In
Georgian times Sadler's Wells was a "well-known place of entertainment"
which took its name from a spring of mineral water, now called Islington
Spa, or new Tunbridge Wells, or sometimes Spa Fields. A man called Sadler
discovered the spring in 1683 in the garden of a house he had just opened
as a music room. Although Mr Sadler 'discovered' the well in 1683, it
had actually been popular in late medieval times when the priests of
the priory of Clerkenwell extorted money from people to effect cures
at the spring – during the Reformation the practice was stopped
and the well filled in.
After
Sadler's death the
house became an exhibition place for rope-dancers and tumblers,
then passed into the hands of a Mr Rosamund (the builder of Rosamund
Row, Clerkenwell) who promoted Sadler's Wells as a place of entertainment.
As one eighteenth-century gentlemen remarked:
"Sir,
I remember when the price of admission here was but threepence,
except a few places scuttled off at the sides of the stage at sixpence,
and which were usually reserved for people of fashion, who came to see
the fun. Here we smoked and drank porter and rum and water as much as
we could pay for, and every man had his doxy that liked it, and so forth;
and though we had a mixture of very odd company (for I believe it was
a good deal the baiting-place of thieves and highwaymen), there was
little or no rioting. There was a public then, Sir, which kept
one another in awe."
As
for the entertainment, there was "some hornpipes and ballad-singing,
with a kind of pantomime ballet, and there were four or five exhibitions
every day."
