by a tunnel. The roof of this tunnel was not to come within twelve feet of the present surface of the burial-ground, although it is stated that "the ground is so crowded with dead that hundreds of bodies are buried to a depth of twenty-four feet in the older part of the ground." It may be stated here that, in 1848, when the church was being altered, it was found necessary to take in a piece of the churchyard to admit of the enlargement of the building; and while making the excavations which were necessary, it was discovered that at depths varying from eight to twelve feet the clay was laden with foetid decomposition and filthy water from the surrounding ground, and that masses of coffins were packed one upon the other in rows, with scarcely any intervening ground. In 1866 the railway company commenced their operations against the St. Giles's burial-ground; but immediately upon the discovery, through the works of the contractor, that bodies were buried there, application was made to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, as also to the solicitors and engineer of the company; and an undertaking was obtained that the works should be stopped, and the exposed places decently covered, until an order could be obtained for the proper removal of the remains. Upon this discovery becoming known, a loud outburst of indignation was raised by the parishioners, especially those living in the immediate neighbourhood, and who, consequently, were most affected thereby. They very justly considered that a "horrible desecration of the dead" had taken place, and such as ought not to be tolerated, or even justified, by any Act of Parliament. They accordingly decided that the matter should be made as public as possible, and that it should be brought prominently to the notice of the authorities in view to putting a stop to the proceedings of the railway company. In the House of Cornmons the attention of the Government was twice called by a member to the proceedings of the railway company; and the consequent inquiry into the facts of the case would, it was fondly hoped, protect this sacred spot from profanation. But alas! that hope was a vain one. The company in their turn appeared to have given up the making of the tunnel; but in the end the railway was carried across it: many tombs and many bodies were displaced, and the authorities of the parish availed themselves of the opportunity to enlarge and improve the place, and convert it into a public recreation-ground. The old disused burial-ground was accordingly laid out as a garden, and a memorial erected to record the many eminent persons buried all around. This memorial was built at the cost of Lady Burdett-Coutts, and the grounds were opened to the public in 1877. The new Cemetery of St. Pancras, eighty-seven acres in extent, was opened in 1854. It is situated on the Horse Shoe Farm, at Finchley, about four miles from London, and two miles from the northern boundary of the parish. It was the first extra-mural parish burial-ground made for the metropolis. Close by the old church of St. Pancras it would appear that there was formerly another "Adam and Eve" tavern—a rival, possibly, to that which we have already noticed at the corner of the Hampstead and Euston Roads. The site of the old "Adam and Eve” tea-gardens, in St. Pancras Road, is now occupied by Eve Terrace, and a portion of the burial-ground for St. Giles's-in-theFields, of which we have spoken already. The tavern originally had attached to it some extensive pleasure-grounds, which were the common resort of holiday-folk and pleasure-seekers. The following advertisements appear in the newspapers at the commencement of this century : ADAM AND EVE TAVERN, ADJOINING ST. PANCRAS CHURCHYARD G. Swinnerton, jun., and Co., proprietors, have greatly improved the same by laying out the gardens in an elegant manner, improving the walks with arbours, flowers, shrubs, &c., and the long room (capable of dining any company) with paintings, &c. The delightfulness of its situation, and the enchanting prospects, may justly be esteemed the most agreeable retreat in the vicinity of the metropolis. They therefore solicit the favour of annual dinners, &c., and will exert their best endeavours to render every part of the entertainment as satisfactory as possible. The proprietors have likewise, at a great expense, fitted out a squadron of frigates, which, from a love to their country, they wish they could render capable of acting against the natural enemies of Great wisher to his country. They therefore hope for the company Britain, which must give additional pleasure to every wellof all those who have the welfare of their country at heart, and those in particular who are of a mechanical turn, as in the above the possibility of a retrograde motion is fully evinced. The Gardens at the Adam and Eve, St. Pancras Church, are opened for this season, which are genteel and rural. Coffee, tea, and hot loaves every day; where likewise cows are kept for making syllabubs: neat wines and all sorts of fine ales. Near which gardens is a field pleasantly situated for trap-ball playing. Mr. Lambert returns those gentlemen and hopes for the continuance of their future favours, which will ever be most gratefully acknowledged by, gentlemen, your most obedient humble servant, thanks who favoured him with their bean-feasts last season, GEO. LAMBERT. Dinners dressed on the shortest notice; there is also a long room which will accommodate 100 persons. All those who love trap-ball to Lambert's repair, Leave the smoke of the town, and enjoy the fresh air. Apropos of this place of rural retirement for the citizen of years long gone by, as a place to which St. Pancras.] THE "MAYOR OF GARRATT.” 339 Another advertisement, which appeared forty years later, states that— St. Pancras Wells Waters are in the greatest perfection, and highly recommended by the most eminent physicians in the kingdom. To prevent mistakes, St. Pancras Wells is on that side the churchyard towards London; the house and gardens of which are as genteel and rural as any round this metropolis; the best of tea, coffee, and hot loaves, every day, may always be depended on, with neat wines, curious punch, Dorchester, Marlborough, and Ringwood beers; Burton, Yorkshire, and other fine ales, and cyder; and also cows kept to accommodate ladies in the greatest perfection. The proprietor returns his unand gentlemen with new milk and cream, and syllabubs feigned thanks to those societies of gentlemen who have honoured him with their country feasts, and humbly hopes a continuance of their favours, which will greatly oblige JOHN ARMSTRONG. their most obedient servant, Note.-Two long rooms will dine two hundred compleatly. June 10, 1769. he could escape from the din and turmoil of the great Babel of London, we may be pardoned for quoting the words of the facetious Tom Brown, in his "London Walks: "-"It was the wont of the good citizens," he says, "to rise betimes on Sunday mornings, and, with their wives and children under their arms, sally forth to brush the cobwebs from their brains, and the smoke from their lungs, by a trip into the country. Having no cheap excursions by boat and rail to relieve the groaning of the metropolis for twelve hours of a few of its labouring thousands, the immediate neighbourhood of London naturally became the breathing space and pleasure-ground of the lieges to whom time and shillings were equally valuable. Then it was that Sadler's and Bagnigge Wells, the Conduit, Marylebone Gardens, the Gun (at Pimlico), Copenhagen House, Jack Straw's Castle, the Spaniards and Highbury Barn, first opened their hospitable portals, and offered to the dusty, thirsty, hungry, and perspiring pleasure-seeker rest and refreshment-shilling ordinaries-to which, by the way, a known good appetite would not be admitted under eighteenpence. Bowling-greens, where the The "village" of St. Pancras, too, has not been players, preferring elegance, appeared in their shirt. without its oddities; for such, we presume, must sleeves and shaven heads, their wigs and long- have been one Harry Dimsdale, or, as he was skirted coats being picturesquely distributed on called, Sir Harry, the mock "Mayor of Garratt," * the adjacent hedges, under the guard of their three- who was a well-known character, some years since, cornered hats and Malacca canes. Hollands, at all the public-houses in the parish. According punch, claret, drawn from the wood at three-andsixpence a quart; skittles and quoits, accompanied, of course, with pipes and tobacco, offered their fascinations to the male customers; while the ladies and juveniles were beguiled with cakes and ale, tea and shrimps, strawberries and cream, syllabubs and junkets, swings and mazes, lovers' walks and woodbine bowers." St. Pancras had formerly its mineral springs, which were much resorted to. Near the churchyard, in the yard of a house, is, or was till recently, the once celebrated St. Pancras Wells, or Spa, the waters of which are said to have been of a slightly cathartic nature, The gardens of the Spa were very extensive, and laid out with long straight walks, which were used as a promenade by the visitors. In the bills issued by the proprietors it was stated that the quality of its waters was "surprisingly successful in curing the most obstinate cases of scurvy, king's evil, leprosy, and all other breakings out of the skin." The following advertisement, dated 13th February, 1729, thus alludes to the Spa : To be Lett, at Pancras, a large House, commonly called Pancridge Wells, with a Garden, Stable, and other conveniences. Inquire, &c. Apart from its tea-gardens and mineral springs, St. Pancras has in its time possessed a building devoted to the Muses, for we learn that at a private amateur theatre in Pancras Street, Mr. J. R. Planché made some of his earliest appearances on a stage. to Mr. Palmer, in his "History of St. Pancras," "he was a poor diminutive creature, deformed, and half an idiot. He was by profession a muffinseller. The watermen at the hackney-coach stands throughout the parish used to torment him sadly; almost every day poor Harry was persecuted, and frequently so roughly used by them that he often shed tears. Death released poor Harry from his persecutors in the year 1811." There are several portraits of him in existence. Inter alia, St. Pancras has the honour of having given birth to the imaginary" Emmanuel Jennings," who figures in the "Rejected Addresses” in the imitation of Crabbe "In Holywell Street, St. Pancras, he was bred, Facing the pump, and near the 'Granby's Head.'" Before proceeding to describe Somers Town in detail, we may state that the vivid imagination of Dr. Stukeley, whose utter untrustworthiness as an antiquary is shown by the late Mr. B. B. Woodward in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1866, not only discovered the remains of a veritable Roman camp here (called the Brill), but drew it out on • See Vol. VI., p. 486. paper, in minute detail, showing even the stables of the horse soldiers. Dr. Stukeley affirmed that the old church of St. Pancras covered part of the encampment, the outline and plan of which he gave in the "Itinerarium Curiosum," as far back as 1758; but notwithstanding that his opinion has been strongly condemned by more trustworthy antiquaries and topographers, the supposition of Dr. Stukeley may derive some confirmation from the fact that in 1842 a stone was found at King's Cross or Battle Bridge, bearing on it the words LEG. XX. (Legio Vicesima), one of those Roman legions which we know from Tacitus to have formed part of the army under Suetonius. It may further be mentioned that the spot known for so many centuries as Battle Bridge, and the traditional scene of a fierce battle between the Britons and the Romans, corresponds very closely to the description of the battle-field as still extant in the pages of the 14th book of the "Annals" of Tacitus. We learn from a writer in Notes and Queries (No. 230), that during the Civil War a fortification was erected at the Brill Farm, near Old St. Pancras Church, where, some hundred and twenty years later, Somers Town was built. A view of it, published in 1642, is engraved on page 336. We may add, in concluding this chapter, that the desecration of the St. Pancras churchyard, of which we have spoken above, was as nothing compared to the demolition of the hundreds of houses of the poorer working classes in Agar Town and Somers Town, occasioned by the extension of the Midland Railway. The extent of this clean sweep was, and is still, comparatively unknown, and has caused a very considerable portion of St. Pancras parish to be effaced from the map of London. Perhaps no part of London or its neighbourhood has undergone such rapid and extensive transformation. It will, perhaps, be said that in the long run the vicinity has benefited in every way; but it is to be feared that in the process of improvement the weakest have been thrust rather rudely to the wall. CHAPTER XXVI. SOMERS TOWN AND EUSTON SQUARE. “Quis novus hic nostris successit sedibus hospes?"—Virgil, “Æn.” Gradual Rise and Decline of Somers Town-The Place largely Colonised by Foreigners-A Modern Miracle-Skinner Street-The Brill-A Wholesale Clearance of Dwelling-houses-Ossulston Street-Charlton Street-The "Coffee House"-Clarendon Square and the PolygonMary Wollstoncraft Godwin-The Chapel of St. Aloysius-The Abbé Carron-The Rev. John Nerinckx-Seymour Street-The Railway Clearing House-The Euston Day Schools-St. Mary's Episcopal Chapel-Drummond Street-The Railway Benevolent Institution-The London and North-Western Railway Terminus-Euston Square-Dr. Wolcot (Peter Pindar)-The Euston Road-Gower Street-Sir George Rose and Jack Bannister-New St. Pancras Church-The Rev. Thomas Dale-Woburn Place. Down to about the close of the last century, the locality now known as Somers Town-or, in other words, the whole of the triangular space between the Hampstead, Pancras, and Euston Roads-was almost exclusively pastoral; and with the exception of a few straggling houses near the "Mother Red Cap," at Camden Town, and also a few round about the old church of St. Pancras, there was nothing to intercept the view of the Hampstead uplands from Queen's Square and the Foundling Hospital. An interesting account of the gradual rise and decline of this district is given in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1813, wherein the writer says:-" Commencing at Southampton Row, near Holborn, is an excellent private road, belonging to the Duke of Bedford, and the fields along the road are intersected with paths in various directions. The pleasantness of the situation, and the temptation offered by the New Road, induced some people to build on the land, and the Somers places, east and west, arose; a few low buildings near the Duke's road (now near the 'Lord Nelson') first made their appearance, accompanied by others of the same description; and after a while Somers Town was planned. Mr. Jacob Leroux became the principal landowner under Lord Somers. The former built a handsome house for himself, and various streets were named from the title of the noble lord (Somers); a chapel was opened, and a polygon began in a square. Everything seemed to prosper favourably, when some unforeseen cause arose which checked the fervour of building, and many carcases of houses were sold for less than the value of the building materials. In the meantime gradual advances were made on the north side of the New Road (now the Euston Road), from Tottenham Court Road, and, finally, the buildings on the south side reached the line of Gower Street. Somewhat lower, and nearer to Battle Bridge, there was a long grove of stunted trees, which never seemed to thrive; and on the site of the Bedford Nursery a pavilion was erected, in which Her Royal Highness the Duchess of York gave away colours to a volunteer regiment. The interval between Southampton Place and Somers Town was soon one vast brick-field. On the death of Mr. Leroux," continues the writer, "and the large property being submitted to the hammer, numbers of small houses were sold for less than £150, at rents of £20 per annum each. The value of money decreasing at this time, from thirty to forty guineas were demanded as rents for these paltry habitations; hence everybody who could obtain the means became a builder: carpenters, retired publicans, leather workers, haymakers, &c., each contrived to raise his house or houses, and every street was lengthened in its turn. The barracks for the Life Guards, in Charlton Street, became a very diminutive square, and now we really find several of these streets approaching the old Pancras Road. The Company of Skinners, who own thirty acres of land, perceiving these projectors succeed in covering the north side of the New Road from Somers Place to Battle Bridge, and that the street named from them has reached the 'Brill Tavern,' have offered the ground to Mr. Burton to build upon, and it is now covered by Judd Street, Tonbridge Place, and a new chapel for some description of Dissenters or other." Mr. Burton, as we have previously stated, was the builder, not only of the houses covering the land belonging to the Skinners' Company, but also of Russell Square, Bedford Place, &c.* 341 Camden Towns will soon be closely connected with it." During the ten subsequent years we find that great strides had been made in the progress of building in Somers Town, for a correspondent of Hone's "Year Book," in 1832, tells us that, though it had then become little better than another arm to the "Monster Briareus" of London, he remembered it as "isolated and sunny, when he first haunted it as a boy." Under the heading of "A Miracle at Somers Town," Hone, in his "Every-day Book," tells the following laughable tale: "Mr. a middleaged gentleman who had long been afflicted by various disorders, and especially by the gout, had so far recovered from a severe attack of the latter complaint, that he was enabled to stand, yet with so little advantage, that he could not walk more than fifty yards, and it took him nearly an hour to perform that distance. While thus enfeebled by suffering, and safely creeping in great difficulty, on a sunny day, along a footpath by the side of a field near Somers Town, he was alarmed by loud cries intermingled with the screams of many voices behind him. From his infirmity he could only turn very slowly round, and then, to his astonishment, he saw, within a yard of his coat-tail, the horns of a mad bullock-when, to the equal astonishment of its pursuers, this unhappy gentleman instantly leaped the fence, and, overcome by terror, continued to run with amazing celerity nearly the whole distance of the field, while the animal kept its own course along the road. At the end of the last century this district, rents gentleman, who had thus miraculously recovered being cheap, was largely colonised by foreign arti- the use of his legs, retained his power of speed sans, mostly from France, who were driven on our until he reached his own house, where he related shores by the events of the Reign of Terror and the miraculous circumstance; nor did his quickly the first French Revolution. Indeed, it became restored faculty of walking abate until it ceased nearly as great a home of industry as Clerkenwell with his life several years afterwards. This and Soho. It may be added that, as the neighbour-miraculous cure," adds Mr. Hone, "can be attested hood of Manchester and Portman Squares formed by his surviving relatives." the head-quarters of the emigrés of the wealthier class who were thrown on our shores by the waves of the first French Revolution, so the exiles of the poorer class found their way to St. Pancras, and settled down around Somers Town, where they opened a Catholic chapel, at first in Charlton Street, Clarendon Square, and subsequently in the square itself. Of this church, which is dedicated to St. Aloysius, we shall have more to say presently. "Somers Town," wrote the Brothers Percy in 1823, "has now no other division from the rest of the metropolis but a road, and Kentish and • See Vol. IV., p. 576. The Skinner Street, where we now resume Our perambulation, lies in the south-east corner of Somers Town, and connects the Euston Road with Brill Row; this street is so called after the Skinners' Company, who, as above stated, own a great part of this district. The company hold the land on behalf of their grammar school, at Tonbridge, in Kent. The property, which was originally known as the Sandhills Estate, and was comparatively worthless three centuries ago, was bequeathed by Sir Andrew Judd, Lord Mayor of London, in 1558, to endow the said school; hence the nomenclature of the streets in this neighbourhood-Judd + See Vol. IV., p 576. Street, Skinner Street, Tonbridge Place, &c. The property now brings in a regular income of several thousands a year. known fish, our early riser will most probably find that the Somers 'Brill' claims no special relationship to the scaly tribe. . . Here is the Brill' Brill Row, at the northern end of Skinner Street, tavern, and how it came to have this name would, together with the "Brill" tavern close by, are no doubt, be as interesting as to know the origin nearly all that remains of the locality once familiarly of the names given to other public-houses. Some known by that name, which was nothing more nor landlord of old may have had a particular liking less than a range of narrow streets crossing each for this fish, or may have been fortunate in proother at right angles, and full of costermongers' curing a super-excellent cook who could satisfy the shops and barrows, but which were swept away during the formation of the Midland Railway Terminus. Dr. Stukeley derives the name of the "Brill" as a contraction from Burgh Hill, a Saxon name for a place on an elevated site; but surely that derivation will scarcely apply here, as it certainly does not lie as high as the land on its eastern or western side. The place on a Sunday morning was thus facetiously described by a writer in the Illustrated News of the World, just before the time of its demolition :-"The 'Brill' is situated between Euston Square and the station of the Great Northern Railway, and is a place of great attraction to thousands who inhabit Somers, Camden, and Kentish Towns. Though bearing the name of a well most fastidious appetite of the most fastidious customer by placing before him a superior dish. Very likely some local antiquarian could tell us all about it and much else. He could tell us, no doubt, when, and under what circumstances, this north-west suburb of London itself was so named from the noble family of Somers; that this very Brill' was known in days gone by as Cæsar's Camp, and for this latter statement might quote as an authority the distinguished and well-known Dr. Stukeley himself. The oldest inhabitant could also talk with great volubility respecting the site on which Somers Town now stands-how, some sixty or seventy or more years ago, it was a piece of wild common or barren brick-field, whither resorted on Sundays the bird-fanciers and many of the |