Newington

Newington-Butts, Newington, Surrey,—there is no particular pile of buildings distinguished by this name, but the neighbourhood about the Elephant and Castle is so called.

Newington Butts, a village in Surry, extending from the end of Blackman street, to Kennington common, is said to receive the name of Butts, from the exercise of shooting at Butts, much practised, both here and in the other towns of 34England, in the reign of King Henry VIII. &c. to fit men to serve in the regiment of archers. But Mr. Aubrey thinks it received this name from the Butts of Norfolk, who had an estate here. The Drapers and Fishmongers company have almshouses here: and Mr. Whatley observes, that here were planted the first peaches so much esteemed, distinguished by the name of Newington peaches. The church here, which is dedicated to St. Mary, is a rectory in the gift of the Bishop of Winchester, and the profits arising to the Incumbent amount to about 140l. per annum. Maitland. See Stoke Newington.

Newington, Surrey. The parish of Newington, or Newington Butts, extends from St George's, Southwark, to Camberwell; Walworth is a hamlet. The original name was Neweton, afterwards spelled Newerton; the addition of Butts occurs first in 1558, and is evidently due to the butts set up here by royal mandate for the practice of archery by the inhabitants of this side the Thames. The main streets are Newington Causeway and Newington Butts. Newington Causeway reaches from Blackman Street to the Elephant and Castle. On the east side is the Surrey Sessions House, and by it was Horsemonger Lane Gaol. Newington Butts runs southwards from the Elephant and Castle to the Kennington Road. On the west side was the parish church, removed in 1876 to widen the highway. [See St. Mary, Newingtoa] Here is the Metropolitan Tabernacle (The Rev. C.J. Spurgeon's), erected 1860–1861, from the designs of Mr. W.W. Pocock, at a cost of £31,000, and calculated for a congregation of 4500. Of the exterior the distinctive feature is a great hexastyle Corinthian portico; the interior is characterised by its great space; it is 145 feet long, 80 broad and 60 high; its lightness; the deep double galleries, the peculiar arrangement of the seats, and the ample platform which supplies the place of a pulpit. In front of the pulpit is a large marble basin, but it is only uncovered on occasions of public immersions. Altogether the Tabernacle is, with its congregation, as much worth seeing as "the pastor" is worth hearing.

Michael Faraday was born at Newington, September 22, 1791. In 1797, when Robert Southey was reading for the bar, he lived at "Mr. Peacock's, No. 20 Prospect Place, Newington Butts." In the last year of the 16th and the early part of the 17th century there was a theatre at Newington Butts of which Philip Henslowe was the manager, and where "My Lord Admirals" and "My Lord Chamberlain's Men," of whom Shakespeare was one, acted.¹

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¹ Henslowe's Diary (Shak. Soc.), p. 35; Malone's Hist. of the Stage, p. 294; Collier's Hist. of Dram. Poetry, vol. iii. p. 263.