Spring Gardens

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Soup / Dessert Spoons Geo. Angell - London 1867-8
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UK: 1896 Map, London Population Density. Hackney, etc
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Sir Walter Besant, in The Fascination of London, published in 1903, continues his survey of London with this look at Spring Gardens:

One of the sights of London in the seventeenth century, was the garden which lay between St. James's Park and Charing Cross, called Spring Gardens.

The place was laid out as a bowling-green; it had also butts, a bathing-pond, a spring made to scatter water all around by turning a wheel.

There was also an ordinary, which charged 6s. for a dinner - then an enormous price - and a tavern where drinking of wine was carried on all day long.

In the "Character of England," 1659, attributed to Evelyn, the following account of Spring Gardens is found:

"The manner is as the company returned (from Hyde Park) to alight at the Spring Gardens so called, in order to the Parke, as our Thuilleries is to the Course; the inclosure not disagreeable, for the solemness of the grove is broken by the warbling of the birds, as it opens into the spacious walks at St. James's; but the company walk in it at such a rate, you would think that all the ladies were so many Atalantas contending with their wooers...But fast as they run they stay there so long as if they wanted not time to finish the race; for it is usual here to find some of the young company till midnight; and the thickets of the garden seem to be contrived to all advantages of gallantry; after they have been refreshed with the collation, which is here seldom omitted, at a certain cabaret, in the middle of this paradise, where the forbidden fruits are certain trifling tarts, neats' tongues, salacious meats, and bad Rhenish; for which the gallants pay sauce, as indeed they do at all such houses throughout England."

After the Restoration the gardens were built over.

Prince Rupert lived here 1674-1682.

Colley Cibber, actor and prolific dramatist, had a house "near Bull's Head Tavern in Spring Gardens, 1711-14"; Sir Philip Warwick and George Canning were also among the residents.

Next: George III's bank: Drummond's Bank