court was situated on the east side between Long Acre and Broad Court, and has now. disappeared. "The growth of London has pushed the market-gardener gradually into the country, and now, instead of sending up his produce by his own wagons, he trusts it to the railways and is often thrown into a market fever by a late delivery. To compensate him, however, for the altered state of the times, he often sells his crops like a merchant upon 'Change, without the trouble of bringing more than a few hand samples in his pockets. He is nearly seventy years of age but looks scarcely fifty, and can remember the time when there were ten thousand acres of ground within four miles of Charing Cross under cultivation for vegetables, besides about three thousand acres planted with fruit to supply the London consumption. He has lived to see the Deptford and Bermondsey gardens curtailed; the Hoxton and Hackney gardens covered with houses; the Essex plantations pushed farther off; and the Brompton and Kensington nurseries-the home of vegetables for centuries-dug up and sown with International Exhibition temples, and Italian gardens that will never grow a pea or send a single cauliflower to market. He has lived to see Guernsey and Jersey, Cornwall, the Scilly Islands, Holland, Belgium, and Portugal, with many other more distant places, competing with the remote outskirts of London bricks and mortar, and has been staggered by seeing the market supplied with choice early peas from such an unexpected quarter as French Algeria" ("Cornhill Magazine," 1866). As will be seen from the above, London was renowned for its gardens. This fact was recorded as early as the reign of Henry II. 1154-1189) by FitzStephen. The royal garden at Westminster was noted for its magnificent blooms in 1276. Stow noted that "Within the compass of one age, Somerset House and the buildings were called country-houses; and the open places about them were employed in gardens for profit; and also many parts within the City and liberties were occupied by working gardeners and were sufficient to furnish the town with garden-ware; for then but a few herbs were used at the table as compared to what are spent now." Holborn (Oldbourne) was celebrated for its gardens, especially those belonging to Ely House: DUKE OF GLOU.: My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn I saw good strawberries in your garden there; I do beseech you send for some of them. B. OF ELY: Marry, and will, my lord, with all my heart. ("Richard III.," Act iii. sc. 4.) The site of Lincoln's Inn Fields was for years renowned for the fine fruit grown there. The accounts of the bailiff, when the garden supplied Lincoln House, mention that apples, pears, large nuts and cherries, sufficient for the Earl of Lincoln's use, and what was over yielded in one year £135 modern currency (Timbs). Clerken well also produced a fair quantity of vegetables, and the site of Buckingham Palace (Goring House) boasted a cherry-garden and also a kitchen-garden. Waller described the wall in St. James's Park as "all with a border of rich fruit-trees crown'd." In 1828 the site of Trinity Church, Brompton, was a large market garden. In South Lambeth was a celebrated garden which existed in 1749 and belonged to Tradescant, the "King's Gardener." Besides many varieties of flowers, pappas, or Virginian potatoes, fox grapes from Virginia, white and red Burlett grapes, currant grapes, "Muscadells," "Frontinack or Musked grapes, white and red," British Queen strawberries, and "Hippomarathrum" or rhubarb of the monks were cultivated here. There were also other gardens, both in and around the metropolis, where herbs and medicinal roots were largely grown. PAGE 216 Belton Street. This street was at one time named Hanover Street. A public-house stood |