Ranelagh Gardens

Coordinates: 51°29′14″N 0°9′19″W / 51.48722°N 0.15528°W / 51.48722; -0.15528

Ranelagh Gardens (/ˈrænɪlə/; alternative spellings include Ranelegh and Ranleigh, the latter reflecting the English pronunciation) were public pleasure gardens located in Chelsea, then just outside London, England in the 18th century.

History

The Ranelagh Gardens were so called because they occupied the site of Ranelagh House, built in 1688-89 by the first Earl of Ranelagh, Treasurer of Chelsea Hospital (1685–1702), immediately adjoining the Hospital; according to Bowack's Antiquities of Middlesex (1705), it was "Designed and built by himself". Its actual builder and owner was one Solomon Rieti, an Italian Jewish immigrant. Rieti's niece, Rebecca Rieti, was the grandmother of Benjamin Disraeli. Ranelagh House was demolished in 1805 (Colvin 1995, p 561).

In 1741, the house and grounds were purchased by a syndicate led by the proprietor of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and Sir Thomas Robinson MP, and the Gardens opened to the public the following year. Ranelegh was considered more fashionable than its older rival Vauxhall Gardens; the entrance charge was two shillings and sixpence, compared to a shilling at Vauxhall. Horace Walpole wrote soon after the gardens opened, "It has totally beat Vauxhall... You can't set your foot without treading on a Prince, or Duke of Cumberland." Ranelagh Gardens introduced the masquerade, formerly a private, aristocratic entertainment, to a wider, middle-class English public, where it was open to commentary by essayists and writers of moral fiction.

Ranelagh

Ranelagh (/ˈrænᵻlə/ RAN-ə-lə, locally pronounced /ˈrɛnələ/; Irish: Raghnallach) is a residential area and urban village on the south side of Dublin, Ireland. It is in the postal district of Dublin 6.

History

The district was originally a village just outside Dublin, surrounded by landed estates.

In the early years of the Irish Confederate Wars (1641–1649) the area was the scene of skirmishes culminating in the Battle of Rathmines in August 1649. After the Irish united with the Royalists against the Parliamentarians, an attempt was made to take Dublin. Their army under Ormonde was defeated, many of them killed, and the place where they fell (mainly between Rathmines and Ranelagh) was known for a long time as the Bloody Fields.

In 1785, only two years after the first manned flight, Richard Crosbie successfully flew in a hot air balloon from Ranelagh Gardens to Clontarf. The 225th anniversary of his flight was commemorated with a balloon flight from the same gardens on 23 January 2010 although due to adverse weather the balloon did not take off.

Ranelagh (Paris Métro)

Ranelagh is a station of the Paris Métro on the Rue de Ranelagh. The station opened on 8 November 1922 with the opening of the first section of the line from Trocadéro to Exelmans.

The street of Rue de Ranelagh was named after Lord Ranelagh, an Irish peer and amateur at music, who built a rotunda for concerts in the park of his property in Chelsea in 1750. A similar establishment was established on the grounds of the Château de la Muette in 1774. The place was fashionable under Marie Antoinette, under the Directory and then again under the Restoration. It disappeared in 1858 with the creation of the Bois de Boulogne.

Station layout

Ranelagh (disambiguation)

Ranelagh may refer to:

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