[Sunday Ramble (1776); A Modern Sabbath (1797), chap. vii.; Faulkner’s Kensington (1820), pp. 438, 441; Lysons’s Environs, supplement to first ed. (1811), p. 215; Wheatley, London P. and P. s.v. “Cromwell House” and “Gloucester Lodge”; Fores’s New Guide (1789), preface, p. vi.; The Public Advertiser, 10 July, 1789; The Morning Herald, 7 July, 1786; and newspaper cuttings in W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
There seem to be no views of the Cromwell and Florida Gardens. There is a view of the garden front of Gloucester Lodge in Jerdan’s Autobiography (1852), vol. ii. frontispiece.
VI
SOUTH LONDON GROUP
BERMONDSEY SPA GARDENS
The Bermondsey Spa Gardens owe such celebrity as they attained to the enterprise of their founder and proprietor, Thomas Keyse, a self-taught artist, born in 1722, who painted skilful imitations of still life and exhibited pictures at the Royal Academy. About 1765 he purchased the Waterman’s Arms, a tavern in Bermondsey, together with some waste ground adjoining, and opened the place as a tea-garden, exhibiting there a collection of his own pictures. At that time, and for several years in the present century, Bermondsey was surrounded by open country.
About 1770 a chalybeate spring was discovered in the grounds, and Keyse’s establishment thereupon acquired the name of the Bermondsey Spa Gardens. Keyse was a cheery, ingenious landlord, remarkable among other things for his preparation of cherry-brandy. In 1784 he obtained a license for music from the Surrey magistrates, and spent £4,000 in improvements. The gardens (covering not less than four acres) were opened during the summer months on week-day evenings and Sundays, and the price of admission on week-days was a shilling. Each visitor was, however, given on entering a metal check,[253] which was exchanged for refreshments to the extent of sixpence. On special occasions the admission was half-a-crown or three shillings.
In the gardens were the usual arbours and benches for tea-drinking. The space before the orchestra was about a quarter of the size of that at Vauxhall, and on the north-east of the garden was a lawn of about three acres. A row of trees leading from the entrance to the picture gallery was hung at night with lamps of red, blue, green, and white, in humble imitation of the Grand Walk at Vauxhall.[254]
Jonas Blewitt, one of the most distinguished organists of the latter half of the eighteenth century, composed the music of many songs for the entertainments at the Spa.[255] The Spa poets were Mr. J. Oakman and Mr. Harriss. Songs of hunting, drinking, and seafaring took their turn with ditties full of what may be described as sprightly sentiment. The other music[256] consisted of burlettas, duets, and interludes, performed by vocalists of only local fame. In a burletta called the ‘Friars,’ certain nuns who had been forced by wicked guardians to take the veil, make their escape with the assistance of two friars. These reverend men, after singing an anacreontic song, divide the gold which the ladies have given them as their reward, and the whole concludes with a chorus. The words of the burlettas and songs were printed in little books, sold for sixpence at the bar and in the exhibition room.[257]
An occasional display of fireworks took place, and the gardens and a cascade (introduced about 1792) were illuminated.[258] From time to time there was a representation of the Siege of Gibraltar by means of fireworks, transparencies and bomb shells.[259] The apparatus for the Siege, which was designed by Keyse himself, was set up in a field divided from the lawn by a sunk fence, the rock being fifty feet high and two hundred feet long. The blowing up of the floating batteries and the sinking of boats in ‘fictitious water’ were (we are assured) ‘so truly represented as to give a very strong idea of the real Siege.’