156 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 
known as the Red House for many generations. It was 
much resorted to, but latterly its reputation was none 
of the best. Games of all kinds took place in its 
gardens, and pigeon-shooting was one of the greatest 
attractions there, during the first half of the nineteenth 
century. Although for long, crowds enjoyed harmless 
amusements there—“ flounder breakfasts,” and an annual 
“ sucking-pig dinner,” and such-like—towards the end 
of the time of its existence, it became the centre 
of such noisy and riotous merrymakings that the 
grounds of the Red House became notorious. The 
Sunday fairs, with the attendant evils of races, gam¬ 
bling, and drinking, were crowded, and thousands of the 
less reputable sections of the community landed every 
Sunday at the Red House to join in these revellings. 
It was chiefly with a view to doing away with this 
state of affairs, that the scheme was set on foot, for 
absorbing the grounds of the Red House, and other 
less famous taverns and gardens that had sprung up 
round it, and forming a Park. 
Battersea, or “ Patricesy,” as it is written in 
Domesday, was a manor belonging to the Abbey of 
Westminster until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. 
The name is most probably derived from the fact that 
it was lands of St. Peter’s Abbey “by the water.” 
Later on it came into the St. John family, and Henry 
St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, was born and died in 
Battersea. After his death it was purchased by Earl 
Spencer, in whose family it remains. Part of the 
fields were Lammas Lands, for which the parish was 
duly compensated. The gloomy wildness of the fields 
gave rise to superstitions, and a haunted house, from 
which groans proceeded and mysterious lights were 
