The White Lion, in St. John Street, Clerkenwell, was originally an inn frequented by drovers and carriers, and covered a good deal of ground; but before its demolition it had already been greatly reduced in size, the gateway leading into the yard having been built up and formed into an oil-shop. Inserted in the front wall was the sign in stone relief, representing a lion rampant, painted white, and with the date 1714. A house on the other side of the central portion also seems to have formed part of the original White Lion. The gate just mentioned led into a yard similar to those attached to other ancient inns. There were, in the east front of the inn, strong wooden beams, which no doubt supported the erection over the gateway, and that there was a yard surrounded by a gallery is proved by the remains of door openings in the upper parts of the back walls of the premises, which had been bricked up. At one time a bowling-green was attached to the tavern, and by the side of it a pond, in which Anthony Joyce, the cousin of Pepys, drowned himself. He was a tavern keeper, and kept the Three Stags in Holborn, which was burnt down in 1666. Pepys records in his Diary, under September 5 of that year: ’Thence homeward ... having ... seen Anthony Joyce’s house on fire.’ The loss incurred by the fire preyed on Joyce’s mind, and is supposed to have led him to commit the rash act.
Here we will close our selection, which embraces all the most important galleried taverns once existing in London. Their disappearance is much to be regretted, though with the requirements of modern travellers it was scarcely to be avoided. But they formed picturesque features of London, which has so very few of them, especially as regards hotels, which in their modern style remind us only of slightly decorated barracks, if they are not perfectly hideous, as, for instance, the architectural nightmare in Victoria Street. But there are plenty of people yet who delight in old-fashioned houses and surroundings—the revival of stage-coaches is proof of it. A galleried tavern with modern improvements would, we fancy, not be a bad spec.
Names are often misleading. Mr. Coward is a fierce fire-eater; Mr. Gentle’s family tremble when they hear his footsteps on the pavement on his return home from his office, for they know that immediately on his entrance he will kick up a row with every one of them; whilst Mr. Lion lives in awe of his termagant better, or worse, half. We are led into these reflections by the term ’tea-gardens.’ It sounds so very innocent; it calls up visions of honest citizens, surrounded by their wives and olive-branches, enjoying, amid idyllic scenes of rural beauties, their fragrant bohea, bread-and-butter, cream and sillabub. But the vision is delusive. Noorthouck, who wrote about 1770, when the tea-gardens were most abundant and flourishing, speaks of them thus: ’The tendency of these cheap catering places of pleasure just at the skirts of this vast town is too obvious to need further explanation; they swarm with loose women and with boys whose morals are depraved, and their constitutions ruined, before they arrive at manhood. Indeed, the licentious resort to the tea-drinking gardens was carried to such excess every night that the magistrates lately thought proper to suppress the organs in their public rooms; it is left to their cool reflection whether this was discharging all the duty they owe to the public.’ Certes, the remedy seems hardly adequate when the grand jury of Middlesex, as far back as 1744, had complained of ’advertisements inviting and seducing not only the inhabitants, but all other persons, to several places kept apart for the encouragement of luxury, extravagance, idleness, and other wicked illegal purposes, which go on with impunity to the destruction of many families, to the great dishonour of the kingdom, especially at a time when we are involved in an expensive war, and so much overburdened with taxes of all sorts,’ etc. With such an indictment before them, the magistrates must have been wooden-headed indeed if they thought to stop the evil by forbidding the playing of organs at such places. And the evil must have been not only serious, but widespread, seeing there were upwards of thirty of these tea-gardens around London. But our object is not to preach a sermon on the wickedness of the world, but to describe the places where it was practised. We begin with Bagnigge Wells tea-gardens.