204 LONDON PARKS <^ GARDENS 



made across some of the sharpest curves, to allow a better 

 flow of water. This has stopped all the objectionable 

 flooding, but the melancholy part is that, having been 

 obliged to make these imperative but necessarily artificial 

 cuttings, the London County Council did not plant them 

 with alders, thorns, and willows, like the pretty, natural 

 stream ; but instead, the islands thus formed, and the 

 banks, were dotted about with box and aucuba bushes. 

 The babbling stream seems to jeer at these poor sickly 

 little black bushes, as if to say, " What is the good of 

 bravely playing at being in the country, and trying to 

 make believe trout may jump from my ripples and water- 

 ousels pop in and out of my banks, if you dreadful 

 Cockneys disfigure me like that ? " Very likely it does 

 not jar on the feelings of the inhabitants of Lewisham 

 or Catford, but when public money is spent by way of 

 improvement, it is cruel to mar and deform instead. 

 Where the churchyard of St. Mary's, Lewisham, touches 

 the stream is a pretty spot, but, in places, untidy little 

 back-gardens are the only adornment ; but that is not 

 the fault of the London County Council. 



Peckham Rye Common is more or less flat, without 

 any special feature of interest, except at the southern 

 end, which has been converted into a Park. The Rye — 

 what a quaint name it is ! and there is no very satisfactory 

 derivation. It may either come from a stream of that 

 name, long since disappeared, or from a Celtic word, 

 rkyn^ a projecting piece of land — Peckham Rye, the village 

 on the spur of the hill, now known as Forest Hill and 

 Honor Oak. This "Rye" has been a place of recrea- 

 tion from time immemorial, and at one time must 

 have extended so as to embrace the smaller patches of 

 common known as Nunhead Green (now black asphalt). 



