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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