THE TEMPLE OF FLORA
The Temple of Flora stood hard by the Temple of Apollo, in the middle of Mount Row on the left hand side of Westminster Bridge Road, going towards the Obelisk, and was separated by Oakley Street from the Apollo Gardens (Temple of Apollo). Concerts were given every evening in the season, and the place is described as “beautifully fitted up with alcoves and exotics.”
In the hot house was “an elegant statue of Pomona,” a transparency of Flora, and at the lower end of the garden, a natural cascade and fountain. “The entrance and the gardens,” were advertised in July 1789 as being formed by the proprietor into an exact imitation of the admired Temple of Flora, which he had constructed at the Grand Gala at Ranelagh.
Some special entertainments were given in June and July in honour of the King’s recovery, and the Grand Temple of Flora, an “elegant and ingenious imitation of Nature in her floral attire,” was then illuminated with nearly a thousand variegated lamps amid wreaths of flowers twining round pillars “made in imitation of Sienna marble.” Fireworks and water-works were also displayed; a large star of lamps was suspended above the cascade, and (in the absence of nightingales) “a variety of singing birds” were imitated. The admission for these special entertainments was one shilling, and the gardens were illuminated from eight till the closing time at eleven. Light refreshments were served consisting of orgeat, lemonade, “confectionary,” strawberries and cream.
There is evidence[294] that in the first few years of its existence (1788–1791) the place was visited by some people of good position, but it afterwards became the haunt of dissolute characters and of young apprentices.[295] The author of A Modern Sabbath describes (circ. 1796) the boxes in the gardens as “neatly painted” like most of the company who were to be seen there about ten in the evening. The admission appears to have been now reduced to sixpence.
In 1796 the proprietor, a man named Grist, was indicted for keeping the place as a disorderly house, and was ordered (May 30) to be confined for six months in the King’s Bench Prison,[296] and in all probability the Temple of Flora was then finally closed.
Mme. Lamotte, the heroine of the famous Diamond Necklace affair, ended her strange career (23 August, 1791) in her house near the Temple of Flora, a place of amusement that, it is likely enough, she frequented.[297]
[A Modern Sabbath (1797), chap. viii.; Public Advertiser, 2 July, 1789 (fêtes of June and July); Brayley and Mantell, Surrey, iii. 399; Allen’s Lambeth, 321.]
APOLLO GARDENS (OR TEMPLE OF APOLLO)
These gardens were on the left hand side of the Westminster Bridge Road going from Westminster to the Obelisk, and were situated nearly where the engineering factory of Messrs. Maudslay, Sons and Field now stands and opposite the present Christ Church Congregational Chapel.[298]