The Flora Tea Gardens (or Mount Gardens), were on the right hand side of the Westminster Bridge Road going towards the Obelisk, and opposite the Temple of Flora. They were in existence about 1796–7. The gardens were well kept and contained “genteel paintings.” They were open on week-days and on Sundays till about 11 p.m., and the admission was sixpence. Among the frequenters were democratic shopmen, who might be heard railing against King and Church, and a good many ladies respectable and the reverse. The “Sunday Rambler” (1796–7) describes the company as very orderly, but at some time before 1800 the place was suppressed on account of dissolute persons frequenting it. Some small cottages were then built in the middle of the garden, which retained a rural appearance till shortly before 1827, when several rows of houses, “Mount Gardens,” were erected on the site. [The Flora Tea Gardens described in _A Modern Sabbath_ (1797), chap. viii., are evidently identical with the Mount Gardens mentioned by Allen (_Lambeth_, 335), though he does not mention their alternative name (cp. Walford, vi. 389). Allen (_loc. cit._) is the authority for the suppression of the gardens.] THE TEMPLE OF FLORA The Temple of Flora stood hard by the Temple of Apollo, in the middle of Mount Row on the left hand side of Westminster Bridge Road, going towards the Obelisk, and was separated by Oakley Street from the Apollo Gardens (Temple of Apollo). Concerts were given every evening in the season, and the place is described as “beautifully fitted up with alcoves and exotics.” In the hot house was “an elegant statue of Pomona,” a transparency of Flora, and at the lower end of the garden, a natural cascade and fountain. “The entrance and the gardens,” were advertised in July 1789 as being formed by the proprietor into an exact imitation of the admired Temple of Flora, which he had constructed at the Grand Gala at Ranelagh. Some special entertainments were given in June and July in honour of the King’s recovery, and the Grand Temple of Flora, an “elegant and ingenious imitation of Nature in her floral attire,” was then illuminated with nearly a thousand variegated lamps amid wreaths of flowers twining round pillars “made in imitation of Sienna marble.” Fireworks and water-works were also displayed; a large star of lamps was suspended above the cascade, and (in the absence of nightingales) “a variety of singing birds” were imitated. The admission for these special entertainments was one shilling, and the gardens were illuminated from eight till the closing time at eleven. Light refreshments were served consisting of orgeat, lemonade, “confectionary,” strawberries and cream.