4b 
PARK AND CE-METERY 
Broad Walk was at one time the 
fashionable promenade, just as 
the Mall was at an earlier period. 
The existing scheme of laying out 
was based on Queen Caroline's 
scheme. 
One of the features of these 
parks is that a charge of one pen- 
ny is made for the chairs, a ticket 
being given which is available for 
the whole of the day of issue ; the 
benches, however, are free. 
The Serpentine forms an impor- 
tant feature of the park. With 
FERRY HOUSE AND ISUAND IN THE SERPENTINE. pOSSible eXCeptioU of the 
Green park there is at present 
James Park. Afterwards the same artist was em- not a park of any great importance in London 
ployed by William III. to lay out his new pur- which is without its lake. The Serpentine received 
chase, which is now part of Kensington Gardens. its name from the curve in. its plan — for it was a 
The style adopted was in accord- 
ance with the militarism of the 
day; hedges and trees were cut 
and trained to resemble fortifi- 
cations and other symbols of 
warfare, etc. Queen Caroline, the 
wife of George II., greatly al- 
tered the style of the gardens to 
“the Dutch style of straight 
walks and clipped hedges, in 
preference to the formal and 
square precision of the forego- 
ing age.” Other improvements 
carried out at this time included 
the very necessary one of drain- 
age, replanting of trees, etc., 
enclosure with iron railings, and 
the formation of three radi- 
ating walks which originated in sp^ke memorial and avenue in Kensington gardens. 
the east of the palace and ex- 
tended eastwards across the Broad Walk. Fine trees great breach of the rectangular fashion of the time 
verge these walks, upon which used to meet the to have a plan out of straight — and was formed — 
celebrated statesmen and wits of the period, for the in fact, it was the chief feature of the Queen’s im- 
provements — by Queen Caroline. 
Up to that time the site of the 
lake had been distinguished by 
eleven marshy pools, through 
which the West Bourne stream 
wended its way. In 1730, Queen 
Caroline set Walpole to work to * 
devise some means of improving * 
the park. The whole scheme em- 
braced the formation of roads, 
paths, and the new Serpentine, r,; 
while, to crown all, a palace was ^ 
to be built on the banks of thej j 
lake, a project which, so far as the i 
4 
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i 
THE cascade, KENSINGTON GARDENS. 
