352 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 
front of the house, and lies between two groves of tall 
lime trees, planted on a carpet of grass. The outsides 
of those groves are bordered with tubs of bays and 
orange trees. At the end of the broad walk you go up 
to a terrace 400 paces long, with a large semicircle in 
the middle, from where are beheld the Queen’s (Anne’s) 
two parks and a great part of Surrey: then, going down 
a few steps, you walk on the bank of a canal 600 yards 
long and 17 broad, with two rows of limes on either 
side. On one side of this terrace a wall, covered with 
roses and jessamines, is made low to admit the view of a 
meadow full of cattle just beneath (no disagreeable 
object in the midst of a great city), and at each end is a 
descent into parterres with fountains and waterworks. 
From the biggest of these parterres we pass into a little 
square garden, that has a fountain in the middle and 
two green-houses on the sides . . . below this a kitchen- 
garden . . . and under the windows ... of this green¬ 
house is a little wilderness full of blackbirds and 
nightingales.” This is truly an entrancing picture of 
a town garden. 
The waterworks, those elaborate fountains then in 
vogue, were supplied by water pumped up from the 
Thames into a tank above the kitchen, which held fifty 
tons of water. Buckingham House was then a red-brick 
building, consisting of a central square structure, with 
stone pillars and balustrade along the top, and two 
wings attached to the main building by a colonnade. 
It was this style of house when King George III. bought 
it, originally for a dower-house for Queen Charlotte, 
instead of Somerset House, where the Queens-Dowager 
had previously lived. These formal gardens were not 
suited to the taste of the time, and George IV. had 
