Ranelagh Gardens
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Ranelagh Gardens (alternative spellings include Ranelegh and Ranleigh, the latter of which reflects the English pronunciation) were public pleasure gardens located in Chelsea, then just outside London, England in the eighteenth century.
The Ranelagh Gardens were so called because they occupied the site of Ranelagh House, built in 1688-89 by the first Earl of Ranelagh, Treasurer of Chelsea Hospital (1685-1702), immediately adjoining the Hospital; according to Bowack's Antiquities of Middlesex (1705), it was "Designed and built by himself". Ranelagh House was demolished in 1805 (Colvin 1995, p 561). Fulham F.C. played on this very site for home matches between 1886-8 when it was known as the Ranelagh Ground.
In 1741, the house and grounds were purchased by a syndicate led by the proprietor of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and Sir Thomas Robinson MP, and the Gardens opened to the public the following year. Ranelegh was considered more fashionable than its older rival Vauxhall Gardens; the entrance charge was two shillings and sixpence, compared to a shilling at Vauxhall. Horace Walpole wrote soon after the gardens opened, "It has totally beat Vauxhall... You can't set your foot without treading on a Prince, or Duke of Cumberland." Ranelagh Gardens introduced the masquerade, formerly a private, aristocratic entertainment, to a wider, middle-class English public, where it was open to commentary by essayists and writers of moral fiction.[1]
The centrepiece of Ranelagh was a rococo rotunda with a diameter of 120 feet (37 metres) which was designed by William Jones, a surveyor to the East India Company. The central support housed a chimney and fireplaces for use in winter. In 1765, the nine year old Mozart performed in this showpiece, which figured prominently in views of Ranelagh Gardens taken from the river.[2] Canaletto painted the gardens, and painted the interior of the Rotunda twice, for different patrons. There was also a Chinese pavilion, which was added in 1750, as well as an ornamental lake and several walks. Ranelagh was a popular venue for romantic assignations. Edward Gibbon wrote that it was, "the most convenient place for courtships of every kind — the best market we have in England."
From its opening, the Rotunda at Ranelagh Gardens was an important venue for musical concerts.
The rotunda was closed for good in 1803 and demolished two years later. Ranelagh Gardens were re-designed by John Gibson in the nineteenth century and is now a green pleasure ground with shaded walks, part of the grounds of Chelsea Hospital and the site of the annual Chelsea Flower Show.
[edit] See also
- Cremorne Gardens — a mid 19th century public garden. Also in Chelsea, but at the opposite end of the district.
- Ranelagh — a Dublin suburb named after the Ranelagh Gardens.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Terry Castle, Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction (Stanford University Press) 1986.
- ^ A 1751 Canaletto view of Ranelagh Gardens, extending down to the river bank between Chelsea Hospital and Ranelagh House, was illustrated in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 40 No. 226 (January 1922) p 37 fig. B (at Cotswold Gallery, London).
[edit] References
- Colvin, Howard. A Biographical Dictionary of British architects, 1600-1840 3rd ed. 1995.
[edit] External links
