Travellers describe nothing to be so much dreaded by the people of the
East as a flight of locusts, except indeed a settlement of locusts. When
those devouring insects alight on the fields and pastures, they begin
from a centre composed of myriads, and eat up everything green within
radii extending over not acres, but miles. They fall upon gardens and
leave them deserts; and upon a field they do not permit so much as a
blade of grass to indicate where grass was.
Although, in fact, these little devastators do not trouble us; in
effect, Londoners are the victims of equally efficient destroyers of
their green places.
Bricklayers are spreading the webs and meshes of houses with such
fearful rapidity in every direction, that the people are being gradually
confined within narrow prisons, only open at the top for the admission
of what would be air if it were not smoke. Suburban open spaces are
being entombed in brick-and-mortar mausoleums for the suffocation as
well as for the accommodation of an increasing populace; who, if they
wish to get breath, can find nowhere to draw it from, short of a long
journey. The Lungs of London have undergone congestion, and even their
cells are underground.
Of all the neighbourhoods of which London is a collection, Finsbury and
Islington have suffered most. Within the recollection of middle-aged
memories, Clerkenwell Green was of the right colour; Moorfields,
Spafields, and the East India Company’s Fields, were adorned with grass;
and he must be young indeed who cannot remember cricket-playing in White
Conduit, Canonbury, Shepherd and Shepherdess, Rhodes, and Laycock’s,
besides countless acres of other “Fields,” which are now blotted out
from the face of the Country to become Town, in the densest sense of the
word. Thanks to the window tax and the bricklayer, fresh air will be
thoroughly bricked out, unless a vigorous effort be made to stop the
invasion of burnt clay and water.
Mr. Lloyd, a gentleman of Islington who dreamt a few years since that he
lived in the country, but has recently awoke to the conviction that his
once suburban residence has been completely incorporated with the town,
determined, if possible, to arrest the invasion of habitations. His plan
is to dam out the flood of encroachment by emparking a large space at
Islington for the behoof of the Borough of Finsbury, which contains a
population of three hundred thousand panting souls. This space is,
according to his plan, that which surrounds the village of Highbury, one
of the highest and airiest suburbs of London. It is within two miles of
the City, and might be rendered accessible to Victoria Park in the east,
and to Regent’s Park in the west. The proposed enclosure will take in a
good portion of the course of the New River, and a large quantity of
ground so well and picturesquely wooded, that a paling and a name are
only requisite to convert it at once into a park. In shape the enclosure
would be a triangle, the base of which is the Holloway Road and Hopping
Lane, and the apex, a point at which the Seven Sisters’ Road joins the
Green Lanes. The extent of these grounds is about three hundred acres,
and the total cost of securing them to the public is not more than one
hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
Mr. Lloyd has been vigorously agitating this matter for more than nine
years, and yet—such is the pace at which the public are apt to move in
affairs in which the public alone is itself concerned—it is only lately
that he has obtained an attentive hearing for his plan.
A prospect of success appears now, however, to dawn. Public meetings
have been lately held in every district concerned, in which every sort
of co-operation has been promised. A single difficulty seems to stand in
the way; one little thing needful is only required to turn the project
into an accomplished fact, and that is, the money,—one hundred and fifty
thousand pounds merely. Mr. Lloyd and his coadjutors have, we believe,
mentioned their little difficulty at the Treasury, and are awaiting an
answer. This state of things would form a curious problem for De Morgan,
Quetelet, or others learned in the doctrine of probabilities: given,
official routine multiplied by systematic delay, what are the chances of
the cash required within the present generation?
A park for Finsbury is too urgent a demand for a dense population to
allow of much time being wasted in knocking at the door of the Treasury.
The public must bestir _themselves_ in the scheme, and it will soon be
accomplished and carried out.