Mature Notes: The Selborne Society's Magazine. No. 7. JULY 15, 1890. VOL. I. THE PRESERVATION AND ENJOYMENT OF OPEN SPACES. I HAVE been asked by the Editors to give some account of the work of the several Societies which have been formed to secure to the public adequate means of enjoying life in the open air. The oldest of these Societies is the Commons Preservation Society. This body was formed in the autumn of 1865, and was the direct outcome of the attacks which about that time threatened to deprive London of its commons. At Wimbledon, Lord Spencer had proposed to convert two-thirds of the common into a park, and to enclose the rest; Epping Forest had, by gigantic enclosures, been cut down to little more than half its full size; Epsom Common had been in danger of parliamentary enclosure. But these were mere instances of a danger threatening all open land. Before the Committee of the House of Commons, which had held an enquiry on the subject of metropolitan open spaces, the lords of manors and their agents had claimed the right to enclose common land almost at will. Amongst those who were anxious to save the commons some were ready to take the lords at their word, and to embark upon costly schemes of purchase. On the other hand, many held-and the opinion had found advocates before the Committee -that the commons in the neighbourhood of London might be saved without spending a penny in purchase, if the commoners would only watchfully and energetically assert their rights. Enclosure, it was said, could be prevented by litigation, if necessary; and good order could be insured by local management without injury to any legal rights. It was to advocate this view that the Commons Preservation Society was formed. Mr. Shaw Lefevre was the first Chairman of the Committee-a post he has held, save when a Minister of the Crown, ever since. Mr. John Locke, who had been Chairman of the House of Commons Committee, Mr. Charles Buxton and Mr. John Stuart Mill, were amongst the first members; Mr. Leslie Štephen acted for a short time as honorary secretary; and Mr. Philip Lawrence, to whose efforts it was largely due that the Society was formed, advised and guided the new body with consummate skill and ability in the capacity of honorary solicitor. One is tempted to dwell on the succession of victories the little Society achieved within the next ten years, but we have in this paper to do with the present rather than the past. Suffice it to say that a series of decisions of the Courts, culminating in the judgment of Sir George Jessel, by which the enclosure of some three thousand acres in Epping Forest was declared illegal, amply justified the position assumed by the Society, and established beyond question, that a lord of a manor cannot enclose a common against the will of the Commoners. At the same time the Metropolitan Commons Act of 1866, and the several Acts passed on the basis of its provisions, converted into fact the second thesis of the society, that all that was necessary to complete the work of securing London commons to the public, was local management without prejudice to existing legal rights. By this means nuisances are prevented, order preserved, and improvements made without depriving a common of its distinguishing features. The work of the Society soon grew beyond its first limits. Some time before the final victory in the Epping Forest case, the late Mr. Fawcett had obtained the support of the Commons Preservation Society in his intrepid stand against the wholesale enclosure of rural commons under the Enclosure Acts. The Society became the vigilant critic of every proposal to enclose a common which came before Parliament. Enclosure was entirely suspended for several years, and in 1876, by passing the Commons Act, the Legislature provided an alternative method of treating rural commons-that of managing them as open spaces, and declared that no common should be enclosed unless it were shown that the interests both of the neighbourhood and of the nation at large would be served; while in these rare cases ample provision of recreation ground and field gardens should be made. The result of this legislation and of the untiring efforts of the Society to ensure attention to its provisions is, that since 1876 30,000 acres of common land have been placed under regulation, that only commons in retired and mountainous parts have been enclosed. Where enclosure has been sanctioned, in some cases large allotments for recreation and field-gardens have been set out, and in others a general right of roaming, except where the land is cultivated or planted, has been reserved to the public. Moreover, proposals to enclose have become fewer and fewer, and have now almost ceased. It was not long after the passing of the Commons Act that the attention of the Commons Preservation Society was first PRESERVATION OF OPEN SPACES. 103 turned to those smaller open spaces which are invaluable in crowded towns-square gardens, church-yards, and fields and gardens in private ownership. Miss Octavia Hill commenced this branch of open space work by a vigorous effort to save from the builder some fields in the neighbourhood of the Swiss Cottage at Finchley. In 1881, Mr. Walter James, as a representative of the Society proposed the Metropolitan Open Spaces Act, 1881, and in 1884 Mr. John Hollond piloted through Parliament an Act prohibiting building on disused burial grounds; several other Acts to facilitate the preservation of such open spaces-out-door sitting-rooms, as Miss Octavia Hill has styled them have since been passed. At the same time the Society, when necessary, has challenged the attempts of railway companies and other promoters of industrial undertakings to obtain special Parliamentary powers to appropriate commons, town gardens and other open spaces; its efforts in this direction have been signally successful. We have now, however, reached the time when the Commons Preservation Society was to have fellows in its work. The Kyrle Society was founded at the suggestion of Miss Miranda Hill, with the general object of "bringing beauty home to the poor." Its work in the first instance ran in two channels; it busied itself in decorating rooms and halls used by the poorer classes, by the execution of frescoes and the gift or loan of pictures; and it organised a choir to perform good music in churches and other public places without expense to the hearers. In the spring of 1879 the Society determined to establish a Branch to aid the Commons Preservation Society in its battle for open spaces, and a paper on the subject was read to a meeting of the Kyrle Society by the present writer, on the 6th of March. The Open Spaces Committee of the Kyrle Society soon found a special field for its activities, in laying out gardens in London -disused burial grounds and similar spots—and in supplying seats and aiding local efforts in the improvement of such places. While mainly interesting itself in this branch of the work, it cordially supported the efforts of the Commons Preservation Society both in and out of Parliament, to resist the appropriation of open land; and to this Committee belongs the honour of first calling attention to the threatened sale of Burnham Beeches, and of particularly energetic efforts to prevent the spoliation of the lake country by unnecessary railways. The Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, the youngest of the Societies having for their express object the preservation of open spaces, was founded by the Earl of Meath, then Lord Brabazon, in October, 1882. Its avowed aim was "to provide breathing and resting places for the old and play-grounds for the young in the midst of densely populated localities, especially in the east and south of London ;" and the justification for its existence is stated to be that "the work is of far too vital importance to be dealt with as a mere detail in any general scheme of philanthropic effort." Lord Meath, in fact, was of opinion that the pace of the Kyrle Society was not quick enough, and that "a special and influential combination of persons" giving its "earnest and considerate attention" to the subject, and acting under his Lordship's guidance, would be able to accomplish greater things. Whether this opinion was a sound one, it would be idle to discuss. As a matter of fact the Metropolitan Gardens Association has done much good work, and any slight feeling of rivalry which may have once existed between it and the older Societies has long since vanished; the three agencies are working together in thoroughly cordial relations. Lord Meath's Association can point to a very long list of church-yards and other gardens laid out or improved by its efforts; while it has done much to force upon the public notice the importance of this particular branch of open space work. The project of forming a public promenade on the main drainage embankment in the East of London, and the placing of flowers in Trafalgar Square show that the action of the Society is by no means a matter of routine, but that it welcomes every suggestion by which increased facilities for out-door recreation may be extended to London. Such is a brief sketch of the circumstances under which each of the Open Space Societies came into existence and of the character of the work on which they have been mainly engaged. But there have of late years been many developments of the Open Space movement which deserve notice, and upon these and the relations thereto of the Societies I have mentioned, and of other agencies, I shall be glad, with the Editors' permission, to say a few words on another occasion. ROBERT HUNTER. THE PLANT ALLUSIONS IN THE POEMS OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. (Continued from p. 84.) "Thyrsis is full of references to flowers. Here are some of them : "So, some tempestuous morn in early June, So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry, From the wet field, through the vext garden trees, MATTHEW ARNOLD'S PLANT ALLUSIONS. 105 "Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go? 666 Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on, Roses that down the alleys shine afar, And groups under the dreaming garden-trees, easy access to the hearer's grace When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine! She loved the Dorian pipe the Dorian strain. "Well! wind-dispersed and vain the words will be, In the old haunt, and find our tree-topp'd hill ! I know what white, what purple fritillaries The grassy harvest of the river-fields, Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields, And what sedged brooks are Thames's tributaries.' "In subsequent verses we have amongst other things, the Hawthorn, the Cowslip, the Orchis, the Loose strife, the Meadowsweet, and the Wood Anemone, all set in their characteristic surroundings. "The next verses are from the poem on Carnac in NorthWestern France : "Behind me on their grassy sweep, Bearded with lichen, scrawl'd and grey, "No priestly stern procession now Moves through their rows of pillars old; "From bush to bush the cuckoo flies, The orchis red gleams everywhere; "With these we may contrast the following scene from the South-East of the same country : "Dotting the fields of corn and vine, Like ghosts the huge, gnarl'd olives stand. |