Cremorne and the later London gardens

by Warwick William Wroth

The garden—a delightful adjunct to a London restaurant—contained some fine trees, walnut and mulberry trees among them, which had been the pride of the good William Wilberforce when he lived in Gore House, before the coming of the gorgeous Countess. The meadow or ‘park’ of the domain—really a grazing-meadow hired from a Kensington cow-keeper—was adroitly styled the Pré d’Orsay, and here was erected the Encampment of All Nations, which was the public dining-hall, 400 feet long, ‘with a monster tablecloth, 307 feet long, of British manufacture.’

The garden, reached by flights of steps from the back of the house, had natural beauties of its own—Lady Blessington’s great rose-tree and Wilberforce’s thick-foliaged trees, Soyer added fountains and statuary, a grotto of Ondine, a little pavilion of many-hued stalactites with a crystal roof, and a statue of Hebe dispensing ambrosial liquors through the shafts of the temple. Here also stood the Baronial Hall, a building (not unsuggestive of Rosherville) 100 feet long, with a stained-glass roof. It was hung with pictures by Soyer’s wife (Emma Jones), and with the more interesting crayon portraits by Count d’Orsay. The American Bar and the Ethiopian Serenaders were perhaps more suited to Cremorne.

The Symposium opened on May 1, 1851, and the Metropolitan Sanitary Association and other festively inclined societies began to banquet in its halls. The average attendance was 1,000 a day, and the takings amounted to £21,000; but none the less the great chef was £7,000 out of pocket, and the Symposium closed suddenly and for ever on October 14, 1851. There had, in fact, been many complaints of bad dinners and imperfect management. It is not easy—or was not in those days—to provide simultaneously sightseers’ luncheons and dinners for epicures. Even at this remote period, and without aspiring to the Bower of Ariadne, one is appalled at the idea of dining in an Encampment of All Nations at a table 307 feet long. The roasting of a bullock whole, which took place in the Pré d’Orsay on May 31, no doubt brought many shillings to the treasury, but was reminiscent of Battersea Fields or of a Frost Fair on the Thames.

In February, 1852, the place was dismantled, and the Hall and the Encampment were sold by auction. The Gore estate was purchased the same year by the Commissioners of the Exhibition, and the grounds in later years formed part of those of the Royal Horticultural Society. [33]

[Volant and Warren, Memoirs of Alexis Soyer; Davis’s Knightsbridge, p. 142; Walford, Old and New London, v., p. 118 f.; Illustrated London News, May 10 and 17, 1851 (views of the garden and the Baronial Hall); ‘Gore House,’ a water-colour by T. H. Shepherd, circa 1850, in Kensington Public Library; Timbs’s Clubs, quoting Sala’s account from Temple Bar Magazine.]

THE HIPPODROME, NOTTING HILL

This was a race-course of some two and a half miles in circuit. In 1837 a Mr. John Whyte had turned his attention to the slopes of Notting Hill, and to the Portobello meadows west of Westbourne Grove, and prepared a course, not for golf, but for horse-racing and steeple-chasing, with the accompaniments of a training-ground and stables for about eighty horses.

The Hippodrome was opened on June 3, 1837. The public were admitted for a shilling, and those who could not enter the carriage enclosure mounted a convenient hill from which a splendid view of the racing—also of much adjacent country—could be obtained. No gambling-booths or drinking-booths were permitted, but iced champagne, or humbler beverages were to be obtained on this eminence. Lord Chesterfield and Count d’Orsay were the first stewards, and the Grand Duke of Russia, the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Brunswick, and many noble personages, condescended to visit this London Epsom, to which gay marquees and ‘splendid equipages’ lent éclat on a race-day.

These races were held for four years, and were duly recorded in Bell’s Life, with the usual details of horse, owner, and jockey. Cups of fifty and a hundred guineas were offered. The proceedings generally began at two, and on one occasion lasted till nine.

One drawback to the selectness of the Hippodrome (and the proprietor’s profits) was a path across the enclosure through which the public had a right-of-way. The footpath people seem, as a rule, to have been orderly enough, but gipsies, ‘prigs,’ and hawkers did not neglect the opportunity of mingling with the nobility and gentry. In March, 1838, an attempt was made in Parliament to block this footpath by a measure entitled the Notting Hill Enclosure Bill; but this harmless title was speedily perceived to conceal an attempt to legalize horse-racing in London. ‘Strong public feeling’ (particularly strong in Bayswater and Notting Hill) was excited, and many reasons, wise and foolish, were urged against the measure. One objection was that the young ladies in the boarding-schools of Kensington would be unable to take their usual walks abroad. On the other hand—so different are points of view—a writer in the Sporting Magazine declared that the Hippodrome was ‘a necessary of London life, of the absolute need of which we were not aware until the possession of it taught us its permanent value.’ A reading of the Bill passed the Commons early in 1838 by a majority of 26, but by September the Notting Hill Enclosure Bill had been quietly dropped. Next year the proprietor enclosed his course so as to exclude the obnoxious path, but at a considerable sacrifice of space. The last race was run in June, 1841. The proprietor had lost heavily, not so much, perhaps, through mismanagement as on account of a fatal defect in the course, which had a strong clay soil, and was so damp that it could only be used for training horses during part of the year.