demolition of Ranelagh House and the Rotunda; the furniture was sold by
auction shortly afterwards, and the buildings were removed. The organ
was bought for Tetbury Church, Gloucestershire, where it remained till
1863, when it was purchased by a builder.
The Ranelagh grounds had extended from the old Burial Ground (east of
Chelsea Hospital) to the rivermarshes on the south, and the Chelsea
Bridge Road now crosses their eastern boundary. When the buildings were
removed the grounds were, by degrees, purchased of the shareholders
by General Richard R. Wilford to add to his property adjoining. A
poet of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ in June 1807 laments the
Fall of Ranelagh, and the site already overgrown with weeds. The
foundation walls of the Rotunda and the arches of some of the cellars
could, however, be traced as late as 1813, and part of the site was
a favourite playground for Chelsea children. By 1826, the Ranelagh
grounds had become by purchase the property of Chelsea Hospital and
were parcelled out into allotments. The ground is, at the present time,
once more a ‘Ranelagh Garden,’ in which the public are admitted, as the
old advertisements would say, “to walk gratis.”
All traces of Ranelagh have been thus obliterated, and a London
historian (Jesse, _London_, iii, 420) on visiting the site in 1871,
could find as its memorial only a single avenue of trees with
one or two of the old lamp-irons--the ‘firetrees’ of the early
advertisements--still attached.
[From the numerous authorities, the following may be
selected:--_Gent. Mag._ 1742, 418, ff.; _Ranelagh House: a
Satire in prose_, London, 1747 (W. Coll.); Dodsley’s _London_,
1761; Sir John Fielding’s _Brief Description of London_,
1776; Burney’s _Hist. of Music_, iv. 668, ff.; Kearsley’s
_Strangers’ Guide_ (1793?); Lysons’s _Environs_, Supplement,
p. 120; Faulkner’s _Chelsea_, ii. 299, ff.; Blanchard in _The
Era Almanack_, 1870; Grove’s _Dict. of Music_, art. “Ranelagh
House,” by W. H. Husk; L’Estrange’s _Village of Palaces_, ii.
296; Walford, v. 76, ff.; Austin Dobson’s _Eighteenth Century
Vignettes_, 2nd ser. p. 263, ff.; collections relating to
Ranelagh in British Museum and Guildhall libraries, and a large
series of cuttings from newspapers, magazines, &c., W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
A good representative series of the principal early views of
Ranelagh is in the Crace Collection (_Catal._ p. 164; pp.
312–314). The site is well marked in Horwood’s Plan A, 1794.
STROMBOLO HOUSE AND GARDENS, CHELSEA
Strombolo House[241] was a minor place of entertainment, dating from
1762, or earlier, with tea-gardens and “a fine fountain”[242] attached
to it. The gardens[243] are said to have been most frequented about
1788. They were open chiefly in the afternoons of week-days and Sundays
for tea-drinking during the summer season. The house, opposite the
famous Royal Bun House, Chelsea, in Jew’s Row (now Pimlico Road), was
still standing in 1829, when Faulkner’s _Chelsea_ (second edition)
was published, but it appears to have been disused as a place of
amusement long before that date.
The ground was afterwards occupied by the Orange Tavern and tea-gardens
to which was attached the Orange Theatre, a small private playhouse,
where local geniuses performed (1831–32). St. Barnabas Church, Pimlico,
built 1848–1850, standing off the south side of Pimlico Road (entrance
in Church Street) is now nearly on the site.
[O’Keefe’s _Recollections_, i. p. 88; Faulkner’s _Chelsea_,
ii. p. 357; Davis’s _Knightsbridge_ (1859), p. 263; Wheatley’s
_London P. and P._ s.v. “Strombello”; Timbs’s _Club Life_
(1866), ii. p. 260.]
STAR AND GARTER TAVERN AND GARDENS, CHELSEA
In the grounds attached to the Star and Garter Tavern in the Five
Fields between Chelsea and Pimlico,[244] displays of fireworks and
horsemanship took place in 1762 (July-September) to celebrate the birth
of the Prince of Wales, and the visit of the chiefs of the Cherokee
Indians[245] who were duly exploited by the proprietor. Carlo Genovini,
an Italian artificer, exhibited stars and moving suns, a guilloche of a
varied coloured rose, reprises of water cascades and many pyrotechnic
devices, together with the Temple of Liberty, a machine thirty-two feet
long and forty high “painted in a theatrical manner” with Britannia
triumphant over the portico. The fireworks began at eight or nine and
the tickets were usually half-a-crown.
On other evenings at seven o’clock Thomas Johnson, the well-known
equestrian, performed feats with two and three horses similar to
those undertaken by him at the Three Hats, Islington. The admission
was one shilling. The proprietor of the Star and Garter also kept the
neighbouring Dwarf’s Tavern, with Coan, “the jovial Pigmy,” as Major
Domo,[246] and to this place visitors were invited to adjourn after the
fireworks, there to sup on “a most excellent ham, some collared eels,
potted beef, etc., with plenty of sound old bright wine and punch like
nectar.”[247]
[Faulkner’s _Chelsea_, ii. 354–356, where further details
of the fireworks and horsemanship may be found; Davis’s
_Knightsbridge_, p. 264.]
JENNY’S WHIM, PIMLICO
St. George’s Row, near Ebury Bridge, formerly called The Wooden Bridge
or Jenny’s Whim Bridge, marks the site of Jenny’s Whim, a tavern and
pleasure-garden popular in the last century.
Jenny’s Whim is said to have been established as a place of amusement
by a firework artificer and theatrical machinist, in the reign of
George II. About 1750 it appears to have been a good deal frequented
during the day-time, and people of rank and fashion occasionally
visited it. Walpole once encountered Lord Granby “arrived very drunk
from Jenny’s Whim,” where he “had dined with Lady Fanny [Seymour] and
left her and eight other women and four other men playing at Brag.”
A writer in _The Connoisseur_ comparing it in 1755 with Ranelagh
and Vauxhall, describes it, however, as a resort of “the lower sort of
people,” rather than of the quality.
[Illustration: _A West VIEW OF Chelsea BRIDGE
... Un VUE du Pont de Chelsea du COTE du ‘Vest._
SHOWING JENNY’S WHIM, 1761.]
The gardens possessed, in addition to the usual bowers, alcoves and
prim flowerbeds, a bowling-green, a grotto, a cock-pit and a ducking
pond. In the centre was a large fish pond. Mechanical devices, similar
to those at New Georgia, Hampstead, attracted many visitors. A
Harlequin, a Mother Shipton, or some terrific monster, started up in
the recesses of the garden when an unsuspected spring was trodden upon,
and huge fish and mermaids rose at intervals from the water of the
pond.
The admission about 1755 appears to have been sixpence.
Before the close of the eighteenth century, the popularity of the place
had declined, though it was still frequented as a summer tea-garden,
and by 1804 Jenny’s Whim had become a mere public-house. The house,
a red brick building with lattice work, containing a large room
originally used for breakfasting parties, continued in existence for
many years, and was not pulled down till 1865.
[Walford, v. 45., ff.; Walpole’s _Letters_, ii. 212, 23 June,
1750; _The Connoisseur_, No. 68, 15 May, 1755; _Low Life_, 1764;
Davis’s _Knightsbridge_, 253, ff.; _Notes and Queries_, 3rd ser.
viii. 166; Angelo’s _Picnic_ (1834), s.v.]
VIEWS.
1. The north front of Jenny’s Whim Bridge and the Old Public
House at the foot of the Bridge, water colour drawing, 1761.
Crace, _Cat._ p. 311, No. 58.
2. “A west view of Chelsea Bridge” (showing Jenny’s Whim).
Boreman pinx. Lodge sculp. (1761), W. Coll.; Crace, _Cat._
p. 311, No. 59 (cp. Walford, v. 43).
CROMWELL’S GARDENS,
Afterwards FLORIDA GARDENS, BROMPTON
Cromwell’s Gardens consisted of grounds immediately adjoining (and
perhaps at one time belonging to) Hale House, Brompton, a mansion
popularly known as Cromwell House from a tradition, seemingly
unfounded, that the Protector or his family had once resided there.
Some of the entrance tickets of Cromwell’s Gardens consisted of rude
imitations of Oliver’s pattern-shillings, and had his effigy on the
obverse.
The Gardens were in existence at least as early as 1762,[248] and in
1776 they are described as frequented by fashionable gentlemen of
Kensington and the West End, and by various ladies who were apparently
not always of irreproachable character. Brompton was then and long
afterwards in the midst of gardens and nurseries, and was noted for its
salubrious air. Cromwell’s Gardens were within a pleasant rural walk
from the Park, Chelsea and Knightsbridge. The grounds were neatly kept:
there were “agreeable” arbours for drinking tea and coffee, and in one
part of the garden trees, curiously cut, surrounded an elevated grass
plat. Their retired situation rendered them (in the opinion of the
“Sunday Rambler”) “well adapted for gallantry and intrigue.”
Music of some kind seems to have been provided, and at one time
equestrian performances in the open air were exhibited by Charles
Hughes, the well-known rider, who in 1782 founded with Dibdin the Royal
Circus, afterwards the Surrey Theatre. The admission was sixpence,[249]
and the gardens were open at least as late as nine at night.[250]
In 1781 (or 1780) the gardens were in the hands of Mr. R. Hiem, a
German florist, who grew his cherries, strawberries, and flowers there.
About that time he changed the name to Florida Gardens,[251] erected
a great room for dining in the centre of the gardens, and opened the
place to the public at a charge of sixpence. A bowling-green was formed
and a band (said to be subscribed for by the nobility and gentry)
played twice a week during the summer. An air-balloon and fireworks
were announced for 10 September, 1784. It was a pleasant place where
visitors could gather flowers, and fruit “fresh every hour in the
day,” and take the light refreshment of tea, coffee, and ice creams,
or wine and cyder if they preferred it. Hiem specially recommended his
Bern Veckley as “an elegant succedaneum for bread and butter, and eat
by the Noblesse of Switzerland.” However, like many proprietors of
pleasure-gardens, he subsequently became bankrupt, between 1787 and
1797 (?).
Maria, Duchess of Gloucester, having procured a lease (before September
1797)[252] of the place, built there a villa, at first called Maria
Lodge, then Orford Lodge, at which she died in 1807. Shortly after
1807 the premises consisting of about six acres were purchased by
the Rt. Hon. George Canning, who changed the name of the house to
Gloucester Lodge, and lived there for many years.
The house was pulled down about 1850 and the ground let on building
leases. Part of Courtfield Road, Ashburn Place, and perhaps other
streets, occupy the site of Gloucester Lodge which stood immediately
south of the present Cromwell Road, and west of Gloucester Road near
the point where the Gloucester Road intersects Cromwell Road.
[_Sunday Ramble_ (1776); _A Modern Sabbath_ (1797), chap.
vii.; Faulkner’s _Kensington_ (1820), pp. 438, 441; Lysons’s
_Environs_, supplement to first ed. (1811), p. 215; Wheatley,
_London P. and P._ s.v. “Cromwell House” and “Gloucester Lodge”;
Fores’s _New Guide_ (1789), preface, p. vi.; _The Public
Advertiser_, 10 July, 1789; _The Morning Herald_, 7 July, 1786;
and newspaper cuttings in W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
There seem to be no views of the Cromwell and Florida Gardens.
There is a view of the garden front of Gloucester Lodge in
Jerdan’s _Autobiography_ (1852), vol. ii. frontispiece.
VI
SOUTH LONDON GROUP
BERMONDSEY SPA GARDENS
The Bermondsey Spa Gardens owe such celebrity as they attained to the
enterprise of their founder and proprietor, Thomas Keyse, a self-taught
artist, born in 1722, who painted skilful imitations of still life
and exhibited pictures at the Royal Academy. About 1765 he purchased
the Waterman’s Arms, a tavern in Bermondsey, together with some waste
ground adjoining, and opened the place as a tea-garden, exhibiting
there a collection of his own pictures. At that time, and for several
years in the present century, Bermondsey was surrounded by open country.
About 1770 a chalybeate spring was discovered in the grounds, and
Keyse’s establishment thereupon acquired the name of the Bermondsey
Spa Gardens. Keyse was a cheery, ingenious landlord, remarkable among
other things for his preparation of cherry-brandy. In 1784 he obtained
a license for music from the Surrey magistrates, and spent £4,000 in
improvements. The gardens (covering not less than four acres) were
opened during the summer months on week-day evenings and Sundays, and
the price of admission on week-days was a shilling. Each visitor was,
however, given on entering a metal check,[253] which was exchanged
for refreshments to the extent of sixpence. On special occasions the
admission was half-a-crown or three shillings.
In the gardens were the usual arbours and benches for tea-drinking. The
space before the orchestra was about a quarter of the size of that at
Vauxhall, and on the north-east of the garden was a lawn of about three
acres. A row of trees leading from the entrance to the picture gallery
was hung at night with lamps of red, blue, green, and white, in humble
imitation of the Grand Walk at Vauxhall.[254]
Jonas Blewitt, one of the most distinguished organists of the latter
half of the eighteenth century, composed the music of many songs for
the entertainments at the Spa.[255] The Spa poets were Mr. J. Oakman
and Mr. Harriss. Songs of hunting, drinking, and seafaring took their
turn with ditties full of what may be described as sprightly sentiment.
The other music[256] consisted of burlettas, duets, and interludes,
performed by vocalists of only local fame. In a burletta called the
‘Friars,’ certain nuns who had been forced by wicked guardians to take
the veil, make their escape with the assistance of two friars. These
reverend men, after singing an anacreontic song, divide the gold which
the ladies have given them as their reward, and the whole concludes
with a chorus. The words of the burlettas and songs were printed in
little books, sold for sixpence at the bar and in the exhibition
room.[257]
An occasional display of fireworks took place, and the gardens and a
cascade (introduced about 1792) were illuminated.[258] From time to
time there was a representation of the Siege of Gibraltar by means
of fireworks, transparencies and bomb shells.[259] The apparatus for
the Siege, which was designed by Keyse himself, was set up in a field
divided from the lawn by a sunk fence, the rock being fifty feet high
and two hundred feet long. The blowing up of the floating batteries and
the sinking of boats in ‘fictitious water’ were (we are assured) ‘so
truly represented as to give a very strong idea of the real Siege.’
A permanent attraction was the Gallery of Paintings, an oblong room
described as being about the same size as W. M. Turner’s studio
in Queen Anne’s Street. Here were exhibited Keyse’s pictorial
reproductions of a Butcher’s Shop and a Greengrocer’s Stall and many
other paintings, including a Vesuvius, and a candle that looked as if
it were really lighted.
On the whole, the Bermondsey Spa appears to have been a respectable,
though hardly fashionable, resort, which brought its proprietor a
moderate income and supplied harmless, if not very exalted, means of
recreation.
It being not unnecessary to provide for the safe convoy of the visitors
after nightfall, Keyse inserted the following advertisement in the
newspapers:--“The Spa Gardens, in Grange Road, Bermondsey, one mile
[the distance is rather understated] from London Bridge; for the
security of the public the road is lighted and watched by patroles
every night, at the sole expense of the proprietor.” The lighting
and patrolling were probably somewhat mythical, but no doubt the
announcement served to reassure the timid.
J. T. Smith, the author of _A Book for a Rainy Day_, has left a
graphic description of a visit that he paid on a bright July evening of
1795. The popularity of the gardens was then waning, and on entering he
found no one there but three idle waiters. A board with a ruffled hand
within a sky-blue painted sleeve directed him to the staircase which
led “To the Gallery of Paintings,” and he made a solitary tour of the
room.
The rest of the visit may be described in Smith’s own words. “Stepping
back to study the picture of the ‘Greenstall,’ I ask your pardon,’
said I, for I had trodden upon some one’s toes. ‘Sir, it is granted,’
replied a little, thick-set man, with a round face, arch look, and
closely-curled wig, surmounted by a small three-cornered hat put very
knowingly on one side, not unlike Hogarth’s head in his print of the
‘Gates of Calais.’ ‘You are an artist, I presume; I noticed you from
the end of the gallery, when you first stepped back to look at my best
picture. I painted all the objects in this room from nature and still
life.’ ‘Your Greengrocer’s Shop,’ said I, ‘is inimitable; the drops of
water on that savoy appear as if they had just fallen from the element.
Van Huysum could not have pencilled them with greater delicacy.’
‘What do you think,’ said he, ‘of my Butcher’s Shop?’ ‘Your pluck is
bleeding fresh, and your sweetbread is in a clean plate.’ ‘How do you
like my bull’s eye?’ ‘Why, it would be a most excellent one for Adams
or Dollond to lecture upon. Your knuckle of veal is the finest I ever
saw.’ ‘It’s young meat,’ replied he; ‘anyone who is a judge of meat can
tell that from the blueness of its bone.’ ‘What a beautiful white you
have used on the fat of that Southdown leg! or is it Bagshot?’ ‘Yes,’
said he, ‘my solitary visitor, it is Bagshot: and as for my white, that
is the best Nottingham, which you or any artist can procure at Stone
& Puncheon’s, in Bishopsgate Street Within.’ ‘Sir Joshua Reynolds,’
continued Mr. Keyse, ‘paid me two visits. On the second, he asked me
what white I had used; and when I told him, he observed, ‘It’s very
extraordinary, sir, how it keeps so bright. I use the same.’ ‘Not
at all, sir,’ I rejoined: ‘the doors of this gallery are open day
and night; and the admission of fresh air, together with the great
expansion of light from the sashes above, will never suffer the white
to turn yellow. Have you not observed, Sir Joshua, how white the posts
and rails on the public roads are, though they have not been repainted
for years; that arises from constant air and bleaching.’ ‘Come,’ said
Mr. Keyse, putting his hand upon my shoulder, ‘the bell rings, not for
prayers, nor for dinner, but for the song.’
“As soon as we had reached the orchestra, the singer curtsied to us,
for we were the only persons in the gardens. ‘This is sad work,’ said
he, ‘but the woman must sing, according to our contract.’ I recollect
that the singer was handsome, most dashingly dressed, immensely
plumed, and villainously rouged; she smiled as she sang, but it was not
the bewitching smile of Mrs. Wrighten, then applauded by thousands at
Vauxhall Gardens. As soon as the Spa lady had ended her song, Keyse,
after joining me in applause, apologised for doing so, by observing
that as he never suffered his servants to applaud, and as the people
in the road (whose ears were close to the cracks in the paling to hear
the song) would make a bad report if they had not heard more than
the clapping of one pair of hands, he had in this instance expressed
his reluctant feelings. As the lady retired from the front of the
orchestra, she, to keep herself in practice, curtsied to me with as
much respect as she would had Colonel Topham been the patron of a
gala-night. ‘This is too bad,’ again observed Mr. Keyse, ‘and I am sure
you cannot expect fireworks!’ However, he politely asked me to partake
of a bottle of Lisbon, which upon my refusing, he pressed me to accept
of a catalogue of his pictures.”
Keyse died in his house at the Gardens on 8 February, 1800[260] and
his pictures were subsequently sold by auction. His successors in the
management of the Bermondsey Spa failed to make it pay,[261] and it was
closed about 1804.[262] The Site, now in Spa Road, was afterwards built
upon.
[Lysons’s _Environs_, vol. i. (1792), p. 558; Smith’s _Book
for a Rainy Day_, p. 135, ff. under “1795”; G. W. Phillips’s
_History and Antiquities of Bermondsey_, 1841, pp. 84, 85;
_Dict. Nat. Biog._ art. “Keyse”; Walford, vi. 128, 129;
_Histories of Surrey_; E. L. Blanchard in the _Era Almanack_
for 1870, p. 18; Rendle and Norman’s _Inns of Old Southwark_,
pp. 394–396; _A Modern Sabbath_ (1797), chap. ix.; Kearsley’s
_Strangers’ Guide to London_ (1793?); Fores’s _New Guide_
(1789), preface, p. vi.; _Picture of London_, 1802, p. 370,
where “the pictures of the late Mr. Keys” are mentioned; “Public
Gardens” Coll. in Guildhall Library, London; _Description of
some of the Paintings in the Perpetual Exhibition at Bermondsey
Spa_, Horselydown (_circ._ 1785?) 8vo. (W. Coll.). Song-books
(words only) of Bermondsey Spa, W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
A pen and ink sketch of Bermondsey Spa and a portrait of Keyse
were in J. H. Burn’s Collection, and at his sale at Puttick’s
were bought by Mr. Gardner (_Notes and Queries_, 6th ser.
i. 506).
ST. HELENA GARDENS, ROTHERHITHE
These gardens were opened in 1770, and in May 1776 music and dancing
were advertised to take place there in the evenings. Towards the
close of the century the Prince of Wales (George IV.) and various
fashionable people are said to have occasionally visited the place.
St. Helena’s was a good deal frequented as a tea-garden during the
first thirty years of the nineteenth century,[263] chiefly by the
dockyard population of the neighbourhood. In 1831 fireworks and other
entertainments were introduced on the week-day evenings and the place
was for some years styled the Eastern Vauxhall. In 1832 the gardens
occupied about five acres and a half, and in this year the performers
advertised included Mr. G. R. Chapman “from the Adelphi and Astley’s”
as organist and musical director, Mrs. Venning, “from the Nobility’s
Concerts,” Miss Wood, “the Infant Prodigy, only six years of age,”
and Miss Taylor who performed “many difficult airs on that delightful
instrument, the Musical Glasses.” Concerts, dancing and other
amusements continued till about 1869 when the gardens appear to have
been closed.
[Illustration: _S^t. Helena Tavern and Tea Gardens._
_Rotherhithe._]
In 1874, the gardens passed into the hands of Messrs. W. H. and J.
R. Carter who erected an orchestra and a dancing platform, and
provided music and fireworks for an admission of sixpence. The gardens
had fallen into a neglected state, but the walks were once more well
laid out, and the old chestnut trees, the elms and planes were still
standing.
[Illustration: ORCHESTRA AND DANCING-PLATFORM, ST. HELENA
GARDENS, _circ._ 1875.]
The gardens ceased to exist in 1881 and were eventually built
over.[264] The site was to the west of Deptford Lower Road, and
just south of Corbett’s Lane and the present St. Helena Road. St.
Katharine’s Church (consecrated 18 October, 1884) in Eugenia Road
(south of St. Helena Road) stands on part of the site.
[Newspaper cuttings, W. Coll.; and see notes.]
VIEWS.
1. The entrance to the St. Helena Tavern and tea-garden,
water-colour drawing, signed R. B. 7 June, 1839 (W. Coll.).
2. Admission ticket in white metal. Size 1·5 inch. Nineteenth
century, _circ._ 1839? (British Museum). _Obverse_:
View of the entrance to the tavern and gardens (similar to No.
1); in foreground, two posts supporting semi-circular board
inscribed “St. Helena Tavern and Tea Gardens. Dinners dress’d”:
in exergue, “Rotherhithe.” _Reverse_: “Refreshment to the
value of sixpence” within floral wreath.
3. Lithographed poster of the St. Helena Gardens, _circ._
1875, showing the orchestra, dancing-platform, and gardens
illuminated at night (W. Coll.).
FINCH’S GROTTO GARDENS