Bulls Head, Old Spring gardens, St Martins in Fields SW1
St Martins pub history index
Spring Gardens, Cockspur street and Charing Cross in 1799
A listing of historical public houses, Taverns, Inns, Beer Houses and Hotels in St Martins in Fields, London.
Residents at this address.
No trace remains of the " Bull's Head " tavern in Old Spring Gardens, Charing Cross. During the writing and publishing of " Joannis Philippi Angli Defensio," &c., John Milton lodged at one Thomson's, next door to the "Bull's Head," at Charing Cross, opening into Spring Gardens.
It was outside this "Bull's Head" tavern at Charing Cross that Colonel Blood with five or six of his associates, well mounted and armed, awaited the return home to Clarendon House of the Duke of Ormond. Their design was to carry the Duke to Tyburn and there hang him with a paper pinned to his breast showing why they had done it. Blood had laid a design in Ireland to surprise the Castle of Dublin, and the magazine there, and to usurp the government ; but this being discovered by the Duke of Ormond the night before its intended execution, some of his accomplices were taken and executed as traitors. The deaths of these, Blood and the surviving rogues bound themselves by a solemn oath to revenge upon the person of the Duke.
When the Duke had passed the "Bull's Head" they all took horse and galloped after him, overtaking him near his own gate.
They knocked down his footmen, having ascertained beforehand that he was attended by only two or three, took him out of his coach, forced him up behind one of the horsemen, to whom he was tied, and rode away with him. The coachman and servants crying out, the porter reached the spot, and, seeing what was done, pursued them. The Duke strove so violently to free himself that at last he got loose, and threw himself, with the villain he was tied to, off the horse. The rest turned back, and, finding it impossible to carry him away, discharged two pistols at him ; but the night being dark they could not see to take aim properly, missing him both times. And the porter and other assistance coming up, they were glad to make haste away, leaving the nobleman much bruised by his fall. A thousand pounds reward offered by the King did not shake the fidelity of these scoundrels to each other, and they would probably never have been discovered if the failure of the attempt which Blood made on the Crown jewels had not led to his confession of the attempt on the Duke.
Colley Cibber, whilst living in Old Spring Garden, advertised as follows :
" In or near the old Play-house in Drury Lane, on Monday last the 19th of January, a watch was dropped having a Tortoiseshell Case inlaid with silver, a silver chain, and a gold seal ring; the arms, a cross wavy and chequer. Whoever brings it to Mr. Cibber, at his house near the Bull-head in Old Spring Garden, shall have three guineas reward." * He lived here from 1711 until 1714.
In Taylor's "Taverns," 1636, a Bull or Buffle's (Buffalo's) Head is mentioned as being at Charing Cross. It was at his house in Spring Gardens that Prince Rupert breathed his last on November 29, 1684.
The name of Spring Gardens has become so closely associated, through their offices being built on the site, with the London County Council, that it bids fair to remain in perpetuity, a memento of other less civilised, if more picturesque times. Its dying depositions, so far as old associations are concerned, were taken in the year 1896, when the new Government Offices absorbed, I think, nearly the whole of New Street, where dwelt Sir Astley Cooper at No. 2 ; Sir James Scarlett (Lord Abinger), at No. 4; and Joseph Jekyll, the wit, at No. 22. A curious sodality had its headquarters for some time at No. 10 New Street, Spring Garden. This was the Outinian Society, formed in 1818 at No. 190 Piccadilly by John Penn, a descendant of the founder of Pennsylvania, to whose house, No. 10 New Street, it was afterwards removed. It was a sort of matrimonial society, and its character may be inferred from its descriptive title in 1823 : "A proposal of the Outinian Society for establishing a plan to afford means to any of its members and advocates ... of entering, on marriage, into a covenant or contract ... to insure of^ener the constant voluntary companionship of husbands and wives."
The retaining wall at the end of New Street and along the terrace was a piece, about 225 feet long, of the old Park wall, between which and the Mall was the ' Green Walk " where Charles II. stood and talked to Nell Gwynne.
When Drummond's Bank, was rebuilt in 1879, on the site of Lockett's and the Bull's Head taverns, the excavations revealed fossil remains of the cave lion, the mammoth, and the Irish elk, and, in the upper deposits, the Celtic ox, the horse, and the sheep. These foundations, the excavations for which were attended by great difficulties, reached to a depth exceeding thirty feet, and it is said, of course exaggeratedly, that it cost more to draw the water off for the foundations than it did to build the bank itself. The writer has himself seen the shells of freshwater species thrown up in the "alluvial gravel" during excavations both on the site of the new Government Offices in Spring Gardens and during the deep diggings for the lavatories near the King Charles statue — the first conveniences, reputedly, of their kind in London. The purchasing from a labourer is also remembered of a fossil nautilus, which, except for the remnants of its silvery shell, was a mass of white day exuding moisture at every pore. This was discovered at a depth of about thirty or forty feet, while digging foundations in Water Lane, Blackfriars. The nautilus also came from the "alluvial gravel."
It was at the Bull's Head tavern that Pepys looked down the barrel of his " French gun," newly purchased firom Truelocke, the £unous gunsmith, with as many misgivings as some persons examine the mouth of a gift horse. " A very good piece of work," he says, " and truly wrought ; but for certain not a thing to be used much with safety ; and he " {i.e. the gunsmith) " do find that this very gun was never shot off" {Diary March 29, 1667).