Paris Garden

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Plan of the Paris Garden, 1629

Paris Garden (s), also Liberty of Paris Garden, was an extra-urban , 40.5 hectare area of London , near the south bank of the Thames and belonged to the Bankside . Today the (completely built-up) area is in the London Borough of Southwark .

Origin of name

The name is said to come from a Robert de Parys or Paris , a greengrocer and ship owner who owned a manor there in 1390 , whose lands he also cultivated himself. In addition, he worked from 1384 to 1392 as a senior supervisor (Marshal) in the neighboring prison Marshalsea . Some, like the English antiquarian William Rendle (1811-1893), doubt it and bear the name Paris Garden to a misspelling back as it was quite common in these times not standardized spelling: It should at the origin Parish Garden hot, so the green space of a local parish ( Parish ).

The mansion of Wideflete or Paris Garden was on the riverside and was bounded to the east by the territories of the Bishop of Winchester and to the east by the border of Southwark Borough and to the west by a more remote part of Kennington Manor, partially marked by a moat, as well as by Lambeth and bounded to the south by the possessions of Bermondsey Abbey .

history

Beginnings as a monastery property

In 1113, Robert Marmion, son of a henchman William I , gave the Benedictine monastery (Bermondsey Abbey) of Bermondsey the swampy, often partly flooded area called Wideflete , along with a water-powered flour mill and other properties belonging to it. The monastery head Reynold granted it to the neighboring Knights Templar in 1166 for an annual lease of 10 marks . The Templars in turn gave part of the manor house to a tenant. After the dissolution of the Knights Templar in 1312, King Edward II gave the area to Baron William Montagu . This ordered that the tenants have to repair the walls and moats on the Thames bank, which belonged to the site, immediately. Shortly thereafter, they received further instructions to repair his mills at a cost not to exceed £ 10. In 1319 the prior of Bermondsey Monastery was given permission to swap Wideflete and the two mills on it with other land belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury. However, it appears that no use was made of such a permit, because the manor house, now leased by the Order of Malta , was still held by the monastery. In 1338 it was leased for life to Hawisia de Swalelive instead of a pension of £ 20 previously granted to her by the Prior of the Order of the Maltese, Thomas L'Archer . The reason was the dubious financial situation caused by mismanagement in which this brought the English Order of St. John. In 1420 a noble farmer named John Duke of Bedford cultivated the land of the "privileged place Parish Garden or Wideflete or Wiles".

The privileges that were in effect on the grounds of the Paris Garden were the result of its previous use by the Templars and a papal bull , presumably enacted in 1200 , which gave the area immunity. It stipulated that every man who fled to the safety of the Paris Garden had to be asked about the cause of his escape, whether it was his debt, his crime or some other transgression and that his answer along with his name should be registered. For this he should pay four pennies "to the Lord". He had to swear on the Bible that from now on he would not do anything that would lead to disadvantages, scandals or damage to his place of refuge; that he would comply with all of its statutes and ordinances; that he would not leave him by day or by night; and if so, you do so at your own risk. If he came because he had committed a crime, he had to be held in custody by six men from the area for the whole following night after his arrival, unless someone vouched for him or there was a report of his good deeds. Anyone found guilty of a crime upon arriving at the Paris Garden lost the protection of the site and was transferred to Kings Bench Court . Fines were imposed for violations of peace and morality, and anyone who left the premises without permission should pay four shillings to the Lord when they return.

In 1434 the Order of St. John held the Mills of Wideflete with the Paris (h) Garden, several other properties, apartment houses and grassland in Southwark, Kennington, Lambeth and Newington from the Abbot of Bermondsey for an annual rent of 10 marks and 4s. Between 1475 and 1485 the ruled area was called “St. John at Parys Garden ”. A license for the property for agricultural cultivation is still available for the year 1505. The prior then gave Robert Udale , a London goldsmith, a 31-year lease for the moat-enclosed mansion of Paris Garden and two adjoining gardens, along with the gatehouse and the four willows Poundyard, Conyng Garth, Chapel Hawe and Walnut Trees , plus the two Willows Woods . The rent was set at £ 8 13s (4 shillings a year).

16th Century

The Bermondsey Abbey received the rights back in 1536, the very year when King Henry VIII gained access to all monastic properties with the dissolution of the English monasteries . Paris Garden was immediately granted to the king's wife Jane Seymour as compensation, who, however, fell back to the king a short time later due to her death. Robert Urmiston received a lease, which was higher at 52 pounds a year, as he intended to build the popular bowling alleys on the site , which were officially not well-regarded due to their "sinful" nature.

A lease, for a further 21 years, was signed with William Barley in 1542. Edmund Wiseman then received the lease, again for 21 years, for the house, the willows and the gatehouse, the rent of which, however, was again £ 10 / year due to the 1542 ban on bowling. In 1578, at the request of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon (the first patron of Shakespeare's theater company Lord Chamberlain's Men ) , Queen Elizabeth I granted Robert Newdigate and Arthur Fountaigne the rule and main building of Paris Garden. Later in the year they transferred the property and the buildings on it to Robert Udale . The manor was transferred a year later, in 1580, from Lord Hunsdon, Robert Newdigate and Arthur Fountaigne to Thomas Cure , saddler in the service of the court. In the same year the tenants of the apartment buildings bought a lease term of 2000 years and the right to transfer this to trustees for the sum of 6000 pounds (raised by loans). The cloth merchant, loan shark and later impresario Francis Langley had the lease contract transferred from the indebted Thomas Cure and between 1595 and 1596 built the Swan Theater on a swampy part, near the mill pond on the northeastern edge of the property. It was the fourth largest playhouse in London at the time and an important location for Elizabethan theater ; it is even said that William Shakespeare himself was on the stage. In the 1620s the theater fell into disrepair.

17th century

Holland's Leaguer or the Paris Garden mansion

Langley died in 1602 and the property was acquired by John Carey, 3rd Baron Hunsdon , who leased it to a business woman named Elizabeth 'Bess' Holland . (It should not be confused with the mistress of the same name, who died in 1547, of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk .) The manor house was used as a successful and well-known brothel under the name Holland's Leaguer until 1631 . They also barricaded the house from any attackers, whereby the existing moat, a drawbridge and a portcullis were integrated into the fortification. At the beginning of 1631, Holland had to interrupt operations, as young people first devastated the house and then the authorities forbade continued operation the following year. However, they were only able to enter the house after several weeks of siege.

From 1688 to 1699 the mansion was referred to as “Beggars hall” (“beggar's home”), which indicates that it was used as a poor quarter. Then the property fell into disrepair.

Modern times

Paris Garden continued to be parceled out and sold to various new owners. In the Local Government Act 1888 , all politically independent areas and liberties were repealed and merged to form the County of London . Today the former area of ​​the Paris Garden is neither recognizable as a contiguous area, nor as such at all and largely overbuilt with the landing Blackfriars Railway Bridge and the mighty Sampson House office complex built in 1979 , which was demolished in February 2020 for the purpose of urban redevelopment. The name Paris Garden can still be found in a street on the west side of the former area.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Rendle: Notes and Queries, London 1987
  2. ^ A b c The borough of Southwark: Manors , information from British History Online
  3. ^ William Dugdale : Monasticon Anglicanum , London 1603, p. 205 online in archive.org
  4. ^ George Pierce, The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist, New York, Macmillan, 1907; P. 50 n.2.
  5. ↑ Conspiracies, whorehouses, and flying horses ( s ) on January 8, 2014. Accessed March 15, 2020th
  6. ↑ a b c Victoria E Price (Ed.): Holland's Leaguer. In: Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006, ISBN 978-0-313-32968-5 (English).
  7. ↑ Gordon Williams (Ed.): A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature: Three Volume Set Volume I AF Volume II GP Volume III QZ . A&C Black, 2001, ISBN 978-0-485-11393-8 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  8. ^ Sian Rees (ed.): Moll: The Life and Times of Moll Flanders . Pimlico, 2012, ISBN 978-1-84595-193-1 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  9. ^ Nicholas Goodmann (Ed.): Hollands leaguer: A critical Edition . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-158825-4 , p. 9 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  10. ^ A b Philip Norman: The Accounts of the overseers of the poor of Paris Garden , in Surrey Archaeological Collections, Issue 16, published 1901, online as PDF 30MB
  11. ↑ http://www.sampsonandludgatehouse.com/ Investor's website
  12. ↑ https://www.londonplanning.org.uk/lp_planning/sampson-house-64-hopton-street/ Urban planning concept

Coordinates: 51 ° 30 '26.9 "  N , 0 ° 6' 13.4"  W.