MUNICIPAL PARKS 135 



for the benefit of the poor. It had been purchased 

 and enclosed, the deed specified, "for the prevention 

 of any new building thereon." Of this ground 9 acres 

 form the present Garden ; on part of the remainder 

 St. John's Church was built, and in 1872 the Bethnal 

 Green Museum, an offshoot from South Kensington, 

 was opened on another section. The most exhaustive 

 work on Municipal Parks says that when the land 

 " came into the possession of the London County 

 Council " it *' consisted of orchard, paddock, kitchen 

 garden, and pleasure grounds, all in a rough and 

 neglected condition." Under the levelling hand of 

 the London County Council it has been made to look 

 exactly like every other public garden, with *' orna- 

 mental wrought-iron enclosing fences, broad walks, 

 shrubberies," and so on, at a cost of over ;^5000, 

 and was opened in 1895. There is no trace of its 

 former condition, nothing to point to its antiquity or 

 any difference in its appearance from the most modern 

 acquisition. Perhaps after all it is as well, for among 

 the thousands of that poor and crowded district that 

 use and enjoy it, there is not one to whom a passing 

 thought of the old weavers who were settled there 

 when the land was given, or to whom the legend of 

 pretty Bessee the Blind Beggar's daughter of Bethnal 

 Green would occur. Though the design is prosaic, the 

 gardens are made cheerful and gay, and if they add 

 a gleam of brightness to the lives of toil of those living 

 near them, they must be said to fulfil their purpose. 



Victoria Park 



Victoria Park was the first of the modern Parks to 

 be laid out, and it is the largest. When the advantage 



