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.
* * * * *
The open spaces of the East district, which (excepting those distant
spaces situated on the borders of Epping Forest) are all near together
and form a large circular group, are Hackney Downs, London Fields,
Victoria Park with Hackney Common, and Hackney Marsh with South and
North Mill Fields--about 730 acres in all. These grounds, as we have
seen, are too distant to be of much benefit to the larger part of the
population, and, it may be added, they have not the same value as
breathing spaces as the parks and commons in other London districts.
Victoria Park does not refresh a man like Hampstead Heath, nor even like
Hyde Park. The atmosphere is not the same. You are not there out of the
smoke and smells and gloom of East London. The atmosphere of Hackney
Marsh is better, but the distance is greater, and the Marsh is not a
place where women and children can rest in the shade, since shade there
is none.
To begin with the spaces nearest to the boundary line of North London:
we have the two isolated not large spaces of Hackney Downs (41 acres)
and London Fields (26 acres). These are green recreation grounds with
few trees or shrubs, where birds cannot breed and do not live. Hackney
Downs is, however, used as a feeding ground by a few thrushes and other
birds that inhabit some of the adjacent private gardens where there are
trees and shrubs.
Victoria Park contains 244 acres, to which may be added the 20 acres
of Hackney Common, and is rather more than two-thirds as large as Hyde
Park. Having been in existence for upwards of twenty years, it is one of
the oldest of our new parks, and is important on account of its large
size, also because it is the only park in the most populous metropolitan
district.
If it were possible to view it with the East-enders' eyes--eyes
accustomed to prospects so circumscribed and to so unlovely an aspect
of things--it might seem like a paradise, with its wide green spaces,
its groves and shrubberies, and lakes and wooded islands. To the
dwellers in West and South-west London it has a somewhat depressing
appearance, a something almost of gloom, as if Nature herself in
straying into such a region had put off her brilliance and freshness
to be more in tune with her human children. The air is always more or
less smoke-laden in that part. That forest of innumerable chimneys,
stretching away miles and miles over all that desolate overcrowded
district to the river, and the vast parishes of Rotherhithe, Bermondsey,
and Deptford beyond it, to the City and Islington and Kingsland on the
north side, dims the atmosphere with an everlasting cloud of smoke; and
Victoria Park is on most days under it. On account of this smokiness
of the air the trees, although of over twenty years' growth, are not
large--not nearly so large as the much younger trees in Battersea Park.
Trees and shrubs have a somewhat grimy appearance, and even the grass
is not so green as in other places.
Among the recent bird-colonists of London, we find that the moorhen and
ringdove have established themselves here, but in very small numbers.
There are two good-sized lakes (besides a bathing-pond), and the islands
might be made very attractive to birds, both land and water. They are
planted with trees, the best grown in the park, but have no proper cover
for species that nest on the ground and in low bushes, and no rushes
or other aquatic plants on their edges. It is a wonder that even the
moorhens are able to rear any young. The lakes are much used for
boating, and this is said to be in the way of providing the birds with
proper refuges in and round the islands; but there is no lake in London
more used for boating exercise than that of Battersea, yet it has there
been found possible to give proper accommodation and protection to the
water-birds in the breeding season.
It is melancholy to find that the songsters have been decreasing in this
park for some years past. Birds are perhaps of more value here than in
any other metropolitan open space. Thrushes, blackbirds, and chaffinches
are still not uncommon. The robin, titmouse, and dunnock are becoming
rare. The greenfinch and (I believe) the wren have vanished. The
decrease of the chaffinch is most regretted by the East-enders, who
have an extraordinary admiration for that bird. Bird fanciers are very
numerous in the East, and the gay chaffinch is to them the first of the
feathered race; in fact, it may be said that he is first and the others
nowhere. Now the value of the chaffinch to the bird fancier depends on
his song--on the bird's readiness to sing when his music is wanted, and
the qualities of his notes, their strength, spirit, and wildness. In
the captive state the song deteriorates unless the captive is frequently
made to hear and sing against a wild bird. At these musical contests
the caged bird catches and retains something of the fine passion and
brilliancy of his wild antagonist, and the more often he is given such a
lesson the better will it be for its owner, who may get twenty to fifty
shillings, and sometimes much more, for a good singer. Victoria Park
was the only accessible place to most of the East-enders who keep
chaffinches for singing-matches and for profit, to which their birds
could be taken to get the necessary practice. To this park they were
accustomed to come in considerable numbers, especially on Sunday
mornings in spring and summer. Even now, when the wild birds are so
greatly reduced in numbers, many chaffinch fanciers may be met with;
even on working days I have met as many as a dozen men slouching about
among the shrubberies, each with a small cage covered with a cotton
handkerchief or rag, in quest of a wild bird for his favourite to
challenge and sing against. They do not always succeed in finding their
wild bird, and when found he may not be a first-rate singer, or may
become alarmed and fly away; and as it is a far cry to Epping Forest
and the country, most of the men being very poor and having some
occupation which takes up most of their time, the decline of Victoria
Park as a training ground for their birds is a great loss to them.
I have tried, but without success, to believe that there was something
more than the sporting or gambling spirit in the East-ender's passion
for the chaffinch. Is it not probable, I have asked myself, that this
short swift lyric, the musical cry of a heart overflowing with gladness,
yet with a ring of defiance in it, a challenge to every other chaffinch
within hearing, has some quality in it which stirs a human hearer too,
even an East-ender, more than any other bird sound, and suddenly wakes
that ancient wild nature that sleeps in us, the vanished sensations of
gladness and liberty? I am reluctantly compelled to answer that I think
not. The East-ender admires the chaffinch because he is a sporting
bird--a bird that affords good sport; just as the man who has been
accustomed to shoot starlings from traps has a peculiar fondness for
that species, and as the cock-fighter admires the gamecock above all
feathered creatures. Deprive the cock-fighter of his sport--the law
has not quite succeeded in taking it away yet--and the bird ceases to
attract him; its brilliant courage, the beauty of its shape, its scarlet
comb, shining red hackles and green sickle plumes, and its clarion voice
that proclaims in the dark silent hours that another day has dawned, all
go for nothing.
It is unhappily necessary to say even more in derogation of the East-end
chaffinch fancier, who strikes one as nothing worse than a very quiet
inoffensive person, down on his luck, as he goes softly about among the
shrubberies with the little tied-up cage under his arm. He is not always
looking out for a wild chaffinch solely for the purpose of affording his
pet a little practice in the art of singing; he not unfrequently carries
a dummy chaffinch and a little bird-lime concealed about his person, and
is quick and cunning at setting up his wooden bird and limed twigs when
a wild bird appears and the park constable is out of sight.
In some of the parks, where the wild birds are cared for, the men who
are found skulking about the shrubberies with cages in their hands are
very sharply ordered out. It is not so in Victoria Park, and this may
be the reason of the decrease in its wild bird life.
In Victoria Park I have met with some amusing instances of the entire
absorption of the chaffinch votaries in their favourite bird, their
knowledge of and quickness in hearing and seeing him, and inability to
see and hear any other species. Thus, one man assured me that he had
never seen a robin in the park, that there were no robins there. Another
related as a very curious thing that he had seen a robin, red breast and
all, and had heard it sing! Yet you can see and hear a robin in Victoria
Park any day.
* * * * *
We now come to the famous Marsh. Victoria Park is in shape like a
somewhat gouty or swollen leg and foot, the leg cut off below the knee;
the broad toes of the foot point towards London Fields and the north,
the flat sole towards Bishopsgate Street, distant two miles; the upper
part of the severed leg almost touches the large space of Hackney Marsh.
The Marsh contains 337 acres; the adjoining North and South Mill Fields
23 and 34 acres respectively--the whole thus comprising an area of
nearly 400 acres. It was acquired by the London County Council for the
public in 1894, but before its acquisition the East-end public had the
use of it, and, no doubt, some right in it, as the owners of ponies and
donkeys were accustomed to keep their animals there. It was a kind of
no-man's-land in London, and it is indeed with the greatest bitterness
that the old frequenters of the Marsh of (to them) pleasant memories
recall the liberty they formerly enjoyed in following their own devices,
and compare it with the restrictions of the present time. There is no
liberty now, they complain. If a man sits down on the grass a policeman
will come and look at him to see if he is doing any damage. The County
Council have deprived the public of its ancient sacred rights. It must
be borne in mind that the 'public' spoken of by the discontented ones
means only a small section, and not the most reputable section, of the
very large population of East London.
To those who know Hackney Marsh from having looked upon it from a
railway carriage window (and most of the dwellers in other districts
know it only in that way) it is but a green, flat, low piece of land,
bounded by buildings of some kind in the distance, a featureless space
over which the vision roams in vain in search of something to rest upon,
utterly devoid of interest, to be seen and straightway forgotten. Yet
I have experienced a pleasing sense of exhilaration here, a feeling
somewhat differing in character from that produced in me by any other
metropolitan open space. And this was not strange, for there is really
nothing like Hackney Marsh in London. Commons, indeed, of various
aspects we have in plenty, parks, too, natural, artificial, dreary,
pretty; and heaths, downs, woods, and wildernesses; but the Marsh alone
presents to the eyes a large expanse of absolutely flat grassy land,
without a bush, stick, or molehill to break its smooth surface. A mile
or a mile and a quarter away, according to the direction, you see an
irregular line of buildings forming the horizon, with perhaps a tapering
church spire and a tall factory chimney or two; and if this extent of
green waste seems not great, it should be borne in mind that a man
standing on a flat surface has naturally a very limited horizon, and
that a mile in this district of London is equal to two miles or more in
the country, owing to the blue haze which produces an illusive effect
of distance. Walking about this green level land in pleasant weather, I
have experienced in some degree the delightful sensation which is always
produced in us by a perfectly flat extensive surface, such as we find
in some parts of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk. This is the
individual character and peculiar fascination of Hackney Marsh. And it
is possible that this feeling of liberty and ease, which mere flatness
and spaciousness give, was an element in the attraction which the Marsh
has always had for the East Londoner.
Here on a windy day at the end of February I have been tempted to exclaim
(like a woman), 'What a picture I could make--if I only knew how to
paint!' The rains and floods and spring-like warmth of the winter of
1896-7 had made the grass look preternaturally green; the distant
buildings, ugly perhaps when viewed closely, at the distance of a mile,
or even half a mile, were looking strangely picturesque in the pale
smoky haze, changing, when the sun was obscured by a flying cloud and
again burst forth, from deep blue to bright pearly grey; and the tall
chimneys changed, too, from a darkness that was almost black to glowing
brick-red. The wind was so strong that it was a labour to walk against
it; but as I walked along the river I came on a solitary swan, and as
though alarmed he rose up and flew away before me with a very free
powerful flight in the face of the wind; but he flew low, and for a
distance of a quarter of a mile his white wings shining in the sun
looked wonderfully bright and beautiful against the vivid green expanse.
The swans in this part of the River Lea are the property of the Water
Company, but they fly about very freely, and are like wild birds. Larks,
too, were soaring to sing on that day in spite of the wind's violence;
first one fluttered up before me, then a second, then a third, and
by-and-by I had four high overhead within hearing at the same time.
It struck me as a great thing to hear four larks at one time in
a metropolitan open space, for the lark is fast dying out in the
neighbourhood of London. I greatly doubt if these birds on the Marsh
ever succeed in bringing off any young; but the large green space is
a great attraction, and it is probable that a few stragglers from the
country settle down every spring, and that the numbers are thus kept up.
The skylark, starling, and sparrow are the only common resident species.
A kestrel hovering above the Marsh is a common sight, and lapwings at
certain times of the year are frequent visitors. The resident species
are indeed few, but there is no spot near London where anything like so
great a variety of waders and water-fowl appear during the autumn and
spring migrations, and in severe weather in winter.
There is a great deal of running water in Hackney Marsh, and most of the
ground lies between two large currents--the East London Waterworks canal
on the west side and the sinuous River Lea on the other side. Midway in
its course over the Marsh the river divides, the lesser stream being
called Lead Mill Stream; lower down the currents reunite: thus the land
between forms a long, green, flat island. On this island stands the
White House, or White House Fishery, close to the bridge over the Lea, a
favourite house for anglers in the vanished days when the Lea was a good
river to fish in. The anglers have long forsaken it; but it is a pretty
place, standing alone and white on the green level land, surrounded
by its few scattered trees, with something of the air about it of a
remote country inn, very restful to London eyes. It is also a place of
memories, but these are not all of sweet or pleasant things. The White
House was the centre and headquarters of the Hackney Marsh sportsmen,
and the sports they followed were mostly of that description which,
albeit still permissible, are now generally regarded as somewhat brutal
and blackguardly in character.
[Illustration: WHITE HOUSE FISHERY, HACKNEY MARSH]
Rabbit coursing, or rabbit worrying, with terriers; and pigeon,
starling, and sparrow shooting from traps, were the favourite pastimes.
The crowds which gathered to witness these matches were not nice to
see and hear, nor were they representative of the people of any London
district; they were, in fact, largely composed of the lowest roughs
drawn from a population of a million souls--raucous-voiced, lawless,
obscene in their language, filthy in their persons, and vicious in their
habits. Yet you will find many persons, not of this evil description,
who lament that these doings on the Marsh have been abolished, so dear
is sport of some kind, involving the killing of animals, to the natural
man! Others rejoice at the change. One oldish man, who said that he had
known and loved the Marsh from boyhood, and had witnessed the sports
for very many years, assured me that only since the County Council had
taken this open space in hand was it possible for quiet and decent folks
to enjoy it. As to the wild bird shooting, he was glad that that too had
been done away with; men who spent their Sundays shooting at starlings,
larks, and passing pigeons were, he said, a rough lot of blackguards.
Two of his anecdotes are worth repeating. One Sunday morning when he was
on the Marsh a young sportsman succeeded in bringing down a pigeon which
was flying towards London. The bird when picked up was found to have a
card attached to its wing--not an unusual occurrence as homing birds
were often shot. On the card in this case was written the brief message,
'Mother is dead.' My informant said that it made him sick, but the young
sportsman was proud of his achievement.
The other story was of a skylark that made its appearance three summers
ago in a vacant piece of ground adjoining Victoria Park. The bird had
perhaps escaped from a cage, and was a fine singer, and all day long it
could be heard as it flew high above the houses and the park pouring
out a continuous torrent of song. It attracted a good deal of attention,
and all the Hackney Marsh sportsmen who possessed guns were fired with
the desire to shoot it. Every Sunday morning some of them would get
into the field to watch their chance to fire at the bird as it rose or
returned to the ground; and this shooting went on, and the 'feathered
frenzy,' still untouched by a pellet, soared and sung, until cold
weather came, when it disappeared.
To return to the White House. This has for the last ninety years been
in the possession of a family named Beresford, who have all had a taste
for collecting rare birds, and their collection, now split up and
distributed among the members of the family, shows that during the last
four or five decades Hackney Marsh has been visited by an astonishing
variety of wild birds. The chief prize is a cream-coloured courser, the
only specimen of this rare straggler from Asia ever obtained in the
neighbourhood of London. It was shot on the morning of October 19, 1858,
and the story is that a working man came full of excitement to the White
House to say that he had just seen a strange bird, looking like a piece
of whity-brown paper blowing about on the Marsh; whereupon the late Mr.
George Beresford took down his gun, went out, and secured the wanderer.
* * * * *
It may be seen on the map of London that Hackney Marsh lies in that
broad belt of low wet ground which forms the valley of the Lea, and cuts
obliquely through North-east and East London to the Thames at Bugsby's
Reach, as that part of the river between Woolwich and the Isle of Dogs
is beautifully named. Leyton Marsh, Hackney Marsh, Stratford Marsh, West
Ham Abbey Marsh, and Bromley Marsh are all portions of this low strip,
over and beyond which London has spread. This marshy valley is not
wholly built over; it contains a great deal of mud and water, and open
spaces more or less green; but on account of the number of factories,
gasworks, and noisy industries of various kinds, and of its foul and
smoky condition, it is not a home for wild bird life.
Some distance beyond or east of this marshy belt--seven miles east of
St. Paul's in the City--there is Wanstead Park, or Wanstead Old Park,
and this is the last and outermost public open space and habitation of
wild birds belonging to East London to be described here. Epping Forest
(with Wanstead Flats), although quite close to Wanstead Park at its
nearest end, runs far into Essex, and lies in a perfectly rural district.
Wanstead Park itself may seem almost too distant from London to be
included here; but Wanstead village and Snaresbrook are all one, and
Snaresbrook and Leytonstone extend loving tentacles and clasp each other,
and Leytonstone clasps Leyton, and there is no break in spite of the mud
and water; and the only thing to be said is that east of the Lea it is
Bethnal Green mitigated or ruralised.
'I was in despair for many days,' some old traveller has said, relating
his adventures in uninhabited and savage places, 'but at length, to my
great joy, I spied a gibbet, for I then knew that I was coming to a
civilised country.' In like manner, at Snaresbrook and Leytonstone many
things tell us that we are coming to, and are practically in, London.
But Wanstead Park itself, and the open country adjoining it, with its
fine old trees, and the River Roding, when the rains have filled it,
winding like a silver serpent across the green earth, is very rural and
beautiful and refreshing to the sight.
The park (182 acres) is mostly a wood, unlike Highgate, Churchyard
Bottom, Wimbledon, or any other wood open to the public near London. It
has green spaces and a great deal of water (the lakes and the Roding,
which runs through it), and is very charming in its openness, its
perfect wildness, and the variety of sylvan scenery contained in it. As
might be supposed, this park is peculiarly rich in wild bird life, and
among the breeding species may be mentioned mallard and teal, ringdove
and turtle-dove, woodpecker, jay, hawfinch, and nightingale. But the
chief attraction is the very large rookery and heronry contained on one
of the two large wooded islands. It has sometimes happened when rooks
and herons have built on the same trees, or in the same wood, that they
have fallen out, and the herons have gone away in disgust to settle
elsewhere. At Wanstead no disastrous war has yet taken place, although
much quarrelling goes on. The heronry is probably very old, as in
1834 it was described as 'long established and very populous.' The
birds subsequently abandoned their old quarters on Heron Island and
established their heronry on Lincoln Island, and in recent years
they appear to have increased, the nests in 1896 numbering fifty or
fifty-one, and in 1897 forty-nine.
In conclusion, I wish to suggest that it would be well to make Wanstead
Park as far as possible a sanctuary for all wild creatures. A perfect
sanctuary it could not very well be made--there are certain creatures
which must be kept down by killing. The lake, for instance, is infested
by pike--our crocodile, and Nature's chief executioner in these realms.
I doubt if the wild duck, teal, little grebe, and moorhen succeed in
rearing many young in this most dangerous water. Again, too many jays in
this limited space would probably make it very uncomfortable for the
other birds. Finally, the place swarms with rats, and as there are no
owls, stoats, and weasels to keep them down, man must kill or try to
kill them, badly helped by that most miserable of all his servants, the
ferret.
But allowing that a perfect sanctuary is not possible, it would be better
to do away with the autumn and winter shooting. It is as great a delight
to see wild duck, snipe, ringdoves in numbers, and stray waders and
water-fowl as any other feathered creatures; and it is probable that if
guns were not fired here, or not fired too often, this well-sheltered
piece of wood and water would become the resort in winter of many
persecuted wild birds, and that they would here lose the excessive
wariness which makes it in most cases so difficult to observe them.
A word must be added concerning the rook-shooting, which takes place
in May, when there are still a good many young herons in the nests. At
Wanstead I have been seriously told that the herons are mightily pleased
to witness the annual massacre of their unneighbourly black neighbours,
or their young. My own belief, after seeing the process, is that the
panic of terror into which the old herons are thrown may result some day
in the entire colony shifting its quarters into some quieter wood in
Essex; and that it would be well to adopt some other less dangerous
method of thinning the rooks, if they are too numerous, which is
doubtful.
[Illustration: WANSTEAD OLD PARK: EARLY SPRING]
For the rest, the Corporation are deserving of nothing but praise for
their management of this invaluable ground. Here is a bit of wild
woodland nature unspoiled by the improving spirit which makes for
prettiness in the Royal Parks and Kew Gardens and in too many of the
County Council's open spaces. The trees are not deprived of their lower
branches, nor otherwise mutilated, or cut down because they are aged
or decaying or draped in ivy; nor are the wind-chased yellow and russet
leaves that give a characteristic beauty and charm to the winter woodland
here swept up and removed like offensive objects; nor are the native
shrubs and evergreens rooted up to be replaced by that always ugly
inharmonious exotic, the rhododendron.