One could ride in Hyde Park in the morning, and then repair to Ranelagh: here was rurality not only brought to town but refined to boot.And imitated too. For Vauxhalls sprang up in all the suburban villages, little pleasure gardens with their fishponds, fireworks and musicians. Perfect for Sunday jaunts were Sadler's Wells in Islington, Kilburn Wells, Bermondsey Spa (now marked by Spa Road), and Hockley-in-the-Hole, Clerkenwell, with its skittle alleys, purgative waters and bear-baiting. Jenny's Whim in Pimlico was celebrated for its mechanical mermaids and flying-fish. All good for a Sunday afternoon frolic.The Victorian era brought the beginning of the end. Killjoys got to work, closing amusement resorts down, along with Bartholomew Fair, Southwark Fair and most of the other metropolitan fairs, claiming they were sinks of vice. London's fields got built over, and in the process something happened to the pleasure garden: it got privatised.

The old public resorts disappeared, but they were (so to speak) parcelled up into everyone's back yard - thus giving free rein to the green-fingered horticultural craze of suburbanites. The form of the pleasure changed, but gardens were still there to divert and delight in Penge, Pinner or deepest Metroland. This century, city gardens gave way to garden cities.And that takes us to the root of today's problem Back-gardens were great when everyone had a house. But as flat-dwelling grew more common in the inner city, no compensatory expansion took place in public pleasure spaces. After the great gains of the Victorian age (securing the capital's commons and heaths, carving out Victoria Park, and so forth) the present century has created relatively few new public parks. We're told there's not the ground - but don't believe it: London abounds in derelict acres.Meanwhile few new commercial developments have made really imaginative use of outdoor urban space - though that's what we've long been promised if the shelved King's Cross redevelopment ever gets off the drawing-board. Docklands, so far, has been a mixed success.The architects of the 1960s fringed their tower blocks with windy precincts, symbols more of urban pain than pleasure; while the planners preferred clean concrete spaces to the variegated muddle of Nature.