This hamlet contains many excellent houses belonging to opulent citizens, and places of worship for Dissenters. Dr. Samuel Chandler, an eminent scholar, and dissenting minister, was pastor of the congregation at Peckham in 1716. Here and in Camberwell are annual fairs, which are much resorted to from London.

From Peckham, through Camberwell to the Kent Road, and thence to the GRANGE and NECKINGER ROADS, leads to ROTHERHITHE.

In the Kent Road, near NEW CROSS, is the handsome villa of JOHN ROLLS, Esq. the front of which, on an eminence next the road, has a stately appearance, and the apartments and offices are elegant and convenient. The stair-case is of a peculiar construction, by Mr. Raffield, to every communication with the interior of the mansion. The grounds are finely laid out, and possess the additional gratification to the owner, that they were made out from the marsh land between Rotherhithe and Deptford.

The Grange Road is rendered worthy of notice for a place of public entertainment, denominated BERMONDSEY SPA, from a chalybeate spring discovered here in 1770. The premises had been famous before this period; they had been opened as tea gardens by Mr. THOMAS KEYSE, an ingenious self-taught painter, who exhibited in various parts of the gardens capital specimens of his pencil; among the rest a butcher's shop had all the appearance of reality. The great resort of company induced Mr. Keyse to procure a licence for opening his gardens with musical entertainments similarly to those at Vauxhall. His plan succeeded, and his ingenuity suggested various improvements, and among others, he entertained the public with an excellent representation of the Siege of Gibraltar, consisting of transparencies and fireworks, constructed and arranged by Mr. Keyse himself; the height of the rock was fifty, and the length two hundred feet; the whole of the apparatus covering about four acres of ground.

After the death of this excellent artist and mechanic, Ber

mondsey

mondsey Spa was rented by several adventurers, who all failed, and the premises have been converted to other purposes.

ROTHERHITHE, commonly called Rederiff, was antiently a village and marsh, to the south-east of London; but now forms a vast suburb, though locally situated in the county of Surrey. It is said that the trench cut by Canute the Great, in order to besige the metropolis, began in this parish, and reached to Vauxhall. The channel through which the river was turned in the year 1173, for the purpose of rebuilding London, Bridge, is supposed by Stow to have taken the same course.

The manor belonged to the abbot of Graces, who, with the permission of Richard II. granted it to the priory of Bermondsey, being then valued at 20l. per annum. After its suppression it was seized by the crown, where it remained till Charles I. granted it to William White, and others. In 1672, it was in the possession of James Cecil, earl of Salisbury. It ultimately was possessed by general Goldsworthy, and has a court leet and court baron.

Such parts of this parish as are next the river are well inhabited by masters of ships, seafaring people, and tradesmen, depending upon navigation; and, in general, the ground is covered with very handsome and substantial buildings.

On the 1st of June, 1765, a dreadful fire broke out in a mast-yard near the church, which in a few hours consumed upwards of two hundred and six houses. It also burnt the inside of a brig; but the wind driving the flames from the waterside, no other damage was done to the shipping. The fire was occasioned by a pitch-kettle boiling over. Great contributions were made in London for the relief of the sufferers: it exceeded the sums required to restore their losses. To the east of Princes Street, near the Thames side, stands the parish church of

ST. MARY, ROTHERHITHE.

THIS church is distinguished from others dedicated to the Virgin Mary, by the name of the place in which it is situated.

situated. The old church had stood above two hundred years, when, in 1736, it was in so ruinous a condition that the inhabitants applied to parliament for leave to pull it down, which being granted*, the present structure was finished in 1739.

This edifice is built with brick, and ornamented with stone. It is enlightened by a double range of windows, and the corners both in the tower and body are strengthened with a bandsome rustic. The tower, in which are eight bells, consists of two stages: in the lower are a door and window; in the upper a window and dial; and the whole is terminated by a balustrade, from which rises a circular base that supports a kind of lanthorn, very elegantly constructed with Corinthian columns; over these are urns with flames; and from the roof of this lanthorn rises a well-constructed spire, terminated by a ball and fane. This church is a rectory, in the gift of a lay patron.

The only monument worthy of particular notice is in the church-yard, with the following inscription:

"To the memory of Prince Lee Boo, a native of the Pelew, or Palas Islands, and son to Abba Thulle, rupack or king of the island Goo-roo-raa, who departed this life on the 27th of December 1784, aged twenty years; this stone is inscribed by the Honourable East India Company, as a testimony of the humane and kind treatment afforded by his father to the crew of their ship the Antelope, captain Wilson, which was wrecked off that island in the night of the 9th of August, 1783.

Stop, reader, stop, let Nature claim a tear,

A Prince of mine, Lee Boo, lies buried here.

An account of this amiable prince is given in Mr. Keate's interesting narrative of captain Wilson's adventures at the Pelew Islands.

A passage under the Thames is now (February 1808) forming from Rotherhithe to Limehouse, under the sanction of an act of parliament, and the management of Mr. R. Trevethick, the ingenious inventor of an "improved steam engine," one of which, of thirty-horse power, con

* Stat. 11. Geo. II. c. 13.

VOL. V. No. 101.

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structed