not take.’ Still the play went on, and in the twelfth game the stranger was 13 to his opponent’s 4. He seemed, in fact, to be winning, when a new-comer among the bystanders exclaimed: ‘What! are you there, Cavanagh?’ The amateur fives player let the ball drop from his hand, and refused to play another stroke, for all this time he had only ‘been breaking his heart to beat Cavanagh.’ [49]
The Tea-Gardens, Rosemary Branch, 1846
Early in the thirties, the proprietor, a Mr. McPherson, began to provide ‘gala nights’ for the inhabitants of the district, and advertised his ‘Branch’ as the Islington Vauxhall. In 1835 he is said to have spent £4,000 on the place, but for some mysterious reason chose this moment for retiring from business. In October, 1836, the gardens were offered for sale—three acres only, but provided with ‘elevated terrace-walks’ screened by trees, and with ground for rackets and skittles. The place was taken by a new proprietor, who continued the fireworks and illuminations, and introduced (1837) Mrs. Graham and her balloon, in which she ascended with the gallant Colonel of the Honourable Lumber Troop.
Admission Ticket, Rosemary Branch, 1853
A view of about the middle of the forties depicts the gardens as entirely surrounded by alcoves and trees, with two rope ascents and a pony race [50] going on in the arena simultaneously, like Barnum’s Circus. An admiring youth, a lady in an ample shawl and hat, and two gentlemen posed in the manner of tailors’ models, occupy the foreground, while a crowd of onlookers stand in front of the circle of boxes. Festoons of coloured lamps, a minute balloon, a small theatre, and an orchestra, are also symbolic of the attractions of the Islington Vauxhall.
Early in the fifties the spirited proprietor (William Barton) was advertising his ball-room and monster platform, and introduced Moffatt’s Equestrian Troupe and the Brothers Elliot, two clever acrobats from Batty’s Hippodrome. [51] The Chinese Exhibition, transplanted from Hyde Park, was expounded by a native interpreter, ‘whose pleasing description of the manners and customs of these Eastern people was in itself highly instructive and amusing.’ John Hampton, a noted balloonist of the time, was also engaged for many ascents.
On July 27, 1853, the timber circus caught fire, and an ill-fated troupe of trained dogs and seven horses perished. I do not suggest that these seven horses constituted the whole of the garden stud, but after this time we happen to hear little of the Rosemary Branch as an open-air resort. It was always a place for visitors of humble rank, the admission being sixpence or a shilling. A ticket of 1853 notifies that persons not ‘suitably attired’ will be excluded. It was, moreover, announced that the M.C.’s (Messrs. Franconi and Hughes) ‘keep the strictest order,’ and a policeman or two hovered in the background. All, therefore, should have gone well.
The successor of the Rosemary Branch is a public-house, the Rosemary Branch and Shepperton Distillery, No. 2, Shepperton Road, N., lying between Rosemary Street and Brunswick Place. Houses now occupy the space behind the building. In the background the tall chimney of the white-lead works (Messrs. Campion, Druce, No. 35, Southgate Road) has taken the place of the windmills.
[Tomlins’ Islington, p. 151; Cromwell’s Islington; Era Almanack, 1871, p. 6; Theatrical Journal for 1852; newspaper advertisements, and bills.
Views: Crace Catalogue, p. 599, No. 135 (water-colour by Storer); ibid., p. 599, No. 136, a woodcut showing the gardens with pony-racing, etc., 1846; an engraving (1812) of the white-lead mills taken from the garden of the Rosemary Branch shows the boating on the pond.]
This was a picturesque old inn, built, it is said in 1614, standing by the water-side opposite the New River Head and Sadler’s Wells. It is shown in Hogarth’s ‘Evening’ (1738)—a gable-ended, vine-clad house with the portrait of the great Sir Hugh as its pendent sign. It will be remembered that this picture represents a portly dame, accompanied by an evidently ill-used husband and two crying children, passing by the tavern, wherein a merry drinking-party is seen through the open window. Perhaps the mantling vine is not a natural feature of the place, but bitter Hogarthian symbolism—‘Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine upon the walls of thy house.’ On the other hand, Clerkenwell has still its Vine Yard Walk, and twenty years ago in one or two of the gardens in a square near Sadler’s Wells, there might be found a vine which produced a passable grape.
The banks of the New River at this time—and, indeed, till near the middle of the nineteenth century—were lined with tall poplars and graceful willows, and were frequented by anglers, young and old. Hood, in his Walton Redivivus (1826), describes Piscator fishing near the Myddelton’s Head without either basket or can, sitting there (as Lamb expresses it) like Hope, day after day, ‘speculating on traditionary gudgeons.’ The covering in of the New River in 1861–1862 ended the Sadler’s Wells angling for ever.
The house was the favourite haunt of the Sadler’s Wells company, and old Rosoman, the proprietor of the theatre; Maddox, the wonderful man who balanced a straw while dancing on the wire; Harlequin Bologna, Dibdin, and Jo. Grimaldi, smoked many a pipe in its long room or in an arbour in the garden. In the fifties, a parlour denominated the ‘Crib’ was set apart for certain choice spirits, who, according to Mr. E. L. Blanchard, were so uncommonly select that they demanded ‘an introduction and a fee’ from all newcomers.
The tavern, having fallen into decay, was replaced in 1831 by a plain, ugly building, surmounted by a bust of Myddelton. The ‘grounds,’ chiefly from the twenties to the fifties, formed a miniature tea-garden with ‘boxes,’ shrubs, and flowers. They were improved in 1852 by Deacon, who succeeded Edward Wells as proprietor. The house, which stood at the west end of Myddelton Place, close to Thomas Street and opposite Arlington Street, was swept away for the formation of Rosebery Avenue.
[Pinks’s Clerkenwell, pp. 406–408; Hone’s Every Day Book, 1826, p. 344; Partington’s Views of London, ii., p. 186 (showing the later tavern); Blanchard’s Life, i., p. 83 f.; Theatrical Journal, 1852, p. 237 (cf. p. 376); a drawing of the tavern by C. H. Matthews, 1849, in Crace Catalogue, No. 93, p. 594.]
The formation of the pleasure-garden that we know as Earl’s Court out of the coal-yards of the North End Road has a parallel in the origin of some ephemeral gardens which arose at Battle Bridge (King’s Cross) on or near the site of mountainous heaps of dust and ashes. The place was recalled by the ‘Literary Dustman’ when he sang:
‘My dawning genus fust did peep
Near Battle Bridge, ’tis plain, sirs;
You recollect the cinder-heap
Vot stood in Gray’s Inn Lane, sirs.’
Now, when these historic dust-heaps were carted off to Russia—the story is a true one—and utilized in rebuilding the walls of Moscow, they left a void which even the London builder could not immediately fill. In the twenties there was still a large vacant space near the corner of Gray’s Inn Lane, bounded by (the present) Liverpool, Manchester, and Argyle Streets, and reaching nearly to the Euston Road. This space became the property of a company which, in 1829, invited the public by prospectus to subscribe about £20,000 for its development. [54] The worthy historian of Clerkenwell describes this company as the ‘Pandemomium’ (sic), but as a matter of fact it called itself the Panarmonion, and had nothing demoniac in its objects, but rather the laudable purpose of converting a dusty wilderness into a garden and temple of the Muses. The promoter was a certain Signor Gesualdo Lanza, who presided over a school for acting and singing in the neighbourhood. Lanza proposed to establish—and displayed in lithographic plans—a great ‘Panarmonion Institution,’ consisting of a theatre, a concert-hall, a ‘refectory,’ a reading-room, and even an hotel. These buildings were to rise in a pleasaunce encircled by trees and alcoves, and adorned with a great fountain and cascade.
Suspension Railway, Panarmonion Gardens. From an engraving, circa 1830
In March, 1830, the place was opened, but the dreams of the prospectus were never realized. A shilling was charged for admission to the gardens, but it does not appear that they were ever properly laid out, and the only attraction was a tour of the grounds in a peculiar ‘Suspension Railway,’ the invention of Mr. H. Thorrington. This railway consisted of a boat-shaped car suspended from a substantial level bar, along which it travelled on small wheels set in motion by a wheel in the car worked by hand. [55a] For the more adventurous visitors, hobby-horses (rudimentary ‘cycles’) were likewise suspended from the bar, and worked in the same way as the boat. The theatre, of which a noble elevation by ‘Stephen Geary, architect,’ [55b] had been shown in the prospectus, turned out to be a small and narrow building, originally erected for an auction-room, which Lanza opened in March, 1830, with an amateurish performance of the opera of Artaxerxes. The enterprise was a failure from the first; the lease of the theatre was offered for sale in August, [56] and we hear no more of the gardens.
In May, 1832, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, of the Adelphi, and W. H. Williams, the comic actor and singer, tried their hands, and reopened the Panarmonion theatre as the ‘Royal Clarence,’ decorating it in the style of a Chinese pavilion. It is claimed that many well-known actors learnt their art at this bijou theatre. What is certain is that it often changed its name—being called, for instance, the Cabinet, and, in its latest days, the King’s Cross Theatre—and that both actors and audiences steadily deteriorated. During the greater part of its existence its boards were trodden by stage-struck amateurs; at one time it was used as a tobacco manufactory; and in the eighties or nineties its entrance-front might be seen plastered with bills announcing a mission-service or a temperance meeting. At last, early in 1897, Messrs. Reggiori, the proprietors of the neighbouring restaurant (Nos. 1 and 3, Euston Road) took the little theatre bodily into their premises, of which it now forms an additional dining-saloon. The old entrance-front (in Liverpool Street) has been smartened up with stucco and stained-glass windows.
It seems likely that the vanished gardens gave a hint for the laying out of Argyle Square, which covers a considerable portion of their site.
[Prospectuses and lithographs of the Panarmonion; newspapers of 1829 and 1830; Clinch’s Marylebone, etc., p. 182 f.; Pinks’s Clerkenwell; Baker’s London Stage, ii., p. 260; Era Almanack, 1868, advt., p. vii; 1869, p. 34. The annals of the theatre may also be sought in the pages of the Theatrical Journal.]
The Eagle tavern and Grecian theatre which stood till lately at the corner of the dreary City Road and Shepherdess Walk were developed out of a quiet eighteenth-century pleasure-garden known as the Shepherd and Shepherdess, which had its arbours, skittle-ground, and small assembly-room. [57a] About 1822 a rather remarkable man, named Thomas Rouse (born in 1784), came into possession of the premises. [57b] He is said to have begun life as a bricklayer; at any rate, he had a turn for building, and in later days indulged himself in saloons, pavilions, and Cockney gardening. He rebuilt the tavern, or, at any rate, renamed it the Eagle, and from 1824 onwards the Eagle lawn was the scene of some of Green’s balloon ascents, and of annual tournaments of the Devon and Cornish wrestlers and single-stick players. One of the earliest balloon ascents, on May 25, 1824, gave a melancholy advertisement to the place. A balloonist named Thomas Harris ascended from the grounds, accompanied by a young lady named Sophia Stocks, who was described by the journalists as ‘an intrepid girl’ who entered the balloon ‘with but slight appearance of fear.’ The balloon took the direction of Croydon, but by its fall to the earth in Beddington Park, Harris was killed and his companion severely injured. [58a]
The coronation of William IV. in 1831 did not pass without influence on the Eagle, for in October the proprietor bought up the fittings of the Abbey entrance and robing-rooms and erected them as an entrance to his gardens, advertising them not only as the identical fittings, but as re-erected by ‘the identical mechanics.’ In this year, also, the famous Grecian Saloon came into existence. It was furnished with an organ and ‘a superb self-acting piano’; also with a superb gas chandelier, and with classic paintings by Philip Phillips, a pupil of Clarkson Stanfield and ‘scene-painter to the Adelphi and Haymarket.’ [58b]
The Eagle reopened in the spring of 1832 with many of the attractions that long continued to characterize it. In the garden was an orchestra of Oriental type, variously described as Moorish or Chinese, and the Pandean Band from Vauxhall Gardens was engaged to perform. Dancing took place, generally once a week, in the ‘Grecian tent’ or in the assembly-room, and the gardens were adorned with Chinese lanterns, cosmoramas, fountains, and dripping rocks. In the Saloon there were concerts and ‘vaudevilles’ every evening, with sacred music (in Lent) from Handel and Mozart. The admission was no more than a shilling or sixpence, and it is pleasing to find that the ‘junior branches of families’ were admitted at threepence a head. One has a tender feeling for these junior branches, some of whom must have sat there with their fathers and mothers rather wearily from 7.30 to near 11, enlivened at times by the conjurer and the lady on the elastic cord (Miss Hengler or Miss Clarke) but caring little for the excellent glees and the vocal efforts of Miss Fraser James—bright star though she was of the London tavern concerts [59a]—or for those of Miss Smith, ‘the little Pickle’ of Drury Lane, of whom the critics remarked that it was miraculous that so young a person should be able to sing so high and so low, and excel in such songs as the ‘Deep, Deep Sea’ and ‘The Wolf,’ which she was understood to sing in private. How many people at this period visited the Eagle, or, indeed, any other place of open-air amusement, it is hard to determine; but the newspapers speak of 5,000 or 6,000 persons being present on one night in May, while others give the more modest total of 1,000 or 1,300 at sixpence each. The frequenters of the Eagle were people of humble rank, and at this time we hear of no distinguished visitors, except, perhaps, Paganini, who, going there with his friends to amuse himself one August night in 1832, was considerably mobbed, the remarks on his appearance being doubtless gems of Cockney sarcasm.
A Tavern-Concert Singer, Miss Frazer (or Fraser) James, circa 1838
A graphic sketch by ‘Boz’ brings back to us the evening when Mr. Samuel Wilkins, the journeyman carpenter of small dimensions, accompanied his sweetheart, Miss Jemima Evans, to the Eagle. On their way from a distant suburb, they stopped at the Crown[59b] in Pentonville, to taste some excellent shrub in the little garden thereto attached, and finally arrived in the City Road. The Eagle garden was gravelled and planted, the refreshment-boxes were painted, and variegated lamps shed their light on the heads of the company. A Moorish band and military band were playing in the grounds; but the people were making for the concert-room, a place with an orchestra, ‘all paint, gilding, and plate glass.’ Here the audience were seated on elevated benches round the room, and ‘everybody’—and this is a touch of the later Dickens—‘was eating and drinking as comfortably as possible.’ Mr. Wilkins ordered rum-and-water with a lemon for himself and ‘sherry-wine’ for the lady, with some sweet caraway-seed biscuits. There was an overture on the organ and comic songs (let us add by the famous singers Henry Howell and Robert Glindon [60]), accompanied by the organ.
This must have been in 1835 or 1836, and Dickens would have been pleased at the all-embracing sympathies of the proprietor of the Eagle, who, a little later, organized so many charitable benefits. Thus, there was a benefit for the Blind Hebrew Brethren in the East, and a ball ‘for our friends of the Hebrew nation.’ On another night, a benefit ‘to relieve decayed Druids and their wives and orphans,’ and yet another night ‘for clothing the children of the needy.’
The coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838, like the previous coronation, gave a hint for new developments. The Eagle now, and for some years, took to itself the sub-title of the Coronation Pleasure-Grounds, and this year, or at the close of 1837, the place assumed nearly the form that it retained till its closing years. A covered promenade ran round the gardens; the great tavern at the corner of the City Road was erected, and a ball-room was completed. The Saloon was remodelled, with a pit—part of it railed off for smokers—and tiers of boxes. A new organ was set up by Parsons of Bloomsbury, and the old organ and self-acting piano were advertised for sale. The architectural genius of Rouse was doubtless at the bottom of these changes, but he gave the credit to the professionals, and announced that the whole was ‘planned by P. Punnett, Esq., and surveyed by R. Warton.’
The new Saloon was opened on January 1, 1838—for the Eagle was a winter as well as a summer resort [61a]—with a concert and an appropriate address by Moncrieff the dramatist. A programme of this year includes an overture by Weber, an air from Rossini, ‘Tell me where is Fancy bred,’ ‘All’s Well’ (duet), and ‘It’s all very well, Mr. Ferguson,’ one of several comic songs.
We approach the forties, when Rouse, like Phelps with Shakespeare at Sadler’s Wells, had the audacity to present a whole series of operas in the City Road. If these representations were not brilliant, they were praiseworthy efforts, and a revelation to East Central London. Rouse had a good band and chorus; an excellent tenor in Frazer from Covent Garden Theatre; C. Horn, the composer of ‘Cherry Ripe,’ Russell Grover, and various passable prima donnas. [61b] Among the operas announced in the bills of the forties we find the Barber of Seville, the Crown Diamonds, Don Giovanni, La Gazza Ladra, and Sonnambula. In these attempts to improve the musical taste of the neighbourhood, Rouse is reported to have lost £2,000 yearly, but as the tavern brought him in about £5,000 a year he could well afford the experiment.
At the Christmas of 1844, pantomime, which was to make the fame of the later Grecian theatre, found its place in the programme, and Richard Flexmore, a really agile, inventive, and humorous clown, made his appearance. A more remarkable actor, who joined the Grecian company about this time, and remained with it for five years, was Frederick Robson, who was given parts in the farces and vaudevilles. Robson’s great reputation dates from his performances at the Olympic from 1853 onwards, but at the Grecian he had already given an unmistakable taste of his quality. His famous song ‘Villikins and his Dinah’ was first heard at the Eagle. A man of strange physique, with a small body and a big head, he could do what he would with his audience—convulsing them with laughter by some outrageous drollery; thrilling them with ‘an electrical burst of passion or pathos, or holding them midway between terror and laughter as he performed some weirdly grotesque dance.’ [62a] In burlesque and extravaganza he displayed such passionate intensity that he seemed to give promise of a second Kean—yet a Kean he never became. A playgoer who saw him often has acutely suggested that ‘the very opportunity of exaggeration afforded by burlesque elicited the display of a quasi-tragic power which would have ceased if the condition of exaggeration were withdrawn.’ [62b]
March 1, 1851, was memorable at the Eagle as the last night of the proprietorship of old Thomas Rouse. He died at Boulogne a year later (September 26, 1852). During his twenty-seven years of management he had done much to deserve the title of ‘Bravo’ Rouse, with which his audiences were wont to hail him. For one thing, he was never bored by his own entertainments, but used to sit, night after night, in a box or other conspicuous place—a symbol of order, armed with a big stick, which one fancies he would have used if necessary.
His successor was Benjamin Oliver Conquest [63] (born 1805) a comic actor of ability, endowed with plenty of animal spirits, which had carried him from the part of a coach-builder or (according to others) of a bootmaker in real life to the stage part of a witch in Macbeth, and finally supported him through a twenty-eight weeks’ repetition at the Pavilion Theatre of a song, ‘Billy Barlow,’ which made a sensation something like ‘Jim Crow.’
He inaugurated the first night of his management at the Eagle, March 31, 1851, by the production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with an opening address by E. L. Blanchard. On another night Blanchard’s burlesque, called Nobody in Town was produced with a part for Sam Cowell (1820–1866), the comic singer, famous for his clear articulation and finished style. The great feature of Conquest’s management was the production of ballets, only surpassed by those of Her Majesty’s Theatre. It happened that Mrs. Conquest, his wife, was a fine dancer and a singularly skilful teacher, who trained a long succession of pupils, including the graceful Kate Vaughan. The Miss Conquests, moreover, his daughters Amelia, Laura, and Isabella, formed in themselves a small troupe of capable dancers. In the gardens, too, the public dancing became more prominent, and a ‘monster platform’ was erected for the accommodation of 500 people. The masked ball was also occasionally tried, an experiment, as Vauxhall had shown, likely to be fraught with rowdyism, though the Eagle sternly refused admittance to clowns, harlequins, and pantaloons. One sensation of Conquest’s management was the ascent, in 1852, of Coxwell’s balloon, with the acrobats H. and E. Buislay suspended on a double trapeze from its car.
In the last years of the fifties, pantomime and drama, romantic and sensational, figure largely in the bills. From 1857 George Conquest, the proprietor’s son, began to take a prominent part as actor and stage-manager, and finally made the Grecian pantomime one of the features of the minor stage. In conjunction with H. Spry, the younger Conquest wrote or produced more than twenty-one pantomimes at this theatre, and was always to the fore in the performance itself. Unsurpassed in daring feats of the trap and trapeze kind, he was no less remarkable for his wonderful make-up and changes. In the Wood Demon (1873–1874), for instance, he presented the title-rôle as a tree, appearing next as a dwarf, an animated pear, and finally as an octopus. He became sole proprietor on his father’s death (July 5, 1872), and built a new Grecian theatre, [64a] opened in October, 1877, with Harry Nicholls; George Conquest, junior, and Miss M. A. Victor in the company.
In 1879 Conquest sold the Eagle property to Mr. T. G. Clark, taking his farewell benefit on March 17. He migrated to the Surrey Theatre, where, as lessee, he continued the traditions of the Grecian pantomimes. He died on May 14, 1901.
Mr. Clark, the new proprietor, [64b] had made money in the marine-store business, and would have been better qualified to command the Channel Fleet than to manage the Eagle. He had, it is true, been for a short time the lessee of the Adelphi, but he had no eye for theatrical business, and his new venture, chiefly in the regions of melodrama, was once more disastrous to his pocket. Perhaps the failure was not entirely his own fault. Tastes were changing, and the Eagle garden, with its public dancing—now that Cremorne had passed away—seemed something like a scandal or an anachronism. In the time of the Conquests there had been complaints of the company that frequented the Eagle. Such charges are too often exaggerated, because they are often made by well-meaning people who really know nothing at first hand of popular amusements, and who go to the garden or the music-hall to collect evidence, as it were, for the prosecution. At the same time, there is generally something in complaints of the kind, nor are managers quite the immaculate beings that their counsel represent them to be when licences come on for renewal in October. It is right to say that George Conquest seems to have done his best to keep out notoriously bad characters, and that he warned mere boys and girls off his monster platform and his concert-hall.
Mr. Clark’s difficulties and the belief, well founded or not, that the Eagle was an undesirable public influence formed the opportunity of ‘General’ Booth and the Salvation Army. The Army wanted a barracks and a headquarters for their social and religious work. That they should have obtained these—and largely by public subscription—few will complain. But it is not quite clear that it was imperative to make an onslaught on the Eagle, being, as it was, a centre of amusement in the colourless life of the district. A new theatre might well have arisen under a new Conquest, even if the garden and the dancing had to go.
In June, 1882, the Eagle was purchased by the Army. In August the stage appliances were sold off, and the Army entered the citadel in triumph. In September the public were admitted. A great tent for religious services took the place of the monster platform—the pernicious spot on which, as Mr. Booth’s friends declared, so many ‘had danced their way to destruction.’ Curiously enough, though one object of the movement was to annihilate the Eagle tavern, that stronghold of beer-drinking and spirit-drinking, Mr. Booth discovered that the law compelled him to keep up the drinking licence, and beer is sold in the Eagle public-house at this very moment. Unfortunately, also, for its funds, the Army got involved in litigation about alterations and repairs—a costly business which was carried up to the House of Lords.
At last the ancient domain of the Shepherd and Shepherdess was deserted even by the Salvation Army. In September, 1899, the newspapers announced that the Eagle premises were in the hands of the house-breakers. A few old frequenters hastened to revisit the place, and some others, no doubt, who had only heard of the Eagle as a somewhat low resort associated with that enigmatic song of their childhood, ‘Pop goes the Weasel,’ must have been surprised to find the buildings—rather handsome in their way—still in existence. The Eagle garden presented itself to such visitors as a large paved square, which, judging from its two surviving trees, could never have been truthfully described as thickly wooded. Conspicuous features were the large rotunda opposite the entrance, with its pit, now floored over, and the ‘new’ theatre (of 1877), adjoining Shepherdess Walk, practically unaltered, though dingy and dirt-begrimed beyond description.
The Oriental orchestra in the garden still showed traces of its gaudy colouring, and a melancholy brick wall displayed remnants of primitive grotto-work. One could trace near the centre of the grounds the concrete-covered circle where many a light-hearted couple had danced before the days of the Conquests. [66] The rows of alcoves, with the balcony for promenaders above them, were still there, though no longer brightly painted, but mostly boarded up and filled with headless Venuses and Cupids—pagan deities of the gardens who nourished circa A.D. 1838–1882.
Soon after this, the huge Eagle tavern, surmounted by its proud stone bird, was demolished, and a smaller public-house of neat red brick (opened August, 1900) now covers part of its site. On the site of the theatre and its entrance, which faced Shepherdess Walk, and was adorned with two more stone eagles, we have now a police-station. Though all the old buildings have been destroyed, much of the garden space is still unoccupied, and in due season a solitary tree puts forth its leaves.
[Newspaper notices, bills, and photographs taken at the time of the demolition of the Eagle (W.); Blanchard’s Life, by Clement Scott and Cecil Howard; Hollingshead’s Footlights and My Lifetime; Ritchie’s Night Side of London; Baker’s London Stage.] [67]