Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
If you would like to write a summary for this topic, email phil [at] gyford [dot] com
Kentishe town backs onto to some nice hiding places for the highwayman, at the top of the the hill there be a well known haunt for many a scalleywag looking for some loot.
CAMDEN TOWN AND KENTISH TOWN.
:—“This singular character, known as ‘Mother Damnable,’ is also called ‘Mother Red Cap,’ and sometimes ‘The Shrew of Kentish Town.’
Suddenly she would let her huge black cat jump upon the hatch by her side, when the mob instantly retreated from a superstitious dread of the double foe.
From: ‘Camden Town and Kentish Town’, Old and New London: Volume 5 (1878), pp. 309-24. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=45239. Date accessed: 06 August 2007.
Why Kentish town it be a long way from hop country.
One: that there be this water way starting near Caen Wood, running to the Thames taking all in its path. Caen [Ken Wood] creating a ditch Ken ditch so the ‘amlet be known as Kenditch town, so sluffing off it becomes Kentish Town. The final name of this riverlet be the Fleet.
The Acaddamien connection:
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=45112&strquery=kentish%20town
Many refs using Kentish town or mother Red cap.
The inn at Holloway mentioned by Samuel Pepys in 1661 as the Sign of the Woman with cakes in one hand and a pot of ale in the other was the Mother Red Cap, Upper Holloway, (fn. 65) which existed in the 1630s.
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=471&s
trquery=red%20cap
another useless tip , one could rent a house in Kentish town for 10 quid.
“1637. William Platt, Esq. A rent-charge on a house at Kentish Town, 10l. per annum.
“