156 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



known as the Red House for many generations. It was 

 much resorted to, but latterly its reputation was none 

 of the best. Games of all kinds took place in its 

 gardens, and pigeon-shooting was one of the greatest 

 attractions there, during the first half of the nineteenth 

 century. Although for long, crowds enjoyed harmless 

 amusements there — " flounder breakfasts," and an annual 

 " sucking-pig dinner," and such-like — towards the end 

 of the time of its existence, it became the centre 

 of such noisy and riotous merrymakings that the 

 grounds of the Red House became notorious. The 

 Sunday fairs, with the attendant evils of races, gam- 

 bling, and drinking, were crowded, and thousands of the 

 less reputable sections of the community landed every 

 Sunday at the Red House to join in these revellings. 

 It was chiefly with a view to doing away with this 

 state of affairs, that the scheme was set on foot, for 

 absorbing the grounds of the Red House, and other 

 less famous taverns and gardens that had sprung up 

 round it, and forming a Park. 



Battersea, or " Patricesy," as it is written in 

 Domesday, was a manor belonging to the Abbey of 

 Westminster until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. 

 The name is most probably derived from the fact that 

 it was lands of St. Peter's Abbey "by the water." 

 Later on it came into the St. John family, and Henry 

 St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, was born and died in 

 Battersea. After his death it was purchased by Earl 

 Spencer, in whose family it remains. Part of the 

 fields were Lammas Lands, for which the parish was 

 duly compensated. The gloomy wildness of the fields 

 gave rise to superstitions, and a haunted house, from 

 which groans proceeded and mysterious lights were 



