352 LONDON PARKS <^ GARDENS 



front of the house, and lies between two groves of tall 

 lime trees, planted on a carpet of grass. The outsides 

 of those groves are bordered with tubs of bays and 

 orange trees. At the end of the broad walk you go up 

 to a terrace 400 paces long, with a large semicircle in 

 the middle, from where are beheld the Queen's (Anne's) 

 two parks and a great part of Surrey : then, going down 

 a few steps, you walk on the bank of a canal 600 yards 

 long and 17 broad, with two rows of limes on either 

 side. On one side of this terrace a wall, covered with 

 roses and jessamines, is made low to admit the view of a 

 meadow full of cattle just beneath (no disagreeable 

 object in the midst of a great city), and at each end is a 

 descent into parterres with fountains and waterworks. 

 From the biggest of these parterres we pass into a little 

 square garden, that has a fountain in the middle and 

 two green-houses on the sides . . . below this a kitchen- 

 garden . . . and under the windows ... of this green- 

 house is a little wilderness full of blackbirds and 

 nightingales." This is truly an entrancing picture of 

 a town garden. 



The waterworks, those elaborate fountains then in 

 vogue, were supplied by water pumped up from the 

 Thames into a tank above the kitchen, which held fifty 

 tons of water. Buckingham House was then a red-brick 

 building, consisting of a central square structure, with 

 stone pillars and balustrade along the top, and two 

 wings attached to the main building by a colonnade. 

 It was this style of house when King George III. bought 

 it, originally for a dower-house for Queen Charlotte, 

 instead of Somerset House, where the Queens-Dowager 

 had previously lived. These formal gardens were not 

 suited to the taste of the time, and George IV. had 



