SOUTH LONDON PARKS i8i 



and there, with much pleasure, spent little and so home." 

 Pepys' home in Seething Lane near the Tower would be 

 an easy distance from the Tea Gardens of RedrifF, as 

 Rotherhithe was called then, and in the days when Swift 

 made Gulliver live there. There were other well-known 

 Tea Gardens near, the " Cherry Garden," *' Half-way 

 House," and at a much later date " St. Helena's Gardens," 

 which were only closed in 1881. The disappearance of 

 all the Tea Gardens and open spaces made the necessity 

 of a Park very obvious, and it was to meet this want that 

 Southwark Park was made. 



Maryon Park 



There is one more small Park to complete the line of 

 South London Parks, for which the public is indebted to 

 Sir Spencer Mary on- Wilson, the lord of the manor of 

 Charlton, in which parish it is situated. It lies between 

 Greenwich and Woolwich, and the South-Eastern Railway 

 skirts the northern side. The ground was chiefly large 

 gravel pits, and has a hill in the middle partly caused by 

 the excavations. This hill has some pretty brushwood 

 still growing on its slope, showing it was once joined to 

 Hanging Wood, a well-known hiding-place of highway- 

 men. It was conveniently thick, and there are many tales 

 of pursuit from Blackheath which ended by losing the 

 thieves in Hanging Wood. The hill in the Park is 

 locally known as Cox's Mount, having been rented by 

 an inhabitant of that name in 1838, who built a summer- 

 house there and planted poplars. The area of the Park 

 is about 1 2 acres, and except for one or two trees on the 

 Mount and patches of brushwood, it is open grass. The 

 boys on the Warspite training ship anchored near are 

 allowed to play cricket there, provision for this having 



