The fields behind Montague House were, from about the year 1680, until
towards the end of the last century, the scenes of robbery, murder, and
every species of depravity and wickedness of which the heart can think.
They appear to have been originally called the Long Fields, and
afterwards (about Strype's time) the Southampton Fields. These fields
remained waste and useless, with the exception of some nursery grounds
near the New Road to the north, and a piece of ground enclosed for the
Toxophilite Society, towards the northwest, near the back of Gower
Street. The remainder was the resort of depraved wretches, whose
amusements consisted chiefly in fighting pitched battles, and other
disorderly sport, especially on the Sabbath day. Such was their state in
1800.

Tradition had given to the superstitious at that period a legendary
story of the period of the Duke of Monmouth's Rebellion, of two brothers
who fought in this field so ferociously as to destroy each other; since
which, their footsteps, formed from the vengeful struggle, were said to
remain, with the indentations produced by their advancing and receding;
nor could any grass or vegetable ever be produced where these _forty
footsteps_ were thus displayed. This extraordinary arena was said to be
at the extreme termination of the northeast end of Upper Montague
Street; and, profiting by the fiction, Miss Porter and her sister
produced an ingenious romance thereon, entitled, _Coming Out, or the
Forty Footsteps_. The Messrs. Mayhew also, some twenty years back,
brought out, at the Tottenham Street Theatre, an excellent melodrama
piece, founded upon the same story, entitled _The Field of Forty
Footsteps_.

In 1792, an ingenious and enterprising architect, James Burton, began to