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, 
rhyn , 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), 
