CHAPTER XLII.
HOXTON, KINGSLAND, DALSTON, &c.
"Dalston, or Shacklewell, or some other suburban retreat northerly."—C. Lamb, "Essays of Elia."
Kingsland Road—Harmer's Almshouses—Gefferey's Almshouses—The Almshouses of the Framework Knitters—Shoreditch Workhouse—St. Columba's Church—Hoxton—"Pimlico"—Discovery of a Medicinal Spring—Charles Square—Aske's Hospital—Balmes, or Baumes
House—The Practising Ground of the Artillery Company—De Beauvoir Town—The Tyssen Family—St. Peter's Church, De Beauvoir
Square—The Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady and St. Joseph—Ball's Pond—Kingsland—A Hospital for Lepers—Dalston—The
Refuge for Destitute Females—The German Hospital—Shacklewell.
Here, it is true, we have no historian or old
annalist to guide our steps, for the district had no
entity of its own till quite a recent date, and it is
not old enough to have a history. Its records are
the annals of a "quiet neighbourhood." Beyond
an occasional remark, too, we can glean nothing
of interest about the neighbourhood from the pages
of Strype, Maitland, or honest John Stow;
"The quaint and antique Stow, whose words alone
Seem letter'd records graven upon stone."
These close-lying suburbs—which we scarcely
know whether to reckon as parts and parcels of
the great metropolis or not—have been wittily
defined by Mr. G. O. Trevelyan, in his "Life of
Lord Macaulay," as "places which, as regards the
company and the way of living, are little else than
sections of London removed into a purer air."
And so rapidly is London growing year by year
that even Mr. Trevelyan's words will soon prove
out of date, so far as regards purity of air.
This district is approached from the City by
Bishopsgate Street and the broad and open
thoroughfare called Kingsland Road, which runs
northward from the end of Old Street Road,
diverging at Shoreditch Church from the road by
which we have travelled towards Hackney.
On the east side of the road we pass several
almshouses. The first of these belong to the
Drapers' Company, and are known as Harmer's
Almshouses. The buildings, which were erected
in 1713, have a somewhat picturesque appearance,
and afford homes for twelve single men and women.
Gefferey's Almshouses and Charity, in the gift of
the Ironmongers' Company, are situated close to
the above; these were founded in 1703, for the
purpose of providing homes and pensions for a
certain number of poor persons. Next we have
the almshouses belonging to the Framework
Knitters' Company. These were established in
the early part of the last century as homes, &c.,
for twelve poor freemen and widows of the abovementioned company.
The only buildings worthy of mention in the
Kingsland Road, which we pass on the west side
on our way northward, are the Workhouse of the
parish of Shoreditch, and St. Columba's Church.
The latter building, a large and lofty red-brick
edifice, with a clergy house adjoining, was built
about the year 1868 from the designs of Mr. P.
Brooks; and the services in the church are conducted on "Ritualistic" principles.
Hoxton, which lies on the west side of the
Kingsland Road, and north of Old Street Road,
now included in Shoreditch parish, was formerly, as we have stated in the previous chapter,
reckoned as part of Hackney. The locality in
bygone times acquired a certain celebrity from a
noted tavern or ale-house, called "Pimlico," which
existed there; it is referred to by Ben Jonson,
Dodsley, and others in plays of the seventeenth
century. The name of "Pimlico" is kept in
remembrance by Pimlico Walk, near the junction
of the New North Road and Pitfield Street. The
origin of the name of Hoxton is somewhat involved
in obscurity. The place was formerly sometimes
called Hogsdon, as we have already seen; (fn. 1) and
Hog Lane, in Norton Folgate, close by, would
lead to the inference that it was so named in
consequence of the number of hogs that might
have been reared there; but this seems doubtful,
for in the "Domesday" record we find the name
of the place entered as Hocheston, and in a lease
of the time of Edward III. it is mentioned as
Hoggeston. Stow, in 1598, describes the place
as "a large street with houses on both sides;"
but it has long since lost all pretensions to a rural
or retired character. A medicinal spring was discovered at Hoxton in the seventeenth century, on
digging the cellar for a house near Charles Square;
but it does not appear to have attained any
eminence or reputation. In Charles Square lived
the Rev. John Newton, Cowper's friend and correspondent, many years rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, in Lombard Street, and who died in 1807.
Peter Cunningham, in his "Handbook of London"
(1850), speaks of the house of Oliver, third Lord
St. John of Bletsoe, who died in 1618, as still
standing.
Hoxton has long been noted for the number of
its charitable institutions, among which Aske's
Hospital, at the upper end of Pitfield Street, held
a prominent place. It consisted of some almshouses and schools, founded by Robert Aske, an
alderman of London, and a member of the Haberdashers' Company, in 1688, as homes for twenty
poor freemen of that company, and for the education of 220 sons of freemen. The buildings were
extensive, and had in front a piazza upwards of
300 feet in length. The chapel was consecrated
by Archbishop Tillotson in 1695. In 1875–6 the
almshouses were removed, and a large middle-class
school, called Aske's Haberdashers' School, now
occupies the site.
Hoxton in former times boasted of at least one
mansion of some importance; this was Balmes
House—termed in old writings Bawmes, or
Baulmes. In the early part of the seventeenth
century the old house was rebuilt on a scale of
great magnificence by Sir George Whitmore, who
was Lord Mayor of London, and a considerable
sufferer for his loyalty to Charles I. The mansion
was purchased about fifty years afterwards by
Richard de Beauvoir, a Guernsey gentleman, who
lived there in great style. Foreigners visited the
mansion as one of the sights of London; and it
was noticed as a memorable show place in French
and German works on architecture and landscape
gardening. At the end of the last century it was
surrounded by a moat spanned by drawbridges,
and there were beautiful gardens, watered by
streams from Canonbury Fields. But Time's progress worked strange changes in Baumes; and in
the end the "old house at Hoxton," as it was
popularly called—a melancholy high-roofed dingy
building, enclosed by high walls—came to be occupied as a private lunatic asylum. Some few years
ago the building was pulled down; but Whitmore
Bridge preserves the memory of the hospitable
alderman of the Stuart days, and the smart De
Beauvoir Town, near at hand, is a handsome
memorial of his successor in the splendour of
Baumes.
The fields near the old building appear to have
been formerly used by the Artillery Company as a
place of exercise; and the "Baumes March" is
said to have been "a favourite exercise at arms."
A melancholy interest attaches to the fields hereabouts, from the fact that it was in one of them
that Ben Jonson killed in a duel Gabriel Spenser,
the player. (fn. 2)
Nearly all the land round this part belongs to
the Tyssen and De Beauvoir families, after whom
and their connections and alliances, streets, squares,
and terraces are named in almost endless succession. One district, indeed, is collectively named
De Beauvoir Town.
The Tyssens were formerly merchants at Flushing,
in Holland, but about the reign of James II. they
settled in London and became naturalised subjects.
Like many other City merchants at that time, they
seem to have fixed their abode at Hackney and
Shacklewell, and several of them were buried in
Hackney Church. Francis Tyssen, of Shacklewell,
married Rachel, the youngest daughter of Richard
de Beauvoir, of Guernsey, and subsequently of
Baumes, as mentioned above; and on his death,
in 1717, he was buried at Hackney "with great
funeral pomp" by his brother merchants, who had
resolved to do honour to his memory. His body
lay in state in Goldsmiths' Hall (from which we
may infer that he was very rich indeed), surrounded
by a magnificent display of plate, gold and silver
sconces and trophies. Then the corpse was borne
to Hackney Church with a great procession of
horse and footmen, and such an abundant following, that the Earl of Suffolk, deputy Earl-Marshal,
became alarmed for the funeral privileges of people
of quality, and published a notice in the Gazette
to the effect that the display "far exceeded the
quality of the deceased, being only a private gentleman," and that "funerals of ignoble persons should
not be set forth with such trophies of honour as
belong only to the peers and gentles of the realm."
The funeral must really have been a grand affair,
for it cost £2,000, a large sum in those days.
Three days after Tyssen was laid in the grave with
so much pomp, his widow was confined of a son,
the heir to the large property. This his only
son, Francis John Tyssen, lord of the manor of
Hackney, died in 1781, leaving a daughter, who
subsequently conveyed the property by marriage
to the Amhursts, of Rochester. At the close of
the last century, through failure of male heirs, the
property passed, by marriage of an heiress, to Mr.
William George Daniel, of Foley House, Kent,
and Westbrook, Dorset, who thereupon assumed,
by royal sign-manual, the surname and arms of
Tyssen. His eldest son, who inherited the manor
of Hackney, took the additional name of Amhurst,
a name given to one of the principal thoroughfares
connecting the main street of Hackney with the
high road at Stoke Newington.
De Beauvoir Town is that part of this neighbourhood lying on the north side of Hoxton, stretching
away from the Regent's Canal on the south to
Ball's Pond Road on the north, and from Kingsland Road on the east to the New North Road and
Canonbury on the west. Its centre is formed by
De Beauvoir Square, which is surrounded by a
number of small streets and terraces. St. Peter's
Church, in the south-west corner of the square, is
a pseudo-Gothic edifice, and was erected about the
year 1830.
In Tottenham Road, near the Kingsland main
road, is the Roman Catholic church of Our Lady
and St. Joseph, which was solemnly opened in the
year 1856 by the late Cardinal Wiseman. The
presbytery, which adjoins the church, fronts the
Culford Road. The church is a spacious brick
edifice. It was originally built for manufacturing
purposes, but was converted to its present use
under the direction of Mr. Wardell. Externally,
the building has not much pretensions to beauty
or ecclesiastical architecture. It is, however, spacious, and will accommodate about six hundred
worshippers. The division of the chancel from the
body of the church is formed by a flight of steps
of considerable elevation, and on each side is a
screened enclosure—the one used for the organchamber and choir, and the other for the sacristy.
At the western ends of these enclosures are the
side altars. The high altar is arranged with
baldachino, reredos, and frontal; and the roof of
the chancel is divided into panels of a blue ground,
relieved with sacred monograms. Underneath the
church are spacious and convenient schools.
The north end of the De Beauvoir and Culford
Roads is crossed at right angles by Ball's Pond
Road, which connects Kingsland Road and Dalston
Lane with Essex Road, Islington.
Ball's Pond was originally a small hamlet belonging to the parish of Islington, and abutting upon
the Newington Road. It consisted of only a
few houses and gardens, and received its name
from one John Ball, whose memory is preserved
on a penny token, as the keeper of a house of
entertainment called the "Salutation," or more
commonly the "Boarded House," at this place
about the middle of the seventeenth century. The
inscription on the token is as follows: "John Ball,
at the Boarded House, neere Newington Green:
his Penny;" and the sign is depicted upon the
coin by the representation of two gentlemen
saluting each other. The place was formerly
famous for the exercise of bull-baiting and other
brutal sports, and was much resorted to by the
lower orders of society from all parts of the
metropolis. There was, near this spot, a large
pond, which by the frequenters of the place became
coupled with the name of "mine host." This pond
was used, doubtless, like that which we have
mentioned in our account of May Fair, (fn. 3) for duckhunting and other such cruel and unmanly sports.
When the citizens of London used to take
lodgings for the summer at Islington for the sake
of its pure and healthy air, the district all around
us must have consisted of open fields, and nothing
met the eye between Hoxton and Stoke Newington.
The fields were doubtless used by the Finsbury
archers when Hoxton got too hot, or rather too
populous, to hold them; and probably within this
present century a stray toxophilite may have been
seen hereabouts stringing his bow, and dreaming
of the days that were past.
In passing through Ball's Pond we have the
New River on our left, not, however, any longer,
as it used to be, open to the view, and reflecting
the sky as in a mirror, but stealing along, like the
mole, underground, being arched over in order to
keep its stream clean and pure, and free from the
smuts and other impurities from which it would be
difficult to purify it by all the filtration in the
world.
Kingsland lies to the north of the Regent's
Canal, which, after leaving the Regent's Park and
Camden Town, is carried by a tunnel under the
high ground of Islington, and passes hence through
Hackney to Mile End, and so into the Thames at
Limehouse. It probably derived its name from
the royal residence on Stoke Newington Green, of
which we shall have more to say presently. The
fields adjoining being occupied by royalty for the
chase, came conventionally to be styled the "King's
lands"—hence Kingsland.
We get a glimpse of the pastoral scenery that
at one time lay between London and Kingsland
in the "Diary" of the inimitable Pepys. Under
date of May 12th, 1667, he writes:—"Walked
over the fields to Kingsland and back again; a
walk, I think, I have not taken these twenty years;
but puts me in mind of my boy's time, when I
boarded at Kingsland, and used to shoot with my
bow and arrow in these fields."
This, and the whole neighbourhood with which
we are now concerned, must at one time have
been part and parcel of the great northern forest
of Middlesex, if there be truth in what Lord
Lyttelton tells us, on the authority of an old
chronicler of the reign of Henry II., that the
citizens of London once had a chace or forest
which extended from Hounsditch nearly twelve
miles north. The last part of this large forest was
Enfield Chace, the furthest portion from town; and
if it all once belonged to the people, it would be
interesting to find out how it passed into the hands
of the sovereign.
Kingsland is a chapelry partly in Hackney and
partly in Islington parish. It is described by the
"Ambulator," in 1774, as a hamlet of the parish of
Islington, lying between Hoxton and Clapton. It
consists chiefly of rows of houses, extending in a
somewhat monotonous series along the road from
London to Stamford Hill.
Lewis, in his "Topographical Dictionary" (1835),
writes: "Here are brick-fields, and some part of
the ground is occupied by nurserymen and marketgardens. Previously to the middle of the fifteenth
century there was at Kingsland a hospital for lepers,
which, after the Reformation, became annexed to
St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and was used as a sort
of out-ward to that institution."
This hospital appears to have been established
at a very early period; for, as we learn from
Strype's "Survey of London," as far back as the
year 1437, "John Pope, citizen and barber, gave
by will to the Masters and Governors of the
House of Lepers, called Le Lokes, at Kingeslond
without London, an annual rent of 6s. 8d. issuing
out of certain shops, situate in Shirborne Lane,
toward the sustentation of the said House at
Kingeslond, for ever." It appears from the records
of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, that soon after the
establishment of that charity in the reign of Henry
VIII., certain Lock, or Lazar, Hospitals were
opened in situations remote from the City, for the
reception of peculiar patients; and the ancient
house for lepers at Kingsland was converted into
one of these receptacles. It was afterwards rebuilt
on a larger and more commodious plan. A substantial edifice of brick, formerly appropriated to
the use of the diseased, having over the door the
arms of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, remained
standing here down to the commencement of the
present century.
BALMES HOUSE IN 1750.
This hospital was anciently called the "Loke,"
or "Lock." (fn. 4) The greater part of the building
was burnt down in the middle of the last century,
but was subsequently rebuilt. The structure joined
a little old chapel, which escaped the fire.
A writer in Notes and Queries states that "a sundial on the premises formerly bore this inscription,
significant of sin and sorrow: 'Post voluptatem
misericordia.'" Prior to its alienation from the
mother hospital, the house had a communication
with the chapel, so contrived that the patients
might take part in the service without seeing or
being seen by the congregation. It may be mentioned here that there was a similar arrangement
in the Lock Chapel, Grosvenor Place. In 1761 the
patients were removed from Kingsland, and the site
of the establishment was let out on building leases,
though the chapel itself was suffered to stand, and
to be used as a proprietary chapel. It was a small
edifice in the Early English style of Gothic architecture, with pointed windows and a bell turret.
It was in the patronage of the Governors of St.
Bartholomew's Hospital, and the endowment was
very insignificant. The chapel, it should be added,
was removed in the reign of William IV., in order
to make room for building private residences. The
chapel adjoined the turnpike at the south-eastern
corner of the road leading to Ball's Pond, and was,
perhaps, coeval with the first establishment of the
house for lepers on this spot. The lower part or
the structure, in its latter years, was so much
hidden by the accumulation of earth on the outside, that the floor of the area was full three feet
below the surface of the highway.
Dalston, or Dorlston, as it was spelt formerly, is
usually regarded as a hamlet of Hackney parish;
it properly designates the houses on either side of
the road leading from Kingsland and Ball's Pond
to Hackney, called Dalston Lane; but has gradually
come to be applied to the whole neighbouring
locality.
The district, which is there styled Dorlston, is
curtly described in the "Ambulator" (1774) as "a
small but pleasant village near Hackney, to which
parish it belongs;" and it is spoken of by Lambert,
in his "History and Survey of London and its
Environs," published in 1806, as "a small hamlet
adjoining Hackney, which has nothing remarkable
but its nursery grounds." Some of these grounds
were still cultivated as lately as 1860; but now the
"demon of bricks and mortar" has fairly possessed
the neighbourhood, and a crowded railway junction,
with constant trains, covers the once rural spot;
indeed, Dalston has lately become an important
suburb, on account of being the point of conflux
of two railways. Of late years, too, large numbers
of streets and terraces have sprung up in this neighbourhood, and the houses are now mainly inhabited
by hundreds of City clerks and other industrious
families, so that the place is now one of the most
populous districts in the suburbs of London.
THE MANOR-HOUSE, DALSTON.
The old manor-house at Dalston is now used as
the Refuge for Destitute Females, which was instituted in 1805, with the view of reforming female
criminals, and training them for domestic service.
The Refuge was founded under the auspices of
Zachary Macaulay, William Wilberforce, Stephen
Lushington, Samuel Hoare, Thomas Fowell Buxton,
and other leading philanthropists of that day. The
sight of a poor destitute boy sitting on a door-step,
just discharged from prison homeless and friendless, first kindled the spark of compassion which
resulted in the foundation of this time-honoured
charity, which was first opened in the month of
June, 1805, at Cupar's Bridge, Lambeth. In 1811
the establishment was removed to the Hackney
Road. The male branch, in 1815, was transferred
to Hoxton, although the females continued in the
former locality. The institution for boys was discontinued altogether in 1849, ten years after the
incorporation of the society (1 & 2 Vic., cap. 71),
on account of Government retrenchments, and
about the same time the females were removed to
the present commodious and desirable premises at
the Manor House, Dalston. Another charitable
institution, in Dalston Lane, is the German Hospital, which was erected in 1845. It is a handsome building of red brick, capable of affording
relief to a considerable number of patients. It was
established for the benefit of Germans suffering
from disease, and also of English in cases of
accidents. The total number of persons annually
relieved is about 12,000. There are in London,
principally at the East-end, about 30,000 Germans,
chiefly of the working classes, and occupied as
sugar-bakers, skin-dressers, and skin-dyers.
Shacklewell, on the north side of Dalston Lane,
is said to have been named after some springs or
wells which were of high repute in former days, but
the very site of which is now forgotten. It is a
hamlet to the parish of Hackney lying on the east
side of the Stoke Newington Road, and covering
a triangular plot of ground, the north-east side of
which is bounded by Amhurst Road and Hackney
Downs. The old manor-house originally belonged
to the family of Heron, and is worthy of mention,
as having been the abode of Cecilia, the daughter
of the great Sir Thomas More, who married George
Heron, "of Shacklewell." Her husband becoming
involved in the ruin of his father-in-law, and her
only son dying in infancy, the family became extinct. The estate then passed into other hands,
and in 1700 was sold to Mr. Francis Tyssen, by its
then owner, a gentleman named Rowe, who, it is
said, late in life was forced to apply for relief to the
parish in which he had once owned a manor.