The favourite promenade, especially on a Sunday, was the River Terrace at the back of Chelsea Hospital. It was thrown open to the public, and you gained access to it from the gate of the private gardens opposite King Charles’ statue. It consisted of a gravelled terrace and a dwarf wall on the river side, with two rows of immense elms commencing at the outlet of Ranelagh Ditch to the river, and ending at the Round House. On the corner by Ranelagh Ditch stood the College Water Works, with the old machinery going to decay, that had been used to pump water for the use of the hospital. This was a grand place, and considered extremely fashionable, where most of the courting and flirting by the young people was carried on. The Ranelagh Ditch was the boundary of the hospital grounds at that tune, and was an open stream about nine feet wide; while its banks were supported by planks and struts across it. It was open right up to the end of Eaton Place. It was crossed by two bridges, one called Ranelagh, in the Pimlico Road, by the side of the “Nell Gwynn” tavern, the other called Bloody Bridge, in the King’s Road, between Sloane Square and Westbourne Street. On the banks of this foul and offensive stream there was no better than a common sewer. Between the two bridges at the back of George Street and overlooking it, were crowded together a lot of old two and three-roomed cottages that periodically at high tide were flooded by the offensive matter. The district was known as Frog’s Island, and suffered terribly in the outbreak of cholera in 1832. It was inhabited by a class that was always in a chronic state of poverty, and as there had been a very severe winter, that had a great deal to do with it. I think this stream is now covered over. It had its rise from the overflow in the Serpentine, in Hyde Park, and crossed under the road at Knightsbridge, about where Albert Gate now stands, into the Park. {32} CHAPTER 5.—Old-time Chelsea.