THE BARGE 27 



The plot the Apothecaries had taken was an 

 excellent site for a garden. Cultivated fields 

 in East Chelsea, the uninhabited district beyond 

 (now Belgravia and Pimlico), with its meadows 

 and ditches, the Tothill fields, and St. James's 

 Park separated the garden from smoky London. 



The Thames alongside kept it open to the 

 south every high tide brought rich river 

 water for the plants not unpleasantly rich, as 

 it afterwards became, for the water was clear 

 enough for angling. Many kinds of coarse 

 fish were to be found in Chelsea Reach, and 

 the nets had good hauls of salmon in the spring, 

 in spite of the poachers who destroyed the 

 young fish with illegal nets. 



There was a creek, too, for the new barge, 

 and a boat-house in the garden itself. A 

 recess in the south-east corner of the Garden 

 marks, to-day, the spot where the Company's 

 barge, as well as two other barges for which 

 the owners paid rent, could be housed. This 

 recess, and the old river wall in the Garden, 

 now some way from the river, show how much 

 the Embankment made in 1874 gained on 

 the mud-banks formerly left bare at low tide. 



The barges housed in the Garden were not 

 the London barges we all know the " lighters " 

 and the sea-going barges, which float down the 

 " London river " to the North Sea, with all 

 sails set before a westerly wind. 



The Company's barge was a four-oared row- 

 ing boat with a room, like the cabin of a gondola, 

 in the stern, and decorated with flag and banners. 



It was of modest size. Sir Thomas More's 

 barge, on which the last sad journey from Chel- 



