58 THE BATH ROAD 



wrote his " Memoirs of a Malacca Cane." In the 

 hist thirty years or so of its existence the " Red Cow " 

 was a favourite pull-up for the waggoners from the 

 market gardens, who in the small hours of the 

 morning rumbled past with piled-up loads of fruit, 

 vegetables, and flowers for Covent Garden, and halted 

 on their return for a refresher of bread and cheese and 

 beer. Then, too, the hay-carts used to halt here, and 

 the sight of them, with the horses drinking from the 

 old wooden water-trough beside the kerb-stone, 

 underneath the swinging sign, was like a picture of 

 Morland's come to life, and agreeably leavened that 

 general air of fried-fish, drink, and dissipation which 

 lingers in the memory as the most characteristic 

 features of modern Hammersmith. 



The travellers who were whirled through this place 

 in the AuQ-ustan ao;e of coachino^ were soon in the 

 country again, on the way to Turnham Green, along 

 the Chiswick High Eoad. That fine broad thorough- 

 fare is now bordered by an almost continuous row of 

 modern shops, erected, many of them, where barns 

 and ricks stood less than ten years ago. Such was the 

 a|)pearance of " Young's Corner," indeed, until quite 

 recently. That corner, let it be said for the informa- 

 tion of those not well acquainted with the topography 

 of the western suburbs, is the spot where the road from 

 Shepherd's Bush joins the highway. Let it further 

 be placed on record, before " historic doubts " have 

 had time to gather about the origin of the name, that 

 it derives from a little grocer's shop kept at the north- 

 east angle of that junction of the roads within the 

 recollection of the present writer, by one Young, who 



