New Globe Pleasure-Grounds, Mile End Road
The New Globe tavern, No. 359, Mile End Road, was and is (though somewhat altered)—a substantial building, with a fine golden globe still keeping its balance on the roof. From the twenties or thirties 70a till the sixties it had some spacious grounds in the rear, entered from an archway beside the tavern. These grounds contained fine trees, and were prettily laid out with many fountains, statues, and rustic boxes. On the west of the grounds was the Regent’s Canal, and the whistling and puffing of the Eastern Counties Railway in the background were, for a time, looked on as amusing novelties. Houses in Whitman Road and Longfellow Road (at the back of the tavern) now cover the site of these grounds.
In 1831 the Mile End New Globe Cricket Club was formed here, and in 1835 we hear of its beating the fashionable Montpelier Club. 70b The garden had its concerts and occasional ballets, and its ballooning, of which a tale is told by Henry Coxwell, aeronaut, who made a series of ascents from this place. On a summer day in 1854 he received an unexpected summons for a balloon display. It was the benefit night of Francis, the manager, and Coxwell was anxious to oblige. But his balloon had just been oiled and it was a warm evening—too warm for the safety of the balloon. Yet a balloon had been promised and fireworks. About eight o’clock an anxious consultation took place in the gardens, and the concert, on Coxwell’s suggestion, was prolonged till it was pitch dark in the grounds. The gardens were now crowded, and there were impatient cries for lighting up. At last, after a little more delay, the reluctant balloonist was seen to enter—or rather to be pushed headlong into—the car. But all went well: the balloon ascended, its occupant bowed and waved his flag, and in a burst of fireworks was quickly lost to view. While all this was in progress a man, evidently suffering from a terrible cold, for he was greatly muffled up, and wearing whiskers—could they be false whiskers?—might have been seen anxiously skirting the edge of the crowd and making the best of his way to the Mile End Road.
Mr. Francis’s benefit was a success, but the next day there arrived at the New Globe a worthy farmer, bearing in a basket Coxwell’s duly ticketed balloon, which had descended in his field. ‘Greatly obliged to you,’ said the proprietor. ‘No lives lost, I hope?’ ‘No lives,’ said the farmer; ‘there was none to lose. The fellow found by my man Joe was thought to have expired, yet all the life he ever had was out of him; but you know and I know that he never had any, mister.’ The farmer spoke the truth: the Globe balloonist was a dummy!
[Newspaper advertisements; Read’s Annals of Cricket; Coxwell’s My Life and Balloon Experiences. There are three lithographs of the Globe and its gardens (circa 1839?) from drawings by H. M. Whichelo.—W.].