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the area is surrounded with wooden rails,
and a row of trees on each side, all cut in
the manner of a cone, or sugar loaf.
The houses, which take up only two sides
and a part of a third, are handsome
buildings; and the rest of the square is
separated from the neighbouring gardens
by rows of pales.
Charles street. 1. Black Friars. 2. Bridge-
water gardens. 3. Covent garden. 4. St.
James's square. 5. Grosvenor square. 6.
King's street, Westminster. 7. Long Acre.
8. Old Gravel lane. 9. Oxford street.
10. Pitfield street, Hoxton. 11. Russel
street, Covent garden. 12. Westminster.
Charlton, a pleasant well-built village
in Kent, on the edge of Blackheath;
famous for a very disorderly fair held in
its neighbourhood, on St. Luke's day,
when the mob who wear horns on their
heads, take all kinds of liberties, and the
lewd and vulgar among the women
give a loose to all manner of indecency.
This is called Horn Fair, and there are
sold at it, Rams horns, horn toys and
wares of all sorts. Of this fair a vulgar
tradition gives the following origin: King
John having a palace at Eltham, in this
neighbourhood, and being hunting near
Charlton, than a mean hamlet, was se-
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parated from his attendants, when en-
tering a cottage he admired the beauty
of the mistress, whom he found alone,
and debauched her; her husband, how-
ever, suddenly returning, caught them
in the fact, and threatening to kill them
both, the King was forced to discover
himself, and to purchase his safety with
gold, besides which he gave him all the
land, from thence as far as the place
now called Cuckold's Point, and also
bestowing on him the whole hamlet,
established a fair, as a condition of his
holding his new demesne, in which
horns were both to be sold and worn.
A sermon is preached on the fair day in
the church, which is one of the hand-
somest in the county, and was repaired
by Sir Edward Newton, Bart. to whom
King James I. granted this manor. This
gentleman built his house at the entrance
of the village: it is a long Gothic struc-
ture, with four turrets on the top; it
has a spacious court yard in the front,
with two large Gothic piers to the gates,
and on the outside of the wall is a long
row of some of the oldest cypress trees in
England. Behind the house are large
gardens, and beyond these a small park
which joins to Woolwich common. This
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HomeVolume IIPage Group 80 - 99
