CHAPTER XXVII.
PUBLIC PLEASURE GROUNDS AND STREET TREES.
Amongst the clauses of the Public Health Act 1875 which affect the duties of the town surveyor will be found the following:
“Any urban authority may purchase or take on lease, lay out, plant, improve, and maintain lands for the purpose of being used as public walks or pleasure grounds, and may support or contribute to the support of public walks or pleasure grounds provided by any person whomsoever.
“Any urban authority may make bye-laws for the regulation of any such public walk or pleasure ground, and may by such bye-laws provide for the removal from such public walk or pleasure ground of any person infringing any such bye-law by any officer of the urban authority or constable” (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55, s. 164).
There are very few, if any, cities or towns in this country that have not availed themselves of this clause, even if they did not already possess one if not more public parks or pleasure grounds of some description, these having either been given by some benevolent citizen or acquired in some other manner by the urban authority.[215]
Included in the powers given by the above clause are no doubt those regulating the acquisition and support of recreation or public playgrounds, public walks, or old city walls or other places, and disused burying grounds.[216]
In connection with the above clause of the Public Health Act, the town surveyor may have the following duties to perform:
To advise his corporation upon the value, suitability, and desirability of any site that is intended for use as a public park or recreation ground, and after its acquisition to adapt it for the requisite purposes. To effect this it must be drained and laid out with carriage-drives, walks, lawns, flower-beds, plantations, and sometimes streams, waterfalls, and lakes. He must design and erect the necessary lodges, entrance gates, fences, shelters, seats,[217] band-stands, and fountains, and must afterwards superintend the maintenance of these and the rest of the works in connection with the pleasure ground.
It would be impossible to lay down any rules for the guidance of a surveyor in carrying out these works, for each case must be dealt with as its exigencies require, and a great deal of common sense, as well as engineering, architectural, and artistic skill must be displayed by him in carrying out any works of this description, details of which could not possibly be given in a book of this size dealing with so many subjects.[218]
A few suggestions may, however, be of some service on these points.