connexion of an earl's coronet and a date would appear to present no difficulty respecting the correct appropriation, I must confess my inability to state to whom the monogram belonged. For the name of Arundel I am equally unable to account. No mention whatever is made of this house by Mr. Faulkner; nor does the name of Arundel occur in the parish records of Fulham, although in 1724, as before mentioned, Stanley Grove House appears to have been in the possession of Henry Arundel. In the midst of this obscurity, the residence of the late Mr. Hallam, the historian, who occupied Arundel House in 1819, invests it with a literary association of interest.

On the opposite side of the road is the carriage entrance to Park House, which stands in Parson's Green Lane. A stone tablet has been let into one of the piers of the gateway, inscribed

PURSER'S CROSS,

7TH AUGUST,

1738.

This date has reference to an occurrence which the monthly chronologer in the London Magazine' thus relates:

66

:-

'An highwayman having committed several robberies on Finchley Common, was pursued to London, when he thought himself safe, but was, in a little time, discovered at a public-house in Burlington Gardens, refreshing himself and his horse; however, he had time to remount, and rode through Hyde Park, in which there were several gentlemen s servants airing their horses, who, taking the alarm, pursued him closely as far as Fulham Fields, where, finding no probability of escaping, he threw money among some country people who were at work in the field, and told them they would soon see the end of an unfortunate man. He had no sooner spoke these words but he pulled

out a pistol, clapped it to his ear, and shot himself directly, before his pursuers could prevent him. The coroner's inquest brought in their verdict, and he was buried in a cross road, with a stake drove through him; but 'twas not known who he was.' ""*

In the Beauties of England and Wales,' "Purser's Cross is said to have been corrupted from "Parson's Cross," and the vicinity of Parson's Green is mentioned in support of the conjecture. However, that Purser, and not Percy Cross, has been for many years the usual mode of writing the name of this locality is established by the Annual Register' for 1781, where the following remarkable coincidence is mentioned::

66

Died, 30th December, 1780, at Purser's Cross, Fulham, Mrs. Elizabeth and Mrs. Frances Turberville, in the seventy-seventh year of their ages, of ancient and respectable west country family; they were twin sisters, and both died unmarried. What adds to the singularity of this circumstance, they were both born the same day, never were known to live separate, died within a few days of each other, and were interred on the same day."

Park House presents a fac-simile of an old mansion which stood precisely on the same site, and was known as Quibus Hall, a name, as is conjectured, bestowed upon it in consequence of some dispute respecting possession between the coheirs of Sir Michael Wharton, who died about 1725. When rebuilt by Mr. Holland for the late Mr. Powell, it was called High Elms House, and was for some time occupied as a school, conducted by the Rev.

* On the same page of the 'London Magazine' which chronicles this occurrence, may be found the announcement of the death of " Mr. Joseph Miller, a celebrated comedian."

Lysons, on the authority of the parish books, states that a Sir Michael Wharton was living at Parson's Green, anno 1654.

Thomas Bowen, who published in 1798 Thoughts on the Necessity of Moral Discipline in Prisons.' After Mr. Bowen's death in the following year, his widow, with the assistance of the Rev. Joshua Ruddock, carried on the establishment until 1825, since which time Park House became the occasional residence of Mr. Powell, of Quex, in the Isle of Thanet, until his death in 1849. A cottage opposite (formerly "Brunswick Cottage") was called "Rosamond's Bower," during the time the late Mr. Crofton Croker lived in it (1837-46).

In a privately printed description of this cottage, when the residence of Mr. Croker, of which but a very few copies were distributed to his friends, Mr. Croker himself writes:

"In what, it may be asked, originates the romantic name of 'Rosamond's Bower?' A question I shall endeavour to answer. The curious reader will find from Lysons' Environs of London' (II. 359), that the manor of Rosamonds is an estate near Parson's Green, in the

Old Rosamond's Bower and Park House, from a Sketch made about 1750.

6

parish of Fulham. Lysons adds, the site of the mansion belonging to this estate, now (1795) rented by a gardener, is said, by tradition, to have been a palace of Fair Rosamond.' There seems to be, however, no foundation beyond the name for this tradition, and it is unnoticed by Faulkner in his History of Fulham,' published in 1813. He merely mentions, adjoining High Elms, or Park House, an old dwelling, which 'ancient house,' continues Faulkner, appears to be of the age of Elizabeth, and is commonly called Rosamond's Bower.' This 'ancient house' was taken down by Mr. Powell, in the year 1826, and the present stables of Park House are built upon the site. But I have recently learned that the name of 'Rosamond's Dairy' is still attached to an old house probably built between two and three hundred years, which stands a little way back from the high-road at the north-west corner of Parson's Green.

66

I have always felt with Dr. Johnson that relics are venerable things, and are only not to be worshipped. When, therefore, I took my cottage, in 1837, and was told that the oak staircase in it had belonged to the veritable Rosamond's Bower,' and was the only relic of it that existed; and when I found that the name had no longer a precise local habitation' in Fulham, I ventured, purely from motives of respect for the memory of the past, and not from any affectation of romance, to revive an ancient parochial name which had been suffered to die out, like the snuff of a candle.' In changing its precise situation, in transferring it from one side of Parson's Green Lane to the other, a distance, however, not fifty yards from the original site, I trust when called upon to show cause for the transfer, to be reasonably supported by the history of the old oak staircase. Indeed I may here venture to assert that the change of name from 'Brunswick Cottage,'-so was 'Rosamond's Bower' called when I took it, and the assumption of that name, if contrasted with the name changing and name travelling fashion of the district, is a proceeding in which I am fully borne out by numerous precedents.

"Miss Edgeworth, in her reply, dated 31st January, 1840, to the letter of a juvenile correspondent (then nine years of age) inquires, Is Rosamond's Bower a real name?' And I well remember the gestures and even some of the jests which the omnibus passengers made when Rosamond's Bower' was first painted upon the stone caps of the gate piers, such as Father Prout's Rosy-man's Bower near the White Sheaf' (Wheatsheaf). But the novelty wore off in a week or

two, and the name has long since ceased to be an object of speculation to any but the inquisitive. For their information I may state, that in the time of Elizabeth all the gardeners' cottages in this neighbourhood were called bowers. It was the Saxon term for a room, and, therefore, applied to the dwelling occupied by the labouring class. And Rosamond, or Rosaman, is said to have been the name of a family of gardeners bestowed upon the district which they had long cultivated— possibly a sobriquet derived from the fame of their roses in times when that flower was a badge of party distinction. * *** It only remains for me to add, that Rosamond's Bower' stands 22 feet back from the high road, and has a small garden or court before it, measuring, exclusive of the stable-yard, 63 feet. The garden behind the house is of that form called a gore, gradually narrowing from 63 to 22 feet, in a distance of 550 feet or 183 yards -five turns up and down which long walk' may be reckoned, by exercise meters, 'a full mile,' it being 73 yards over and above the distance, an ample allowance for ten short turnings. Of the old Rosamond's Bower' three representations have been preserved; two of these are pen-and-ink sketches by Mr. Doharty, made about the middle of the last century, one of which is an authority for the name of Pershouse Cross. The third view appears in a well-executed aquatint plate of 'Fulham Park School taken from the Play Ground.'

"The foundation of the present 'Rosamond's Bower,' judging from the brickwork on the south side, and the thickness of the walls, is probably as old as the time of Elizabeth—I mean the original building which consisted of two rooms, one above the other, 12 feet square, and 7 feet in height. On the north side of this primitive dwelling was a deep draw-well. Subsequently two similar rooms were attached, one of which (the present hall) was built over the well, and two attics were raised upon this very simple structure, thus increasing the number of rooms from two to six. Then a kitchen was built (the present dining-room), and another room over it (the present drawing-room), at the back of the original building, which thus from a labourer's hut assumed the air of an eight-roomed cottage. It was then discovered that the rooms were of very small dimensions, and it was considered necessary to enlarge four of them by the additional space to be gained from bay windows in the dining-room, drawing-room, blue bedchamber, and dressing-room. But the spirit of improvement seldom rests content, and when it was found that the