The London pleasure gardens of the eighteenth century / by Warwick Wroth ; assisted by Arthur Edgar Wroth.
- Warwick William Wroth
- Date:
- 1896
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The London pleasure gardens of the eighteenth century / by Warwick Wroth ; assisted by Arthur Edgar Wroth. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![Beginning in what are now the densely populated districts of Clerkenwell and central London, he would find himself in the open fields and in a region abound- ing in mineral springs. Islington Spa (1684—1840) and its opposite neighbour Sadler’s Wells (from 1683) had chalybeate springs that claimed to rival the water (“ so mightily cry’d up”) of Tunbridge Wells in Kent, and if the water itself was unpalatable, the adjoining pleasure gardens and Long Rooms, with their gay com- pany, tended to make the drinking of medicinal water both pleasant and seductive. At no great distance from Sadler’s Wells were the Wells of Bagnigge (from 1759), the London Spa (from 1685), St. Chad’s Well, and Pancras Wells (from circ. 1697) ; and a walk to Old Street would be rewarded by a plunge in the clear waters of the Peerless Pool, or by a basket of carp and tench caught in the fish pond close by. Behind the Foundling Hospital there might be found a bowling green; at the Mulberry Garden (Clerken- well) a skittle-ground and an evening concert; in Rosoman Street, a wonderful grotto and an enchanted fountain^ and (at the New Wells, circ. 1737—1750), a complete “variety” entertainment. Sunday afternoon, if you did not mind the society of prentices and milliners, might be spent in Spa Fields at the Pantheon tea-house and garden (1770—1776), or at \ the Adam and Eve Gardens at Tottenham Court. Farther west lay the Marylebone Bowling Green and ) Garden, developed in 1738 into the well-known Mary- 1 lebone Gardens, and in this neighbourhood were several :] humbler places of entertainment, the Jew’s Harp House, [ The Queen’s Head and Artichoke, and The Yorkshire c Stingo. Islington and North London were full of rural r resorts, the Sunday haunts of the London “ cit ” and f his family. In Penton Street was the renowned White ^ The English Grotto. B 2](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2897721x_0031.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
