Tottenham Court Road

Tottenham Court Road, a market road, or street, leading from Oxford Street to the prebendal manor of Tothill, Totenhall, or Totenham Court, described in Domesday, and originally appertaining to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's. In 1560 the manor was demised to Queen Elizabeth for ninety-nine years, in the name of Sir Robert Dudley. In 1639, twenty years before the expiration of Queen Elizabeth's term, a lease was granted to Charles I., in the name of Sir Henry Vane. In 1649, being seized as Crown land, the manor was sold to Ralph Harrison, Esq., of London, for the sum of £3318 : 3: 11. At the Restoration it reverted to the Crown; and in 1661 was granted by Charles II., for the term of forty-one years, in payment of a debt, to Sir Henry Wood. The lease was next possessed by Isabella, Countess of Arlington, in the reign of Charles II., from whom it descended to her daughter, the Duchess of Grafton; and in this way was inherited by the family of the Fitzroys, Dukes of Grafton, descended from Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, the notorious mistress of Charles II. The fee-simple of the manor, subject to the payment of £300 per annum to the prebendary of Tottenham, was subsequently vested in the Hon. Charles Fitzroy, first Lord Southampton, and his heirs, by an Act passed in 1768, and Grafton Street, Fitzroy Square, etc., not long after erected on the grounds belonging to the manor. The Manor House stood at the north-west extremity of the present road, and was subsequently transformed into a public house, known as the Adam and Eve, now in the Hampstead Road. There is a view of it in Wilkinson, with a plan exhibiting the exact locality of the house. Here, in Tottenham Court Road, and in front of the Adam and Eve tea gardens, Hogarth has laid the scene of his March to Finchley. Here "the famous pugilistic skill of Broughton and Slack was publickly exhibited, upon an uncovered stage, in a yard open to the North Road;"² and here, in the tea-gardens, (May 16, 1785), Lunardi effected his second descent from his balloon. The grounds attached to the Adam and Eve were spacious and convenient, and the company at one time respectable. As the new buildings increased it became a place of a more promiscuous resort—so much so, indeed, that the music-room was abolished, the skittle-grounds destroyed, and the gardens dug up for the foundation of the present "Eden Street, Hampstead Road" the first turning on the left hand from Tottenham Court Road. The first notice of Tottenham Court, as a place of public entertainment, contained in the books of the parish of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, occurs under the year 1645, when Mrs. Stacye's maid, and two others, were fined a shilling a-piece "for drinking at Tottenhall Court on the Sabbath daie,"¹ but Ben Jonson seems to refer to this road when he makes Quarlous say to Win-wife in Bartholomew Fair, 1614, "Because she is in possibility to be your daughter-in-law, and may ask your blessing hereafter when she courts it to Totnam to eat cream."² Tottenham Fields were until a comparatively recent date a favourite place of resort.

When the sweet-breathing spring unfolds the buds,
Love flies the dusty town for shady woods.
Then Tottenham fields with roving beauty swarm.
Gay, Epistle to Pulteney.

1773. Notwithstanding Tottenham Court Road was so infested by the lowest order, who kept what they called a Gooseberry Fair, it was famous at certain times of the year, particularly in summer, for its booths of regular theatrical performers, who deserted the empty benches of Drury Lane Theatre, under the mismanagement of Mr. Fleetwood, and condescended to admit the audience at sixpence each. Mr. Yates, and several other eminent performers had their names painted on their booths.—J. T. Smith, Book for a Rainy Day, p. 27.

Tottenham Court Road does not boast an illustrious roll of inhabitants. Pinkerton writes to Lord Buchan, January 29, 1793, "My address is 120 Tottenham Court Road;" and Chateaubriand said that about the same time he lodged in a garret in Tottenham Court Road for six shillings a week.

December 5, 1818.—On passing through Tottenham Court Road we saw an unusual congregation of blackguards at the entrance of a passage called Cock Court. Asked what was the matter? "Randall lives here, Sir." It was the Conqueror's levée.— Thomas Moore's Diary.

Moore had been at a fight between this Randall and another the day before, and was now on his way to visit his daughter's grave at Hornsey. Moore's "congregation of blackguards" were not the worst of that colour who have been met with here. Brothers the Prophet declared that he "had seen the Devil walking leisurely up Tottenham Court Road."³

Observe. Meux's brewhouse at the south-east corner, famous for its porter vats and artesian well. Opposite to it:—

A large circular boundary stone, let into the pavement in the middle of the highway, exactly where Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road meet in a right angle. When the charity boys of St. Giles's parish walk the boundaries, those who have deserved flogging are whipped at this stone,¹ in order that as they grow up they may remember the place, and be competent to give evidence should any dispute arise with the adjoining parishes. Near this stone stood St. Giles's Pound.—J.T. Smith, p. 22.

On the west side of Tottenham Court Road was Whitefield's Tabernacle, built by subscription under the auspices of the Rev. George Whitefield, the founder of the Calvinistic Methodists. The first stone was laid May 10, 1756, and the chapel opened November 7 following—Whitefield preaching on the occasion to a very crowded audience. Mrs. Whitefield (d. 1768) is buried here; and here, on a monument to her memory, is an inscription to her husband, who, dying in New England in 1770, was buried at Newbury Port, near Boston. John Bacon, R.A., the celebrated sculptor, died August 7, 1799, is buried uncer the north gallery; here too lies the once popular preacher and writer, the Rev. A.M. Toplady, who died August 11, 1788. The chapel was pulled down in April 1890.

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² Smith, Book for a Rainy Day, p. 26.

¹ Parton's History of St. Giles's, p. 239.
² Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, Act i. Sc. 1.
³ Southey's Espriella's Letters, vol. ii. p. 231.

¹ This refers to the last quarter of the 18th century. The boys do not now receive their whippings here.