34 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



[ Jq y 13, 1876. 



abundance of sphagnnm, which was trodden or pressed down 

 as tight as possible. Surrounded thus by a bad conductor of 

 heat, and one which is very reluctant to part with its moisture, 

 the plants had no injury during the transit to our Antipodes, 

 which in these timeB can be, by the help of steam, managed 

 so much more speedily than in the days of our esteemed 

 grandfathers. 



Crossing the Thames, however, to complete my account of 

 Lambeth and its vicinity, I must observe that really the resi- 

 dents in what is sometimes called the " Court Suburb " have 

 no reason to plume themselves upon the name of Kensington, 

 since a despised Surrey suburb can boast of the same name 

 with only the difference of a letter. "Kensington" and 

 " Kennington," as I now consider, are merely modifications of 

 the " King's Town," taking rise in a period when the word 

 "town" was occasionally applied to a solitary abode, suppos- 

 ing it was occupied by a person of importance. The historian 

 of Lambeth I know speaks of Chenintume, a king who, it is 

 conjectured, gave the place its appellation, but the proofs are 

 slight indeed — quite as much so as those which would associate 

 Prince's Road with the Black Prince, who did once live at 

 Kennington as it is thought. More probable is it, I should 

 say, that Prince's Road had its name from Frederick, Prince 

 of Wales, of the Georgian era, a well-known frequenter of 

 Vauxhall in its palmy days. Kennington, then, the " town " 

 or " place " of the king, formerly had a palace, at which some 

 of our earlier monarchs resided, until the reign of Queen 

 Elizabeth ; however, we have nothing definite about it. Then 

 we find it in the possession of Sir Noel Caron, ambassador 

 from the Netherlands, who, having a grant of the manor, 

 built himself a mansion called Caron, orCaroone House, dying 

 in 1624. And there is a curious account of this estate drawn 

 out by the Commissioners who surveyed the manor by the 

 order of the Commonwealth, which proves Sir Noel had had a 

 fancy for fruit cultivation. The chronicle mentions "sundry 

 small gardens, also one great garden adjoining to the south 

 and west sides of the said mansion, planted with trees and 

 gardener's fruit, with one other garden on the north side of 

 the mansion planted also with young trees, and wherein stands 

 one pump." This north garden, I presume, extended towards 

 the river as far as the present Wandsworth Road, perhaps 

 across it, and I regard a little grassy enclosure with interest 

 on which grow some good old trees, and which overlooks Ken- 

 nington Oval, for I believe it to be a relic of the garden of Sir 

 Noel Caron. Subsequently we read of a transfer of the manor 

 by Chancellor Clarendon to Sir J. Whichcott, when gardens 

 and orchards are again mentioned. There was in addition an 

 extensive deer park, which comprehended Kennington Oval 

 and Common, stretching west towards Claylands, where it was 

 bounded by a stream called the Effra. It might be supposed, 

 from the fact that many coins were dug up in the nursery 

 grounds of Messrs. Chandler & Buckingham in the Wands- 

 worth Road not far from Vauxhall Bridge, that this land be- 

 longed to the Caron estate. 



Few horticulturists know anything of this Mr. Chandler, 

 though he deserves some little repute as the illustrator of a 

 work on the Camellia, published in 1831. The air of Vaux- 

 hall has not, I fear, improved during these recent years, but 

 at the time Mr. Chandler was devoting his attention to Ca- 

 mellia culture the plants would thrive in the open air; he 

 enumerates eight sorts that flowered freely against a north- 

 west wall. This nurseryman produced many varieties from 

 seed. One of these, Chandleri (also versicolor in the " Bo- 

 tanical Register"), being reputed of great excellence. This 

 was o iginated in 1819 by Mr. C. from the seeds of C. ane- 

 moniflora or " Waratah," crossed with other varieties ; and 

 in the same year he produced from the seeds C. Altheae- 

 flora and C. concinna ; and Loudon notes as a curious cir- 

 cumstance that about 1822 Mr. Chandler raised C. Aitoni 

 and four more varieties from the seed in one capsule of 

 C. pomponia. 



Very near this nursery garden was the orchard belonging 

 to a Mr. Phillips, who for his success in fruit culture received 

 two gold medals from the Society of Arts. And, indeed, 

 in the early part of this century fruit trees were numer- 

 ous all along the road to Wandsworth ; the yield in ordinary 

 seasons was quite up to the average or above it, though the 

 gardeners, professional or amateur, did not pursue quite the 

 same methods that were common in the Middlesex orchards, 

 where the practice of manuring was carried almost to excess. 

 One of the " oldest inhabitants " of Kennington, and quite a 

 local celebrity, was a nurseryman of the name of Michelson. 



He had antiquarian tastes, too, so that visitors to the place 

 could obtain much information from him about its history, 

 especially as he reached the age of one hundred, or very nearly, 

 though our anti-centenarian philosophers would doubt this, 

 as they have other instances where the venerable age rested 

 chiefly on the testimony of the individual himself. Mr. 

 Michelson does not figure in our annals of gardening as a cul- 

 tivator of rarities or a producer of varieties, though he plodded 

 on for a good many years at his pursuit, and modern Kenning- 

 ton knows him not or his nursery ground as such, for o'er its 

 surface flies the ball of the cricketer, and the air oft resounds 

 with the shout of applause at the skill displayed by bowler or 

 batsman. In point of fact, when Kennington Oval was first 

 reclaimed from its wilderness condition (for it was once much 

 in the same state as the common adjacent, which once served 

 south Londoners as an assembling ground) in the reign of 

 George III. it was formed into a nursery garden, which an his- 

 torian of the past declares was " peculiarly delightful." There 

 were then but few houses in the vicinity, and Harleyford Road 

 leading to the Oval was quite rural in aspect. On the decease 

 of Mr. Michelson, or soon after, somewhere about 1830, the 

 Oval was cleared of its plants and turfed, to be henceforth 

 devoted to very different uses, and one by one the nurseries of 

 that neighbourhood have disappeared to meet the increasing 

 demand for building ground. 



It may be recollected by the reader that I have made slight 

 allusion to the history of Vauxhall Gardens. Recent investi- 

 gations lead me to think that the garden mentioned by some 

 authors as the Old Spring Garden at Vauxhall, or Fox or 

 Faukes Hall, wa3 distinct from the gardens we read of in 

 the time of Queen Anne and the Georges. If we take the 

 earliest account we have of the Old Spring Garden it gives 

 us quite a different idea of the place from that we obtain in 

 the " Spectator," where Addison descants upon groves, shady 

 walks, carolling birds, and the like, evidently painting Vaux- 

 hall from the life, though he gives us ideal personages. Min- 

 cing, describing the Spring Gardens he saw in the reign of 

 Charles II., states that it had grass and sand walks which 

 divided squares of 20 yards each, which were enclosed with 

 hedges of Gooseberries, and within were grown Roses, Beans, 

 Asparagus, &a. This was manifestly a nursery garden on a 

 moderate scale, with, we will suppose, seats here and there 

 for visitors, while the more modern Vauxhall was chiefly 

 shrubberies. This nursery garden then of 1663, which, if we 

 were to guess at its position, was somewhere near the Thames 

 — (it may be, as one author says, just opposite the New Spring 

 Gardens) — had some singularities. It had walks laid down with 

 grass as well as " sand," the latter we will hope was what 

 modern folks call " gravel ;" and the mode of growing flowers, 

 fruits, and vegetables all in the same bed was original, if not 

 according to the plans of the present race of gardeners. Long 

 before the New Spring Garden the Vauxhall which was extant 

 when Victoria came to the throne had yielded to the force of 

 time. The Old Spring Garden had been seized by the builders, 

 and now we cannot discover its locality, though it is thought 

 that it faced the gardens which made Vauxhall still more 

 famous. " Spring Garden," as it would appear, was a phrase 

 formerly applied in a loose manner to a number of suburban 

 resorts where persons went out for recreation or to obtain fruit . 

 Was it because in many of these gardens they had springs or 

 fountains to impart a sensation of coolness agreeable to the 

 visitors and also to afford a ready means of watering the plants 

 and shrubs ? or was it because the proprietors of these gar- 

 dens, by the introduction of a variety of plants and flowers, 

 endeavoured to present to the eye a spring aspect all through 

 the summer season ? 



Not far from Kennington is a place which has passed through 

 odd vicissitudes, and to which a passing comment must be given. 

 The Surrey Zoological Gardens, Walworth, originally covering 

 about 15 acres, were taken by some gentlemen more hopeful 

 than practical, in the hope that by their means they might be 

 able to develope a liking for botanical pursuits in the minds of 

 holiday-making Londoners. It was in the early part of the 

 reign of William IV. that the establishment was opened as a 

 " botanical garden." It was stored with a variety of exotics, 

 and arrangements were also made for the delivery of lectures, 

 al fresco I suppose. But the scheme did not answer, and so 

 Mr. Cross removed his menagerie to Surrey from Exeter Mews 

 and other animals were added until a very fair zoological col- 

 lection was brought together, though it could not rival the 

 display in Regent's Park. At the time the Horticultural So 

 ciety was passing through an unpleasant crisis, and Fellows 



