BUSYBODIES IN LONDON'S PARKS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Joad is entirely right about the spoiling of Hamp- stead Heath. But what else could he expect from the London County Council ? Has he ever been in Battersea Park ? This horrible place is a mass of large and heavy iron railings, dusty old shrubs, stretches of asphalt, and shabby notice boards warning you against committing all kinds of unlikely offences.
Has he ever been in the Embankment Gardens at Charing Cross ? These are full of little fiddling wire railings, bordering dirty asphalt paths, presided over by a number of perfectly shocking statues. The gardening, such as it is, is hopelessly formal and out of date.
There is also a little patch of desolation in Grosvenor Road, .going towards Chelsea—the most dismal attempt at a garden I have ever seen. (I do not, of course, refer to the excellent gardens next to the Houses of Parliament controlled by the Royal Parks.) To show the mentality of the Parks Committee —even in this sad little wired-in cage, no dog may run loose, though I do not know what harm the poor animals could do, beyond gnawing the iron railings.
Mr. Joad says that lie thinks that Hampstead Heath suffers from the control of urban-minded people. But all the open spaces controlled by the L.C.C. are so obviously of the same nasty type, that I cannot help feeling that those who set and maintain these standards must be people who are essentially common and parochial, who love imposing restrictions in order to show their own importance.
It should be the business of all those who love nature more than iron-work, and grass above asphalt, to ridicule the silliness of these people until they change their ways.
Will you, Sir, help in the work by commissioning one of your staff to undertake a perambulation of all the L.C.C. open spaces, faithfully setting out how the blight of ugliness and officiousness afflicts them all ?—I am, Sir, &c.,
CLAUDE SISLEY. 48 Grosvenor Road, Westminster, S.11- . 1.
[With much that the writer of this letter says we are in agreement, but we think that he is not quite fair to the Parks Committee of the London County Council. We have always thought Battersea Park one of the best laid out parks in London, especially when we remember that it was previously flat fields. But when our correspondent talks of "large and heavy iron railings, dusty old shrubs" and "fiddling wire railings" we are at one with him. The Victorian age had a passion for erecting iron railings and we have suffered therefrom ever since. Will not the Government appoint a properly qualified Com- mittee to make a survey of .Great Britain's urban open spaces and to make recommendations how their beauty and attrac- tions could be increased at practically no cost to the community. Will some defender of the existing order explain to us why in Great Britain alone there is this passion for iron railings and laurel bushes ? The cats of our towns may enjoy the seclusion of these soot-covered evergreens which surround many of our squares, but we cannot discover any human advocates. In America, Canada and in many continental cities green spaces have no railings and are not enclosed by a zareeba of evergreens. Their, beauty is thereby much enhanced and the public does not abuse the freedom from iron bars.—En. Spectator.)
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