For a few years, during the first half of the seventeenth century, there was a rival to Sadler’s Wells in a popular place of amusement called ‘The New Wells near the London Spa.’ There were gardens here, and a theatre, in which took place what we should now call variety entertainments. Mrs. Charlotte Charke--the eccentric daughter of Colley Cibber, was one of the performers. Ceasing to attract, it was closed in 1747, the theatre being afterwards used as a chapel under the auspices of John Wesley, and, according to Pinks, the houses Nos. 5 to 8, Rosoman Street now occupy the site.
Lysons, Halliwell Phillipps, and others, have confused the mineral spring discovered by Sadler with a mineral spring of greater celebrity called the New Tunbridge Wells; but, though near each other, they were quite distinct. In 1699 a narrative poem was published under the title of ‘A Walk to Islington, with a Description of New Tunbridge Wells and Sadler’s Musick House,’ in which the fame of the wells is ascribed to its medicinal water, and that of the music-house to such good cheer as cheesecakes, custards, bottled ale and cider, and the diversions of singing and dancing. An article in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for December, 1813, puts the matter beyond a doubt; and their relative positions are clearly marked in Horwood’s map of 1799. New Tunbridge Wells, or the Islington Spa (really, of course, in the parish of Clerkenwell), was a spring of chalybeate water in a garden, the entrance to which until 1810 was opposite the New River Head on the south side; No. 6, Eliza Place marked the site. This street, a continuation west of Myddleton Place, has, like it, been absorbed by Rosebery Avenue. The spa was open to the public before 1685, as is proved by a curious advertisement in the _London Gazette_ of September 24 in that year: ‘Whereas Mr. John Langley, of London, Merchant, who bought the Rhinoceros and Islington Wells, has been represented by divers of his malicious adversaries to be a person of no estate or reputation, nor able to discharge his debts; which evil practices have been on purpose to ruin and destroy his reputation,’ etc. The character of the company soon after this may be judged from a burlesque poem, published in 1691; it contains the lines which head this chapter. In 1700 there was ‘music for dancing all day long, every Monday and Thursday during the summer season. No mask to be admitted.’ A few years later the spa became fashionable, being patronized by ladies of such position as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. It was at its zenith in 1733, when the Princesses Amelia and Caroline, daughters of George II., came daily in the summer and drank the waters. At this time, as we learn from the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, ‘Such was the concourse of nobility and others that the proprietor took above £30 in a morning. On the birthday of the Princesses, as they passed through the Spa Field (which was generally filled with carriages), they were saluted with a discharge of 21 guns, a compliment which was always paid them on their arrival; and in the evening there was a great bonfire, and the guns were discharged several times.’ Islington Spa continued with, on the whole, declining fortune throughout the rest of the eighteenth century. Soon afterwards it was found necessary to curtail the garden, and a great part of the old coffee-room was pulled down. About the year 1810, the old entrance being closed, a new one was made in Lloyd’s Row; and finally, in 1840, what remained of the garden was altogether done away with, and two rows of houses, called Spa Cottages, were built on the site. Even now there is a house at the corner of Lloyd’s Row and Spa Cottages, the residence of the last proprietor, which recalls the vanished glory of other days by the inscription in capital letters, ‘ISLINGTON SPA, OR NEW TUNBRIDGE WELLS.’ At the back, in the cellar of No. 6, Spa Cottages, I have seen grotto-work with stone pilasters; on each side are steps descending. Here, I believe, was the original chalybeate spring; for many years it has ceased to flow.