Note 259 — VI SOUTH LONDON GROUP

This entertainment was probably first introduced in 1786, in which year (2 September) the Public Advertiser announces “the representation of the storming of a fort which with the fortifications cover (sic) 3 acres of ground, the rock being fifty feet high and 200 feet long.” From about 1789 to 1792 it was advertised as a representation of the Siege of Gibraltar. The writer of A Modern Sabbath (1797) gives further details. “On the north-east side of the gardens is a very fine lawn consisting of about three acres, and in a field parted from this lawn by a sunk fence is a building with turrets, resembling a fortress or castle.” At each side of this fortress at unequal distances were two buildings, from which on public nights bombshells, &c., were thrown. The fire was returned and the whole exhibited the “picturesque prospect of a siege.”