July 10, 1890. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
17 
C ONTINENTAL improvers of cities have long recognised the 
I desirability of providing abundant open spaces for the re¬ 
creation of the people, and in some cases the work has been carried 
out on an extensive scale. Paris may be taken as a notable example 
of what can be effected by following out a well considered liberal 
plan of city embellishment, and the advantages are manifest to 
every visitor. Not only have parks, gardens, and open spaces been 
provided in numbers, but the roads and streets themselves have 
been rendered quite as horticulturally attractive and equally as 
beneficial from a sanitary point of view. Trees and shrubs have 
been planted in thousands, until the city itself is like a vast garden. 
Many less important towns in France and Belgium have taken a 
fiesson from Baron Haussmann’s great work, and wisely included in 
their necessary expenditure, the provision of parks and gardens 
for the people. 
Here in England we do not obtain State aid, and but seldom 
the use of civic purses for such work ; it is mostly left to the 
munificence of private individuals, or to the few societies that have 
within comparatively recent years sprung into existence for that 
special object. In some of the larger, densely populated, provincial 
towns like Manchester and Newcastle-on-Tyne, the matter has 
received much public attention, with the result that money has been 
raised in various ways, tracts of land have been given or purchased 
and laid out in parks. The two cities named are now well provided 
hi this way, and others could be mentioned where considerable 
progress is being made in the same direction. 
London can also boast some extensive and well kept parks, 
which excite the admiration of strangers, and their importance 
cannot be over-estimated. Still, for so great a city, there is a 
deficiency of smaller open spaces just where they are most needed— 
namely, in the poorer and more densely populated districts, which 
are often widely removed from the great parks. Societies have 
been formed for the special purpose of acquiring land in these dis¬ 
tricts, and within the past ten or twelve years a wonderful im¬ 
provement has been effected, though very much yet remains to be 
done. One organisation that has taken a prominent part in the 
work is the Kyrle Society, which commenced its career in 1877, and 
can already point to a creditable record of accomplished improve¬ 
ments. This Society owes its origin we are told, to a letter written 
in 1876 by Miss Miranda Hill, calling attention to the “ dull 
commonplace lives of the poor, and suggesting that means taken to 
enliven and beautify these lives would be labour well spent.” The 
Society thus started has taken a broad view of its object “ to 
bring beauty home to the people,” but of its four branches that 
devoted to “ open spaces ” is by far the most important. The 
support of the Duke of Edinburgh was secured as President, with 
the Princess Louise as Yice-President ; a large and influential 
General Committee was formed, and sub-Committees for the 
different branches. During the past thirteen years many small 
open spaces have been secured to the public through the exertions 
of this Society, and their most recent acquisition is the Yauxhall 
Park, which was formally opened on Monday last by the Prince of 
Wales. Its history is briefly as follows :— 
This little park of about eight acres occupies the site of the 
bouses formerly known as the Lawn, and Carron House. The Lawn 
was the name given to seven houses—each possessed a long old- 
No. 524 .—Vol. XXL, Third Series, 
fashioned garden—standing together in an enclosure, behind a 
refreshing strip of green sward, dotted with a few old trees. The 
river Effra at one time flowed in an open channel between the 
houses and the South Lambeth Road ; and the grass and trees, 
from which the Lawn derives its name, probably covered the course 
of the stream. Carron House, named after Sir Noel Caron, Dutch 
Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s in the early part of the 
nineteenth century, stood in its own grounds of considerable 
extent between the Lawn and the road known as Fentiman Road. 
The Lawn is mainly interesting as the residence of the late 
Henry Fawcett from the year 1874 to the time of his death at 
Cambridge in November, 1884. In the southernmost house of the 
group, that next to Carron House, Mr. Fawcett lived during his 
term of office as Postmaster-General from 1880 to 1881 ; and here, 
in the autumn of 1882, he passed through the serious illness which 
barely spared his life, and to the effects of which his subsequent 
sudden death must no doubt be traced. In the long garden, which 
now forms part of the park, pacing up and down the gravel paths, 
or sitting under the trees, he was wont to discuss with his friends 
the various projects for ameliorating the lot of the people which 
he was constantly initiating, amongst which none occupied a place 
nearer his heart than the preservation for public use of ample 
commons, parks, and gardens. 
When therefore in 1887 it became known that the Lawn and 
Carron House had come into the hands of a gentleman who viewed 
them as material for a thriving building speculation, it was felt to 
be only due to Mr. Fawcett’s memory to make a determined effort 
to avert such a misfortune, and to put the ground to the use which 
he would most have approved, that of a park for the people. The 
Yauxhall Park Committee was formed, with Mr. Mark Beaufoy, 
now the member for the Kennington Division of Lambeth, as its 
Chairman and Treasurer, and Mr. Walter Edwards as Secretary. 
A working men’s Committee was also constituted. An Act of 
Parliament was obtained, authorising the purchase by the Yestry, 
and power was conferred upon the Metropolitan Board of Works 
and other public bodies to contribute towards the purchase money. 
The price asked was £43,500, and the cost of obtaining the Act, 
and other expenses, raised the total sum required to over £45,000, 
without reckoning the expense of laying out the Park. The 
aggregate of the contributions obtainable from public bodies 
left over £9000 to be raised by private subscription. At a, 
critical moment, when the time for purchase bad nearly expired, 
the Kyrle Society threw its whole influence into the movement. 
Public meetings were held, at one of which the Princess Louise, 
Yice-Prcsident of the Kyrle Society, was present; and the Prince 
of Wales was pleased to meet a few representatives of the 
working men at Lambeth Palace, and to express his interest 
in the scheme. A large amount was collected through the 
instrumentality of the Kyrle Society ; in the course of a few 
weeks the necessary sum was raised, and in the spring of last year 
the land wa? conveyed to the Yestry of Lambeth. It still re¬ 
mained to clear and lay out the land as a garden, a work entailing 
an expense cf upwards of £2000. This expenditure was under¬ 
taken by the Kyrle Society, plans were prepared and approved by 
the Yestry, and the Society made itself responsible for the 
necessary fuuds. The garden has been laid out from the designs 
of Miss Wilkinson, by Mr. Holmes, of Hackney ; and the railings 
and other architectural works have been executed under the super¬ 
intendence of Mr. Harrison Townsend, F.R.T.B.A. 
The programme on Monday, July 7th, at the opening of 
Vauxball Park, when the Prince and Princess of Wales were 
attended by the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Louise, and the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, included the presentation to the Prince 
of several officia’s who had been concerned in the scheme, amongst 
them being Miss F. Wilkinson and Mr. William Holmes, and 
the latter assisted the Prince in planting a small Plane tree as a 
memento of the opening ceremony. 
No. 2180.— Vol. LXXX1II., Old Series. 
