Cremorne Gardens, London

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An 1865 map showing Cremorne Gardens. Kings Road is at the top and the River Thames is at the bottom right.

Cremorne Gardens was formerly a popular pleasure gardens by the side of the River Thames in Chelsea, London, England.

Originally the property of the Earl of Huntingdon (c. 1750), father of Steeles Aspasia, who built a mansion here, the property passed through various hands into those of Thomas Dawson, Baron Dartrey and Viscount Cremorne (1725–1813), who greatly beautified it. It was subsequently sold and converted into a proprietary place of entertainment, being popular as such from 1845 to 1877. It never, however, acquired the fashionable fame of Vauxhall Gardens, and finally became so great an annoyance to some of the more influential residents in the neighbourhood that a renewal of its licence was refused; and most of the site of the gardens was soon built over. The name survives in Cremorne Road.

A vestige of the gardens survives next to the Thames, just east of Lots Road power station. It is largely paved over, and there is little to suggest the grand scale of the original gardens, though it still has two attached jetties, an echo of the landing stages where visitors to the original pleasure gardens would arrive by boat. Recently, one of the original grand iron gates from the gardens has been restored and stands on the current site.

Donald James Wheal, in his first-person memoir of life in working-class Chelsea, World's End gives a lively account of the almost-forgotten history and destruction of Cremorne Gardens.