Pimlico

(SW1) A name given to gardens for public entertainments, often mentioned by our early dramatists, and which appears to have originated at Hoxton. In a rare tract, Newes from Hogsdon (Hoxton, 1598) , we read : " Have at thee, then, my merrie boys, and hey for old Ben Pimlico's nut-browne!" and the place, in or near Hoxton, was afterwards named from him. (Reference: Timbs's Curiosities of London, p. 678) There is still a Pimlico Walk at Hoxton. There is also a place called Pimlico near Clitheroe in Lancashire; but the name appears to have been at first applied to gardens of entertainment at Hoxton, which were the property of a person so called and who lived about the beginning of the seventeenth century. In Queen Elizabeth I's time Sir Lionel Rash, in Green's comedy Tu quo que, says: "I sent my daughter as far as Pimlico for a draught of Derby ale, that it may bring colour into her cheeks." The ground in Pimlico was raised with the soil excavated in the formation of the St. Katherine's Docks, and deposited there by order of the Marquis of Westminster. (Reference: Walcott's Memorials of Westminster, p. 300)