ifty feet. It was built
out fifteen or twenty feet from the house, and had a colonnade in front
over the pathway; the other, kept by Chapman, was two doors further on,
of the same style but much smaller. On a Good Friday morning I have seen
a large crowd waiting to get served, which they did through the window.
I have seen carriages and traps waiting as far as the tollhouse. A
little farther on, where St. Barnabas' Church now stands, was the
"Orange" tavern and tea gardens, with a theatre where regular plays were
acted, and beyond, just before you came to the wooden bridge over the
canal there was a road leading down to the Chelsea Water Works reservoir
and filtering beds, and at the bottom stood the "White House," with its
ferry over to the "Red House" at Battersea, a great sporting riverside
house, where nearly all the pigeon shooting took place. There was always
a great crowd of amateur sportsmen outside waiting for a shot at any
birds that escaped, and frequently a dispute would arise as to who shot
the bird, often ending in a fight.

There were no buildings on the right hand side of the road, but some
marshy ground and a row of willow trees between it and the canal as far
as the basin, which was surrounded by a few shops and wharves, and where
Victoria Station now stands. And nearly opposite stood Bramah's Iron
Foundry, where nearly the first iron lighthouse was built and fitted
together and erected in the yard complete, and then taken and shipped to
one of the West India Islands, I think Jamaica, and re-erected. It was
afterward's Bramah's Great Unpickable Lock Factory.

At the other side of the canal was the Willow Walk, a raised road leading
from the Monster Gardens to Rochester Row, with market gardens and low
swampy ground running right down to the river on one side, and the canal
on the other. In winter I have seen snipe, teal and wild duck shot on
the ground at the west end of Chelsea. Just over Stamford Bridge stood
Stamford House, once the residence of Nell Gwynn, now occupied by the Gas
Company's engineer, and just beyond, through a farm yard, was a public
footpath right through the orchards and market gardens alongside of the
river right away to a riverside tavern, with a lane bringing you out by
Parson's Green. In the orchards was grown some of the choicest fruit to
be found in the country. There were some old walls with fruit trees that
appeared to have stood there for centuries. This distri