A question that is often asked of authors is, “Where do you get your ideas from?” It is, most of the time, one that is very difficult to answer, but I can tell you about one idea that is easy to pin down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was reading about the social history of the Early Stuart Era when I came across a reference to \u2018The Holland House\u2019 in Southwark as a brothel and the rules that prostitutes had to follow. I then looked for this establishment elsewhere and, after some initial confusion with ‘Holland House’, originally Cope Castle, built for Sir Walter Cope in 1605 in Kensington, found ‘Holland’s Leaguer’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was a moated manor house situated in Liberty of Paris Garden, probably close to what is today Holland Street, near the back of Tate Modern. Paris Garden was one of three liberties in Southwark which were still outside the purview of the City of London during the seventeenth century (the others being The Clink and The Mint). This meant that all sorts of activities that the City Common Council would not allow in the City, could be carried on in the liberties – one example being the construction of The Globe theatre. The manor house passed into the hands of Bess Holland around 1602 and she transformed it from a high-class gambling house to a high-class brothel. In late 1631 an attempt to eject Holland failed, but the authorities did not give up, but besieged the house and by early February it appears that Bess had gone. It was at this point that the house acquired the name Holland’s Leaguer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leaguer – a military camp, especially one under siege – from the Dutch leger, camp (like laager?) – compare ‘beleaguered’. There was also a play entitled Holland’s Leaguer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I had to use very little imagination to create The Dutch House and Ma Dutch, which, I’m afraid, don’t have half the history of Holland’s Leaguer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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