i 4 2 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 
It has the additional charm of the New River passing 
through the heart of it, and, furthermore, the ground is 
undulating. 
One of the approaches to the Park still has a semi- 
rural aspect and associations attached to it. This is 
Queen Elizabeth’s Walk, with a row of fine elm trees, 
under which the Queen may have passed as a girl while 
staying in seclusion at the manor-house, then in the 
possession of the Dudley family, relations to the Earl of 
Leicester. Stoke Newington, until lately, was not so 
overrun with small houses as most of the suburbs. In 
1855 it was described as “ one of the few rural villages 
in the immediate environs [of London]. Though, as the 
crow flies, but three miles from the General Post Office, 
it is still rich in parks, gardens, and old trees.” The last 
fifty years have quite transformed its appearance. “ Green 
Lanes,” which skirts the west of the Park, though with 
such a rural-sounding name, is a busy thoroughfare, with 
rushing trams; and, but for Clissold Park and Abney 
Park Cemetery, but little of its former attractions would 
remain. The Cemetery is on the grounds of the old 
Manor House, where Sir Thomas Abney lived, and “ the 
late excellent Dr. Isaac Watts was treated for thirty-six years 
with all the kindness that friendship could prompt, and 
all the attention that respect could dictate.” The manor 
was sold by direction of Sir Thomas’s daughter’s will, and 
the proceeds devoted to charitable purposes. The old 
church, with its thin spire, and the new large, handsome 
Gothic church, built to meet the needs of the growing 
population, stand close together at one corner of the 
Park, at the end of Queen Elizabeth’s Walk, and on all 
sides the towers among the trees form pretty and con¬ 
spicuous objects. The house in the Park, for the most 
