RELICS OF OLD LONDON.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20291, 27 December 1927, Page 18

RELICS OF OLD LONDON.

A PEPYSIAN “ PHYSICK WELL.” Not only do Londoners preserve oldtime customs, but they sees to revive those which have died out. The latest revival is concerned with the Physick Well at Barnet, a tonic which gave vim to Samuel Pepys in the seventeenth century (writes the London correspondent of the Melbourne Argus). Under date July 11, 1664, there is this entry in Peppys’s Diary :—“ Betimes up this morning . . . at 9 o’clock set out to Barnett. . . . Thence I and Will to see the Wells half a mile off, and there 1 drank three glasses and went and walked and came back and drank two more. The woman would have had me drink three more, but I could not.” Garden walks and flower beds have been built around the site of the old well, which still gives water impregnated with magnesia, as in Pepys’s time, and we may vet see a revival of dram-drinking at Barnet. Another Pepysian haunt nas been added to the possible visits ready for visitors to London. Barnet is the scene of a famous horse fair, and can be included in a pleasant motor excursion through Middlesex and Hertfordshire. If the glory of Barnet Wells has been restored, La Belle Sauvage, an historic haunt nearer Mid-London, is threatened with extinction. La Belle Sauvage is courtyard off Ludgate Hill, and has long been occupied bv Cassell and Co. Changes in the publishing house have necessitated the sale of the courtyard. As long ago as 1580 a man named Savage lived on the site, and, in 1453, the place was known as Savage’s Inn. Before Shakespeare came to London from his Warwickshire home a play called The Perambulation of Kent” was performed in the inn yard, these courtyards being the precursors of the theatre proper. Later Sir Thomas Watt slept at the Le Belle Sauvage during the ill-fated attack upon the Tower of London. Then the place became a coaching inn. and the coachguard’s horn was heard there until 1873. It may be honed that the name, at least, may be preserved to London.