In 1781 (or 1780) the gardens were in the hands of Mr. R. Hiem, a German florist, who grew his cherries, strawberries, and flowers there. About that time he changed the name to Florida Gardens,[251] erected a great room for dining in the centre of the gardens, and opened the place to the public at a charge of sixpence. A bowling-green was formed and a band (said to be subscribed for by the nobility and gentry) played twice a week during the summer. An air-balloon and fireworks were announced for 10 September, 1784. It was a pleasant place where visitors could gather flowers, and fruit “fresh every hour in the day,” and take the light refreshment of tea, coffee, and ice creams, or wine and cyder if they preferred it. Hiem specially recommended his Bern Veckley as “an elegant succedaneum for bread and butter, and eat by the Noblesse of Switzerland.” However, like many proprietors of pleasure-gardens, he subsequently became bankrupt, between 1787 and 1797 (?). Maria, Duchess of Gloucester, having procured a lease (before September 1797)[252] of the place, built there a villa, at first called Maria Lodge, then Orford Lodge, at which she died in 1807. Shortly after 1807 the premises consisting of about six acres were purchased by the Rt. Hon. George Canning, who changed the name of the house to Gloucester Lodge, and lived there for many years. The house was pulled down about 1850 and the ground let on building leases. Part of Courtfield Road, Ashburn Place, and perhaps other streets, occupy the site of Gloucester Lodge which stood immediately south of the present Cromwell Road, and west of Gloucester Road near the point where the Gloucester Road intersects Cromwell Road. [_Sunday Ramble_ (1776); _A Modern Sabbath_ (1797), chap. vii.; Faulkner’s _Kensington_ (1820), pp. 438, 441; Lysons’s _Environs_, supplement to first ed. (1811), p. 215; Wheatley, _London P. and P._ s.v. “Cromwell House” and “Gloucester Lodge”; Fores’s _New Guide_ (1789), preface, p. vi.; _The Public Advertiser_, 10 July, 1789; _The Morning Herald_, 7 July, 1786; and newspaper cuttings in W. Coll.] VIEWS. There seem to be no views of the Cromwell and Florida Gardens. There is a view of the garden front of Gloucester Lodge in Jerdan’s _Autobiography_ (1852), vol. ii. frontispiece. VI SOUTH LONDON GROUP BERMONDSEY SPA GARDENS