36 FORESTS, WOODS, AND TREES 
obtained by purchase. Opened in 1876, it has been 
extended to 34 acres, the total cost amounting to £26,330. 
Miss Ryland presented as a second gift to the Corpora- 
tion 43 acres of partly wooded land at Small Heath, and 
£4000 to lay it out as a park, which was opened as 
Small Heath Park in 1879, and renamed Victoria Park 
in 1887. 
The most important event in the history of the parks 
of Birmingham was the securing for public use of the 
Lecky Hills, the only range within easy access of the city. 
A few building plots had been sold on one of these 
hills, Rednall Hill. Mr. Grosvenor Lee, the Secretary 
of the Birmingham Association for the Preservation of 
Open Spaces, in 1887, with the help of several prominent 
citizens, purchased the rest of the hill, 32 acres, which was 
conveyed to the Corporation in 1889, as a place of public 
recreation for ever. The other two hills, Beacon Hill, 
33 acres, and Bilberry Hill, 49 acres, were afterwards 
secured. Beacon Hill rises to 1000 feet elevation and 
commands a view of ten counties. The acquisition of this 
hilly tract, covered with pine and larch and heather, was 
a great achievement. The learned American blacksmith, 
Elihu Burritt, gives this description: “Any summer day in 
the year when the sun shines on them, these hills are set 
to the music of merry voices of boys and girls and older 
children who feel young on the purple heather at fifty.” 
Of the parks in the added areas, not formerly included 
in the district under the control of the Birmingham 
Corporation, there may be mentioned Handsworth Park, 
63 acres, at Handsworth; Queen’s Park, 14 acres, at 
Harborne ; and Sparhill Park, 19 acres, at Yardley, mostly 
acquired by purchase. In the well- wooded district of 
Warley, Lightwoods Park and its extension, some 50 acres, 
were the gift of several citizens from 1903 to 1915. 
Warley Park, a fine natural woodland of 109 acres, was 
partly acquired by gift and partly by purchase, the cost to 
the Corporation being £50,472. Perry Park and Reservoir, 
about 100 acres, of which 88 acres was purchased for 
