Half a mile to the east of Finsbury Park we have Clissold Park (53 acres), comparatively small but singularly attractive. This is one of the old and true parks that have remained to London, and, like Ravenscourt and Brockwell, it has an old manor house standing in it; and this building, looking upon water and avenues of noble elms and wide green spaces, gives it the appearance of a private domain rather than a public place. Close by is Abney Park Cemetery, which is now so crammed with corpses as to make it reasonable to indulge the hope that before long it will be closed as a burial place, only to be re-opened as a breathing space for the living. And as the distance which separates these two spaces is not great, let us indulge the further hope that it may be found possible to open a way between them to make them one park of not less than about a hundred acres.
Clissold Park is specially interesting to bird lovers in London on account of the efforts of the superintendent and the park constables in encouraging and protecting the bird life of the place. In writing of the carrion crow, the jackdaw, and the little grebe, I have spoken of this park, and shall have occasion to speak of it again in a future chapter.
South of Clissold, with the exception of the strip of green called Highbury Fields, there is no open space nearer than St. James’s Park, four miles distant. Highbury Fields (27 acres) was opened to the public about twelve years ago, and although small and badly shaped, it is by no means an unimportant ‘lung’ of North London. To the inhabitants of Highbury, Canonbury, and Islington it is the nearest open space, and though in so vast and populous an area, is a refreshing and pretty spot, with good shrubberies and healthy well-grown young trees. A few years ago a small rookery existed at the northern extremity of the ground, where some old trees are still standing, but the birds have left, it is said on account of the decay of their favourite tree. Skylarks also bred here up to the time of the opening of the ground to the public. The only wild birds at present, after the sparrows, are the starlings that come in small flocks, and a few occasional visitors. A few years ago it was proposed to make a pond: I fear that the matter has been forgotten, or that all the good things there were to give have been bestowed on the show parks, leaving nothing for poor Highbury and Islington.
CHAPTER XI
EAST LONDON
Condition of the East district—Large circular group of open spaces—Hackney Downs and London Fields—Victoria Park with Hackney Common—Smoky atmosphere—Bird life—Lakes—An improvement suggested—Chaffinch fanciers—Hackney Marsh with North and South Mill Fields—Unique character of the Marsh—White House Fishery—The vanished sporting times—Anecdotes—Collection of rare birds—A region of marshes—Wanstead Old Park—Woodland character—Bird life—Heronry and rookery—A suggestion.
Judging solely from the map, with its sprinkling of green patches, one might be led to suppose that East London is not worse off than other metropolitan districts in the matter of open spaces. The truth is that it is very much worse off; and it might almost be said that for the mass of East-enders there are practically no breathing spaces in that district. The population is about a million, the greatest portion of it packed into the parishes which border on the river and the East Central district; that is to say, on all that part of London which is most destitute of open spaces. In all this poor and overcrowded part of the East the tendency has been to get more and more housing-room out of the ground, with the result that not only have the old gardens vanished but even the mean back-yards have been built over, and houses densely packed with inmates stand back to back, or with little workshops between. One can but wonder that this deadly filling-up process has been permitted to go on by the authorities. It is plain that the people who live in such conditions, whose lives are passed in small stuffy rooms, with no outside space but the foul-smelling narrow dusty streets, are more in need of open spaces than the dwellers in other districts; yet to most of them even Victoria Park is practically as distant, as inaccessible, as Hyde Park, or Hampstead Heath, or the country proper. If once in many days a man is able to get away for needed change and refreshment, he finds it as easy to go to Epping Forest as to Victoria Park and Hackney Marsh; but it is not on many days in the year, in some cases not on any day, that he can take his wife and children.