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Crutched Friars in 1711, and removed to Austin Friars. Here (1735) Richard Gough, the antiquary, was born; and here, at No. 18, lived James Smith, one of the authors of the Rejected Addresses. A second James Smith coming to the place after he had been many years a resident, produced so much confusion to both, that the last comer waited on the author and suggested, to prevent future inconvenience, that one or other had better leave, hinting at the same time, that he should like to stay. "No," said the wit, "I am James the First; you are James the Second; you must abdicate." One of the last of the remaining old houses in Austin Friars was demolished in the spring of 1888. [See Drapers' Hall and Gardens.]

The

Austin's (St.) House, SOUTHWARK. This was the Abbot's Inn of St. Augustine of Canterbury, which stood between the Bridge House and the Church of St. Olave. It was at one time held from the Earls of Warren and Surrey, as appears by a deed of 1281. house afterwards came into the possession of the St. Leger family. It was sold in 1566 by Richard Grenville to George Fletcher, by the description "of a capital messuage or mansion house called St. Austin's, alias St. Leger's House, between the Bridge House, a wood wharf, the tenement called the Draper's rent, the river Thames on the north, and a lane leading to the same and the Bridge House." A wharf was built on the site and named Sellinger.-Rendle's Old Southwark, 1878, p. 267.

Ave Maria Lane, between LUDGATE HILL and Paternoster Row. Ave-Mary Lane, so called of text-writers and bead-makers, then dwelling there.Stow, p. 126.

"Ave-maria aly" is mentioned in the curious early poem of Cocke Lorelles Bote, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, circ. 1506. In Queen Anne's time "The Black Boy Coffee-house," in this lane, was the chief place for the sale of books by auction.

Avenue (The).

September 11, 1651.-Whitehall, Council of State to Major-General Skippon.We hear that the guards upon the Avenue, under colour of examining and searching suspicious persons, very much molest and trouble all passengers, as well those who are going out of town as those who are coming in, and that they demand money to let people go, which is a most intolerable abuse. Give order that this practice be forborne, and that all things be in the condition they were in before the late invasion by the Scotch army.—Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1651, p. 425.

Avenue Road, ST. JOHN'S WOOD. The Right Hon. Sir Robert Lush, Lord Justice (1807-1881), died at No. 6.

Axe Lane.

Some dozen years later [about 1769] Goldsmith startled a brilliant circle at Bennet Langton's with an anecdote of "When I lived among the beggars in Axe Lane," just as Napoleon, 50 years later, appalled the party of crowned heads at Dresden with his story of "When I was a lieutenant in the regiment of La Fère."Forster's Life of Oliver Goldsmith.

The Axe Lane of the story was perhaps Axe Yard, on the left hand in Grub Street, and may have referred to the period when he

belonged to the fraternity named after the street so many of them inhabited.

Axe Yard, KING STREET, WESTMINSTER, where Fludyer Street was afterwards built (about 1767), and so called from "a great messuage or brew-house" on the west side of King Street, "commonly called the Axe." This place is referred to in a document of the 23d of Henry VIII., 1531. Sir William Davenant, the poet, according to Aubrey, had cause to remember "the black handsome wench that lay in Axe Yard, Westminster." Pepys opens his Diary (January 1, 1660) by stating: "I lived in Axe Yard, having my wife and servant Jane, and no other in family than us three." They appear to have let out the main part of the house, and lived themselves in the garret.

August 10, 1660.-By the way, I cannot forget that my Lord Claypoole did the other day make enquiry of Mrs. Hunt, concerning my house in Axe Yard, and did set her on work to get it of me for him, which methinks is a very great change.— Pepys.

Samuel Hartlib dated a letter to J. Winthrop from here, September 3, 1661.

In 1663 Bishop Sprat writes to Wren: Now then, my dearest friend, you may recollect we went lately from Axe Yard to walk in St. James's Park, and, though we met not the accomplished person [Cowley] whose company we sought, yet he was enough present to our thoughts to bring us to discourse of that in which he so much deals, the wit of conversation.-Wren's Parentalia, p. 256.

July 20, 1665.-Lord! to see how the plague spreads! It being now all over King's Streete, at the Axe, and next door to it, and in other places.-Pepys.

Act, Anno, 6 and 7 Will. III. (1695) c. 20.-To enable William Wanley, an infant under 21 years, to new build several messuages or tenements in Axe Yard, King Street, Westminster, and to enable his Guardian to make one or more leases for effecting the same.

Aylesbury Street, CLERKENWELL, leads from St. John Street to Clerkenwell Green, and covers the site of the house and gardens of the Bruces, Earls of Aylesbury, to whom the old Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem descended from the Cecil family, and with whom it continued till 1706. Earl Robert, Deputy Earl Marshal, dates many of his letters in 1671 from Aylesbury House, Clerkenwell.

On the south side of Aylesbury Street, and "at the corner house of that passage [Jerusalem Passage] leading by the Old Jerusalem Tavern, under the gateway of the Priory in St. John's Square," Thomas Britton, the musical small coalman, held his celebrated music meetings for a period of six and thirty years (1678-1714); he played on the viol-da-gamba with the skill of an artist, and the leading musicians of the day assembled at his meetings. Handel and Pepusch played the organ there; Bannister the violin. joined the party immediately on his arrival. Woolaston, the painter, played on the violin or flute, and painted the portrait of the concert giver, which was engraved in mezzotint. John Hughes, the poet, Henry Symonds, Needler of the Excise, Abiell Wichello, Shuttleworth, and Sir Roger L'Estrange, are mentioned by Hawkins among the

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performers, and the Duchess of Queensbury as a regular attendant. Britton was also a collector of prints, drawings, books, especially works on astrology and alchemy, music, and old musical instruments, and the sale of his collections after his decease attracted much notice.

On the ground floor was a repository for small coal, and over that was the concert room, which was very long and narrow, and had a ceiling so low that a tall man could but just stand upright in it. It has long since been pulled down and rebuilt. At this time [1776] it is an ale house known by the sign of the Bull's Head.-Hawkins's History of Music, vol. v. p. 74.

Various were the opinions concerning him: some thought his musical assembly only a cover for seditious meetings; others for magical purposes. He was taken for an atheist, a presbyterian, a jesuit. But Woolaston, the painter, and the father of a gentleman from whom I received this account, and who were both members of the music-club, assured him that Britton was a plain, simple, honest man, who only meaned to amuse himself. His subscription was but ten shillings a year: Britton found the instruments, and they had coffee at a penny a dish. Sir Hans Sloane bought many of his books and MSS. (now in the Museum) when they were sold by auction at Tom's Coffee-house, near Ludgate.-Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting, ed. Wornun, vol. ii. p. 236.

Tho' doomed to small coal yet to arts allied,
Rich without wealth and famous without pride;
Music's best patron, judge of books and men,
Beloved and honoured by Apollo's train,

In Greece or Rome sure never did appear

So bright a genius in so dark a sphere !—PRIOR.

Ayliffe Street. [See Goodman's Fields Theatre.]

Babmaes Mews, JERMYN STREET, named after Baptist May, Keeper of the Privy Purse to Charles II., but the origin of the name seems to have been forgotten, if we may judge from the spelling adopted. The name is spelt correctly in Elmes's Topographical Dictionary of London, 1831.

Bacon House stood in FOSTER LANE, CHEAPSIDE, and was so called after Lord Keeper Bacon, the father of the Chancellor. It seems to have been inhabited jointly by the Bacon family and by Recorder Fleetwood, the constant correspondent of the great Lord Burghley. It had previously been called Shelley House. Sir Thomas Shelley was owner of it, temp. Henry IV.

July 21, 1578.-My Lord Keeper, My Ladie, and all the howse are come to London this night.1

There is a charity in Bassishaw Ward called Lady Bacon's Charity, the income of which, derived from houses in the ward, is distributed by trustees, who, in pursuance of the lady's will, have an annual feast, with a magnificent piece of bacon invariably as a standard dish.

Bag of Nails (properly THE BACCHANALS), a public-house at the corner of Arabella Row (changed to Lower Grosvenor Place in 1879) and Buckingham Palace Road. According to the Tavern Anec

1 "Fleetwood to Burghley," Wright, vol. ii. p. 89.

dotes (1825), the original sign, on the front of the house, was a Satyr of the woods with a group of Bacchanals.

Bagnigge House, a mansion adjoining the Wells on the south, had over the chimney-piece of one of the principal rooms the royal arms, the garter, and other heraldic bearings, and "between them the bust of a woman in Roman dress, let deep into a circular cavity of the wall. . . . It is said to represent Mrs. Eleanor Gwin, who sometimes made this place her summer residence."1 There was a tradition that she came here in order to take the bath in the adjacent Cold Bath Fields, where half a century later "a nude statue" was shown by the proprietor of the bath as a portrait of the frail beauty. The bust, as already mentioned, was transferred to the Long Room of Bagnigge Wells. A square stone placed "over an old Gothic portal," taken down in 1757, bore the inscription: "This is Bagnigge House neare the Pinder a Wakefielde, 1680." When what remained of Bagnigge House and Wells was demolished, about 1862, this stone was inserted in the front of a small house, one of a row erected on the site.

Bagnigge Wells, BAGNIGGE WELLS ROAD, now KING'S CROSS ROAD, a place of public entertainment opened in consequence of the discovery of the medicinal properties of two wells, "the water of one of which purges, the other is a chalybeat." This place of entertainment appears to have been opened earlier than is generally stated, for Dr. Rimbault pointed out (Notes and Queries, 1st S., vol. ii. p. 228) that Bickham's curious work, The Musical Entertainer (circ. 1738), contains an engraving of Tom Hippersley mounted in the "singing rostrum" regaling the company with a song. As early as 1760, when Dr. John Bevis published "An Experimental Inquiry concerning the contents, qualities, and medicinal virtues of the two Mineral Waters lately discovered at Bagnigge Wells, near London," the wells "were got into great repute," and "elegant accommodation provided" for visitors. Bagnigge Wells was then literally in the country, the valley between Coppice Row and Battle Bridge being known as Bagnigge Wash or Bagnigge Vale.

These wells are a little way out of London, in the high road from Coppice Row, or Sir John Oldcastle's, which, about a quarter of a mile farther, at Battle Bridge turnpike, comes into the great new road from Paddington to Islington, affording an easy access to the springs for coaches from all parts: and the footpath from Tottenham Court Road, by Southampton Row, Red Lion Street, and the Foundling Hospital, running close by the wells is no less convenient for such as prefer walking exercise. A tradition goes that the place of old was called Blessed Mary's Well, but that the name of the Holy Virgin having in some measure fallen into disesteem after the Reformation, the title was altered to Black Mary's Well, as it now stands upon Mr. Rocque's Map, and then to Black Mary's Hole [as it commonly stands on later maps], though there is a very different account of these later appellations.— Bevis, pp. 1-4. [See Black Mary's Well.]

...

No satisfactory derivation has been given of the origin of the name Bagnigge. One of the most likely is from the A. S. bag,

1 Bevis, p. 2.

badge, a badger (as in Bagenthorpe, Badgeworth), and ig, igge, an island; although this does not account for the n. The place was a swamp-the Fleet here forming Bagnigge Wash-the land abounding in springs, and a somewhat raised spot in its midst may well have been noted as a resort of badgers.

The Wells are noticed as a place of public entertainment by William Woty in his Shrubs of Parnassus, 1760. A good coloured print, after George Morland, shows them a little later in all their glory; and there is a large mezzotint print of the "Long Room, Bagnigge Wells," by J. R. Smith, from a drawing by T. Sanders, dated 1772, which shows that the wells were then frequented by people of fashion. It represents the assembly room, with the master of the ceremonies in a tall wig and sword, cocked-hat in hand, receiving the visitors. Tea is being carried round by a page, who has in one hand a tray with a very small tea-pot and proportionally small cups, and in the other a steaming kettle. one end of this long room was "a fine-toned organ," at the other the bust spoken of below. But the quality of the visitors quickly deteriorated.

Says Madame Fussock, warm from Spitalfields,
Bon Ton's the space 'twixt Saturday and Monday,
And riding in a one-horse chair o' Sunday!
'Tis drinking tea, on summer afternoons,

At Bagnigge Wells, with china and gilt spoons!

COLMAN, Prologue to BonTon, 1775.

So Cits to Bagnigge Wells repair,

To swallow dust and call it air.

In 1808 it is described as having "something romantic and pleasant in the situation. But it is liable to inundations from the river of Fleet, on which it is situated. Here is a commodious room, which contains a good organ for the amusement of the company, usually played on during the summer season by a respectable performer."1 When Lysons wrote, about 1810, it was "a noted place of entertainment, much resorted to by the lower sort of tradesmen." Somewhat later the favourite resort appears to have been the gardens, which were laid in irregular walks, and "decorated with leaden statues, alcoves, and fountains,” and had as their chief ornaments a "circular Corinthian Temple," in the centre of which was a double pump, one piston supplying the cathartic water, the other the chalybeate; and a hexagonal castellated grotto covered with shells, whilst along the back ran the Fleet river.2

We remember the Wells nearly sixty years since, with its gardens and round fish ponds, with a fountain of Cupid bestriding a swan spouting water, a rustic cottage, and a grotto to contain twenty persons, and elder bushes, willows, huge docks, and other river-side greenery, with bowers or boxes for tea-drinkers, and two large pastoral figures-a man with a scythe and a woman with a hay-rake and bird's nest.3 In its last years the company declined below even "the lower sort of tradesmen." Thus in a popular London street ballad of some fifty years back we read of the costermonger hero and his doxy that

1 Hughson's London, vol. vi. p. 364.

2 Cromwell, History of Clerkenwell, 1828. 3 John Timbs, in Leisure Hour.

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