The formation of the pleasure-garden that we know as Earl’s Court out of the coal-yards of the North End Road has a parallel in the origin of some ephemeral gardens which arose at Battle Bridge (King’s Cross) on or near the site of mountainous heaps of dust and ashes. The place was recalled by the ‘Literary Dustman’ when he sang:

‘My dawning genus fust did peep
Near Battle Bridge, ’tis plain, sirs;
You recollect the cinder-heap
Vot stood in Gray’s Inn Lane, sirs.’

Now, when these historic dust-heaps were carted off to Russia—the story is a true one—and utilized in rebuilding the walls of Moscow, they left a void which even the London builder could not immediately fill. In the twenties there was still a large vacant space near the corner of Gray’s Inn Lane, bounded by (the present) Liverpool, Manchester, and Argyle Streets, and reaching nearly to the Euston Road. This space became the property of a company which, in 1829, invited the public by prospectus to subscribe about £20,000 for its development. [54] The worthy historian of Clerkenwell describes this company as the ‘Pandemomium’ (sic), but as a matter of fact it called itself the Panarmonion, and had nothing demoniac in its objects, but rather the laudable purpose of converting a dusty wilderness into a garden and temple of the Muses. The promoter was a certain Signor Gesualdo Lanza, who presided over a school for acting and singing in the neighbourhood. Lanza proposed to establish—and displayed in lithographic plans—a great ‘Panarmonion Institution,’ consisting of a theatre, a concert-hall, a ‘refectory,’ a reading-room, and even an hotel. These buildings were to rise in a pleasaunce encircled by trees and alcoves, and adorned with a great fountain and cascade.

Suspension Railway, Panarmonion Gardens. From an engraving, circa 1830

In March, 1830, the place was opened, but the dreams of the prospectus were never realized. A shilling was charged for admission to the gardens, but it does not appear that they were ever properly laid out, and the only attraction was a tour of the grounds in a peculiar ‘Suspension Railway,’ the invention of Mr. H. Thorrington. This railway consisted of a boat-shaped car suspended from a substantial level bar, along which it travelled on small wheels set in motion by a wheel in the car worked by hand. [55a] For the more adventurous visitors, hobby-horses (rudimentary ‘cycles’) were likewise suspended from the bar, and worked in the same way as the boat. The theatre, of which a noble elevation by ‘Stephen Geary, architect,’ [55b] had been shown in the prospectus, turned out to be a small and narrow building, originally erected for an auction-room, which Lanza opened in March, 1830, with an amateurish performance of the opera of Artaxerxes. The enterprise was a failure from the first; the lease of the theatre was offered for sale in August, [56] and we hear no more of the gardens.

In May, 1832, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, of the Adelphi, and W. H. Williams, the comic actor and singer, tried their hands, and reopened the Panarmonion theatre as the ‘Royal Clarence,’ decorating it in the style of a Chinese pavilion. It is claimed that many well-known actors learnt their art at this bijou theatre. What is certain is that it often changed its name—being called, for instance, the Cabinet, and, in its latest days, the King’s Cross Theatre—and that both actors and audiences steadily deteriorated. During the greater part of its existence its boards were trodden by stage-struck amateurs; at one time it was used as a tobacco manufactory; and in the eighties or nineties its entrance-front might be seen plastered with bills announcing a mission-service or a temperance meeting. At last, early in 1897, Messrs. Reggiori, the proprietors of the neighbouring restaurant (Nos. 1 and 3, Euston Road) took the little theatre bodily into their premises, of which it now forms an additional dining-saloon. The old entrance-front (in Liverpool Street) has been smartened up with stucco and stained-glass windows.

It seems likely that the vanished gardens gave a hint for the laying out of Argyle Square, which covers a considerable portion of their site.

[Prospectuses and lithographs of the Panarmonion; newspapers of 1829 and 1830; Clinch’s Marylebone, etc., p. 182 f.; Pinks’s Clerkenwell; Baker’s London Stage, ii., p. 260; Era Almanack, 1868, advt., p. vii; 1869, p. 34. The annals of the theatre may also be sought in the pages of the Theatrical Journal.]