The London pleasure gardens of the eighteenth century

St. George’s Row, near Ebury Bridge, formerly called The Wooden Bridge or Jenny’s Whim Bridge, marks the site of Jenny’s Whim, a tavern and pleasure-garden popular in the last century.

Jenny’s Whim is said to have been established as a place of amusement by a firework artificer and theatrical machinist, in the reign of George II. About 1750 it appears to have been a good deal frequented during the day-time, and people of rank and fashion occasionally visited it. Walpole once encountered Lord Granby “arrived very drunk from Jenny’s Whim,” where he “had dined with Lady Fanny [Seymour] and left her and eight other women and four other men playing at Brag.”

A writer in The Connoisseur comparing it in 1755 with Ranelagh and Vauxhall, describes it, however, as a resort of “the lower sort of people,” rather than of the quality.

The gardens possessed, in addition to the usual bowers, alcoves and prim flowerbeds, a bowling-green, a grotto, a cock-pit and a ducking pond. In the centre was a large fish pond. Mechanical devices, similar to those at New Georgia, Hampstead, attracted many visitors. A Harlequin, a Mother Shipton, or some terrific monster, started up in the recesses of the garden when an unsuspected spring was trodden upon, and huge fish and mermaids rose at intervals from the water of the pond.

The admission about 1755 appears to have been sixpence.

Before the close of the eighteenth century, the popularity of the place had declined, though it was still frequented as a summer tea-garden, and by 1804 Jenny’s Whim had become a mere public-house. The house, a red brick building with lattice work, containing a large room originally used for breakfasting parties, continued in existence for many years, and was not pulled down till 1865.

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