On a trip to London in August 1661 the Dutch artist and traveller William Schellinks paid a visit to ‘Cuckold's Haven’, a point on the Thames near Deptford. The promontory had a special significance in the popular culture of seventeenth-century England, being the place where, as legend had it, since the time of King John the cuckolded husbands of London had gathered early in the morning of 18 October to parade to the ‘horn fair’ at Charlton. As accounts of the fair reported, the men were instructed to come ‘well fitted with a Basket, Pick-Axe and shovel’ and then march to nearby gravel pits to ‘dig sand and gravel for repairing the foot-ways’ so that their wives and their wives’ gallants ‘may have pleasure and delight in walking to horn fair’. This task completed, the crowd of husbands, wives and lovers passed through Deptford and Greenwich Heath, where skirmishes were apt to break out between the women, wielding ladles, and their hapless spouses. Although such accounts seem to have had little basis in fact, an annual fair did indeed take place at Charlton which acquired a reputation for boisterous debauchery. It is not known whether descriptions of such events had led Schellinks to include Cuckold's Haven on his itinerary, but he appears to have been impressed and bemused by the curious sight he witnessed on arrival.