268 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 
carpenter, for repairing ‘ the pound ’ and other seats in 
the garden and walks, &c., .£15, 8s.” There must have 
been another summer-house at the same time, unless the 
sums paid to a plasterer “ for work done about the 
summer-house in the garden,” in 1630, refers to the 
same “ pound.” 
A great deal seems to have been done to the Garden 
during the first few years of the Commonwealth, and 
large sums were expended in procuring new gravel and 
turf: “ 392 loads of gravel at 2s. 6d. the load ” is one 
entry. But the chief work was the re-turfing. An 
arrangement was made, by payment of various small 
sums to the poor of Greenwich, to cut 3000 turfs on 
Blackheath, and convey them in lighters to the Temple 
Stairs. A second transaction procured them 2000 
more, each turf being a foot broad and a yard long. 
These amounts would cover a third of an acre with 
turf. The head gardeners seem to have been par¬ 
ticularly unruly people. Although they remained in 
office many years, there were frequent complaints. On 
one occasion this official had cut down trees, another 
time he had the plague, and his house was frequented 
by rogues and beggars. At first the gardener’s house 
was on the present King’s Bench Walk side of the 
Garden, near the river; later on, near where Harcourt 
Buildings are now. In 1690 the house, then in Middle 
Temple Lane, was turned into an ale-house, and evi¬ 
dently none of the quietest, for the occupier was for¬ 
bidden to sell drink, and the “ door out of the gardener’s 
lodge towards the water gate ” was ordered to be bricked 
up, so as to prevent all the riffraff from the river riot¬ 
ing in his rooms. Yet the post descended from father 
to son. In 1687 Thomas Elliott succeeded his father, 
