Gardens of Pleasure

By Philip Morgan

What is it with the mysterious gateway on Union Road just North of the Level?

Imagine that you’re part of an aspirational young couple living in London in 1793. He’s an architect hoping to follow in the footsteps of John Nash. She’s a portrait painter and interior designer hoping to follow in the footsteps of Angelica Kauffman.

It’s summer. France has declared war on England. The Reign of Terror in Paris is at its worst. People are worried and frightened. It’s dry and hot and smelly. You both need work. You need a change of scene. You’ve heard there’s a lot of building work in Brighton. You decide to pay it a visit and try and drum up some commissions. You book rooms for July in the Blues and Buffs lodging houses on The Steine so you can mix with the military officers and minor members of the aristocracy who lodge there.

The Prince of Wales’s house on the left. The Blues and Buffs lodging houses top right.

The Steine is where the great and good meet to walk and gossip. The Prince of Wales’s place is opposite your rooms. Promenade Grove, Brighton’s first Pleasure Garden, has opened just behind it in what will eventually become Pavilion Gardens. It’s three minutes walk away! What could be better for networking?

Pleasure Gardens are all the rage in London they are ‘places where wealth and high culture can collide with danger, drunkenness and debauchery’, assignations completed and deals done.

Pleasure Gardens like Vauxhall and Ranelagh in London are the places to network. So, when you arrive in Brighton and discover that the Prince of Wales is due to go to a Public Breakfast at Promenade Grove, you wangle some tickets immediately, not cheap but worth a punt.

And it’s great. It is designed ‘For the Amusement of the Nobility and Gentry’. There’s an avenue of elms, known as the Rutland Walk, to stroll up and down. The lawns are ‘as smooth and velvety as the pile of a Turkish Carpet.’ The breakfast, which is included in the entry fee, is great: ‘tea, coffee, or chocolate, …fruits, cold meats, jellies.’ There’s music, free newspapers and best of all: ‘The majority of the morning company of the Grove consisted of the Prince of Wales and his more immediate associates.’ Then after exhausting hours of wheeling and dealing and socialising you take a refreshing dip in the sea under the watchful eye of Brighton’s famous dipper, Martha Gunn.

And off to the Castle Tavern Assembly Rooms for yet more touting for business. You sure know how to work a room.

You do so well with all your new contacts –

That you leave London and rent your own place in the newly built New Steine. But you don’t forget Promenade Grove, the foundation of your success. You go dancing on its lawns until late in the night. You get drunk. You watch the spectacular firework displays. Expensive but worth it: so many contacts. But it doesn’t last. The Prince of Wales wants a bigger garden and he buys Promenade Grove in 1802. You go to the last full show on 16th September.

Under the Patronage of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.

PROMENADE GROVE. The Nobility, Gentry, and Public in general are respectfully informed that on Thursday next, September 16th, 1802, there will be

A GALA AT THE ABOVE PLACE.

The whole to conclude with a Grand Display of Chinese Fireworks, in which will be introduced

THE GRAND SPECTACLE OF MOUNT VESUVIUS

At the time of its greatest Eruption (for the last time) in 1737, under the direction of Mr. Mottram.

Doors to be opened at Seven. Concert to begin at Half-past Seven. Fireworks at Nine o’clock. Admittance, 3s. 6d., Tea included.

You are acutely distressed when the Grove finally shuts in 1803. So, you are thrilled when twenty years later a replacement Ireland’s Royal Brighton Gardens or Grounds finally opens in the Steine at the North end of The Level. It’s on a grand scale. In the image below you can see the new cricket ground on The Level which replaced the previous one which the Prince Regent has stopped using now he’s king. If you squint you can just make out the ‘Aviary’, the ‘Bird Room’ and the ‘Gothic Tower’ to the top left of the picture. Although you can see them far better in the second image below.

Cricket ground in foreground on what is now The Level, entertainments in the background to the left and in image below on what is now Park Crescent and Park Crescent Gardens.

You go along to its opening on 1 May 1823 having been promised the new cricket ground, a bowling green, a Billiard room, Tea gardens with commodious bar, reading room, promenade room, a second bowling green, a Grotto, an aviary, a canal with a bridge leading to a battery of six cannon and maze and finally a swing. Phew. But it doesn’t really work, perhaps because of the competition from the Kings Road Promenade which is inaugurated by the now George IV on 29 January 1822 and the Chain Pier which opens on 25 November 1823. They become the places to see and be seen. Ireland’s Grounds only lasts until 1826 when it passes on to a Mr Hensman who dreams of adding a zoological garden to the existing attractions and a pair of lions to the gateway piers.

When you go along to the opening in the early 1830’s you are sadly dissapointed, it doesn’t match up to the marketing images! The lions are there on the gateway but not much else.

‘The collection of animals is at present small, and kept in a temporary place … It consists of two young tigers, two fine leopards, a panther, hyaena, a lynx, two Russian bears, foreign goats, deer, lamas, monkeys, &c. &c. The lion and the elephant are still wanting.’ Hensman goes bust almost immediately the animals are sold off; he gets £150 for the tigers and ‘a minimal amount for the rest.’ and the site is abandoned and the buildings allowed to fall into disrepair.

In 1849 they are demolished and work on Park Crescent begins where the two of you buy a house for a hopefully comfortable retirement. A bit past nighttime frolics and shady business deals now with nothing much left of all the dreams apart from happy memories and the mysterious gateway.