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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. x. AUG. 22, im.

merit. Faulkner 'omits reference to the part taken in the work by the first king from Hanover ; and although Dr. Doran in 1877 referred to it, and the consequent public outcry (' London in Jacobite Times,' ii. 14), it has remained unnoticed. It ap- pears that the King, having finished the eastern addition to the Palace, turned his attention to his gardens. We find from the Surveyor's estimate of 5 May, 1726, that " His Majesty had ordered the Paddock in Hyde Park to be inclosed with a brick wall nine feet high," and we have a lengthy statement of " the new works in the Paddock in Hyde Park" executed between Septem- ber, 1726, and June, 1727 (Treasury Papers). The first item in this account is the taking down of old brickwork in the Paddock, probably the Finch wall, with perhaps others built by Queen Anne ; and that the new wall, above referred to, was intended to complete the enclosure of the area now covered by the Gardens, may be seen in a ' Plan of Hyde Park as it was in 1725 ' in the Grace Collection. Here " His Majesties New Gardens " come down to the Canal (now the Long Water), and the fence crosses the dam (where is now the bridge) on to Buck Barn Hill. The statement mentioned above tells us a good deal about the work and its cost, but does not locate it so clearly as we desire. There is the excavation of the Great Basin (now called the Round Pond), and the making of the Canal was a heavy work. Trees and their planting form a very interesting subject : 22,000 of all kinds may be reckoned in the account. Elm, oak, chestnut (of both kinds), walnut, beech, lime, evergreen oak, almond, fir, and lesser ornamental trees and shrubs were in abundance. George I. died before the completion of the Gardens, and the work was continued into the reign of his successor. The amount of the statement was 25,856Z., the main portion of which was for work " pursuant to orders of his late Majesty King George I.," and but 1,203Z. pursuant to orders of King George II.

The Plan of 1725 above noticed does not show the completed enclosure of the Gardens upon Buck Barn Hill, their north-eastern limit, probably because not there finished ; but perhaps the space was wanted for the title of the plan. In the remaining two years of George I. the ha-ha fence, the surprising invention of Bridgeman a wall perhaps nine feet high, of which the coped top only was seen above the ground surface, the remainder forming one side of a deep fosse beyond may have been

built ; but more probably as Faulkner shows it should be attributed to the gardening period of Queen Caroline, the able consort of George II. This Queen found the whole extent of the Gardens in an incompleted state, and from the accounts preserved it seems that the completion occu- pied at least four years of George's reign. As to the area taken from Hyde Park, however, I think the full encroachment had been rounded off by his father. Caroline never- theless had a fine field for invention and disposal, with the ability of Bridgeman at her service. The maze of flower-beds on the south front of the Palace, which had been the delight of poor Queen Anne, was swept away by Caroline. Greater import- ance seems then to have been given to the Broad Walk by doubling the ranks of elms. Thames water was brought to the Great Basin, first filled in the midsummer of 1728 ; and the " Queen's Temple," designed by Kent, was made to overlook the Serpentine.* These thirty acres of water, joining the Long Water of ten acres, and made where the West Bourne had wandered through a marsh, formed the Queen's chief achieve- ment, quite apart from the Gardens. And her Majesty, though acquitted in the matter of the Park aggression, had her own imperial conception of projects and expenditure. Not only Kensington Gardens, but the entire remainder of Hyde Park, were to form the exclusive pleasure domain of a new palace to rise at its centre (Read's Weekly Journal, 26 Sept., 1730 ; The Old Whig, 26 June, 1735). The Queen, however, had the dis- cretion which prevented too great an ad- vance ; she listened to the warning of her minister, whose reply, on an occasion when he was consulted as to cost, was : " Madam, it might cost three crowns " (Dr. Doran, ' Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover,' 1875, i. 380).

On completion of the Gardens an accurate survey was made of the entire royal domain. The plan existsf ; it is without date, but from its features I gather that it preceded by a few years Rocque's better-known plan of 1736. Every parcel is numbered, and its advantage over Rocque's plan is the accompaniment of a table giving the name or disposal of each parcel (in this a very interesting record), and 1 its area. The total area is 297a. 2r. 38p., say 297*75 acres. Now, it has been shown that Hyde Park,

gardener's lodge. t Brit. Mus. K. xxviii. 10, d. 1.
 * The Temple yet exists, transformed into