Warwick Wroth

Cremorne and the Later London Gardens Warwick Wroth

I have taken some pains in compiling these lists, partly from topographical curiosity, partly from the conviction that their enumeration almost rises to the dignity of pointing a moral. The main contrast is between the tavern and public-house of former days and the gin-palace, with whose aspect-externally, if not (in any sense of the word) internally-we are only too familiar. A description that I have found in a London guide-book of 1846 of the tea and tavern gardens of that date has already an old-world air: 'The amusements are innocent, the indulgence temperate; and a suitable mixture of female society renders it [our guide means them] both gay and pleasing.' The public-house was then, as now, no inconspicuous feature of the Metropolis; yet in the earlier half of the nineteenth century it had, if not exactly gaiety and innocence, some characteristics which tended in that direction-its little gardens in summer, its tavern concerts in winter-time. In the fifties, or earlier, many of these garden spaces-often, it is true, of Lilliputian dimensions-were marked out as building-ground, which was either sold to alien contractors or utilized by the proprietor of the tavern when he thought fit to erect thereon a roomier and more imposing edifice.