Samuel Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century and is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire of London. Pepys was born in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, London on 23 February 1633, the son of John Pepys (1601–1680), a tailor, and Margaret Pepys ("née" Kite; died 1667), daughter of a Whitechapel butcher. His great uncle Talbot Pepys was Recorder and briefly Member of
Promenade concert buildings, and was generally of the popular variety: ballroom dances, quadrilles (medleys), cornet solos etc. Other entertainments would have included fireworks, masquerades and acrobatics. There were 38 gardens which are known to have provided music. Perhaps the most famous of these were Vauxhall Gardens (1661-1859), south of the Thames. Known at first as New Spring Gardens this was the favourite haunt of diarists Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn. The music of Handel was very popular here in the eighteenth century, and in 1738 there was even a statue erected of Handel playing the lyre. The Gardens were described as fashionable