All about Battersea. Henry S. Simmonds
their sweet perfume. In the ditches and trenches or small channels and streams occasioned by the tidal overflow from the river, juveniles of both sexes might have been seen catching with hand and cap sticklebacks and utilizing a medicine phial or gin bottle for an aquarium. Senior boys and hobbledehoys with jovial facial aspect who had not studied ichthyology or that part of zoology which treats of fishes, attempted to catch larger fry by adopting the Izaak Walton method of angling with rod and line, and thought themselves amply rewarded if after much patient endurance the motion of their floats indicated that their baits had taken, their eyes would glisten at the sight of a few roaches and perches. Youngsters would amuse themselves by watching the newts and tadpoles, the leaping and swimming of that amphibious reptile of the batrachian tribe, wondering perhaps, supposing their biblical knowledge to have extended thus far, whether those were the kind of creatures that crawled out of the river Nile and crept into the houses of the Egyptians.
[1] His Grace the Duke of Westminster is the President of the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association.
Many a dainty dish of stewed eels have the miller's men had at Mill-pond Bridge, who not unfrequently caught alive this precious kind of anguilla as it lay concealed between the stones and mud, without the aid of eel-pot or basket. Mill-Pond Bridge derives its name from the old tidal water flour mill, the only vestige of the mill remaining is the outward carcase, which is in a ruinous condition; beneath its cover are the lock gates, the entrance of the creek where thousands of tons of coal are conveyed in barges to the London Gas Works.
NEW ROAD, as it is designated, leading from Battersea fields to the Wandsworth Road was a lane with a mud bank on both sides. In a line with the centre of the South Western Railway "Running Shed" was formerly Mill-Pond which answered the purpose of a large reservoir of water raised for driving the mill wheel.
Water mills used for grinding corn are said to have been invented by Belisarius, the General of Justinian while besieged in Rome by the Goths, 555. The ancients parched their corn and ground it in mortars. Afterwards mills were invented which were turned by men and beasts with great labour, yet Pliny mentioned wheels turned by water. See Telo-dynamic Transmitter.
The simplest mill for bruising grain was nothing more than two stones between which it was broken. Such was often seen in the country of the Niger by Richard and John Lander on their expedition to Africa. The manna which God gave to the children of Israel in the desert "the people went about and gathered it, and ground it in mills or beat it in a mortar," Numbers xi. 8.
From mills and mortars thus rudely constructed there must have been obtained at first only a kind of peeled grain which Dr. Eadie says may be compared to the German graupe, the English groats, and the American grits or hominy. Fine flour was laboriously obtained from household mills like our coffee mills. The oldest mention of flour is in Gen. xviii. 6; but bread which is made of flour or meal is named in Gen. iii. 19. In order to reduce the flour to a proper degree of fineness it was necessary sometimes to have it ground over again and cleared by a sieve.
Samson when a prisoner to the Philistines was condemned to the mill-stone to grind with his hand in the prison-house, Judges xvi. 21. In England prisoners are sent to the treadmill as a punishment.
The Talmudists have a story that the Chaldeans made the young men of the captivity carry mill-stones with them to Babylon where there seems to have been a scarcity at that time. They have also a proverbial expression of a man with a mill-stone about his neck which they use to express a man under the severest weight of affliction.
Windmills are of great antiquity and stated to be of Roman or Saracen invention, they are said to have been originally introduced into Europe by the Knights of St. John, who took the hint from what they had seen in the crusades (Baker). Windmills were first known in Spain, France and Germany in 1299 (Anderson). Wind saw-mills were invented by a Dutchman in 1633, when one was erected near the Strand in London.
Acorns was the coarse fare of the old inhabitants of Britain, when wild Britons painted their skin to make themselves appear more fierce, and native tribes in a still more barbarous condition, half naked or clad in the skins of beasts, not cultivators of the soil, subsisted on the flesh of their cattle or on the precarious produce of the chase. Packs of hungry, growling, cruel wolves[1] prowled in the woods and forests, and Druidical Priests exercised an entire control over the unlettered people they governed, and human captives seized on Britannia's shores were offered as victims in sacrifice, a holocaust to the divinities and false gods which ancient Britons worshipped!
[1] Wolves were very numerous in England, King Edgar unsuccessfully attempted to effect their total destruction by commuting the punishment of certain crimes into the acceptance of a certain number of wolves' tongues from each criminal; their heads were demanded by him as a tribute particularly 300 annually from Wales, A.D. 961.
In 1289 Edward I. issued his Royal Mandate to Peter Corbet for the extermination of wolves in the several counties of Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, Salop, and Stafford; and in the adjacent county of Derby.
Camden at page 900 informs us certain persons at Wormhill held their lands by the duty of hunting and taking the wolves that infested the country, whence they were styled Wolf Hunt.
In Saxon times and during Athelstan's reign wolves abounded so in Yorkshire that a retreat was built at Flixton in that county "to defend passengers from the wolves that they should not be devoured by them." On account of the desperate ravages these animals made during winter the Saxons distinguished January by the name of the Wolf month. An outlaw was called a wolf's head as being out of the protection of law and liable to be killed as that destructive beast.
The Accipenser, in ichthyology, a genus of fishes belonging to the Amphibia Nantes of Linnæus. The Accipenser has a single linear nostril; the cirri are below the snout, and before the mouth. There are three species of this genus. The ruthenus has four cirri, and fifteen squamous protuberances; it is a native of Russia. The huso has four cirri; the body is naked, has no prickles or protuberances. The ichthyocollo, or isinglass of the shops, famous as an agglutinant, and used also for the fining of wines, is made from its sound or scales. The Sturio, or Sturgeon with four cirri and eleven squamous protuberances on the back. This fish annually ascends our rivers (it has occasionally been seen in years gone by as high up the river Thames as Wandsworth) but in no great numbers, and is taken by accident in the salmon nets. It seems a spiritless fish making no manner of resistance when entangled, but is drawn out of the water like a lifeless lump. This cartilaginous fish is highly prized for food, not unlike in taste to veal. About thirty-six years ago a Royal Sturgeon was caught in the wheel of the mill at Mill-Pond Bridge then in the occupation of Mr. Hutton the Miller (who was noted as a breeder of game fowls), now the property of the London Gas-Light Company. It appears that a local tradesman named Henry Appleton was going to town and saw a great crowd, some with guns shooting at a great fish, but the Sturgeon's natural armour resisted the force of their small shot such as they were then using. Mr. Appleton upon seeing the state of affairs hastened to procure a bullet or two as a more effectual means of capturing the prize and the first shot or bullet fired was fatal to the poor sturgeon which was then landed and conveyed into the garden of Mr. Hutton's private house upon the exact spot of which at the present time stands the house (since erected) on the banks of the Creek in the occupation of Mr. Methven. It then became after the usual ceremony of asking the Lord Mayor, the property of Mr. Appleton, and was exhibited by him in York Street (now Savona Street), on premises now in the occupation of Mr. Dulley, Butcher. After being exhibited several weeks great crowds coming from all parts of London to see it, the Sturgeon was sold to a Fishmonger residing in Bond Street, who publicly exhibited it in his shop for some years with a description stating particulars, where it was captured and by whom and its length, being upwards of 9-ft. It is said to have been equal in weight to a sack of flour viz., 280 lbs.
The Sturgeon is more abundant in the Northern Coasts of Europe. It is also found in the more Southern parts. It was esteemed