he entrance every night. And
Sunday nights in the same room is an assembly where the gentlemen and
ladies who lodge in the town are entertained with tea and coffee at
sixpence per head, but no other amusements are allowed on these nights."

Here Mrs. Johnson came, and Mark Akenside, poet and physician of the
eighteenth century; Dr. Arbuthnot, friend of Swift, a man ranked high
among the wits of his day, and holding the appointment of physician to
Queen Anne; Fanny Burney, and many others. The house is now a private
residence. Standing further back from the road behind a quadrangle is
Burgh House, also old. This was at one time used as a militia barracks,
at which time (1863) the two solid wings adjoining the road were
erected.

Burgh House is now a private residence, and the cells where
insubordinate soldiers were confined are converted into the drying and
mangling rooms of a laundry.

The Wells Tavern is on the site of the Green Man, of ancient date. In
1879 the Vestry proposed to sweep away the groves of the Well Walk and
make it into a modern thoroughfare, a New Wells Street, which drew forth
indignant protest from the parishioners and a pamphlet from Sir Gilbert
Scott.

The renovations, accordingly, were confined to the opening of one or two
new streets on the south side, and the erection of the fountain. But
even this involved the destruction of part of the old Pump Room. On the
site of the Pump Room is a new red-brick house called Wellside, built in
1892, which has an inscription to that effect. Besides the Pump Room,
Well Walk has many associations. The famous painter Constable lived in a
house which was then numbered 6. He took this house as an extra one in
1826, though still retaining the studio and a few rooms in his London
house, near Fitzroy Square; he was then fifty, and was just beginning to
feel the small measure of success which was all that was granted him in
his lifetime. John Keats and his brothers lodged in Well Walk, next to
the Wells Tavern, in 1817-18; and the seat on which Keats loved to sit
under a grove of trees at the most easterly end is still called by his
name. Here Hone found him "sobbing his dying breath into a
handkerchief."

East Heath and South End Roads are traversed annually by millions of
people, for they lead from the station and the tramway terminus to the
Heath, passing some nicely laid-out ground suggestive of a
watering-place, and a curious octagonal tower connected with