The London Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century PDF
Preview The London Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century
THE LONDON PLEASURE GARDENS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR Y _- ... _-.....- .. 2""."_,"",, -".0\ -UL(.. -ylfir,~(C'1U , 07, 011. "'.Jht "r n'~U)t IAt !.9""liJl? ?I"l!rr( (~n.UJrJ}l(t~",.J_\ G~.$(:-:-_-... . THE LONDON PLEASURE GARDENS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BY WARWICK WHOTH, F.S.A. OF THE ßRITISH MUSEUM ASSISTED BY ARTHUR EDGAR WROTH WITH A FOREWORD BY A. H.SAXON M MACMILLAN First published 1896 by Macmillan and Co Ltd, London. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1896 Reprinted 1979 in an unabridged edition in the United States of America as an Archon Book by The Shoe String Press Inc, Hamden, Connecticut and in the United Kingdom by TJlE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Associated companies in Delhi Dub/in Hong Kong lohannesburg Lagos Me/boume New York Singapore Tokyo Foreword © Arthur H Saxon 1979 Reprinted in Great Britain in 1993 by Antony Rowe Ltd Chippenham, Wiltshire British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Wroth, Warwick The London pleasure gardens of the eighteenth century - (Archon books on popular entertainments) 1. London - Amusements - History 2. Gardens - England - London - History I. Title II. Se ries 301.5'7 DA689.G3 ISBN 978-1-349-04665-2 ISBN 978-1-349-04663-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-04663-8 FOREWORD Among the pioneering studies in the history of popular entertainments, Warwiek Wroth's The London Pleasure 0/ Gardens the Eighteenth Century is one of the few that still serves as a model to scholars and serious students of the present day. Based largely, of necessity, on primary sourees, including contemporary newspapers, magazines, and the extensive col lections of ephemera in the British Library, Guildhall Library, and Wroth's own possession; judieiously annotated and supple mented by bibliographie and ieonographie entries for eaeh separate garden; and embellished with an outstanding selection of illustrations, the book remains amine of information on not only how Londoners of all classes spent their leisure hours at these establishments, but also what they and the literati of the day thought of them. For here was contained, for more than a eentury, the reereational life of an entire people - from the fashionable, if somewhat dull, assemblies in Ranelagh's great rotunda, to the more democratic nightly festivities amid the decorated supper boxes and leafy avenues of Vauxhall Gardens, to the free and easy atmosphere of sueh middle- and working class pleasure haunts as Bagnigg~ Wells, Dobney's Bowling Green, and the ill-famed Dog and Duek in St. George's Fields. vi FOREWORD Besides the amusements peculiar to the gardens themselves, there were the embryonie stirrings of a number of other en tertainments that were destined to flourish in the second half of the eighteenth and the coming century. Thus, in addition to the music, dancing, bowling, occasional gambling, and consumption of tea, wine, cakes, and other comestibles for wh ich the gardens were justly ceiebrated, and more ambitious ventures such as fireworks and illuminations, transpareneies, masquerades, and balloon ascensions, there were often spirited exhibit ions of trick horsemanship, juggling, and ropedancing (eventually a specialty of Sadler's Wells), together with more obviously dramatic fare such as puppets and burlettas. As the population of greater London continued to increase and the outlying regions in which many of the gardens lay were gradually built over, several of these last were incorporated into newly estab lished circuses, summer theatres, and music halls, where the business of eating and drinking was also continued. For anyone studying the origins of these later entertainments, therefore, the history of the eighteenth-century pleasure gardens forms essential reading. And in this task one could wish for no more capable a guide than Warwiek W roth, whose own vast knowl edge, coupled with a sympathetic, if sometimes gently ironie, view of his subject, is everywhere apparent in his book. A. H. SAXON "A great deal of company, and the weather and garden pleasant and it is very cheap and pie asant going thirher. ... Bur to hear the nighringale and the hirds, and here tiddles and there a harp, and here a Jew's rrump, and here laughing and there fine people walking is mighty divertising." - Samuel Pepys. PREFACE the following pages an attempt has been made to ] N write, for the first time, a history of the London pleasure gardens of the last century. Scattered notices of these gardens are to be found in many histories of the London parishes and in other less accessible sources, and merely to collect this information in a single volume would not, perhaps, have been a useless task. It is one, however, that could not have been undertaken with much satisfaction unless there was a prospect of making some substantial additions-especially in the case of the less known gardens-to the accounts already eXlstmg. A good deal of such new material it has here been possible to furnish from a collection of newspapers, prints, songs, &c., that I have been forming for several years to illustrate the history of the London Gardens.1 The information available in the writings of such laborious topographers as Wilkinson, Pinks, and Nelson is, of course, indispensable, and has not been here 1 Some of the rarer items of the eolleetion whieh it seemed dcsirable to eite as authorities are mark cd W. or W. Col!. VIII PREFACE neglected; yet even in the treatment of old material there seemed room for improvcment, at least in the matter of lucidity of arrangement and chronological definiteness. For, if the older histories of the London parishes have a fault, it is, perhaps, that, owing to their authors' anxiety to omit nothing, they often read more like materials for history than history itsclf. Thus, we find advertisements and newspaper paragraphs set forth at inordinate length and introduced without being properly assimilated with the context, and the reader is often left to find his own way through a mass of confusing and trivial detail. The principal sources of information consulted are named in the notes and in a section at the end of each notice, and, wherever practicable, a list has been added of the most interesting view3 of the various gardens. The Introduction contains a brief sketch of some of the main characteristics of the pleasure resorts described in the volume, and it is only necessary here to add that even our long list of sixty-four gardens does not by any means exhaust the outdoor resources of the eighteenth-century Londoner, who had also his Fairs, and his Parks, and his arenas for rough sport, like Hocklcy-in-the-Hole. But these subjects have al ready found their chroniclers. In preparing this work for press I have had the assistance of my brother, Mr. Arthur E. Wroth, who has, moreover, made a substantial contribution to the volume by furnishing the accounts of Sadler' s Wells, White Conduit House, Bagnigge Wells, and Hampstead PREFACE IX Wells, and by compiling ten shorter notices. For thc remaining fifty notices, for the Introduction, and the revision of the whole I am myself responsible. Although the bookhas not been hastily prepared, and has been written for pleasure, I cannot hope that it is free from errors. I trust, however, that the short comings of a work which often breaks new ground and which deals with many miscellaneous topics will not be harshly judged. WARWICK WROTH. LONDON, September, 1896.
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