Note 88 — Chapter VIII

The springs thus named were almost on the site of another medicinal spring called Black Mary’s Well or Hole. Dr. Bevis makes them out the same, and suggests that the title by which the latter had been known was a corruption of ‘Blessed Mary’s Hole.’ Other writers seek to derive it from Mary Woolaston—a black woman who about 1680 is supposed to have lived hereabout, by the side of the road, in a circular hut built of stones, and to have leased and sold the waters. According to the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1813, part ii., p. 557, this spring was afterwards enclosed in a conduit by Walter Baynes, Esq., the gentleman who, in 1697, discovered the famous Cold Bath, and who owned, in part at least, the Sir John Oldcastle tavern and gardens hard by. According to a plan of the city and environs of London, as fortified by Parliament in 1642-3, there was a battery and breastwork ‘on the hill E. of Blackmary’s Hole.’