This was a picturesque old inn, built, it is said in 1614, standing by the water-side opposite the New River Head and Sadler’s Wells. It is shown in Hogarth’s ‘Evening’ (1738)—a gable-ended, vine-clad house with the portrait of the great Sir Hugh as its pendent sign. It will be remembered that this picture represents a portly dame, accompanied by an evidently ill-used husband and two crying children, passing by the tavern, wherein a merry drinking-party is seen through the open window. Perhaps the mantling vine is not a natural feature of the place, but bitter Hogarthian symbolism—‘Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine upon the walls of thy house.’ On the other hand, Clerkenwell has still its Vine Yard Walk, and twenty years ago in one or two of the gardens in a square near Sadler’s Wells, there might be found a vine which produced a passable grape.

The banks of the New River at this time—and, indeed, till near the middle of the nineteenth century—were lined with tall poplars and graceful willows, and were frequented by anglers, young and old. Hood, in his Walton Redivivus (1826), describes Piscator fishing near the Myddelton’s Head without either basket or can, sitting there (as Lamb expresses it) like Hope, day after day, ‘speculating on traditionary gudgeons.’ The covering in of the New River in 1861–1862 ended the Sadler’s Wells angling for ever.

The house was the favourite haunt of the Sadler’s Wells company, and old Rosoman, the proprietor of the theatre; Maddox, the wonderful man who balanced a straw while dancing on the wire; Harlequin Bologna, Dibdin, and Jo. Grimaldi, smoked many a pipe in its long room or in an arbour in the garden. In the fifties, a parlour denominated the ‘Crib’ was set apart for certain choice spirits, who, according to Mr. E. L. Blanchard, were so uncommonly select that they demanded ‘an introduction and a fee’ from all newcomers.

The tavern, having fallen into decay, was replaced in 1831 by a plain, ugly building, surmounted by a bust of Myddelton. The ‘grounds,’ chiefly from the twenties to the fifties, formed a miniature tea-garden with ‘boxes,’ shrubs, and flowers. They were improved in 1852 by Deacon, who succeeded Edward Wells as proprietor. The house, which stood at the west end of Myddelton Place, close to Thomas Street and opposite Arlington Street, was swept away for the formation of Rosebery Avenue.

[Pinks’s Clerkenwell, pp. 406–408; Hone’s Every Day Book, 1826, p. 344; Partington’s Views of London, ii., p. 186 (showing the later tavern); Blanchard’s Life, i., p. 83 f.; Theatrical Journal, 1852, p. 237 (cf. p. 376); a drawing of the tavern by C. H. Matthews, 1849, in Crace Catalogue, No. 93, p. 594.]