Gardens -- England -- London; London (England) -- Description and travel; Parks -- England -- London
In monastic times there were many gardens within the precincts of the
Abbey, besides the infirmary garden; but it is difficult to locate
all of them with certainty, although the sites of some are known. The
abbot’s garden lay in the north-west angle of the wall, and must have
covered part of the present Broad Sanctuary, including the spot
where the Crimean monument now stands. Beyond the abbot’s house, just
west of the cloister, was the abbot’s little garden. The northern part
of Dean’s Yard was from very early times known as “The Elms,” from
the grove of fine trees, some of which remain. It is said that when
Elizabeth ascended the throne and summoned Abbot Feckenham, who had
been reinstated by Mary, he was planting some, perhaps these identical,
elm trees. Among them formerly stood a huge oak, which was blown down
in 1791. The horse pool was on the west of the Elms, and beyond both to
the south lay the numerous adjuncts of the monastery, the brewhouse,
bakehouse, and granaries. Skirting this enclosure was the “Long Ditch,”
which flowed by the line of the present Delahay Street and Prince’s
Streets, and passed along outside of the wall of the Infirmary Garden,
in what is now Great College Street, and fell into the Thames. This
stream turned the mill from which “Millbank” took its name. In it, to
the south of the granary, was a small island osier bed. The sale of the
osiers on it used to bring in 10s. annually in the fourteenth century.
Beyond the stream were more gardens. The “Hostry Garden” was a large
one on the site of the church of St. John, and next to it the “Bowling
Alley,” where Bowling Street ran in later times, and to the west of
that was a kitchen-garden. Somewhere also on the west of the “Long
Ditch,” before it turned towards the Thames near the osier island, must
have been the “Precentor’s Mede,” or, as it was sometimes called, the
“Chaunter’s-hull,” and also the “Almoner’s Mede” or “Almery Garden.”
On the other side of the “Hostry Garden,” southwards on the site of
“Vine Street” and “Market Street,” was situated the vineyard, without
which no thirteenth-century monastery was complete, and “Market Mede.”
Even this does not exhaust the list of separate gardens, but the
others probably lay further away. The cellarer had charge of a large
garden, which may have been the “Convent Garden,” which is so familiar
as “Covent Garden” that the connection between the site of the market
and the Abbey has been lost sight of. One of the large gardens which
was generally let was “Maudit’s Garden.” In the records it is spoken
of as “Maudit’s” or “Caleys.” The name Maudit was given to it because
Thomas Maudit, Earl of Warwick, in the thirteenth century effected an
exchange of lands with the Abbey, of which the garden formed a part.
The other name, “Caleys,” was “Calais,” named from the wool staplers
who came from that town and resided near there, just as “Petty France”
(where Milton lived) was called so from the French merchants. An Act
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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