GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



it may be safely assumed that the enclosed lands of Lambeth 

 Palace included, once upon a time, not only gardens, but also 

 chase, and park, and that they were very extensive. 



Where " Lambeth Palace Road " now is, was formerly an 

 avenue of elms known as " Bishop's Walk." It was a favourite 

 promenade until it was swept away to make room for the Albert 

 Embankment ; but it did not exist in very early days, although 

 some of its patriarchal trees may have been in the Palace gardens 

 in the time when the latter stretched to the river bank. Much 

 of the land where now stands St. Thomas's Hospital, has been 

 reclaimed from the mud of the river ; the remainder of it was 

 covered by a grove of trees, no doubt originally on lands belonging 

 to the Palace. In those days Lambeth Marsh and St. George's 

 Fields must have come close up to these. " St. George's Fields," 

 says the writer of " Old and New London," " appear to have 

 been marked by all the floral beauty of meadows uninvaded by 

 London smoke. And yet these fields, together with Lambeth 

 Marsh, which lies between them and the river, were at one time 

 almost covered with water at every high tide." Across them the 

 Romans threw embanked roads, and raised villas after the Dutch 

 summer-house fashion, on piles. 



When John Tombs in his " Curiosities of London " says " Lambeth 

 abounded in gardens," he probably meant market gardens, for 

 these occupied much land on the opposite Middlesex shore, and 

 doubtless did so on the Surrey side also ; and according to Pennant, 

 between Southwark and Lambeth there was not a single house in 

 1560. Even a hundred years later Pepys wrote in his diary : 

 * Went across the river to Lambeth and so over the fields to 

 Southwark." 



All this goes to prove that in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seven- 

 teenth centuries, the demesne of Lambeth was really in the country ; 

 although so rapid, even at that day, was the growth of London, 

 that James I. predicted that " England will shortly be London, 

 and London England." 



It must be remembered, as mentioned in the previous chapter, 

 that before Elizabeth's days, English gardening, having developed 

 a distinct style of its own, had arrived at great excellence. The 

 pleasure-grounds of Lambeth House, which, even at the present 

 day, when they are surrounded by acres of houses and factories, 



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