Cremorne and the later London gardens

Transcribed from the 1907 Elliot Stock edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Many thanks to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Libraries for allowing their copy to be consulted in making this transcription.
BY WARWICK WROTH ASSISTANT-KEEPER OF COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM;
AUTHOR OF ‘THE LONDON PLEASURE-GARDENS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY’
WITH TWENTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 1907
The open-air resorts described in this volume lack the romantic associations of the classic pleasure-gardens of the eighteenth century, and it is impossible to impart to Cremorne or the Surrey ‘Zoo’ the historic dignity of a Vauxhall or a Ranelagh. Yet, if these places are undeserving of the detailed treatment that has been accorded to their prototypes, they may claim at least a brief and modest chronicle, which may seem the more necessary because it has mainly to be constructed, not from books, but from stray handbills and forgotten newspapers. Already, indeed, we are growing accustomed to speak of the nineteenth century as the ‘last,’ and to recognize that the London of Dickens, and Thackeray—the London of the thirties, the forties, and even of the sixties—had a physiognomy of its own.
Such places of resort, for the most part, enjoyed no kind of fashionable vogue; they were frequented (if invidious distinctions must be made) by the lower middle classes and the ‘lower orders.’ Yet they offer some curious glimpses of manners and modes of recreation which may be worth considering. I have endeavoured to describe some twenty of these places, selecting those which seem, in various ways, to be typical. To the general reader this selection will be enough—though, I trust, not more than enough—but the London topographer who turns to the appendix and the notes will find a quite formidable list of tea-gardens and tavern-gardens, which, if my aim had been to omit nothing, I could have described in greater detail.