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Ranelagh Gardens, usually seen as the most august and respectable summer-time pleasure garden of Georgian London, was opened in Chelsea in 1742, in direct competition with its rather less reputable counterpart, the hugely successful Vauxhall Gardens, just over the river Thames in south Lambeth. Ranelagh's proprietors sought not only to exploit Vauxhall's success, but also to learn by its mistakes; their strategy was to construct, in a garden previously laid out for the Earl of Ranelagh by George London and …
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