94 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



church was rebuilt in 1832, to realise it and to purchase 

 the figures, and remove them to strike the hours in 

 his new villa. St. John's Lodge is another of these 

 detached villas, with a fascinating garden, built by 

 Burton, for Sir Francis Henry Goldsmid ; and also in 

 the inner circle there is South Villa, with an observatory, 

 erected in 1837 by Mr. George Bishop, from which 

 various stars and asteroids were discovered by Dawes 

 and Hinde. 



The most interesting of the houses in the park is 

 St. Katharine's Lodge, not from any special beauty of 

 its own, but from the sad association of its history. 

 On the east of the road which encircles the Park is 

 St. Katharine's Hospital, built by A. Poynter, a pupil 

 of Nash, in 1827, when the "act of barbarism" of re- 

 moving the Hospital from the East End was committed. 

 The home of the Hospital, with its church and alms- 

 houses, was close to the Tower, and after a peaceful 

 existence of nearly seven hundred years it was oom- 

 pletely swept away to make room for more docks. 

 There is nothing to redeem the crude look of useless- 

 ness that the new buildings in Regent's Park present. 

 They seem out of place, and as if stranded there by 

 accident. Even thirty years after their removal an official 

 report on the revenues of the hospital shows some signs of 

 repentance. The writers sum up the increased income, 

 then about ;^ 11,000 a year, and wonder if in this far- 

 away spot it is being put to the best uses ; and the 

 report even goes so far as to suggest its restoration to 

 the populous East End, where the recipients of the 

 charity would spend their lives in the cure of souls, or as 

 nurses and mission-women among the poor. Since then, 

 an improvement has set in as it has become the Central 



