id
int64 1
665
| text
stringlengths 639
1.09k
|
|---|---|
401 | have no horticultural interest. The garden in front of Cadogan
Place varied most from the usual pattern, having been designed by
Repton. “Instead of raising the surface to the level of the street, as
had usually been the custom, by bringing earth from a distance,” he
“recommended a valley to be formed through its whole length, with other
lesser valleys flowing from it, and hills to be raised by the ground
so taken from the valleys.” The original intention was to bring the
overflow of the Serpentine down Repton’s valley, but this was never
done, and the gardens now only show the variation of level in one part.
There is a good assortment of trees, and a group of mulberries which
bear fruit every year.
Further west again, the old hamlet of Brompton has small, quiet squares
of its own. The trees of Brompton Square, that quiet _cul-de-sac_, and
the way through with a nice row of trees to Holy Trinity Church (built
in 1829), with Cottage Place running parallel with it, is rather unlike
any |
402 | other corner of London. Before it was built over Brompton was
famous for its gardens--first that of London and Wise, in the reign of
William III. and Anne, and then that of William Curtis, the editor of
the _Botanical Magazine_. A guide-book of 1792, describes Brompton as
“a populous hamlet of Kensington, adjoining Knightsbridge, remarkable
for the salubrity of its air. This place was the residence of Oliver
Cromwell.” Kensington Square is older than any of the Brompton Squares,
having been begun in James II.’s reign, and completed after William
III. was living in Kensington Palace. From the first it was very
fashionable, and has many celebrated names connected with it--Addison,
Talleyrand, Archbishop Herring, John Stuart Mill, and many others.
The weeping ash trees and circular beds give the gardens a character
of their own. Edwardes differs from all other London Squares. The
small houses and large square garden are said by Leigh Hunt, who lived
there at one time, to have been laid o |
403 | ut to suit the taste of French
refugees, who it was thought might take up their quarters there. The
small houses were to suit their empty pockets, and the large garden
their taste for a sociable out-of-door life. Loudon was an admirer
of the design of the garden, which he says was made by Aiglio, an
eminent landscape painter, in 1819. The arrangement is quite distinct
from other squares--small paths, partly hidden by groups of bushes and
larger trees, all round the edge, and from them twisting walks diverge
towards the centre. At their meeting-point now stands a shell from the
battle of the Alma. The Square with its nice trees, standard hollies,
and even a few conifers and carefully-planted beds, is further original
in possessing a beadle. This gentleman, who lives in a delightful
little house, with a portico in which the visitors to the Square
can shelter from the rain, looks most imposing in his uniform and
gold-braided hat, and adds greatly to the old-world appearance of the
place. |
404 | It is sad to think the leases all fall in within the next few
years, and this quaint personage and vast garden (it is 3¼ acres) and
funny little houses may all disappear from London.
It is impossible in such a hasty glance to give more than a very
faint sketch of the story of the squares, or a mere suggestion of the
romance attached to them. Though the gardening in many leaves much to
be desired, it is well to appreciate things as they are, and enjoy
to the full the pleasure the sight of the huge planes in Berkeley
or Bedford Squares, or Lincoln’s Inn Fields, can bring even to the
harassed Londoner. When the sun shines through the large leaves, and
the chequered light and shade play on the grass beneath, and sunbeams
even light up the massive black stems, which defy the injurious fogs,
they possess a soothing and refreshing power. They, indeed, add to the
enjoyment, the health, and the beauty of London.
CHAPTER X
BURIAL-GROUNDS
_Praises on tombs are trifles vainly spent,
|
405 | A man’s good name is his best monument._
--EPITAPH IN ST. BOTOLPH, ALDERSGATE.
The disused burial-grounds within the London area must now be counted
among its gardens. There are those who would not have the living
benefit by these hallowed spots set apart for the dead, but the vast
majority of people have welcomed the movement which has led to this
change. In some instances there is no doubt the transformation has been
badly done. Here and there graves have been disturbed and tombstones
heedlessly moved, but on the whole the improvement of the last fifty
years has been immense. It is appalling even to read the accounts of
many of the London graveyards before this reaction set in. The hideous
sights, the foul condition in which God’s acre was often allowed to
remain, as revealed by the inquiry held about 1850, together with the
horrors of body-snatchers, are such a disagreeable contrast to the
orderly graveyards of to-day, that the removal of a few head |
406 | -stones is
a much lesser evil.
Loudon, in the _Botanical Magazine_, was one of the first to write
about the improvement of public cemeteries, and to point out how they
could be beautified, and the suggestion that the smaller burial-grounds
could be turned into gardens was made as early as 1843 by Sir Edwin
Chadwick. But the closing of them did not come until ten years later,
and it was many years after that, before any attempt was made to turn
them into gardens. By 1877 eight had been transformed, and from that
time onwards, every year something has been done. The Metropolitan
Gardens Association, started by Lord Meath (then Lord Brabazon) in
1882, has done much towards accomplishing this work. One of the
earliest churchyards taken in hand was that of St. Pancras, and joined
to it St. Giles-in-the-Fields. The Act permitting this was in 1875.
Perhaps because it was one of the first, it is also one of the worst in
taste and arrangement. The church of St. Pancras-in-the-Fields is one
of |
407 | the oldest in Middlesex. “For the antiquity thereof” it “is thought
not to yield to St. Paul’s in London.” In 1593 the houses standing
near this old Norman church were much “decaied, leaving poore Pancras
without companie or comfort.” The bell of St. Pancras Church was said
to be the last tolled in England at the time of the Reformation,
to call people to Mass. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century,
adjoining to the south side of the churchyard, was “a good spaw,
whose water is of a sweet taste,” very clear, and imbued with various
medicinal qualities. These “Pancras Wells” had a large garden, which
extended from the Spa buildings by the churchyard, between the coach
road from Hampstead, and the footpath across the meadows to Gray’s Inn.
As late as 1772 the coach was stopped and robbed at this corner, and
the footpads, armed with cutlasses, made off through the churchyard.
It was of this then lonely, rural churchyard that it was said the dead
would rest “as secure against the day o |
408 | f resurrection as ... in stately
Paules”; but, alas for modern exigencies, the Midland Railway now spans
the sacred ground by a viaduct, and the would-be improvers, in turning
what remained into a garden, have moved the tombstones, levelled the
undulating ground, and heaped the head-stones into terrible rocky
mounds, or pushed them in rows along the wall. Numerous were the
interesting monuments it contained; many a courtly French _emigré_ here
found a resting-place, such as the Comte de Front, on whose tomb was
the line, “A foreign land preserves his ashes with respect.” Although
a monumental tablet put up to record the opening, and the names of the
designers of the garden, proclaims it to be “a boon to the living, a
grace to the dead”; it is doubtful how that respect to the dead was
shown. The lines go on to say it was “not for the culture of health
only, but also of thought.” Surely health and thought could have been
equally well stimulated by making pretty paths, lined with trees an |
409 | d
flowers, wind reverently in and out among the tombs, and up and down
the undulating ground, with seats in shade or sun, arranged with peeps
of the old church; and there might even have been room for the fine
sun-dial (the gift of Baroness Burdett-Coutts) without levelling the
whole area and laying it out with geometrically straight asphalt walks.
The asphalt paths are in themselves a necessity in most cases, as the
expense of keeping gravel in order is too great, and the majority of
the renovated disused burial-grounds suffer from this fact.
Westward from St. Pancras the next large churchyard is that of
Marylebone, and further to the north is St. John’s Wood burial-ground.
Its large trees and shaded walks are familiar to the thousands who go
every year to Lord’s Cricket Ground. Another large one, still more
westward, now used as a garden, is Paddington. The small green patch
round St. Mary’s Church, and a large cemetery beyond, together make
over 4 acres. All round London these spac |
410 | es are being used, and in
most cases little has been done to upset the ground--among the more
prominent are St. George’s, Hanover Square, in Bayswater; St. John’s,
Waterloo Road; Brixton Parish Church, with a row of yew trees; Fulham
Parish Church, with Irish yews, and tall, closely clipped hollies;
St. Mary’s, Upper Street, Islington, and many others. Some are large
spaces, such as St. John-at-Hackney, which covers 3 acres, and in it
stands the tower of the old church, the present very large church which
dominates it being in the Georgian style of 1797.
Stepney is the largest of all these disused churchyards, and covers
7 acres. It was opened as a public garden in 1887. The beautiful old
Perpendicular church of St. Dunstan, with its carved gargoyles and fine
old tower, which escaped the fire that destroyed the roof, stands on
a low level, with the large square stone graves, of which there are a
great quantity, on higher mounds round it. The central path, the old
approach to the churc |
411 | h, has trees on either side, and runs straight
across the graveyard, and is as peaceful-looking as the walk in many
a country churchyard. The way the laying out as a garden has been
carried out is unfortunate in many respects. The number of the big,
stone, box-like monuments made it difficult to carry intersecting
paths across between them, so a plan hardly to be commended has been
followed, of half burying a number of these, and planting bushes in the
earth thus thrown about, and putting the necessary frames for raising
plants in the centre. To place the frames against the wall, and make a
raised path or terrace among the tombs, and not to have banked them up
with a kind of rockery of broken pieces, might have been more fitting.
The part of the ground which is less crowded is well planted. Birch and
alder (_Alnus cordifolia_) are doing well, and a nice clump of gorse
flourishes.
One of the best-arranged of these old East End graveyards is that of
St. George’s-in-the-East, near Ratcli |
412 | ffe Highway. It is kept up by the
Borough of Stepney, having been put in order under the direction of the
rector, Rev. C. H. Turner (now Bishop of Islington), at the expense of
Mr. A. G. Crowder, in 1866. The tombstones have for the most part been
placed against the wall, or left standing if out of the way, as in the
case of the one to the Marr family, whose murder caused horror in 1811.
In the centre stands the obelisk monument to Mrs. Raine, a benefactress
of the parish, who died in 1725. The whole of the ground is laid out
with great taste and simplicity, and is thoroughly well cared for.
The flowers seem to flourish particularly well, and the borders in
summer are redolent with the scent of old clove carnations, which are
actually raised and kept from year to year on the premises. A small
green-house supplies the needs of the flower-beds, The superintendence
of the garden is left to Miss Kate Hall, who takes charge of the
Borough of Stepney Museum in Whitechapel Road, and also of t |
413 | he charming
little nature-study museum in the St. George’s Churchyard Garden. What
formerly was the mortuary has been turned to good account, and hundreds
of children in the borough benefit by Miss Hall’s instruction. Aquaria
both for fresh-water fish and shells, and salt-water collections,
with a lobster, starfish, sea anemones, and growing sea weeds are to
be seen, and moths, butterflies, dragon-flies, pass through all their
stages, while toads, frogs, and salamanders and such-like are a great
delight. The hedgehog spends his summer in the garden, and hibernates
comfortably in the museum. The bees at work in the glass hive are
another source of instruction. Outside the museum a special plot is
tended by the pupils, who are allowed in turn to work, dig, and prune,
and who obtain, under the eye of their sympathetic teacher, most
creditable results. The charm of this East End garden, and the special
educational uses it has been put to, shows what can be achieved, and
sets a good example |
414 | to others, where similar opportunities exist. A
less promising neighbourhood for gardening could hardly be imagined,
which surely shows that no one need be disheartened.
Some of the burial-grounds were in such a shocking state before they
were taken in hand, that very few of the head-stones remained in their
right places, and many had gone altogether, while some even reappeared
as paving-stones in the district. Spa Fields, Clerkenwell, had a very
chequered history. The site was first a tea garden, near the famous
Sadler’s Wells. For a few years, from 1770, its “little Pantheon” and
pretty garden, with a pond or “canal” stocked with fish, and alcoves
for tea drinkers, was thronged by the middle class, small tradesmen,
and apprentices, while the more fashionable world flocked to Ranelagh
or Almack’s. It was the sort of place in which John Gilpin and his
spouse might have amused themselves, on a less important holiday than
their wedding anniversary. Twenty years later the scene had chan |
415 | ged.
The rotunda was turned into a chapel, by the Countess of Huntingdon,
who took up her residence in a jessamine-covered house that had
been a tavern, near to it. The gardens had already been turned into
a private burial-ground, which soon became notorious for the evil
condition in which it was kept. There every single gravestone had
disappeared long before it was converted into the neat little garden,
the delight of poor Clerkenwell children. The rotunda was at length
pulled down, and in 1888 a new church was erected on the site. The
same disgraceful story of neglect and repulsive overcrowding, can be
told of the Victoria Park Cemetery, although the ground had not such a
strange early history. It was one of those private cemeteries which the
legislation with regard to other burial-places did not touch. It was
never consecrated, and abuses of every kind were connected with it. It
is a space of 9½ acres in a crowded district between Bethnal Green and
Bow, a little to the south of Vict |
416 | oria Park. After various difficulties
in raising funds and so forth, it was laid out by the Metropolitan
Gardens Association, opened to the public in 1894, and is kept up by
the London County Council, and is an extremely popular recreation
ground, under the name of “Meath Gardens.”
One of the quiet spots near the City is Bunhill Fields. This has for
over two hundred years been the Nonconformist burial-ground. The
land was enclosed by a brick wall, by the City of London in 1665 for
interments “in that dreadful year of Pestilence. However, it not
being made use of on that occasion,” a man called “Tindal took a
lease thereof, and converted it into a burial-ground for the use of
Dissenters.” As late as 1756 it appears to have been known as “Tindal’s
Burial-ground.” The name Bunhill Fields was given to that part of
Finsbury Fields, on to which quantities of bones were taken from St.
Paul’s in 1549. It is said “above a thousand cartloads of human bones”
were deposited there. No wonder the g |
417 | hastly name of “bone hill,”
corrupted into Bunhill, has clung to the place. At the present time the
gravestones here are undisturbed, and more respect has been shown to
them than to the bones in the sixteenth century. Asphalt paths meander
through a forest of monuments, and a few seats are placed in the shade
of some of the trees. Those who live in this poor and busy district no
doubt make much use of these places of rest, but the visitor is only
brought to this depressing, gloomy spot on a pilgrimage to the tomb of
John Bunyan. He rests near the centre of the ground, under a modern
effigy. Not far off is the tomb of Dr. Isaac Watts, whose hymns are
repeated wherever the British tongue is spoken, and near him lies the
author of “Robinson Crusoe,” Daniel Defoe. This quaint old enclosure
opens off the City Road, opposite Wesley’s Chapel, and on the western
side it is skirted by Bunhill Row. But a few yards distant is another
graveyard of very different aspect, as it contains only one sto |
418 | ne,
and that a very small one, with the name of George Fox, who died in
1690. The other graves in this, the “Friends’ Burial-ground,” never
having been marked in any way, it has the appearance of a dismal little
garden, like the approach or “gravel sweep” to a suburban villa. But it
is neatly kept.
Of all the churchyards, that of St. Paul’s is best known, and least
like the ordinary idea of one. But this was not always so. It was
for centuries an actual burying-place. When the foundations of the
present cathedral were dug, after the Great Fire, a series of early
burials were disclosed. There were Saxon coffins, and below them
British graves, where wooden and ivory pins were found, which fastened
the woollen shrouds of those who rested there, and below that again,
between twenty and thirty feet deep, were Roman remains, with fragments
of pottery, rings, beads, and such-like.
The original churchyard was very much larger, as the present houses in
“St. Paul’s Churchyard” are actually on |
419 | part of the ground included in
it. It extended from Old Change in Cheapside to Paternoster Row, and on
the south to Carter Lane, and the whole was surrounded by a wall built
in 1109, with the principal gateway opening into “Ludgate Street.” This
wall seems to have been unfinished, or else part of it became ruinous
in course of time, and the churchyard became the resort of thieves
and ruffians. To remedy this state of things, the wall was completed
and fortified early in the fourteenth century. It had six gates, and
remained like this until the Great Fire, although long before that date
houses had been built against the wall both within and without. Round
here were collected the shops of the most famous booksellers, such as
John Day, who came here in 1575.
[Illustration: ST. PAUL’S CHURCHYARD]
On the north side was a plot of ground known as Pardon’s Churchyard,
and here was built a cloister in Henry V.’s time, decorated with
paintings to illustrate Lidgate’s translation of “The Dance |
420 | of Death.”
Here, too, was a chapel and charnel-house, and the whole was
pulled down by order of the Protector Somerset, who used some of the
material in building Somerset House. It was on that occasion that the
cartloads of bones were removed to Finsbury Fields. There, covered
with earth, they made a solid, conspicuous hill on which windmills
were erected. It was part of this same ground which has already been
referred to as Bunhill Fields. Great as was the damage done by the
Fire, perhaps no site has been so completely altered as that of St.
Paul’s. The modern cathedral, dearly loved by all Londoners, stands at
quite a different angle from the old one, the western limit of which is
marked by the statue of Queen Anne. Nestling close to the south-west
corner of the great Gothic cathedral with its lofty spire, was the
parish church of St. Gregory, and the crypt was the parish church
of St. Faith’s. Both these parishes were allocated a portion of the
churchyard for their burials.
To the |
421 | north-east of the cathedral stood Paul’s Cross, the out-door
pulpit whence many notable sermons were preached. It is described
by Stowe. “About the middest of this Churchyard is a pulpit-crosse
of timber, mounted upon steps of stone, and covered with Lead, in
which are Sermons preached by learned Divines, every Sunday in the
fore-noone. The very antiquity of which Crosse is to me unknowne.” The
earliest scene he records as taking place at this “crosse,” was when
Henry III., in 1259, commanded the Mayor to cause “every stripling of
twelve years of age and upward to assemble there,” to swear “to be
true to the King and his heires, Kings of England.” In later times,
the most distinguished preachers of the day were summoned to preach
before the Court and the Mayor, Aldermen and citizens, and the
political significance of such harangues may well be imagined. It was
here Papal Bulls were promulgated; here Tyndal’s translation of the
New Testament was publicly burnt; here Queen Elizabeth list |
422 | ened to a
sermon of thanksgiving on the defeat of the Armada--only to mention a
few of the associations that cling round the spot, which, until within
the last fifty years, was marked by an old elm tree which kept its
memory green. Now it is treated with scant respect. There is, indeed,
a little wooden notice-board, like a giant flower-label, stuck into
the ground by an iron support, which records the fact that here stood
Paul’s Cross, destroyed by the Fire of 1666. The notice is not so large
or conspicuous as the one a few feet from it, beseeching the kindly
friends of the pigeons not to feed them on the flower-beds! It is to be
hoped that before long the bequest of £5000 of the late H. C. Richards,
for the re-erection of the Cross, may be embodied in some visible form.
What a picture such recollections call up!--the excited crowds with
all the colour of Tudor costumes, the eager, fanatical faces of the
“defenders of the Faith,” the sad and despondent faces of the intensely
serious R |
423 | eformers, as they see the blue smoke curl upwards, and the
flames consume the sacred volumes.
Picture the churchyard once more in still earlier times, when strange,
fantastic customs clung round the cathedral services. One of the most
original seems to have arisen from the tenure of land in Essex granted
to Sir William Baud by the Dean and Chapter. The twenty-two acres of
land were held on the condition that “hee would (for ever) upon the
Feast day of the Conversion of Paul in Winter give unto them a good
Doe, seasonable and sweete, and upon the Feast of the Commemoration of
St. Paul in Summer, a good Buck, and offer the same at the high Altar,
the same to bee spent amongst the Canons residents.” On the appointed
days the keeper who had brought the deer carried it through the
procession to the high altar. There the head was severed, and the body
sent off to be cooked, while the horns, stuck on a spear, were carried
round the cathedral. The procession consisted of the Dean and Chapter
|
424 | in their copes--special ones for the two occasions--one embroidered
with does, the other with bucks, the gift of the Baud family, and on
their heads garlands of roses. Having performed the ceremony within the
church, the whole procession issued out of the west door, and there
the keeper blew a blast upon his horn, and when he had “blowed the
death of the Bucke,” the “Horners that were about the City presently
answered him in like manner.” The Dean and Chapter paid the blowers of
horns fourpence each and their dinner, while the man who brought the
venison got five shillings and his food and lodgings, and a “loafe of
bread, having the picture of Saint Paul upon it,” to take away with
him. What a strange picture of mediæval life and half-pagan rites! yet
all conducted with perfect good faith, in all seriousness. It is just
one of the great charms of knowing London and its traditions, that one
is able to clear away in imagination the growth of centuries, and throw
back one’s mind to the pa |
425 | st--to stand at the top of Ludgate Hill and to
remove Wren’s building and to see the Gothic pinnacles; to blot out the
garden and fountain and modern seats, and see Paul’s Cross; on the left
to see the arches of the cloisters, and on the right the high wall and
timbered houses; then to open the western door and see this strange
procession issue forth, with the antlers borne aloft, and hear the
bugle-blast and answering notes.
Surely no place can be more crowded with memories than busy, “roaring
London,” and nowhere are the past and present so unexpectedly brought
together. The City is full of surprises to those who have leisure to
wander among its narrow, crowded streets. The quiet little graveyards
afford many of these telling contrasts. Suddenly, in the busiest
thoroughfares, where a constant stream of men are walking by every
weekday, come these quiet little back-waters. In many cases the
churches themselves have vanished, or only remain in part. St. Mary’s
Staining is one of these |
426 | , so hidden away that one might walk along
Fenchurch Street hundreds of times and never find it. The approach
is by a very narrow alley, at the end of which is this quiet little
graveyard, where, among other worthies, reposes Sir Arthur Savage,
knighted at Cadiz in 1596. The church, all except the tower, was
destroyed in the Great Fire, and never rebuilt. The picturesque old
tower stands in the centre of this little plot, which now forms the
garden of the Clothworkers’ Company, whose hall opens on to one side of
it.
Another church which perished in the Fire and was never rebuilt is St.
Olave’s, Hart Street, but its churchyard remains, and a few large tombs
stand in a small garden with seats, where at all times of the year some
weary wayfarers are resting.
Another such graveyard where the burnt church was not restored is at
the corner of Wood Street and Cheapside. The old tree inside the closed
railings may have inspired the lark to carol so joyously as to call up
the “vision of poor |
427 | Susan.”
St. Botolph’s, Aldersgate, has one of the largest churchyards in the
City, but it really consists of four pieces of land thrown into one
in 1892, by a scheme under the London Parochial Charities, which
contributed part of the purchase-money of some of the land, and gives
£150 a year for the upkeep--£100 being paid to them by the General Post
Office, which has the right of light over the whole space. One-half
of the churchyard is St. Botolph’s, and the rest is made up of the
burial-grounds of St. Leonard, Foster Lane, and Christ Church, Newgate
Street, and a strip of land which might have been built on, but which,
under the revised scheme in 1900, became permanently part of this open
space. The garden is carefully laid out; there are nice plane trees
and a little fountain, regular paths and numerous seats. A sheltered
gallery runs along one side, and in it are tablets to commemorate deeds
of heroism in humble life--Londoners who lost their lives in saving
the lives of others. T |
428 | he church of St. Botolph was one which escaped
the Fire, but had fallen into such disrepair that it was rebuilt, by
Act of Parliament, in 1754. The Act specially stipulates that none of
the gravestones were to be removed, but where some of them are, now
that it is a trim garden, it would be hard to say. Being not far from
the General Post Office, this garden is so much used by its officials
during the middle of the day, it has earned the name of the “Postman’s
Park.”
[Illustration: SUN-DIAL, ST. BOTOLPH’S]
Another much-frequented but much smaller churchyard is that of St.
Katharine Coleman. Suddenly, in a corner of crowded Fenchurch Street,
comes this retired shade. The church, with its old high pews, and tiny
graveyard, devoid of monuments, is a peaceful oasis. These surprises
in the densest parts of the City are very refreshing, and they are too
numerous to mention each individually. Most of them now are neatly
kept, though some look dreary enough. None of them recall the neglect
o |
429 | f half a century ago. St. Olave’s, Hart Street, in Seething Lane, is
perhaps among the most gloomy. It is the church Pepys speaks of so
often as “our owne church,” and was one of the churches that escaped
the Fire. The archway with the skulls over it, leads from Seething
Lane to the dismal-looking churchyard. Nothing is done to alter or
brighten this place of many memories. One shudders to think of what it
must have been like when Pepys crossed it for the first time after the
Great Plague, when he went to the memorial service for King Charles
I., on 30th January 1666. No wonder he says it “frighted me indeed to
go through the church more than I thought it could have done, to see
so many graves lie so high upon the churchyard, where people have been
buried of the Plague. I was much troubled about it, and do not think
to go through it again a good while.” The parish registers show that
no less than 326 were interred in this very small place, during the
previous six months, so Pepys’ feel |
430 | ings were well justified. The old
church has a special interest to lovers of gardens, as in it is the
tomb of William Turner, the author of the first English Herbal.
In more than one City churchyard a portion of the old wall
makes its appearance. There is St. Alphage, London Wall, and
Allhallows-in-the-Wall, where the little gardens by the wall have
been formed with a view to preserving it. The most picturesque is St.
Giles’s, Cripplegate, where Milton is buried. The graveyard is large,
and the ground rises above the footpath, which was made across it some
thirty years ago, to a bastion of the wall, of rough stones and flint,
which is in its old state, although part of the wall was rebuilt in
1803. There has been no attempt here to make it a resting-place for the
living, although it is used as a thoroughfare.
[Illustration: THE BANK GARDEN]
Few people who have not entered the Bank of England would suspect it
of enclosing an extremely pretty garden. There the inner courtyard
possesse |
431 | s tall lime trees, gay rhododendrons, and a cool splashing
fountain, with ferns and iris glistening in the spray. It is quite
one of the most delightfully fresh and peaceful corners on a hot
summer’s day, and carries one in imagination to Italy. Yet this is
but another of the many old City churchyards. The parish of St.
Christopher-le-Stocks was absorbed, with five other parishes, into
St. Margaret’s, Lothbury, in 1781. Some of the tombs, and pictures of
Moses and Aaron, were removed from it, and are still to be seen in St.
Margaret’s, which is crowded with monuments from all six churches.
The Bank was already in possession of most of the land within the
parish, and by the Act of Parliament of 1781, the church and churchyard
became part of the Bank premises, which cover nearly three acres. The
church site was built over, but the graveyard became the garden. This
enclosure at first was a simple grass plot, as shown in an engraving
dated 1790. The lime trees may have been planted soon af |
432 | ter, as they
appear as large trees sixty years later, and are spoken of in 1855
as two of the finest lime trees in London. The fountain was put up in
1852 by Mr. Thomas Hankey, then the governor. The water for it came
from the tanks belonging to the Bank, supplied by an artesian well 330
feet deep, said to be very pure, and free from lime. Perhaps that is
why the rhododendrons look so flourishing. Most of the Bank, as is well
known, was the work of the architect Sir John Soane, but some of the
portions built by Sir Robert Taylor, before his death in 1788, when
Soane was appointed to succeed him, are to be seen in the garden court.
It is said that the last person buried there was a Bank clerk named
Jenkins, who was 7½ feet in height. He was allowed to rest there, as he
feared he might be disinterred on account of his gigantic proportions.
Very different is the churchyard of St. Martin’s, on Ludgate Hill. It
belongs to Stationers’ Hall, and although it boasts of one fine plane
tree, is |
433 | an untidy, grimy, dingy little square. By permission of all
the necessary authorities, the coffins (480 in number) were removed and
reverently buried in Brookwood Cemetery in 1893, a careful register
of all the names and dates, that could be deciphered, being kept.
This having been done, the earth was merely left in an irregular heap
round the tree, and no attempt has been made to improve in any way the
forsaken appearance of the place.
This sketch does not aim at being a guide-book, and it would only be
tedious to enumerate the many churchyards, without as well as within
the City, which of late years have been made worthy “gardens of sleep.”
St. Luke’s, Old Street; St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch; St. Anne’s, Soho;
St. Sepulchre, Holborn, and many others in every part of the town, from
being dreary and untidy, have become orderly and well kept; and instead
of being unwholesome and unsightly, have become attractive harbours of
refuge in the sea of streets and houses.
CHAPTER XI
INNS OF |
434 | COURT
_Sweete Themmes! runne softly, till I end my Song.
At length they all to mery London came,_
* * * * *
_There when they came, whereas those brickly towers
The which on Themmes brode aged backe doe ryde
Where now the studious Lawyers have their bowers,
There whylome wont the Templer Knights to byde,
Till they decayed through pride:_
* * * * *
_Sweete Themmes! runne softly, till I end my Song._
--SPENSER: “Prothalamion, or a Spousall Verse.”
There are no more peaceful gardens in all London than those among
the venerable buildings devoted to the study of the law. There is a
sense of dignity and repose, the moment one has entered from the noisy
thoroughfares which surround these quiet courts. They may be dark,
dull, and dingy, as seen by a Dickens, and sombre and serious, to those
whose business lies there; but to the ordinary Londoner, |
435 | who loves the
old world of the City, and the links that bind the present with the
past, there are no more reposeful places than these gardens. The courts
and buildings seem peopled with those who have worked and lived there.
If stones could speak, what tales some of these could tell!
The best-known, perhaps, of the gardens are those belonging to the
Inner and Middle Temple, as their green lawns are visible from the
Embankment. They add greatly to the charm of one of London’s most
beautiful roadways, now, alas! desecrated by the rush of electric
trams, and its fine young trees sacrificed to make yet more rapid the
stream of beings hourly passing between South London and the City.
The modern whirl of business life can leave nothing untouched in this
age of bustle, money-making, ceaseless toil, and care. Even pleasures
have to be provided by united effort, and partake of noise and hurry.
Thought and contemplation are hardly counted among the pleasures of
life; yet to those who value the |
436 | m, even to look through the iron
railings on the smooth turf brings a sense of relief. Even to those
who scarcely seem to feel it, the very existence of these haunts of
comparative peace, which flash on their vision as they hurry by, leaves
something, a subtle influence, a faint impression on the brain. It
must make a difference to a child who knows nothing beyond the noisy
streets and alleys in which its lot is cast, to hear the rooks caw and
the birds sing in the quiet gardens of Gray’s Inn. It must come as a
welcome relief, even though unperceived and unappreciated, from the din
and clatter in which most of its days are passed. One cannot be too
grateful that it has not been thought necessary to change and modernise
“our English juridical university.”
Although the four great Inns of Court are untouched, the lesser Inns
have vanished or are vanishing. Clement’s Inn has gone. The garden
there was small, but had a special feature of its own--a sun-dial
upheld by the kneeling figure of |
437 | a blackamoor. This is now preserved
in the Temple Garden, where it appeared soon after Clement’s Inn
was disestablished in 1884. Clement’s Inn, which appertained to the
Inner Temple, was so named from the Church of St. Clement Danes and
St. Clement’s Well, where “the City Youth on Festival Days used to
entertain themselves with a variety of Diversions.” The sun-dial is
said to have been presented to the Inn by a Holles, Lord Clare, and
some writers state that it was brought from Italy. It was, however,
more probably made in London by John Van Nost, a Dutch sculptor, who
came to England in William III.’s time, and established himself in
Piccadilly. When he died in 1711 the business was continued by John
Cheere, brother of Sir Henry Cheere, who executed various monuments
in Westminster Abbey. Similar work is known to have issued from this
studio. At Clifford’s Inn, which was also attached to the Inner Temple,
there is still a vestige of the garden, but it looks a miserable doomed
wreck, |
438 | a few black trees rising among heaps of earth and rubbish. It
was described in 1756 as “an airy place, and neatly kept; the garden
being inclosed with a pallisado Pale, and adorned with Rows of Lime
trees, set round the gravel Plats and gravel walks.” Its present
forlorn appearance is certainly not suggestive of its past glories.
Barnard’s Inn has been converted into a school by the Mercers’ Company;
it also has its court and trees on a very small scale. Staples Inn,
so familiar from the timbered, gabled front it presents to Holborn,
carefully preserved by the Prudential Assurance Company, its present
owners, still has its quiet little quadrangle of green at the back.
It was of that Dickens wrote such an inimitable description. “It is
one of those nooks, the turning into which out of the clashing streets
imparts to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton
in his ears and velvet soles on his boots.” Furnival’s, Thavies’, and
all the other Inns famous in olden days, ha |
439 | ve disappeared, and their
quiet little gardens with them.
The Temple Gardens are larger now than in the earlier days of their
history, as then there was nothing to keep the Thames within its
channel at high tide. The landing steps from the river were approached
by a causeway of arches across the muddy banks. It was not until 1528
that a protecting wall was built, and a pathway ran outside the wall
between it and the river. Gardens must have existed on this site from
a very early date. When the Templars moved there from Holborn and
built the church in 1185, it was all open country round, with a few
great houses and conventual buildings standing in their own orchards
and gardens. After the suppression of the Order, it was in the hands
of Aimer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, and in 1324 the land was given
to the Knights of St. John. As they had their own buildings and church
not far off, they granted it “to the Students of the Common Lawes of
England: in whose possession the same hath sit |
440 | hence remained.” All the
consecrated land, and all within the City, was included in the grant to
the Knights of St. John: besides this there was some land outside the
City, or the Outer Temple, part of which remained in secular hands, and
in later times was covered by Essex House, with its famous gardens. The
section belonging to the Law Societies, beyond the City, is spoken of
in early records as the Outer Garden, and from time to time buildings
were erected on it--at first under protest, as in 1565 there was an
order “for the plucking down of a study newly erected,” and again in
1567, “the nuisance made by Woodye, by building his house in the Outer
Garden, shall be abated and plucked down, or as much thereof as is upon
Temple ground.” All this garden has long ago been completely built
over, and the large spaces now forming the Temple Gardens are those
anciently known as the “Great Garden,” belonging to the Inner Temple
and the Middle Temple Garden. The Outer Temple (never another Inn |
441 | ) was
merely the ground outside the limits of the City.
The long green slopes down to the Embankment, are much larger than the
older gardens, as the wall which was built in 1528 to keep out the
river, cut across from where No. 10 King’s Bench Walk now stands. The
wall must have been a vast improvement, and was greatly appreciated.
In 1534 a vote of thanks was passed by the “parliament” of the Inner
Temple to the late Treasurer, John Parkynton, who had “takyn many and
sundrie payns in the buylding of the walle betwene the Thamez and
the garden,” for which “greate dyligens” they gave unto him “hartey
thankes.” And, indeed, the garden must sorely have needed this
protection. It is difficult to picture the Temple in the sixteenth
century, and the little gardens must have been as bewildering as the
present courts and buildings. In the records there are references to
various gardens, no doubt small enclosures like the present courts,
besides the Great Garden and the kitchen-garden. There wa |
442 | s the nut
garden, perhaps adorned with nut trees, as Fig-tree Court probably was
with figs. There is more than one record of payments for attending to
the fig-tree or painting rails round it. In 1610, just at the time
James I. brought them into notice, a mulberry was “set in Fairfield’s
Court.” In 1605 seats were set “about the trees in Hare’s Court”; thus
all the courts were more or less little gardens. In 1510 a chamber is
assigned to some one “in the garden called le Olyvaunte.” This was
probably the Elephant, from a sign carved or painted to distinguish a
particular house facing it. There was similarly “le Talbott,” probably
from a greyhound sign, in another court. The houses facing the Great
Garden apparently had steps descending into it from the chief rooms,
and it was a special privilege to have your staircase opening on to it.
Thus, “May 1573, Mr. Wyott and Mr. Hall, licensed to have ‘a steeyrs’
(stairs) from their chamber into the garden.” The Great Garden was
constantly being |
443 | encroached on as new chambers were built. Entries in
the records with regard to permission to build into the garden often
occur; for instance--
“1581. Thomas Compton ... to build ... within the compass of the garden
or little Court ... from the south corner of the brick wall of the said
garden ... 57 feet ... and from the said wall into the garden 22 feet.”
On one occasion a license to build was exceeded, and the offence
further aggravated by cutting down “divers timber trees.” The offender
was at first put out of commons, and fined £20, which was afterwards
mitigated to £5, with the addition of a most wise proviso, that “he
shall plant double the number of trees he caused to be cut down.” Would
that the fault of felling timber always met with the same punishment!
When houses were put on the site of the present Paper Buildings in
1610, the Great Garden was cut in two, and the eastern portion went
to form the broad stretch with its trees known as King’s Bench Walk.
Elm trees were pl |
444 | anted, and the walks and seats under them repaired
from time to time, and kept in good order. The part to the west was
carefully tended, and became from that year the chief garden. In James
I.’s reign, that age of gardening, when every house of any pretensions
was having its garden enlarged, and Bacon was laying out the grounds of
Gray’s Inn, the Temple was not behind-hand. The accounts show constant
repairs and additions and buying of trees. The items for painting posts
and rails are very frequent. Probably they do not always refer to
outer palings, but it may be that the Tudor fashion of railing round
the beds, with a low trellis and posts at the angles, still prevailed.
One of the largest items of the expenses was for making “the pound” in
1618. This, it is said, was a pond, but no record of digging it out, or
filling it with water occurs, while all the payments in connection with
it went to painters or carpenters, and therefore it was more probably a
kind of garden-house, much in f |
445 | avour at that time, made by the wall, to
command a view over the river. The chief items with regard to it are:--
“1618, To John Fielde, the carpenter, for making ‘the pound’ in the
garden, £19.”
“To Bowden, the painter, for stopping and ‘refreshing’ the rails in the
‘wakes’ (walks), the posts, seats and balusters belonging to the same,
and for stopping and finishing the ‘pound’ by the waterside, £9, 10s.”
Again in 1639 the entry certainly implies some kind of summer-house and
not “a pond”: “Edward Simmes, carpenter, for repairing ‘the pound’ and
other seats in the garden and walks, &c., £15, 8s.” There must have
been another summer-house at the same time, unless the sums paid to
a plasterer “for work done about the summer-house in the garden,” in
1630, refers to the same “pound.”
A great deal seems to have been done to the Garden during the first few
years of the Commonwealth, and large sums were expended in procuring
new gravel and turf: “392 loads of gravel at 2s. 6d. the load” i |
446 | s one
entry. But the chief work was the re-turfing. An arrangement was made,
by payment of various small sums to the poor of Greenwich, to cut
3000 turfs on Blackheath, and convey them in lighters to the Temple
Stairs. A second transaction procured them 2000 more, each turf being
a foot broad and a yard long. These amounts would cover a third of
an acre with turf. The head gardeners seem to have been particularly
unruly people. Although they remained in office many years, there were
frequent complaints. On one occasion this official had cut down trees,
another time he had the plague, and his house was frequented by rogues
and beggars. At first the gardener’s house was on the present King’s
Bench Walk side of the Garden, near the river; later on, near where
Harcourt Buildings are now. In 1690 the house, then in Middle Temple
Lane, was turned into an ale-house, and evidently none of the quietest,
for the occupier was forbidden to sell drink, and the “door out of the
gardener’s lodge towa |
447 | rds the water gate” was ordered to be bricked up,
so as to prevent all the riffraff from the river rioting in his rooms.
Yet the post descended from father to son. In 1687 Thomas Elliott
succeeded his father, Seth Elliott, who had been there some years, and
when in 1708 Charles Gardner had taken the second Elliott’s place, his
daughter Elizabeth’s name occurs as a recipient of money, and Elliott
himself received a pension of £20 a-year, although he was the culprit
of the riotous ale-house. During the years succeeding the Restoration,
the Garden seems to have been little touched. The kitchen-garden would
still be maintained, and either it was farmed by the gardener, or its
supplies were inadequate, as on fast-days there was always a special
payment to the gardener for vegetables. Such items as the following
are of frequent occurrence: “Sallating for the hall in grass week,
strewings and ‘bow pots’ for the hall in Easter and Trinity terms.”
Though the French fashions in gardening of Cha |
448 | rles II.’s reign do not
seem to have affected the Temple precincts, yet the Dutch influence
that came in with William and Mary made itself felt. A small garden
was specially set apart for the Benchers, and done up entirely in
the prevailing style. A piece of ground between King’s Bench Office
and Serjeants’ Inn was made use of for this. It had been let to the
Alienation Office, but after the Great Fire the Temple resumed the
control of it, and finally did it up and replanted it for the use of
the Benchers. It was known as the “Benchers’,” the “Little” or the
“Privy” Garden, and great care, attention, and money were expended
on it. Turf, gravel, and plants were bought; a sun-dial put on
the wall; orange trees set out in tubs; and a fountain erected in
the middle. This fountain must have been the chief feature of the
Garden, and from the immense amount of care it required to keep it
in order, it seems that it was one of those elaborate “waterworks,”
without which no garden was then compl |
449 | ete. Such fountains were made
with secret arrangements for turning on the water, which dropped
from birds’ bills, or spurted out of dolphins or such-like, with an
unpleasant suddenness which gave the unwary visitor a shower-bath.
Other fountains played tunes or set curious machinery in motion, or
otherwise surprised the beholder. From the descriptions, this one in
the Benchers’ Garden doubtless concealed some original variation. It
consisted of a lion’s face with a copper scallop shell, and a copper
cherry-tree with branches, and perhaps the water dropped from the
leaves. One payment in 1700 occurs for “a new scallop shell to the
fountain, for a cock and a lion’s face to draw the water out of the
fountain, and for keeping the fountain in repair, £12.” The copper
cherry-tree was painted, and perhaps the Pegasus--the arms of the Inner
Temple--figured in the strange medley, as the cost of painting the tree
and “gilding the horse” are together paid to the man “Fowler,” who had
charge of th |
450 | e fountain. The “best way to bring the water” had to be
carefully considered for these “waterworks” which Fowler was designing
and carrying out, and it evidently was brought up to the pitch of
perfection required of a fountain in those days. There was also a
summer-house with a paved floor, and an alcove with seats. Altogether,
even without the glories of the strange fountain, the little enclosed
Dutch garden must have been an attractive place.
[Illustration: THE INNER TEMPLE GARDEN]
While the Benchers’ Garden was being made, the Great Garden was not
neglected. Its form was altered to suit the prevailing taste. This
remodelling must have begun in the winter of 1703, as it was then
resolved that “the trees in the Great Garden be cut down, and the
Garden to be put in the same model as the gardener hath proposed.” The
delightful terrace, which is still one of the most beautiful features
in the Garden, existed before these alterations began, but the sun-dial
which still adorns it was add |
451 | ed during these changes. The payment for
it was made to Strong, who was contractor for St. Paul’s under Wren:
“To Edward Strong, for the pedestal for the dial in the Great Garden
steps, &c., £25.” The beautiful gates of wrought iron were put up in
1730. The design shows the arms of Gray’s Inn, as well as the winged
horse of the Inner Temple, in compliment to the other learned society,
its close ally. In the same way the Pegasus occurs at Gray’s Inn. It
was probably along this terrace that some of the orange trees in pots
were placed during the summer. The pots in which these oranges and
other “greens” were grown seem to have been specially decorative. It
was a serious offence when Allgood, a member of the Inn, broke some,
and was obliged to “furnish other pots of like fashion and value,”
otherwise he would “be put out of commons.” After this others were
purchased, as the payment of £8 was made “for a large mould, carved
in wood, for casting of earthen pots for the Garden”; and in other |
452 |
years further similar expenses occur, one in 1690 “to the potter for
a large pot made for the Garden, painted in oil, £1, 5s.” Some of the
plants grown would stand the winter in the open, but after the oranges
made their appearance a shelter had to be provided. Green-houses owed
their origin to this necessity, and as they were only used in winter,
and merely sheltered the large pots of “greens,” these green-houses or
orangeries were built like rooms, and used as summer-houses during warm
months. All the larger gardens had their green-houses, but the smaller
proprietors frequently sent their plants away to a nurseryman to be
housed during the winter. Even the “greens” at Kensington Palace were
kept by London and Wise, until the new orangery was built. The Temple
orange trees were first sent to the house of Cadrow at Islington.
In 1704 the green-house seems to have been made, and used as a
garden-house in summer. Such items in the accounts as “a chimney-glass
and sconces for the green-h |
453 | ouse” show that it was in the usual solid
architectural style then in fashion. That the “panierman,” an officer,
one of whose duties was to summon members to meals by blowing a horn,
was appointed to take charge of it as well as of the library, is a
further proof that it bore the character of a room, and was more or
less outside the gardener’s department. The panierman also had the
care of the elaborate fountain, after it had been supervised for some
years by the maker. This green-house stood at the end of the terrace,
which still runs parallel with Crown Office Row, and near the site of
Harcourt Buildings, behind the gardener’s house. This gardener’s house
was pulled down two or three years later to make way for Harcourt
Buildings, which was joined to the summer-house. The first or ground
floor opened on to the garden below the “paved walk” or terrace, on
which level stood the summer-house.
The most fascinating feature of a garden ought to be its flowers,
and of these also some parti |
454 | culars can be gleaned from the accounts.
There is enough to show that the Temple Garden was quite up to date
in its horticulture, and that it followed fashion as closely in its
plants as in its design. It is not surprising to find Dutch bulbs, and
especially tulips, being bought when such a lover of those flowers
as Sir Thomas Hanmer was a member. He was one of those who devoted
much time to the culture of that flower, when the tulip mania was at
its height, and raised new varieties, which were known by his name,
“the agate Hanmer.” In 1703 the list of bulbs purchased is carefully
noted. There were “200 ‘junquiles’ at 6s. a hundred; for 200 tulips
at 5s. a hundred; for 100 yellow Dutch crocus, for 50 Armathagalum.”
The spelling of “junquiles” is much more correct than our modern
“jonquil,” and all the old writers would have written it so. Parkinson,
in 1629, describes them as “Narcissus juncifolius” or the “Junquilia
or Rush Daffodill”; but “Ornithogalum” was too much for the Temple
sc |
455 | ribe. The “Ornithogalum” or “Starre of Bethlehem,” and probably one
of the rarer varieties, must be meant by “Armathagalum.” The Arabian
variety was then “nursed in gardens,” but it should be “housed all the
winter, that so it may bee defended from the frosts,” wrote Parkinson,
and sadly admitted that the two roots sent to him “out of Spain” had
“prospered not” “for want of knowledge” of this “rule.” There was also
the “Starre flower of Æthiopia,” which “was gathered by some Hollanders
on the West side of the Cape of Good Hope”; and this is more likely
to have been the variety bought for the Temple with the other Dutch
bulbs. Among the other purchases were various shrubs, on which the
topiary art was then commonly practised. There were “15 yew trees for
the Great Garden in pots, ... 4 box trees for the grass plots, ...
12 striped ‘fillerayes’”--this latter being variegated phillyreas
(most likely _angustifolia_), which were largely used for cutting
into quaint shapes. Another account i |
456 | s for “28 standard laurels, 4
‘perimic’ (laurels), 6 junipers, 4 hollies, and 2 perimic box trees.”
These “perimetric” trees had already gone through the necessary
clipping and training, to enable them to take their place in the trim
Dutch garden. Another year flowering shrubs are got for the Benchers’
Garden: “2 messerius at 2s., and 2 lorrestines at 2s.” The _Daphne
mezereum_ had been a favourite in English gardens from the earliest
times, and the laurestinus (_Viburnum tinus_) came from South Europe in
the sixteenth century. Parkinson, the most attractive of all the old
gardening authors, has a delightfully true description of the “Laurus
Tinus,” with its “many small white sweete-smelling flowers thrusting
together, ... the edges whereof have a shew of a wash purple or light
blush in them; which for the most part fall away without bearing any
perfect ripe fruit in our countrey: yet sometimes it hath small black
berries, as if they were good, but are not”! Fruit-trees were also
to be |
457 | found--peaches, “nectrons,” cherries, and plums, besides figs
and mulberries. That the walls were covered with climbing roses and
jessamine is certain, from the oft-recurring cost of nailing them up.
“Nails and list for the jessamy wall,” and the needful bits of old felt
required to fasten them up, was another time supplied by “hatt parings
for the jessamines.”
Thus it is easy, bit by bit, out of the old accounts, to piece together
the Garden, until the mind’s eye can see back into the days of Queen
Anne, and take an imaginary walk through it on a fine spring evening.
The Bencher walks out of the large window of the “green-house” on to
the terrace, where the sun-dial points the hour: the orange trees,
glossy and fresh from their winter quarters, stand in stiff array, in
the large artistic pots. Down the steps, a few stiff beds are bright
with Dutch bulbs in flower. The turf, well rolled (for a new stone
roller has just been purchased), stretches down to the river between
straight lin |
458 | es of quaintly cut box, yews, and hollies. He sees Surrey
hills clear in the early evening light, and the barges sail by, and
boats pass up and down the river. He may linger on one of the seats
in the garden-house overlooking the river, or wander back under the
stately elms of King’s Bench Walk, to rest awhile in the Privy Garden,
where the air is scented with mezereum, and cooled by the drops that
fall from the metal leaves hanging over the basin of the fountain.
The Middle Temple, too, had its Benchers’ Garden, and part of it
survives to this day in the delightful Fountain Court. The Benchers’
Garden was larger, covering the ground where Garden Court now stands,
up to the wall of the famous gardens of Essex House. A garden covered
the space where the library has been built, and the terrace and steps
in front of the fountain reached right across to the Essex House
wall. Below the beautiful old hall which Queen Elizabeth opened in
person, and where Shakespeare’s contemporaries witness |
459 | ed “Twelfth
Night,” lay the rest of the Garden, with green lawns and shady trees
down the water’s edge. The fountain, once the glory of the Benchers’
private garden, is still one of the most delightful in all London. Sir
Christopher Hatton, whose garden of Ely Place--wrung by Queen Elizabeth
from the unwilling Bishop--was not far off, was an admirer of the
Middle Temple fountain. It was kept, he says, “in so good order as
always to force its stream to a vast and almost incredible altitude.
It is fenced with timber palisades, constituting a quadrangle, wherein
grow several lofty trees, and without are walks extending on every
side of the quadrangle, all paved with Purbeck, very pleasant and
delightful.” In an eighteenth-century picture, with groups of strollers
and a lady passing the gay company in her sedan chair, the palings are
superseded by fine iron railings enclosing the lofty jet, its marble
basin, and shady trees. The pavement ended with the terrace wall
overlooking the garden b |
460 | elow, and the Thames covered at high tide what
is now the lower part of the lawn. The Fountain Court has inspired
many a thought which has found expression in prose and verse, but no
picture is more vivid or well known than the figure of Ruth Pinch, in
“Martin Chuzzlewit,” waiting for her brother “with the best little
laugh upon her face that ever played in opposition to the fountain,”
or the description at the end, of that crowning day to her happiness,
when she walks there with John Westlock, and “Brilliantly the Temple
Fountain splashed in the sun, and laughingly its liquid music played,
and merrily the idle drops of water danced and danced, and peeping out
in sport among the trees, plunged lightly down to hide themselves,
as little Ruth and her companion came towards it.” The fountain has
suffered some modernising changes since Dickens wrote those lines; but
in spite of them there is still music in its sound, which calls up
dreams of other ages and of brighter gardens as it tosses |
461 | its spray
into the murky air.
“Away in the distance is heard the vast sound
From the streets of the city that compass it round,
Like the echo of mountains or ocean’s deep call:
Yet that fountain’s low singing is heard over all.”
--MISS LANDON.
Of all the incidents that are associated with particular places, none
stands out more vividly than the scene told by Shakespeare, of the
first beginning to the Wars of the Roses in the Temple Garden.
[Illustration: THE FOUNTAIN COURT, MIDDLE TEMPLE]
Richard Plantagenet, with the Earls of Somerset, Suffolk, and Warwick,
Vernon, and a lawyer, enter the Temple Garden (“Henry VI.” Pt. I. Act
2, sc. iv.).
_Suffolk._ Within the Temple Hall we were too loud;
The garden here is more convenient.
_Plantagenet._ Then say at once if I maintained the truth,
Or else was wrangling Somerset in the error?
* * * * |
462 | *
The direct answer being evaded, Plantagenet continues--
Since you are tongue-tied and so loath to speak,
In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts;
Let him that is a true-born gentleman,
And stands upon the honour of his birth,
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,
From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.
_Somerset._ Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.
* * * * *
_Warwick._ I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.
_Suffolk._ I pluck this red rose with young Somerset.
* * * * *
_Vernon._ I pluck this pale and maiden blossom here,
Giving my verdict on the white rose side.
* * * * *
_Lawyer_ (t |
463 | o _Somerset_) ... The argument you held was wrong in you,
In sign whereof I pluck a white rose too.
_Plan._ Now, Somerset, where is your argument?
_Som._ Here, in my scabbard, meditating that
Shall dye your white rose in a bloody red.
* * * * *
_Plan._ Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset?
_Som._ Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet?
_Plan._ Ay, sharp and piercing to maintain his truth;
Whiles thy consuming canker eats his falsehood.
_Som._ Well, I’ll find friends to wear my bleeding roses,
That shall maintain what I have said is true.
* * * * *
_Warwick._ And here I prophesy this brawl to-day,
Grown to this faction in the Temple-garden,
Shall send between the red rose and the white
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.
With such a |
464 | tradition the Temple Garden should never be without its
roses. They are one of those friendly plants which will do their best
to fight against fog and smoke, and flower boldly for two or three
years in succession: so a supply of red and white, and the delightful
_Rosa mundi_, the “York and Lancaster,” could without much difficulty
be seen there every summer. Certainly some of the finest roses in
existence have been in the Temple Gardens, as the Flower Shows, which
are looked forward to by all lovers of horticulture, have for many
years been permitted to take place in these historic grounds. How
astonished those adherents of the red or white roses would have been
to see the colours, shades, and forms which the descendants of those
briars now produce. The Plantagenet Garden would not contain many
varieties, although every known one was cherished in every garden,
as roses have always been first favourites. Besides the briars, dog
roses, and sweet briars, there was the double white and do |
465 | uble red, a
variety of _Rosa gallica_. Many so-called old-fashioned roses, such
as the common monthly roses, came to England very much later, and
the vast number of gorgeous hybrids are absolutely new. Elizabethan
gardens had a fair show of roses with centifolia, including moss and
Provence roses, and York and Lancaster, _Rosa lutea_, musk, damask,
and cinnamon roses in several varieties; and as the old records show,
the Temple Garden was well supplied with roses. All these probably
flourished there in the days of Shakespeare, and would readily suggest
the scene he immortalised.
Among the spirits that haunt the Temple Garden, there is none that
seems to cling to it more than that of Charles Lamb. It should be a
pride of these peaceful gardens that they helped to mould that lovable
and unselfish character. A schoolfellow, who describes his ways as a
boy at Christ’s Hospital, recalls how all his young days were spent in
the solemn surrounding of the Temple, and how, while at school, “On |
466 |
every half holiday (and there were two in the week), in ten minutes he
was in the gardens, on the terrace, or at the fountain of the Temple.
Here was his home, here his recreation; and the influence they had
on his infant mind is vividly shown in his description of the old
Benchers.”
“Shadows we are and like shadows depart,” suggests the sun-dial on the
wall of Pump Court, but shadows of such gentle spirits as Charles Lamb
leave something behind, and those “footprints on the sands of time” are
nowhere more traceable than in these solemn precincts of law with their
quiet, restful gardens.
The attractions of the Temple are so great, one feels loth to cross
the noisy thoroughfare and plunge through the traffic till the stately
old gateway out of Chancery Lane, on which Ben Jonson is said to have
worked, affords an opening towards the spacious gardens of Lincoln’s
Inn.
Lincoln’s Inn Gardens have a special claim to antiquity as they are
partly on the site of the famous garden of the Ear |
467 | l of Lincoln, of
which some of the accounts are preserved in a splendid big old manor
roll now at the Record Office. It is supposed that at his death in
1311, Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, assigned these lands to the
“Professors of the Law as a residence.” Additions were made later from
the ground belonging to the Bishop of Chichester, round the palace
which Ralph Neville had built in 1228. Part of the site was the “coney
garth,” which belonged to one William Cotterell, and hence is often
mentioned as “Cotterell’s Garden.” Garden of course only meant a garth
or yard, and though the name now signifies an enclosure for plants, in
early times other enclosures were common. There was the “grass yard”
or lawn, the “cook’s garth” or kitchen-garden, and “coney garth” where
rabbits were kept, as well as the “wyrt yard” or plant yard, the “ort
yard” or orchard, apple yard, cherry yard, and so on. The coney garth
was not a mere name, but was well stocked with game, and even at a
much later date |
468 | , from Edward IV. to Henry VIII., there were various
ordinances in force for punishing law students who hunted rabbits with
bows and arrows or darts.
[Illustration: LINCOLN’S INN]
In the first year of Queen Elizabeth the Garden was separated from the
fields by a clay embankment, and a little later a brick wall was added,
with a gate into the fields, which is probably the same as the present
little gate to the north of the new hall, at the end of the border,
shown in the illustration. The Garden continued much further along the
wall then, and only was curtailed when the new hall and library were
built in 1843. The delightful terrace which is raised against the wall
overlooking the “fields” was made in 1663. On June 27th of that year,
Pepys, who on other occasions mentions his walks there with his
wife, went to see the alterations. “So to Lincoln’s Inne, and there
walked up and down to see the new garden which they are making, and
will be very pretty.” The outside world seems to have h |
469 | ad easy access
to the gardens of all the Inns of Court in those days, but it was
regarded as a special privilege granted to a very wide circle, and
a favour not accorded to the public at large. In the _Tatler_ occur
such passages as, “I went into Lincoln’s Inn walks, and having taken
a round or two I sat down according to the allowed familiarity of
these places.” Again, “I was last week taking a solitary walk in the
garden of Lincoln’s Inn, a favour that is indulged me by several of the
benchers who are my intimate friends.”
They were, however, so much frequented by all the fashionable world
of London, that the foreigner arriving there naturally took them for
public gardens. Mr. Grosley, who came to London in 1765, thus describes
them:--
“Besides St. James’s Park, the Green Park, and Hyde Park, the two last
of which are continuations of the first, which, like the Tuileries
at Paris, lie at the extremity of the metropolis, London has several
public walks, which are much more agreeable |
470 | to the English, as they are
less frequented and more solitary than the Park. Such are the gardens
contained within the compass of the Temple, of Gray’s Inn and Lincoln’s
Inn. They consist of grass plots, which are kept in excellent order,
and planted with trees, either cut regularly, or with high stocks: some
of them have a part laid out for culinary uses. The grass plots of the
gardens at Lincoln’s Inn are adorned with statues, which, taken all
together, form a scene very pleasing to the eye.”
The students must certainly have aimed at keeping their gardens from
the vulgar gaze, and showed their displeasure at some one who had built
a house with windows overlooking the Garden in 1632 in an uproarious
manner. They flung brickbats at the offending window until “one out of
the house discharged haile shot upon Mr. Attornie’s sonne’s face, which
though by good chance it missed his eyes yet it pitifully mangled his
visage.”
Old maps of the gardens show a wall dividing the large upper gard |
471 | en
from the smaller, but by 1772 the partition had disappeared. It was
doubtless unnecessary when the terrace was made and the rabbits done
away with.
The 1658 map with the wall in it shows the upper garden intersected by
four paths, and an avenue of trees round three sides, and the small
garden with a single row of trees round it divided into two large grass
plots. The lovely shady avenue below the terrace in the large garden
has still a great charm, and although not so extensive as it once was,
the great green-sward and walks seem very spacious in these days of
crowding. The terrace overlooking Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with the broad
walk and border of suitable old-fashioned herbaceous plants, has great
attractions. The view from here must have improved since the days when
the Fields were a wild-looking place of evil repute, and the scene of
bloody executions. In the lonely darkness below the terrace wall, deeds
of violence were only too common.
“Though thou are tempted by the li |
472 | nkman’s call,
Yet trust him not along the lonely wall.
In the mid-way he’ll quench the flaming brand,
And share the booty with the pilfering band.”
--GAY.
Certainly when one is sentimental over the departed charms of Old
London, it would be an excellent antidote to call up some of the
inconveniences that electric light and the metropolitan police have
banished.
There is more character about the gardens of Gray’s Inn than either
the Temple or Lincoln’s Inn. They have come down with but little
alteration from the hands of that great lover of gardens, Bacon.
But long before his time gardens existed. The land on which Gray’s
Inn stands formed part of a prebend of St. Paul’s of the manor of
Portpoole, and subsequently belonged to the family of Grey de Wilton,
and in the fourteenth century the Inn of Court was established. Between
its grounds and the villages of Highgate and Hampstead was an unbroken
stretch of open country. |
473 | There, in Mary’s reign, Henry Lord Berkeley
used daily to hunt “in Gray’s Inne fields and in those parts towards
Islington and Heygate with his hounds,” and in his company were “many
gentlemen of the Innes of Court and others of lower condition ... and
150 servants in livery that daily attended him in their tawny coates.”
In Bacon’s time it must still have been as open, and Theobald’s Road
a country lane with hedgerows. The Garden already boasted of fine
trees, and among the records of the Society there is a list of the
elms in 1583 all carefully enumerated, and the exact places they were
growing: “In the grene Courte xi Elmes and iii Walnut trees,” and so
on. Eighty-seven elms, besides four young elms and one young ash,
appear on the list; so the Garden was well furnished with trees even
before Bacon commenced his work. Gray’s Inn was the most popular of
the four Inns of Court in the Elizabethan period, and many famous men,
such as Lord Burghley, belonged to it. It was in 1597 that B |
474 | acon
took the Garden in hand, some ten years after he became a Bencher. In
the accounts of that year £7. 15s. 4d. appears “due to Mr. Bacon for
planting of trees in the walkes.” In 1598 it was resolved to “supply
more yonge elme trees in the places of such as are decayed, and that a
new Rayle and quicksett hedge be sett upon the upper long walke at the
good discretion of Mr. Bacon, and Mr. Wilbraham, soe that the charges
thereof doe not exceed the sum of seventy pounds.” On 29th April
1600, £60. 6s. 8d. was paid to “Mr. Bacon for money disbursed about
garnishing of the walkes.”
Bacon’s own ideas of what a garden should be are so delightfully set
forth in his essay on gardens, that the whole as it left his hand
is not difficult to imagine. The fair alleys, the great hedge, were
essentials, and the green, “because nothing is more pleasant to the eye
than green grass kept finely shorn.” His list of plants which bloom
in all the months of the year was compiled of those specially suited
“f |
475 | or the Climate of London,” so no doubt some would be included in this
Garden under his eye, although they do not appear in the records. He
wished “also in the very middle a fair mount,” and even this desire
he carried out in Gray’s Inn. In a description of the Garden as late
as 1761, a summer-house which Bacon put up in 1609 to the memory of
his friend Jeremiah Bettenham is mentioned as only recently destroyed.
“Till lately,” it says, “there was a summer-house erected by the great
Sir Francis Bacon upon a small mount: it was open on all sides, and the
roof supported by slender pillars. A few years ago the uninterrupted
prospect of the neighbouring fields, as far as the hills of Highgate
and Hampstead, was obstructed by a handsome row of houses on the
north; since which the above summer-house has been levelled, and many
trees cut down to lay the Garden more open.” The view, even then, was
fairly open, as Sir Samuel Romilly, in 1780, complains of the cold, as
there was “only one row of h |
476 | ouses” between him and Hampstead, and “a
north-west wind blows full against” his chambers. This “most gallant
prospect into the country, and its beautiful walks” were the great
attractions of these Gardens. They appear to have been one of the most
fashionable walks, especially on Sundays. Pepys was frequently there,
and his diary records, several times, that he went to morning church,
then had dinner, then to church again, and after went for a walk in
Gray’s Inn. That he met there “great store of gallants,” or “saw many
beauties,” is the usual comment after a visit. On one occasion, he
took his wife there to “observe the fashions of the ladies,” because
she was “making some clothes.” The walks and trees are redolent with
associations, and the Gardens, though curtailed, have much the same
appearance as of yore. When a portion of the ground was sacrificed to
the new buildings, those who loved the Garden deeply bewailed. “Those
accursed Verulam Buildings,” wrote Charles Lamb, recalling hi |
477 | s early
walks in Gray’s Inn Gardens, “had not encroached upon all the east side
of them, cutting out delicate green crankles, and shouldering away
one of two stately alcoves of the terrace. The survivor stands gaping
and relationless, as if it remembered its brother. They are still
the best gardens of any of the Inns of Court--my beloved Temple not
forgotten--have the gravest character, their aspect being altogether
reserved and law-breathing. Bacon has left the impress of his foot
upon their gravel walks.”
After such a delightful summary of their charms it seems cruel to
try and dispel one of their most treasured traditions--namely, that
Bacon planted the catalpa. It is a splendid and venerable tree, and
there is no wish to pull it from its proud position of the first
catalpa planted, and the finest in existence in this country; but it
is hard to believe that Bacon planted it, in the light of the history
of the plant. There is no mention of a catalpa in any of the earlier
writers--Ge |
478 | rard did not know it, and it is not in the later edition of
his work by Thomas Johnson, in 1633, or in Parkinson’s “Paradisus,”
in 1629, or in Evelyn’s “Sylva,” in 1664, all published after Bacon’s
death.
The tree was first described by Catesby in his “Natural History of
Carolina,” a splendid folio which appeared in 1731. There it is classed
as _Bignonia urucu foliis_, or _Catalpa_, as it was not until later
that Jussieu separated the genus _Catalpa_. He says the tree was not
known to the inhabitants of Carolina till the seeds “were brought there
from the remoter parts of the country,” “and though the inhabitants are
little curious in gardening, the uncommon beauty of this tree induced
them to propagate it, and it is become an ornament to many of their
gardens, and probably will be the same to ours in England, it being as
hardy as most of our American plants: many of them, now at Mr. Bacon’s,
at Hoxton, having stood out several winters without any protection,
except the first year.” H |
479 | oxton was then a place famous for its nursery
gardens. In 1767, in Catesby’s volume on the trees of North America,
he gives the same story, and adds, “in August 1748” it produced, “at
Mr. Gray’s, such numbers of blossoms, that the leaves were almost hid
thereby.” This Mr. Gray owned the nurseries in Brompton, famous under
the management of London and Wise.
In Philip Miller’s dictionary, Catesby’s history of the plant is
referred to, and also in 1808, in the _Botanical Magazine_, when the
plant was figured. There it says the plant “has been long an inhabitant
of our gardens, being introduced by the same Botanist [Catesby] about
the year 1728.” “It bears the smoke of large towns better than most
trees; the largest specimen we have ever seen grows in the garden
belonging to the Society of Gray’s Inn.” There is no hint that the
tree in question could have been here before Catesby’s discovery, and
it is not till Loudon’s Encyclopædia in 1822 that the planting is
attributed to Bacon. Such a |
480 | remarkable tree could hardly have escaped
all gardeners for more than a century, during a time when gardening
was greatly in fashion, and every new plant greedily sought after. We
know that nearly a hundred years ago this specimen was the finest in
England, and therefore it may have been planted not more than a hundred
years or so after Bacon’s death. Raleigh very likely walked with Bacon
on the spot where it now stands, but, alas! the possibility that he
brought Bacon a tree from Virginia, which was only discovered near the
Mississippi a century later, is hardly credible.
The entrance to the Gardens on the Holborn side is through massive
wrought-iron gates, on which the date 1723 is legible. The letters
“W. I. G.” are the initials of the Treasurer during whose tenure of
office they were erected, the “T” above standing for Treasurer. In
the Inns of Chancery a “P” for Principal, associated with the various
initials, is often to be noticed. These fine gates are a charming
approach to t |
481 | he sequestered walks and ancient trees. Gray’s Inn Gardens
have another delightful speciality, in that the rooks delight to honour
them by building there. They have a warm welcome, and good food in cold
weather, and seem likely to remain. Looking through the lofty iron
gates, the rooks’ nests are seen, and the pleasant cawing sound adds
greatly to the attraction of the place.
[Illustration: THE GARDEN GATES, GRAY’S INN]
CHAPTER XII
HISTORICAL GARDENS
_History is philosophy teaching by examples._
--BOLINGBROKE.
Although their number has sadly diminished of late years, London still
has a few spaces remaining which may be classed as gardens. Often they
are merely green patches of a formal type, which are better suited to
the present climate than attempts at flowers; but a few regular gardens
still exist, bringing dreams of a former period. In St. Bartholomew’s
Hospital, the oldest of all such institutions, the square, with a
hand |
482 | some fountain in the centre, is more what one expects to find in
Italy than in Smithfield. It is this sort of surprise that makes the
charm of London, and renders a wander through its mazes so attractive.
What a contrast the walk of a few minutes can bring in the heart of
London! but of all these changes none is more impressive than the
hush of the Charterhouse after the rush of Aldermanbury or the noise
of Clerkenwell. There is still lingering there the touch of the old
monastery; a breath of a bygone age seems to pervade the courtyards and
gateways, and something in the silence speaks of another world. The
first indication of its hidden green courts are the mulberry leaves
peeping over the worn stone wall, near the gateway which leads to the
weathered archway, the entrance of the old Carthusian monastery. This
is the very spot where, with the brutal severity of Tudor times, the
arm of the last Prior was exposed after his cruel execution at Tyburn.
The monastery, founded in 1371, was |
483 | dissolved with unusual barbarity,
and passed into secular hands. The possession of it by the Duke of
Norfolk has left its mark in many of the existing buildings, as he
converted it from a cloister to a palace, but its palatial days did not
last long. It was bought by the benevolent Thomas Sutton, a portion
of whose large fortune, amassed from profitably working coal mines,
was bestowed in founding “a hospital for poor brethren and scholars.”
The scholars have been taken away from the historical associations,
to the purer air of Godalming, and the parts of the buildings devoted
to their accommodation were in 1872 bought by the Merchants Taylors’
Company for their school. The playing field of the boys is the ample
space which was enclosed by the cloister of the monastery. Part of the
land to the north has been built over, and a tall warehouse overlooks
the burying-ground of the monks, which is still a large green sward
of hallowed ground, with a row of mulberries. This lies so far below
|
484 | the level of Clerkenwell Road that a flight of steps leads to the
postern gate in the high wall, overhung with climbing plants. This
“God’s acre” is covered with smooth turf, and some day the two walnut
trees planted by the master in 1901 may afford grateful shade. It is
in keeping with the spirit of the place to plant trees of such slow
and stately growth. The Preachers’ Court and the smaller Pensioners’
Court are like college quadrangles, with that perfect turf that England
alone produces. The smooth surface is broken only by the regular
intersecting gravel paths, and one row of mulberry trees some seventy
years old. The red-brick buildings have a venerable appearance,
although they do not carry the weight of centuries with dignity, like
the “Wash-house Court,” the hall, the library, or the brick cloister,
and the delightful old walls with their deliciously-scented fig-trees.
The whole place has a mediæval look and feeling, and teems with ghosts
and recollections of the monks of the |
485 | early peaceful days, and their
courageous successors at the Dissolution. The pious founder, as the
chorus of the old Carthusian melody says, must not be forgotten:--
“Then blessed be the memory
Of good old Thomas Sutton,
Who gave us lodging, learning,
As well as beef and mutton.”
Of the shades which surround these peaceful green courts none appear
more real than that of Colonel Newcome. The guardian will point out the
room in which he died, or his pew in the chapel, as if he belonged to
history as much as Wray, who bequeathed the old books in the “Officers’
Library,” or any of the well-known pensioners. With such true and
pathetic touches has Thackeray drawn the character of Colonel Newcome
that fiction has here become entwined round the walls almost as closely
as fact.
Further eastward is an open piece of ground, which is hardly a garden;
but as it is green, and took the place of what was known as the
Artillery Garden, it may claim a moment’s consideration. P |
486 | ush open
a door in the modern-looking castellated building in the City Road
near Bunhill Fields, and a large, quiet, open space is discovered. Old
guns look inoffensively down on a wide square of green turf. This is
the home of the Honourable Artillery Company, the descendants of the
“Trained Bands” of citizens, first enrolled in 1585 in the fear of
a Spanish invasion. They have been here since 1622, when they moved
from near Bishopsgate Without. “Artillery Garden,” or Teazel Close or
Garden, was the name of the older place, from the teazel grown there
for the cloth workers.
“Teazel of ground we enlarge St. Mary’s Spittle,
Trees cut down, and gardens added to it,
Thanks to the lords that gave us leave to do it,”
says an old poem. The existing Artillery Ground was a great place for
cricket matches, where county met county in the eighteenth century. It
was here that a vast crowd witnessed the first balloon ever launched
into the air in England, sent up by Count Zambecc |
487 | ari in 1783. The next
year, from the same place, Lunardi was more ambitious, and actually
went up in his balloon. It proved too small for the friend who was
ready to risk his life in his company, so he took a dog, a cat, and a
pigeon with him instead.
Passing on into the City, the remains of the once extensive Drapers’
Garden is met with.[10] Only a small piece, seen from the street
through iron railings, and approached through the hall, has been
retained; a few trees and bright flowers survive of what was once a
fashionable and much sought after resort.
[Illustration: TRINITY ALMSHOUSES, MILE END ROAD]
Most of the other patches of green in the City are disused
burial-grounds, and are considered in a chapter by themselves. Beyond
the City, on the east, in the Mile End Road, is the quiet old Trinity
Hospital. It stands on the north of that wide road, which might be
made one of the most beautiful entrances to the City. The simple good
taste of these delightful old almshouses is a grea |
488 | t contrast to some
of the surroundings. They were probably designed by John Evelyn,
with the assistance of Wren. His father-in-law, Sir Richard Browne,
founded and built very similar almshouses at Deptford, long since
swept away. Of these Evelyn writes, “It was a good and charitable
work and gift, but would have been better bestowed on the poor of
that parish than on seamen’s widows, the Trinity Company being very
rich, and the rest of the poor of the parish exceedingly indigent.”
In spite of these sentiments, he is believed to have had a hand in
the Mile End Almshouses, which were founded by Captain Henry Mudd of
Ratcliffe, Captain Sandes or Sanders, and Captain Maples. The two last
are remembered by statues still standing in the little formal gardens.
Maples, who appears in the dress of a naval officer of the period, left
a fortune for the use of the guild in diamonds, collected in India,
where he was an early pioneer, and where he died in 1680. A similar
endowment in Hull is describ |
489 | ed in a poem in 1662:--
“It is a comely built, well-ordered place,
But that which most of all the house doth grace
Are rooms for widowes, who are old and poore,
And have been wives to mariners before.”
Certainly Trinity Hospital, Mile End, is comely and well ordered. The
pensioners take a pride in keeping every nook and corner scrupulously
clean. Everything is, in fact, in “ship-shape” order. The grass is
neatly mown, the trees on either side well trimmed and clipped. Outside
each little house a few plants are carefully tended, the pots arranged
with precision, and every flower looked after with pride. It is indeed
a peaceful place for these old people to pass their declining years
in, and the sight makes the regret for St. Katharine’s and the other
vanished charitable buildings all the more keen.
The site of another benevolent institution near is fulfilling a useful
and delightful task, although the old houses attached to it have
disappeared. It was a row of |
490 | almshouses founded by a member of the
Brewers’ Company, named Baker, about 150 years ago, for widows. The
garden was much too large for these decrepid old women to cultivate,
so the place was taken in hand some twenty-five years ago by the Rev.
Sidney Vatcher, who built the beautiful church of St. Philip, Stepney,
hard by, and he became the tenant of the Brewers’ Company. This
charming garden was at first more or less opened by him to the parish,
but lately it has been put to the most suitable use of giving a quiet
place for rest and recreation to the nurses of the London Hospital. The
almshouses were pulled down about four years ago, to make way for the
laundries of the Hospital. Here, indeed, is one of those sudden and
surprising contrasts to be found in London. A high brick wall encloses
this oasis, and the nurses and some privileged people have keys to the
door, which opens, from a side street close to the noise of the Mile
End Road, suddenly into a peaceful, picturesque garden. Th |
491 | e idea in
the formation was a willow-pattern plate, and the little bridge over
a miniature stream is reproduced. Plane trees in a formal array are
kept trimmed to give a dense shade, and the hammocks hung from them in
summer provide the most ideal resting-places for the worn-out nurses.
At one time animals were kept here in cages, as a kind of small “Zoo”
for Whitechapel; but since the last alterations the animals have been
relinquished, and the bear-pit makes a delightful rock garden, and
the various other cages form summer-houses. One thoughtful addition
of the vicar was placing a small stove in one of these shelters, with
an array of kettles, teapots, cups and saucers, so that any of the
nurses resting can have their _al fresco_ cup of tea--and what could
be more grateful and comforting? A French writer who recently gave her
impressions of L’Ile Inconnue was charmed with the peace and repose
of this little East End Paradise. After seeing the Hospital and all
its wonderful appliances |
492 | , “You will now see our Eden,” said the guide.
“Ici! l’Eden! m’écriai-je, après le péché alors!” Then, when she had
for a moment looked within those mysterious high walls, “N’avais-je pas
raison d’appeler ce jardin l’Eden?” said the friend. “Oui, repondis-je,
c’est l’Eden après la Rédemption.” Certainly any one who sees this
little garden, and realises the devoted lives of those who made it and
those who enjoy it, must agree with this writer.
It is not often that, when the old almshouses vanish, the neighbourhood
benefits to such an extent. What will be the fate of the Ironmongers’
Almshouses in Kingsland Road, between Shoreditch and Dalston? A large
board in the garden that fronts the street announces the site is for
sale!
The Foundling Hospital has large green courts, on which the merry but
sombrely-clad little children are seen running about, through the
fine iron gates which face Guildford Street. This was founded in 1739
by Captain Thomas Coram, who gave so much of his wealth to |
493 | objects
of charity and philanthropy that a subscription had to be raised to
support him in his old age. Theodore Jacobson (died 1772) was the
architect of the building. A colonnade runs round the whole length of
the forecourt up to the gates, part of which is used as laundries, or
other things necessary to the institution. A writer in 1773 describes
the “large area between the gates and the hospital” as “adorned with
grass plats, gravel walks, and lamps erected upon handsome posts:
beside which there are two convenient gardens,” and exactly the same
description holds good to-day. Brunswick Square lies to the west, and
Mecklenburgh Square to the east, so the Hospital grounds are still
airy. There is a small garden at the back of the building in front of
the Infirmary; on the east is the Treasurer’s Garden, a fair-sized
enclosure, and on the other side, with the poplars growing in Brunswick
Square overhanging it, lies the other and larger of the two “convenient
gardens.” There is nothin |
494 | g old-fashioned or attractive in these gardens
left; merely a green lawn, a weeping ash, and a few commonplace
“bedding-out” plants; not altogether in keeping with the age or dignity
of the building and spacious forecourt.
Less well known is the delightful Garden of the Grey-coat School
in Westminster. Most of the old foundations in Westminster have
vanished, such as Emanuel Hospital and the “Blue-coat School,” which
disappeared a few years ago, but so far this charming old house has
been respected. Quaint figures of the children in the dress of the
time--it was founded by the citizens of Westminster in 1698--stand
on either side of the entrance. The children from the parishes of
St. Margaret and St. John the Evangelist, who have attended the
elementary schools for three years, are eligible for admission, up
to the age of ten. The school was reconstituted as a day school for
300 girls in 1873, and, in spite of all educational vicissitudes,
has been allowed to survive, and the sweet an |
495 | d wholesome influence
of those old-fashioned surroundings would be a great loss, should
it ever be swept away. The Garden is delightful. It is practical as
well as ornamental, as it furnishes the staff of teachers with a good
supply of vegetables. They have each a small flower-bed too, tended
with great care, and the children are allowed a place of their own,
where they work, dig, and plant. Down the centre runs a wide gravel
walk, with a deep herbaceous border along either side, sweet-scented
pinks and low-growing plants near the front, then a long row of
spiderwort, and behind that a regiment of magnificent hollyhocks. The
spiderwort or Tradescantia is a flower eminently suited to London
gardens, not only because it seems to withstand any amount of smoke
and bad air, but because of its association with the famous garden
in Lambeth, where it was first grown. Parkinson, in 1629, gives the
history of his friend’s introduction of the plant. “The Spiderwort,”
he writes, “is of late knowle |
496 | dge, and for it the Christian World is
indebted unto that painfull industrious searcher, and lover of all
nature’s varieties, John Tradescant (sometimes belonging to the Right
Honourable Lord Robert Earle of Salisbury, Lord Treasurer of England in
his time, and unto the Right Honourable the Lord Wotton at Canterbury
in Kent, and lastly unto the late Duke of Buckingham), who first
received it of a friend, that brought it out of Virginia, thinking it
to bee the Silke Grasse that groweth there, and hath imparted hereof,
as of many other things, both to me and others.” “Unto this plant I
confess I first imposed the name ... which untill some can finde a
more proper, I desire may still continue ... John Tradescant’s Spider
Wort of Virginia.” Courageous as herbalists generally were in tasting
plants, Parkinson confesses there had “not beene any tryall made of
the properties” or “vertues.” Luckily no one has disputed Parkinson’s
choice of a name, and his friend’s memory is still preserved. Th |
497 | e
plant is not confined to Virginia, but grows much further into the
Wild West, and is common in Kansas, Nebraska, and distant States.
Yet it will still adapt itself to the grimy limits of a London garden,
and flower year after year. The Grey-coat School Garden is quite
refreshing; the plants look so healthy and prosperous that it is really
encouraging. The interior of the house, with oak beams and panels, is
all in keeping, and the long class-room, with windows looking out on
the bright Garden, is most ideal. As, at the close of their afternoon
studies, the girls, singing sweetly in parts, join in some familiar
hymn, and the melodious sounds are wafted across the sunlit Garden, it
is hard to believe in the existence of the crowded, unsavoury slums of
Westminster, only a stone’s throw from this “haunt of ancient peace.”
[Illustration: GREY COAT SCHOOL, WESTMINSTER]
Among its many charms and associations Westminster Abbey can lay
claim to possessing one of the oldest gardens in Englan |
498 | d. The ground
still occupied by the space known as the “College Garden” was part
of the infirmary garden of the ancient monastery. It cannot trace
back its history with the Abbey to the Saxon Sebert, but when Edward
the Confessor’s pile began to rise, and all the usual adjuncts of
a monastery gathered round it, the infirmary with the necessary
herb-garden of simples for treating the sick monks would be one of the
first buildings to be completed. One of the most peaceful and retired
spots within the Abbey precincts is the Little Cloister, which was
the infirmary in early days. When the Great Cloister was finished in
1365, the Little Cloister was taken in hand. Payments for work on
“the New Cloister of the Infirmary” appear in the accounts from 1377,
and it was completed in 1390, and that year the centre was laid down
in turf. The garden belonging to the infirmary covered all the space
now occupied by the “College Garden,” and joined the “Grete Garden,”
which lay to the west. It was prob |
499 | ably, like all the gardens of that
date, laid out in long, narrow, straight beds, in which were grown all
the healing herbs used for the sick of the monastery. Probably there
were fruit-trees, too, as in 1362 John de Mordon, the infirmarer, got
9s. for his apples, and the following year 10s. for pears and apples.
No doubt the favourite Wardon pear was among them, as in another
record, between 1380–90, it is specially mentioned. The chapel of St.
Katharine, which stood on the north side of the Garden, was destroyed
in Elizabeth’s reign. This, the infirmary chapel of Norman building,
was as replete with history as every other nook and corner of the Abbey
buildings. Here St. Hugh of Lincoln and most of the early bishops were
consecrated, and here took place the unseemly dispute for precedence,
between the Primates of Canterbury and York in 1186, which led to the
settling of their respective ranks by the Pope. While so many changes
have swept over the Abbey, and whole buildings have vanish |
500 | ed, the
herb-garden of early days has kept its place, and is still a garden,
though bereft of its neat little beds.
[Illustration: ABBEY GARDEN, WESTMINSTER]
The Little Cloister has been greatly altered since then, having been
refashioned in the early part of the eighteenth century under the
influence of Wren. Although so changed since the time when strange
decoctions of medicinal herbs were administered within its walls, it
has retained much of its fascination, and the approach to it by the dim
vaulted entrance, dating from the Confessor’s time, out of the narrow
passage known as the “Dark Entry,” adds to its charm. The sun streams
down on this small court, with its tree and ferns and old moss-grown
fountain, lighting it with a kind of “dusky splendour.” Any one
standing in this suggestive spot will feel with Washington Irving,
that “The Cloisters still retain something of the quiet and seclusion
of former days. The gray walls are discoloured by damps, and crumbling
with age; a coat |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.