Cremorne and the later London gardens

by Warwick William Wroth

Now, when these historic dust-heaps were carted off to Russia—the story is a true one—and utilized in rebuilding the walls of Moscow, they left a void which even the London builder could not immediately fill. In the twenties there was still a large vacant space near the corner of Gray’s Inn Lane, bounded by (the present) Liverpool, Manchester, and Argyle Streets, and reaching nearly to the Euston Road. This space became the property of a company which, in 1829, invited the public by prospectus to subscribe about £20,000 for its development. [54] The worthy historian of Clerkenwell describes this company as the ‘Pandemomium’ (sic), but as a matter of fact it called itself the Panarmonion, and had nothing demoniac in its objects, but rather the laudable purpose of converting a dusty wilderness into a garden and temple of the Muses. The promoter was a certain Signor Gesualdo Lanza, who presided over a school for acting and singing in the neighbourhood. Lanza proposed to establish—and displayed in lithographic plans—a great ‘Panarmonion Institution,’ consisting of a theatre, a concert-hall, a ‘refectory,’ a reading-room, and even an hotel. These buildings were to rise in a pleasaunce encircled by trees and alcoves, and adorned with a great fountain and cascade.

In March, 1830, the place was opened, but the dreams of the prospectus were never realized. A shilling was charged for admission to the gardens, but it does not appear that they were ever properly laid out, and the only attraction was a tour of the grounds in a peculiar ‘Suspension Railway,’ the invention of Mr. H. Thorrington. This railway consisted of a boat-shaped car suspended from a substantial level bar, along which it travelled on small wheels set in motion by a wheel in the car worked by hand. [55a] For the more adventurous visitors, hobby-horses (rudimentary ‘cycles’) were likewise suspended from the bar, and worked in the same way as the boat. The theatre, of which a noble elevation by ‘Stephen Geary, architect,’ [55b] had been shown in the prospectus, turned out to be a small and narrow building, originally erected for an auction-room, which Lanza opened in March, 1830, with an amateurish performance of the opera of Artaxerxes. The enterprise was a failure from the first; the lease of the theatre was offered for sale in August, [56] and we hear no more of the gardens.

In May, 1832, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, of the Adelphi, and W. H. Williams, the comic actor and singer, tried their hands, and reopened the Panarmonion theatre as the ‘Royal Clarence,’ decorating it in the style of a Chinese pavilion. It is claimed that many well-known actors learnt their art at this bijou theatre. What is certain is that it often changed its name—being called, for instance, the Cabinet, and, in its latest days, the King’s Cross Theatre—and that both actors and audiences steadily deteriorated. During the greater part of its existence its boards were trodden by stage-struck amateurs; at one time it was used as a tobacco manufactory; and in the eighties or nineties its entrance-front might be seen plastered with bills announcing a mission-service or a temperance meeting. At last, early in 1897, Messrs. Reggiori, the proprietors of the neighbouring restaurant (Nos. 1 and 3, Euston Road) took the little theatre bodily into their premises, of which it now forms an additional dining-saloon. The old entrance-front (in Liverpool Street) has been smartened up with stucco and stained-glass windows.

It seems likely that the vanished gardens gave a hint for the laying out of Argyle Square, which covers a considerable portion of their site.

[Prospectuses and lithographs of the Panarmonion; newspapers of 1829 and 1830; Clinch’s Marylebone, etc., p. 182 f.; Pinks’s Clerkenwell; Baker’s London Stage, ii., p. 260; Era Almanack, 1868, advt., p. vii; 1869, p. 34. The annals of the theatre may also be sought in the pages of the Theatrical Journal.]

THE EAGLE AND GRECIAN SALOON

The Eagle tavern and Grecian theatre which stood till lately at the corner of the dreary City Road and Shepherdess Walk were developed out of a quiet eighteenth-century pleasure-garden known as the Shepherd and Shepherdess, which had its arbours, skittle-ground, and small assembly-room. [57a] About 1822 a rather remarkable man, named Thomas Rouse (born in 1784), came into possession of the premises. [57b] He is said to have begun life as a bricklayer; at any rate, he had a turn for building, and in later days indulged himself in saloons, pavilions, and Cockney gardening. He rebuilt the tavern, or, at any rate, renamed it the Eagle, and from 1824 onwards the Eagle lawn was the scene of some of Green’s balloon ascents, and of annual tournaments of the Devon and Cornish wrestlers and single-stick players. One of the earliest balloon ascents, on May 25, 1824, gave a melancholy advertisement to the place. A balloonist named Thomas Harris ascended from the grounds, accompanied by a young lady named Sophia Stocks, who was described by the journalists as ‘an intrepid girl’ who entered the balloon ‘with but slight appearance of fear.’ The balloon took the direction of Croydon, but by its fall to the earth in Beddington Park, Harris was killed and his companion severely injured. [58a]

The coronation of William IV. in 1831 did not pass without influence on the Eagle, for in October the proprietor bought up the fittings of the Abbey entrance and robing-rooms and erected them as an entrance to his gardens, advertising them not only as the identical fittings, but as re-erected by ‘the identical mechanics.’ In this year, also, the famous Grecian Saloon came into existence. It was furnished with an organ and ‘a superb self-acting piano’; also with a superb gas chandelier, and with classic paintings by Philip Phillips, a pupil of Clarkson Stanfield and ‘scene-painter to the Adelphi and Haymarket.’ [58b]

The Eagle reopened in the spring of 1832 with many of the attractions that long continued to characterize it. In the garden was an orchestra of Oriental type, variously described as Moorish or Chinese, and the Pandean Band from Vauxhall Gardens was engaged to perform. Dancing took place, generally once a week, in the ‘Grecian tent’ or in the assembly-room, and the gardens were adorned with Chinese lanterns, cosmoramas, fountains, and dripping rocks. In the Saloon there were concerts and ‘vaudevilles’ every evening, with sacred music (in Lent) from Handel and Mozart. The admission was no more than a shilling or sixpence, and it is pleasing to find that the ‘junior branches of families’ were admitted at threepence a head. One has a tender feeling for these junior branches, some of whom must have sat there with their fathers and mothers rather wearily from 7.30 to near 11, enlivened at times by the conjurer and the lady on the elastic cord (Miss Hengler or Miss Clarke) but caring little for the excellent glees and the vocal efforts of Miss Fraser James—bright star though she was of the London tavern concerts [59a]—or for those of Miss Smith, ‘the little Pickle’ of Drury Lane, of whom the critics remarked that it was miraculous that so young a person should be able to sing so high and so low, and excel in such songs as the ‘Deep, Deep Sea’ and ‘The Wolf,’ which she was understood to sing in private. How many people at this period visited the Eagle, or, indeed, any other place of open-air amusement, it is hard to determine; but the newspapers speak of 5,000 or 6,000 persons being present on one night in May, while others give the more modest total of 1,000 or 1,300 at sixpence each. The frequenters of the Eagle were people of humble rank, and at this time we hear of no distinguished visitors, except, perhaps, Paganini, who, going there with his friends to amuse himself one August night in 1832, was considerably mobbed, the remarks on his appearance being doubtless gems of Cockney sarcasm.