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The London pleasure gardens of the eighteenth century

Chapter 117: THE FLORA TEA GARDENS (OR MOUNT GARDENS), WESTMINSTER BRIDGE ROAD
By Warwick William Wroth
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History - BritishHistory - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750)

About This Book

A detailed survey traces the development, character, and decline of London’s eighteenth-century pleasure gardens, offering descriptive notices of over sixty venues. Arranged by neighbourhood, the work records origins, proprietors, physical layouts, entertainments, and the social atmosphere of each resort, with attention to music, illuminations, rotundas, tea-houses, and seasonal amusements. Entries are supported by illustrations, plans, contemporary advertisements and newspaper extracts, and by annotated notes and references; a collaborating contributor supplies several of the shorter garden accounts.

THE FLORA TEA GARDENS (OR MOUNT GARDENS),
WESTMINSTER BRIDGE ROAD

The Flora Tea Gardens (or Mount Gardens), were on the right hand side of the Westminster Bridge Road going towards the Obelisk, and opposite the Temple of Flora. They were in existence about 1796–7. The gardens were well kept and contained “genteel paintings.” They were open on week-days and on Sundays till about 11 p.m., and the admission was sixpence.

Among the frequenters were democratic shopmen, who might be heard railing against King and Church, and a good many ladies respectable and the reverse. The “Sunday Rambler” (1796–7) describes the company as very orderly, but at some time before 1800 the place was suppressed on account of dissolute persons frequenting it.

Some small cottages were then built in the middle of the garden, which retained a rural appearance till shortly before 1827, when several rows of houses, “Mount Gardens,” were erected on the site.

[The Flora Tea Gardens described in A Modern Sabbath (1797), chap. viii., are evidently identical with the Mount Gardens mentioned by Allen (Lambeth, 335), though he does not mention their alternative name (cp. Walford, vi. 389). Allen (loc. cit.) is the authority for the suppression of the gardens.]