Haymarket

Hay Market, a very spacious and publick str. betn Cha+ [Charing Cross] SEBS, and Pickadilly Nly. L. 340 Yds. Here is a great Market for Hay and Straw, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

The Hay Market, a spacious Street of great Resort, full of Inns, and Houses of Entertainment; especially on the West Side, which is in this Parish. The Market for Hay and Straw, here kept every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, makes it to be of good Account. The Inns, or Yards, on this Side, beginning next towards Pickadilly, are, Black Horse Yard; David's Yard, both for Stablings. Nag's Head Inn, indifferent large. Cock Yard, for Stablings. White Horse Inn, a Place of good Resort. Phenix Yard, and Unicorn Yard, both for Stablings, and Coach-houses, much resorted unto.

Haymarket, Pall Mall, a pretty long and spacious street, in which there is the opera house on one side, and a small theatre on the other. It received its name from there being a market here for hay and straw, every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Haymarket,—extends from the E. end of Piccadilly to Pall-Mall, from whence it is continued by Cockspur-street to Charing-cross. Note, a market for hay is also held at several other places, viz. Smithfield, Whitechapel, Stones-End, Borough, &c.

Haymarket, The, is a large handsome street that extends from the east end of Piccadilly to Pall-mall. It has the King's Theatre, or Italian Opera-house, on its western side, and the Theatre Royal Haymarket on the other. It derives its name from its being a market for hay and straw every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, which will be shortly removed to Cumberland-market, Regent's-park, which see.

Haymarket (The), Pall Mall to Coventry Street, was so called from a market for hay formerly kept here, and removed to its present site, Cumberland Market, Regent's Park, in 1830, pursuant to the 11th of George IV. c. 14. The market was, no doubt, much older, but there appears to be no earlier notice of it than an accidental allusion in Suckling's "Ballad upon a Wedding;" Suckling, it will be remembered, was a Twickenham squire:—

At Charing Cross, hard by the way,
Where we (thou know'st) do sell our hay,
    There is a house with stairs.
And there did I see coming down
Such folks as are not in our town,
    Vorty, at least, in pairs.

In 1664, when St. James's Fair was suppressed and a market proclaimed in its room, it was at the same time declared that from September 27 there was to be a similar market "for all sorts of cattle every Monday and Wednesday in the Haymarket." The market days for hay were Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. In the Act 2 William and Mary, c. 8 (1690), it is enacted that "From and after the 15th December, no person shall permit his waggon, cart, or car to stand or be in the place now called the Haymarket, near Piccadilly, in the parish of St Martin's-in-the-Fields ... loaden with hay or straw to sell the same, from Michaelmas to Lady-day, after 2 p.m., and from Lady-day to Michaelmas after 3 p.m." The same Act also regulates the width of the wheels of these carriages and the number of horses that are to draw them. The 8 and 9 William III. c. 17 (1697), declares that the hay market "shall be construed to extend in length from the old Toll Post at the upper end of the Haymarket, over against a house lately called Coventry House, to the Phoenix Inn at the lower end of the said Haymarket, and the house over against it, and the breadth from the kennel running by the houses on the east side to the kennel running by the houses on the west side." By this Act the Haymarket was paved, each cart-load of hay contributing 3d, and each cart-load of straw 1d, to the general expense.

On the east side is the Haymarket Theatre, and on the west, nearly opposite, Her Majesty's Italian Opera House. No. 46, the Black Horse, at the south corner of Jermyn Street, has the same name in Strype's Map of 1720. The Blue Posts was a house of some note.

January 4, 1688.—In the afternoon a friend came to see me who told me that yesterday there had been a meeting of several Papists at the Blue Posts in the Haymarket.—Henry, Earl of Clarendon's Diary, p. 153.

Fribourg's snuff shop (No. 34, on the east side, near the top, is mentioned in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1783 (p. 94). Wishart's old tobacco shop was on the east side, at the top, but being pulled down the business was removed to No. 41 on the opposite side of the street. In the great room of No. 28, which had formerly been Ford's auction room, Ralph Kirkley, Sir Joshua Reynolds's servant, had in 1791 his exhibition of Sir Joshua's pictures, in which adventure, Slander suggested, "the knight went half." There is no doubt now that "Ralph's Exhibition" was wholly for his own benefit. The tennis court in James Street, at the back of the Haymarket, which existed until a few years ago, was originally a part of the old gaming-house called Shaver's Hall.

Eminent Inhabitants.—Joseph Addison: Pope asked Walter Harte to ascend three pair of stairs, and enter a small top room above a small shop in the Haymarket; when they were within the room, Pope said to Harte, "In this garret Addison wrote his Campaign. Sir Samuel Garth, then Dr. Garth, on the east side from 1699 to 1703, sixth door from top. Mrs. Anne Oldfield, the actress, from 1714 to 1726, i.e. from Maynwaring's death in 1712 to near the period of her retirement from the stage, seventh door from top. Lionel, first Duke of Dorset, had a house in this street, and here was born (1716) his third son, the well-known Lord George Sackville (afterwards Germaine and Viscount Sackville). George Morland the painter was also born in this street (June 26, 1763).

Mrs, Oldfield—In Market £un'd for Hay, a house full high,
                       With sashes bright, and wainscot rooms have I;
                       Rich beds and damask chairs (I thank my stars)
                       And cabinets are there with China Jars.
The Confederates, a Farce in ridicule of Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot, 8vo, 1717.

At the bottom of this street—or rather in St. Alban's Street, at the lower end, where is now the Opera Arcade—Thynne of Longleat was murdered in his carriage by assassins hired for the purpose by the celebrated Count Koningsmarck. He was shot in the body by Boroski, a Pole, armed with a blunderbuss, between seven and eight at night, on Sunday, February 12, 1681–1682. Count Koningsmarck escaped, but the assassins he had hired were hanged in the street in which the murder was committed.¹ Thynne's monument in Westminster Abbey bears a bass-relief of his murder. Here, October 3, 1769, Baretti, the author of the Italian and Spanish Dictionaries which bear his name, stabbed a man in a broil, for which he was arraigned at the Old Bailey for murder, and acquitted. Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, and Garrick attended the court to testify to Baretti's high character and generally mild disposition.

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¹ Reresby p. 142.