bridge which crosses it there), constructed by the Metropolitan Board of Works and opened in 1864. It cost £555,922. It is 70 feet wide and 3450 feet long, and runs from the Borough High Street, a little south of the Borough Market, in an easy curve to the Blackfriars Road, opposite Stamford Street, and is lined for the most part with large and substantial warehouses and offices, some of them of considerable architectural pretension. Such are the Hop Exchange (opened 1867), the Southwark and the Alliance Chambers, etc. The east end is much occupied by hop merchants and factors; farther west are wholesale stationers, druggists, oil-merchants, engineers, and other large business establishments.

Spa Fields, CLERKENWELL, SO called from the London Spa, a mineral spring of some celebrity in the 17th and first half of the 18th century. The Spa House stood at the angle where Exmouth and Rosoman Streets meet. [See London Spa.] The fields were also known as Ducking Pond Fields, Clerkenwell Fields, and Pipe Fields. They were an open waste, notorious for bull-baiting, duck-hunting, pugilism, wrestling and other rough sports, and a favourite Sunday promenade for Londoners. They began to be built over in 1817, and were in a few years covered thickly with houses.

March 27 (Lord's Day), 1664.-It being church-time walked to St. James's, to try if I could see the belle Butler, but could not; only saw her sister, who indeed is pretty, with a fine Roman nose. Thence walked through the Ducking Pond Fields; but they are so altered since my father used to carry us to Islington, to the old man at the King's Head, to eat cakes and ale (his name was Pitts), that I did not know which was the Ducking Pond, nor where I was.-Pepys.

On Wednesday last two women fought for a new shift, valued at half a guinea, in the Spaw Fields, near Islington. The battle was won by the woman called Bruising Peg, who beat her antagonist in a terrible manner.-Daily Advertiser, June 22, 1768.

On Sabbath-day who has not seen

In colours of the rainbow dizen'd

The prentice beaux and belles I ween,
Fatigued with heat with dust half poisen'd

To Dobney's strolling, or Pantheon

Their tea to sip or else regale,

As on the way they shall agree on,

With syllabubs or bottled ale.

London Evening Post, August 1776. Malcolm, in his Anecdotes of Manners in London in the Eighteenth Century (1803), speaks of Spa Fields as still a great Sunday resort.

The Ducking Pond was a little west of the London Spa, and by it was Ducking Pond House. This was taken down in 1770, and the Pantheon, a large circular assembly room, erected on its site. The grounds were laid out as a sort of minor Vauxhall or Ranelagh, the Ducking Pond being now called the lake, and furnished with boats. After a time the Pantheon acquired an evil reputation, and in 1776 was closed as a place of entertainment, to become shortly the birthplace and cradle of a new and influential sect. It was taken by two

VOL. III

U

"evangelical" clergymen and reopened as Northampton Chapel; the lake being drained and, with the grounds, turned into a cemetery. This provoked the incumbent of the parish, and the clergymen were inhibited by the Ecclesiastical Courts (February 1779) from preaching in an unconsecrated place. The chapel was transferred to the Countess of Huntingdon and immediately reopened, she making the adjoining house her residence with a view to cover, by privilege of peerage, clergymen preaching there. The Ecclesiastical Courts, however, decided against the claim, and two of her clergy having seceded from the Establishment, the chapel became the first chapel of "The Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion." It was a plain brick building, with a high domical roof and lantern, and had on the front a stone inscribed Spa Fields Chapel. It was pulled down 1879. It was capable of holding 2000 persons.

Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, died in the house adjoining, June 17, 1791. Spa Fields burial-ground became notorious in 1845 in consequence of the proprietors burning the bodies of the dead to make room for fresh interments. About 1350 bodies, it appeared, were annually buried there. The ground was shortly after closed by an

Order in Council.

In 1886 a new Spa Fields chapel was built in Lloyd Square, the site and building costing £15,000.

The Spa Fields Reform Meetings of 1816, which led to the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in the following spring, were held on the site of the present Wilmington Square (erected 1818). The first meeting was held November 15, when the crowd dispersed quietly after being addressed by Orator Hunt from the first floor window of the Merlin's Cave public-house. At the second meeting on December 2 the Watsons, father and son, spoke from a waggon drawn up in front of Merlin's Cave. After much noise and riot young Watson called on the mob to follow him and seize the Tower. Having sacked the shop of Beckwith, a gunsmith at Snow Hill, on their way, they reached Tower Hill, but were there quickly dispersed. In the following June young Watson was tried for high treason before Lord Ellenborough and acquitted. A Merlin's Cave still occupies the site of the old house, the present building being a "gin palace" marked by a bust, meant no doubt for Merlin, but which would serve as well for Homer, with the equally authentic date, “A.D. 516." It stands at the junction of Merlin's Place with Upper Rosoman Street. Wilmington Square is immediately south.

Spanish Place, MANCHESTER SQUARE, is at the north-east corner of the square and extends into Charles Street. At its own north-east corner is the chapel built for the Spanish Embassy in 1792 from the design of Joseph Bonomi, A.R.A., architect, and renovated and decorated in 1866 under the superintendence of C. J. Wray, when a new and powerful organ by Gray and Davison was added. The campanile was raised, 1846, by Charles Parker, architect. In the time of the first

French Empire No. 3 was the residence of the Maréchal duc de Coigny, and a great resort of the leading emigrés. Michael Faraday, who spent his early days in this neighbourhood, often pointed out the spot in this street where he used to play marbles.

'Sparagus Garden, a place of amusement in LAMBETH MARSH, adjoining Cuper's Gardens, and now only known, even by name, to local antiquaries and the readers of our seventeenth century literature. It was a narrow strip running up from the river, a little east of Queen's Arms Stairs, the landing-place opposite and answering to Whitehall Stairs. Richard Brome wrote a play, called the 'Sparagus Garden, acted in 1635 at Salisbury Court, and printed in 4to, 1640.

April 22, 1668.-To the fishmonger's and bought a couple of lobsters, and over to the 'Sparagus Garden, thinking to have met Mr. Pierce and his wife, and Knipp.-Pepys.

Spectacle Makers' Company, the sixtieth on the list of the City Companies, an ancient fraternity by prescription, but first incorporated by letters patent of Charles I., dated May 16, 1630. The Company has a livery, granted by the Court of Aldermen in 1809, but no hall.

Spencer House, ST. JAMES'S PLACE and the GREEN PARK, was built for John Spencer, first Lord Spencer of Althorp (d. 1783). The statues on the pediment are by M. H. Spang. The Green Park front designed by John Vardy, and the St. James's Place front by James Stuart. [See St. James's Place.]

Spitalfields, a district and parish in the east of London, between Bishopsgate and Bethnal Green, inhabited by weavers of silk and other poor people. It was a place of sepulture for Roman London, and received its name from the fields having once belonged to the Priory and Hospital of St. Mary Spital, founded in 1197 by Walter Brune and Rosia his wife, and dedicated to the honour of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary by the name of Domus Dei et Beatæ Mariæ, extra Bishopsgate, in the parish of St. Botolph. Hence the present parish of Christ Church, Spitalfields. The old name was Lolesworth, according to Stow, who gives a long and particular account of the discovery of a large number of Roman cinerary urns, bones, vestiges of coffins and various other remains made in excavating on the east side of the church for brick-earth in 1576. Stow was himself present during some of the diggings, and carried with him a small "pot of white earth . . . made in the shape of a hare squatted upon her legs, and between her ears the mouth of the pot; also the lower jaw of a man, some iron nails," etc. The fields were covered with buildings between 1650 and 1660.

The silk manufacture was planted in Spitalfields by French emigrants, expelled from their own country upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, a measure which transferred to this country

1 Stow, p. 64.

the families of Auriol, Barré, Boileau, Bouverie, Ligonier, Labouchere, Romilly, Houblon, Lefroy, Levesque, De la Haye, Garnault, Ouvry, etc. In Spitalfields are found many French names, as Bataille, Lafontaine, Strachan, Fontaneau, etc., by weavers, enamellers, jewellers, etc., both masters and workpeople, down to our own day; while still more, perhaps, translations of the original French names of their ancestors, as Masters (Le Maître), Young (Le Jeune), Black (Lenoir), King (Le Roi), and the like; but the traces of French descent have been fast fading away in recent years. The Dollonds were French refugees, and John Dollond, the inventor of the achromatic telescope, was born in Spitalfields and worked with his father at the loom. In the churchyard of the priory (now Spital Square), was a pulpit cross, "somewhat like," says Stow, "to that in St. Paul's churchyard," where the celebrated Spital sermons were originally preached. The cross was rebuilt in 1594, and destroyed during the troubles of Charles I. The sermons, however, have been continued to the present time, and are still preached every Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday, before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, at Christ Church, Newgate Street. The Christ's Hospital or Blue Coat Boys were regular attendants, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth,1 at the Spital sermons at the old cross in Spital Square.

A hospital or spital signified a charitable institution for the advantage of poor, infirm, and aged persons-an almshouse, in short; while spittles were mere lazarhouses, receptacles for wretches in the leprosy, and other loathsome diseases the consequence of debauchery and vice.-Gifford (Note in Massinger's Works).

On Easter Sunday the ancient custom is that all the children of the Hospital go before my Lord Mayor to the Spittle, that the world may witness the works of God and man, in maintenence of so many poor people, the better to stir up living men's minds to the same good.—A Nest of Ninnies, by Robert Armin, 4to, 1680.

That other

That, in pure madrigal, unto his mother
Commended the French hood and scarlet gown

The Lady May'ress passed in through the town,

Unto the Spittle Sermon.-Ben Jonson, Underwoods, No. Ixi.

But the sermon of the greatest length was that concerning Charity before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen at the Spittle: in speaking which he [Dr. Barrow] spent three hours and a half. Being asked after he came down from the pulpit whether he was not tired: "Yes, indeed," said he, "I began to be weary with standing so long."-Pope's Life of Seth Ward, 12mo, 1697, p. 148.

The population of Spitalfields in 1881 was 22,585. No district in or about London contains a similar mass of low-rented houses to that of Spitalfields and Bethnal Green. The weavers' houses generally consist of two rooms on the ground floor and a workroom above. This workroom always has a window the whole length of the room for the admission of light to the loom; in these small, crowded, and often dirty rooms some of the most delicate and exquisitely wrought velvets, satins, and brocaded silks have been produced. But the weaving population of Spitalfields has been for some years declining. Many of the houses above described have been swept away in constructing Commercial

1 Stow, p. 119.

Street, the formation and extension of the Great Eastern Railway, and in various local alterations and improvements, and few if any such houses have been built in their place. The character of the district has undergone a marked change in the last few years, but it remains distinctively a region of small, low-rented and overcrowded houses, inhabited by a very poor population. [See Christ Church, Spitalfields; Pelham Street, Spital Square, Wheeler Street.]

"In 1870, when the promulgation of the celebrated decree of papal infallibility had been resolved upon, it was deemed necessary that the Pope should wear at the attendant ceremony a new vestment woven entirely in one piece. Italy, France, and other European countries were vainly searched for a weaver capable of executing this work, and at last the order came to England, where in Spitalfields was found the only man able to make the garment, and he, by a strange irony of fate, one of the erstwhile persecuted Huguenot race. Booth's Labour and Life of the People, 1889, vol. i. p. 394, note.

Bishop Wilson of Calcutta was born in Church Street, Spitalfields, July 22, 1778. A view of the house is given in his Life, vol. i. p. 3.

Spital Square, SPITALFIELDS, is an open place on the east side of Norton Folgate, formerly a centre of the silk and velvet trade. Thomas Stothard, R.A., passed a seven years' apprenticeship with a "draftsman of patterns for brocaded silk" in this square; and here his genius was first discovered by Harrison, the publisher of the Novelist's Magazine, which was to owe its popularity to his graceful pencil.1

Spittle Croft, a burying ground of 13 acres, consecrated in 1349 by Dr. Ralph Stratford, Bishop of London, situated near Charterhouse Square.

And the Plague coming on with great fury in the year 1349, Sir Walter de Manny... purchased of the Master and Brethren of St. Bartholomew's Spittle, a piece of ground called Spittle Croft, containing thirteen acres and a rod . . . and there were buried in that year more than fifty thousand corpses in these thirteen acres and a rod of ground.-Bearcroft's Sutton and Charter House, 1737, p. 164.

Spring Gardens, between St. JAMES'S PARK and CHARING CROSS and WHITEHALL, a garden dating at latest from the reign of James I., with butts, bathing-pond, pheasant-yard, and bowling-green, attached to the King's Palace at Whitehall, and so called from a jet or spring of water, which sprung with the pressure of the foot, and wetted whoever was foolish or ignorant enough to tread upon it.

In March 1610, there is a "Grant to Geo. Johnson, Keeper of the King's Sprin Garden;" and in the same month funds are assigned for "making defence for orange and other fruit trees in the Park and Spring Garden." In March, 1611, the minion Robert Carr was created Viscount Rochester, and appointed Keeper of the Palace of Westminster, part of the duty being to "keep and preserve wild beasts and fowl in St. James's Park and Garden and Spring Garden" (Cal. State Pap., 1611-1618, p. 57, etc.) Among the Egerton MSS., No. 806, in the British Museum, is an account of Charges don in doeinge of sundry needful reparacons about the Pke and Springe Garden, beginninge primo Julij, 1614, and ending ultimo Septem. next." The water was supplied by pipes of lead from St. James's Fields. Among other charges at the

1 Life, by Mrs. Bray, p. 9.