4i 
On the right-hand side were two small gardens with grass plots enclosed within walls, one of which led 
into the principal garden. Down the centre of this garden was a large oblong parterre, with a fountain 
in the centre, and each of the plots adorned with statuary. At the further end was a semicircular 
raised terrace, with a handsome pair of gates leading into the park. On either side of the parterre were 
kitchen gardens enclosed within hedges, and with broad grass walks between, terminated by little 
summer-houses, from whence vistas might be obtained through the entire length of the gardens. In one 
corner was an oblong bowling-green. 
OLD BUCKINGHAM HOUSE, MIDDLESEX. 
PLATE 69. 
HIS plan of the gardens which originally surrounded Buckingham House, now 
Buckingham Palace, is taken from an original coloured survey preserved in the 
Soane Museum, and is particularly interesting both on account of the present 
world-wide celebrity of the palace erected on its site, and as a contemporary plan of 
a garden dating from the early years of the eighteenth century. 
The House was built by John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, in a magnificent 
manner in the year 1703, on the site of the once famous Mulberry Gardens. 1 The 
duke, who had purchased the property from the Earl of Arlington, did not live long to enjoy the 
pleasures of his beautiful house, in which he took a keen delight, for he died in 1720. 
The duke, who retired here after a busy life, has left an interesting account of the house and gardens 
in a letter to a noble friend, wherein he says : “The avenues to this house are along St. James’s Park, 
through rows of goodly elms on one hand, and gay flourishing limes on the other; that for coaches, this 
for walking, and the mall lying betwixt them ; this reaches to an iron palisade that encompassed a square 
court, which has in its midst a great basin with statues and waterworks: and from its entrance rises all 
the way imperceptibly till we mount to a terrace in the front of a large hall. ... To the gardens we go 
down from the house by seven steps into a gravel walk that reaches across the gardens with a covered 
arbour at each end. Another, of thirty feet broad, leads from the front of the house, and lies between 
two groves of tall lime trees planted upon a carpet of grass: the outsides of these groves are bordered 
with tubs of bays and orange trees. At the end of this broad walk you go up to a terrace four hundred 
paces long, with a large semicircle in the middle, from whence are beheld the Queen’s two parks and a 
great part of Surry; then going down a few steps, you walk on the bank of a canal, six hundred yards 
long and seventeen broad with two rows of limes on each side. On one side of this terrace, a wall covered 
with jessamines, is made low, to admit the view of a meadow full of cattle just beneath, and at each end 
is a descent, into parterres with fountains and waterworks. 2 From the biggest of these parterres we 
pass into a little square garden that has a fountain in the middle, and two greenhouses on the sides, 
with a convenient bathing appartment, and near a flower garden. Below all this a kitchen garden, filled 
with the best sorts of fruits, has several walks in it fit for the coldest weather. . .” 
On the death of the duke in 1720 the property passed to his duchess, and she was succeeded by the 
duke’s natural son, who died a minor. 
1 Knight’s “ London,” 6 vols., 1841-4. 
2 To supply the fountains a reservoir over the kitchen wing contained fifty tons of water; this was forced up by an engine from the 
Thames. 
