Foote, the dramatist and comedian,* which still stands on the opposite side of the road leading to Brompton, and where he lived for many years, expending large sums upon its improvement. It is now called "The Hermitage," and is completely surrounded by a large garden enclosed by high walls.

Exactly opposite to this house, in the angle of the road, stands an old house in a moderate-sized garden (Cambridge Lodge). Francis Bartolozzi, the celebrated engraver, who arrived in England in 1764, came to reside here in 1777. He was born at Florence in 1730, and died at Lisbon in 1813. His son, Gaetano Bartolozzi, father to the late Madame Vestris, was born in 1757, and died August 25th, 1813. Passing up the road, beside market gardens, is the old garden wall of Normand House, with some curious brick gates (now closed in): the house is very old; the

* Died 20th October, 1777, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

date, 1661, is in the centre arch, over the principal gate

way, and it is said to have

been used as a hospital for persons recovering from the Great Plague in 1665. Sir E. Bulwer Lytton has resided here. In 1813 "it was appropriated for the reception of insane ladies" (Faulkner), and it is now a lunatic asylum for ladies, with the name of

Bartolozzi's House.

the road, out of which we have turned, is a cottage to the right named Wentworth Cottage. Here Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall once resided. The willow in front of the cottage was planted by them from a slip of that over the grave of Napoleon at St. Helena. The land opposite this cottage is now to be let on building lease. This district, now known "Fulham Fields," was formerly called 'No Man's Land," and according to Faulkner, the local historian, contained, in 1813, "about six houses." One of these was

as

66

an ancient house, once the residence of the family of Plumbe," which was pulled down about twenty-three years ago, and replaced by a cluster of dwellings for the labourers in the surrounding market gardens, which extend from Walham Green nearly to the Thames in a north-west direction; "the North End Road," as it is called, forming the eastern boundary of "Fulham Fields." To establish

the connection of Sylvester's lines, quoted in the late Mr. Crofton Croker's Paper on the "Golden Lion," with this locality, the antiquary who pointed it out observed that

"Our poet had an uncle named William Plumbe, who resided at North End, Fulham, having married the widow of John Gresham, the second son of Sir John Gresham, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1547, and which lady was the only daughter and heir of Edward Dormer of Fulham. Here it was, while visiting his uncle, that Sylvester formed the attachment which is the subject of his poem (see the folio edition of his works, 1621). Uncle Plumbe had been a widower; and from monuments which exist, or existed, in the parish church of Fulham, appears to have departed this life on the 9th February, 1593-4, aged sixty. In the previous May, his widow had lost her son Edmund (or Edward) Gresham, at the age of sixteen; and seriously touched by the rapid proofs of mortality within her house, from which the hand of death had within twelve months removed both a husband and a child, made preparations for her own demise by recording her intention to repose beside their remains: and to her husband's memory she raised, in Fulham Church, a monument of alabaster, inlaid and ornamented with various-coloured marble,' leaving a space after her name for the insertion of the date of her death and age, which appear never to have been supplied."

The arms of "Dormer, impaled with Gresham," we are told remain, "those of Plumbe are gone." Sylvester's "Triumph of Faith" is consecrated "to the grateful memory of the first kind fosterer of our tender Muses, by my never sufficiently honoured dear uncle, W. Plumb, Esq." It is not our intention to linger over the recollections connected with the age of Elizabeth in Fulham Fields or at North End, although there can be no doubt that a little research might bring some curious local particulars to light connected with the history of the literature, the drama, and the fine arts of that period.

The gardens here provide the London markets with a large supply of vegetables. A very primitive form of draw-well was common here, con

sisting of a pole, balanced hori

zontally on an upright, the bucket being affixed to a rope at one end. The pole is pulled downward for the bucket to descend the well, and when filled, is raised by the weight of wood attached to the opposite end of the pole. This

mode of raising water is still in use in the East, and Wilkinson, in his 'Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians,' Series I. vol. ii. p. 4, has engraved representations of this machine, from paintings on the walls of Thebes, of the time of the Pharaohs.

to the right going to Hammersmith, and that to the left leading to Fulham. Hammersmith was a part of Fulham until 1834, when it was formed into a separate parish by Act of Parliament.

Returning to the lane at North End, immediately beyond

Bartolozzi's house, is an old wall, apparently of the time of Charles II., enclosing a tall peculiarlooking house, now called Elm House, once the residence of Cheeseman the engraver, of whom little is known, except that he was a pupil of Bartolozzi, and lived in Newman Street about thirty years

ago. He is said to have been very fond of music, and having a small independence and less ambition, he was content to engrave but little, and with his violoncello and musical friends, passed a very happy life.

A little further on the opposite side of the road stood Wal

nut-Tree Cottage (pulled down in 1846), once the residence of Edmund Kean, and also of Copley the artist, which took its name from the tree in the fore-court. We then come to the North End Sunday and Day Schools, erected in 1857. The road here curves round by the wall of Kensington Hall, a