Birds in London Part 8

The open s.p.a.ces of the East district, which (excepting those distant s.p.a.ces situated on the borders of Epping Forest) are all near together and form a large circular group, are Hackney Downs, London Fields, Victoria Park with Hackney Common, and Hackney Marsh with South and North Mill Fields--about 730 acres in all. These grounds, as we have seen, are too distant to be of much benefit to the larger part of the population, and, it may be added, they have not the same value as breathing s.p.a.ces as the parks and commons in other London districts.

Victoria Park does not refresh a man like Hampstead Heath, nor even like Hyde Park. The atmosphere is not the same. You are not there out of the smoke and smells and gloom of East London. The atmosphere of Hackney Marsh is better, but the distance is greater, and the Marsh is not a place where women and children can rest in the shade, since shade there is none.

To begin with the s.p.a.ces nearest to the boundary line of North London: we have the two isolated not large s.p.a.ces of Hackney Downs (41 acres) and London Fields (26 acres). These are green recreation grounds with few trees or shrubs, where birds cannot breed and do not live. Hackney Downs is, however, used as a feeding ground by a few thrushes and other birds that inhabit some of the adjacent private gardens where there are trees and shrubs.

Victoria Park contains 244 acres, to which may be added the 20 acres of Hackney Common, and is rather more than two-thirds as large as Hyde Park. Having been in existence for upwards of twenty years, it is one of the oldest of our new parks, and is important on account of its large size, also because it is the only park in the most populous metropolitan district.

If it were possible to view it with the East-enders' eyes--eyes accustomed to prospects so circ.u.mscribed and to so unlovely an aspect of things--it might seem like a paradise, with its wide green s.p.a.ces, its groves and shrubberies, and lakes and wooded islands. To the dwellers in West and South-west London it has a somewhat depressing appearance, a something almost of gloom, as if Nature herself in straying into such a region had put off her brilliance and freshness to be more in tune with her human children. The air is always more or less smoke-laden in that part. That forest of innumerable chimneys, stretching away miles and miles over all that desolate overcrowded district to the river, and the vast parishes of Rotherhithe, Bermondsey, and Deptford beyond it, to the City and Islington and Kingsland on the north side, dims the atmosphere with an everlasting cloud of smoke; and Victoria Park is on most days under it. On account of this smokiness of the air the trees, although of over twenty years' growth, are not large--not nearly so large as the much younger trees in Battersea Park.

Trees and shrubs have a somewhat grimy appearance, and even the gra.s.s is not so green as in other places.

Among the recent bird-colonists of London, we find that the moorhen and ringdove have established themselves here, but in very small numbers.

There are two good-sized lakes (besides a bathing-pond), and the islands might be made very attractive to birds, both land and water. They are planted with trees, the best grown in the park, but have no proper cover for species that nest on the ground and in low bushes, and no rushes or other aquatic plants on their edges. It is a wonder that even the moorhens are able to rear any young. The lakes are much used for boating, and this is said to be in the way of providing the birds with proper refuges in and round the islands; but there is no lake in London more used for boating exercise than that of Battersea, yet it has there been found possible to give proper accommodation and protection to the water-birds in the breeding season.

It is melancholy to find that the songsters have been decreasing in this park for some years past. Birds are perhaps of more value here than in any other metropolitan open s.p.a.ce. Thrushes, blackbirds, and chaffinches are still not uncommon. The robin, t.i.tmouse, and dunnock are becoming rare. The greenfinch and (I believe) the wren have vanished. The decrease of the chaffinch is most regretted by the East-enders, who have an extraordinary admiration for that bird. Bird fanciers are very numerous in the East, and the gay chaffinch is to them the first of the feathered race; in fact, it may be said that he is first and the others nowhere. Now the value of the chaffinch to the bird fancier depends on his song--on the bird's readiness to sing when his music is wanted, and the qualities of his notes, their strength, spirit, and wildness. In the captive state the song deteriorates unless the captive is frequently made to hear and sing against a wild bird. At these musical contests the caged bird catches and retains something of the fine pa.s.sion and brilliancy of his wild antagonist, and the more often he is given such a lesson the better will it be for its owner, who may get twenty to fifty s.h.i.+llings, and sometimes much more, for a good singer. Victoria Park was the only accessible place to most of the East-enders who keep chaffinches for singing-matches and for profit, to which their birds could be taken to get the necessary practice. To this park they were accustomed to come in considerable numbers, especially on Sunday mornings in spring and summer. Even now, when the wild birds are so greatly reduced in numbers, many chaffinch fanciers may be met with; even on working days I have met as many as a dozen men slouching about among the shrubberies, each with a small cage covered with a cotton handkerchief or rag, in quest of a wild bird for his favourite to challenge and sing against. They do not always succeed in finding their wild bird, and when found he may not be a first-rate singer, or may become alarmed and fly away; and as it is a far cry to Epping Forest and the country, most of the men being very poor and having some occupation which takes up most of their time, the decline of Victoria Park as a training ground for their birds is a great loss to them.

I have tried, but without success, to believe that there was something more than the sporting or gambling spirit in the East-ender's pa.s.sion for the chaffinch. Is it not probable, I have asked myself, that this short swift lyric, the musical cry of a heart overflowing with gladness, yet with a ring of defiance in it, a challenge to every other chaffinch within hearing, has some quality in it which stirs a human hearer too, even an East-ender, more than any other bird sound, and suddenly wakes that ancient wild nature that sleeps in us, the vanished sensations of gladness and liberty? I am reluctantly compelled to answer that I think not. The East-ender admires the chaffinch because he is a sporting bird--a bird that affords good sport; just as the man who has been accustomed to shoot starlings from traps has a peculiar fondness for that species, and as the c.o.c.k-fighter admires the gamec.o.c.k above all feathered creatures. Deprive the c.o.c.k-fighter of his sport--the law has not quite succeeded in taking it away yet--and the bird ceases to attract him; its brilliant courage, the beauty of its shape, its scarlet comb, s.h.i.+ning red hackles and green sickle plumes, and its clarion voice that proclaims in the dark silent hours that another day has dawned, all go for nothing.

It is unhappily necessary to say even more in derogation of the East-end chaffinch fancier, who strikes one as nothing worse than a very quiet inoffensive person, down on his luck, as he goes softly about among the shrubberies with the little tied-up cage under his arm. He is not always looking out for a wild chaffinch solely for the purpose of affording his pet a little practice in the art of singing; he not unfrequently carries a dummy chaffinch and a little bird-lime concealed about his person, and is quick and cunning at setting up his wooden bird and limed twigs when a wild bird appears and the park constable is out of sight.

In some of the parks, where the wild birds are cared for, the men who are found skulking about the shrubberies with cages in their hands are very sharply ordered out. It is not so in Victoria Park, and this may be the reason of the decrease in its wild bird life.

In Victoria Park I have met with some amusing instances of the entire absorption of the chaffinch votaries in their favourite bird, their knowledge of and quickness in hearing and seeing him, and inability to see and hear any other species. Thus, one man a.s.sured me that he had never seen a robin in the park, that there were no robins there. Another related as a very curious thing that he had seen a robin, red breast and all, and had heard it sing! Yet you can see and hear a robin in Victoria Park any day.

We now come to the famous Marsh. Victoria Park is in shape like a somewhat gouty or swollen leg and foot, the leg cut off below the knee; the broad toes of the foot point towards London Fields and the north, the flat sole towards Bishopsgate Street, distant two miles; the upper part of the severed leg almost touches the large s.p.a.ce of Hackney Marsh.

The Marsh contains 337 acres; the adjoining North and South Mill Fields 23 and 34 acres respectively--the whole thus comprising an area of nearly 400 acres. It was acquired by the London County Council for the public in 1894, but before its acquisition the East-end public had the use of it, and, no doubt, some right in it, as the owners of ponies and donkeys were accustomed to keep their animals there. It was a kind of no-man's-land in London, and it is indeed with the greatest bitterness that the old frequenters of the Marsh of (to them) pleasant memories recall the liberty they formerly enjoyed in following their own devices, and compare it with the restrictions of the present time. There is no liberty now, they complain. If a man sits down on the gra.s.s a policeman will come and look at him to see if he is doing any damage. The County Council have deprived the public of its ancient sacred rights. It must be borne in mind that the 'public' spoken of by the discontented ones means only a small section, and not the most reputable section, of the very large population of East London.

To those who know Hackney Marsh from having looked upon it from a railway carriage window (and most of the dwellers in other districts know it only in that way) it is but a green, flat, low piece of land, bounded by buildings of some kind in the distance, a featureless s.p.a.ce over which the vision roams in vain in search of something to rest upon, utterly devoid of interest, to be seen and straightway forgotten. Yet I have experienced a pleasing sense of exhilaration here, a feeling somewhat differing in character from that produced in me by any other metropolitan open s.p.a.ce. And this was not strange, for there is really nothing like Hackney Marsh in London. Commons, indeed, of various aspects we have in plenty, parks, too, natural, artificial, dreary, pretty; and heaths, downs, woods, and wildernesses; but the Marsh alone presents to the eyes a large expanse of absolutely flat gra.s.sy land, without a bush, stick, or molehill to break its smooth surface. A mile or a mile and a quarter away, according to the direction, you see an irregular line of buildings forming the horizon, with perhaps a tapering church spire and a tall factory chimney or two; and if this extent of green waste seems not great, it should be borne in mind that a man standing on a flat surface has naturally a very limited horizon, and that a mile in this district of London is equal to two miles or more in the country, owing to the blue haze which produces an illusive effect of distance. Walking about this green level land in pleasant weather, I have experienced in some degree the delightful sensation which is always produced in us by a perfectly flat extensive surface, such as we find in some parts of Cambridges.h.i.+re, Lincolns.h.i.+re, and Norfolk. This is the individual character and peculiar fascination of Hackney Marsh. And it is possible that this feeling of liberty and ease, which mere flatness and s.p.a.ciousness give, was an element in the attraction which the Marsh has always had for the East Londoner.

Here on a windy day at the end of February I have been tempted to exclaim (like a woman), 'What a picture I could make--if I only knew how to paint!' The rains and floods and spring-like warmth of the winter of 1896-7 had made the gra.s.s look preternaturally green; the distant buildings, ugly perhaps when viewed closely, at the distance of a mile, or even half a mile, were looking strangely picturesque in the pale smoky haze, changing, when the sun was obscured by a flying cloud and again burst forth, from deep blue to bright pearly grey; and the tall chimneys changed, too, from a darkness that was almost black to glowing brick-red. The wind was so strong that it was a labour to walk against it; but as I walked along the river I came on a solitary swan, and as though alarmed he rose up and flew away before me with a very free powerful flight in the face of the wind; but he flew low, and for a distance of a quarter of a mile his white wings s.h.i.+ning in the sun looked wonderfully bright and beautiful against the vivid green expanse.

The swans in this part of the River Lea are the property of the Water Company, but they fly about very freely, and are like wild birds. Larks, too, were soaring to sing on that day in spite of the wind's violence; first one fluttered up before me, then a second, then a third, and by-and-by I had four high overhead within hearing at the same time.

It struck me as a great thing to hear four larks at one time in a metropolitan open s.p.a.ce, for the lark is fast dying out in the neighbourhood of London. I greatly doubt if these birds on the Marsh ever succeed in bringing off any young; but the large green s.p.a.ce is a great attraction, and it is probable that a few stragglers from the country settle down every spring, and that the numbers are thus kept up.

The skylark, starling, and sparrow are the only common resident species.

A kestrel hovering above the Marsh is a common sight, and lapwings at certain times of the year are frequent visitors. The resident species are indeed few, but there is no spot near London where anything like so great a variety of waders and water-fowl appear during the autumn and spring migrations, and in severe weather in winter.

There is a great deal of running water in Hackney Marsh, and most of the ground lies between two large currents--the East London Waterworks ca.n.a.l on the west side and the sinuous River Lea on the other side. Midway in its course over the Marsh the river divides, the lesser stream being called Lead Mill Stream; lower down the currents reunite: thus the land between forms a long, green, flat island. On this island stands the White House, or White House Fishery, close to the bridge over the Lea, a favourite house for anglers in the vanished days when the Lea was a good river to fish in. The anglers have long forsaken it; but it is a pretty place, standing alone and white on the green level land, surrounded by its few scattered trees, with something of the air about it of a remote country inn, very restful to London eyes. It is also a place of memories, but these are not all of sweet or pleasant things. The White House was the centre and headquarters of the Hackney Marsh sportsmen, and the sports they followed were mostly of that description which, albeit still permissible, are now generally regarded as somewhat brutal and blackguardly in character.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHITE HOUSE FISHERY, HACKNEY MARSH]

Rabbit coursing, or rabbit worrying, with terriers; and pigeon, starling, and sparrow shooting from traps, were the favourite pastimes.

The crowds which gathered to witness these matches were not nice to see and hear, nor were they representative of the people of any London district; they were, in fact, largely composed of the lowest roughs drawn from a population of a million souls--raucous-voiced, lawless, obscene in their language, filthy in their persons, and vicious in their habits. Yet you will find many persons, not of this evil description, who lament that these doings on the Marsh have been abolished, so dear is sport of some kind, involving the killing of animals, to the natural man! Others rejoice at the change. One oldish man, who said that he had known and loved the Marsh from boyhood, and had witnessed the sports for very many years, a.s.sured me that only since the County Council had taken this open s.p.a.ce in hand was it possible for quiet and decent folks to enjoy it. As to the wild bird shooting, he was glad that that too had been done away with; men who spent their Sundays shooting at starlings, larks, and pa.s.sing pigeons were, he said, a rough lot of blackguards.

Two of his anecdotes are worth repeating. One Sunday morning when he was on the Marsh a young sportsman succeeded in bringing down a pigeon which was flying towards London. The bird when picked up was found to have a card attached to its wing--not an unusual occurrence as homing birds were often shot. On the card in this case was written the brief message, 'Mother is dead.' My informant said that it made him sick, but the young sportsman was proud of his achievement.

The other story was of a skylark that made its appearance three summers ago in a vacant piece of ground adjoining Victoria Park. The bird had perhaps escaped from a cage, and was a fine singer, and all day long it could be heard as it flew high above the houses and the park pouring out a continuous torrent of song. It attracted a good deal of attention, and all the Hackney Marsh sportsmen who possessed guns were fired with the desire to shoot it. Every Sunday morning some of them would get into the field to watch their chance to fire at the bird as it rose or returned to the ground; and this shooting went on, and the 'feathered frenzy,' still untouched by a pellet, soared and sung, until cold weather came, when it disappeared.

To return to the White House. This has for the last ninety years been in the possession of a family named Beresford, who have all had a taste for collecting rare birds, and their collection, now split up and distributed among the members of the family, shows that during the last four or five decades Hackney Marsh has been visited by an astonis.h.i.+ng variety of wild birds. The chief prize is a cream-coloured courser, the only specimen of this rare straggler from Asia ever obtained in the neighbourhood of London. It was shot on the morning of October 19, 1858, and the story is that a working man came full of excitement to the White House to say that he had just seen a strange bird, looking like a piece of whity-brown paper blowing about on the Marsh; whereupon the late Mr.

George Beresford took down his gun, went out, and secured the wanderer.

It may be seen on the map of London that Hackney Marsh lies in that broad belt of low wet ground which forms the valley of the Lea, and cuts obliquely through North-east and East London to the Thames at Bugsby's Reach, as that part of the river between Woolwich and the Isle of Dogs is beautifully named. Leyton Marsh, Hackney Marsh, Stratford Marsh, West Ham Abbey Marsh, and Bromley Marsh are all portions of this low strip, over and beyond which London has spread. This marshy valley is not wholly built over; it contains a great deal of mud and water, and open s.p.a.ces more or less green; but on account of the number of factories, gasworks, and noisy industries of various kinds, and of its foul and smoky condition, it is not a home for wild bird life.

Some distance beyond or east of this marshy belt--seven miles east of St. Paul's in the City--there is Wanstead Park, or Wanstead Old Park, and this is the last and outermost public open s.p.a.ce and habitation of wild birds belonging to East London to be described here. Epping Forest (with Wanstead Flats), although quite close to Wanstead Park at its nearest end, runs far into Ess.e.x, and lies in a perfectly rural district.

Wanstead Park itself may seem almost too distant from London to be included here; but Wanstead village and Snaresbrook are all one, and Snaresbrook and Leytonstone extend loving tentacles and clasp each other, and Leytonstone clasps Leyton, and there is no break in spite of the mud and water; and the only thing to be said is that east of the Lea it is Bethnal Green mitigated or ruralised.

'I was in despair for many days,' some old traveller has said, relating his adventures in uninhabited and savage places, 'but at length, to my great joy, I spied a gibbet, for I then knew that I was coming to a civilised country.' In like manner, at Snaresbrook and Leytonstone many things tell us that we are coming to, and are practically in, London.

But Wanstead Park itself, and the open country adjoining it, with its fine old trees, and the River Roding, when the rains have filled it, winding like a silver serpent across the green earth, is very rural and beautiful and refres.h.i.+ng to the sight.

The park (182 acres) is mostly a wood, unlike Highgate, Churchyard Bottom, Wimbledon, or any other wood open to the public near London. It has green s.p.a.ces and a great deal of water (the lakes and the Roding, which runs through it), and is very charming in its openness, its perfect wildness, and the variety of sylvan scenery contained in it. As might be supposed, this park is peculiarly rich in wild bird life, and among the breeding species may be mentioned mallard and teal, ringdove and turtle-dove, woodp.e.c.k.e.r, jay, hawfinch, and nightingale. But the chief attraction is the very large rookery and heronry contained on one of the two large wooded islands. It has sometimes happened when rooks and herons have built on the same trees, or in the same wood, that they have fallen out, and the herons have gone away in disgust to settle elsewhere. At Wanstead no disastrous war has yet taken place, although much quarrelling goes on. The heronry is probably very old, as in 1834 it was described as 'long established and very populous.' The birds subsequently abandoned their old quarters on Heron Island and established their heronry on Lincoln Island, and in recent years they appear to have increased, the nests in 1896 numbering fifty or fifty-one, and in 1897 forty-nine.

In conclusion, I wish to suggest that it would be well to make Wanstead Park as far as possible a sanctuary for all wild creatures. A perfect sanctuary it could not very well be made--there are certain creatures which must be kept down by killing. The lake, for instance, is infested by pike--our crocodile, and Nature's chief executioner in these realms.

I doubt if the wild duck, teal, little grebe, and moorhen succeed in rearing many young in this most dangerous water. Again, too many jays in this limited s.p.a.ce would probably make it very uncomfortable for the other birds. Finally, the place swarms with rats, and as there are no owls, stoats, and weasels to keep them down, man must kill or try to kill them, badly helped by that most miserable of all his servants, the ferret.

But allowing that a perfect sanctuary is not possible, it would be better to do away with the autumn and winter shooting. It is as great a delight to see wild duck, snipe, ringdoves in numbers, and stray waders and water-fowl as any other feathered creatures; and it is probable that if guns were not fired here, or not fired too often, this well-sheltered piece of wood and water would become the resort in winter of many persecuted wild birds, and that they would here lose the excessive wariness which makes it in most cases so difficult to observe them.

A word must be added concerning the rook-shooting, which takes place in May, when there are still a good many young herons in the nests. At Wanstead I have been seriously told that the herons are mightily pleased to witness the annual ma.s.sacre of their unneighbourly black neighbours, or their young. My own belief, after seeing the process, is that the panic of terror into which the old herons are thrown may result some day in the entire colony s.h.i.+fting its quarters into some quieter wood in Ess.e.x; and that it would be well to adopt some other less dangerous method of thinning the rooks, if they are too numerous, which is doubtful.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WANSTEAD OLD PARK: EARLY SPRING]

For the rest, the Corporation are deserving of nothing but praise for their management of this invaluable ground. Here is a bit of wild woodland nature unspoiled by the improving spirit which makes for prettiness in the Royal Parks and Kew Gardens and in too many of the County Council's open s.p.a.ces. The trees are not deprived of their lower branches, nor otherwise mutilated, or cut down because they are aged or decaying or draped in ivy; nor are the wind-chased yellow and russet leaves that give a characteristic beauty and charm to the winter woodland here swept up and removed like offensive objects; nor are the native shrubs and evergreens rooted up to be replaced by that always ugly inharmonious exotic, the rhododendron.

CHAPTER XII

SOUTH-EAST LONDON

General survey of South London--South-east London: its most populous portion--Three small open s.p.a.ces--Camberwell New Park--Southwark Park--Kennington Park--Fine shrubberies--Greenwich Park and Blackheath--A stately and depressing park--Mutilated trees--The extreme East--Bostell Woods and Heath--Their peculiar charm--Woolwich and Plumstead Commons--Hilly Fields--Peckham Rye and Park--A remonstrance--Nunhead and Camberwell Cemeteries--Dulwich Park--Brockwell Park--The rookery.

South London, comprising the whole of the metropolis on the Surrey and Kent side of the Thames, is not here divided into two districts--South-east and South-west--merely for convenience sake, because it is too large to be dealt with in one chapter. Considered with reference to its open s.p.a.ces and to the physical geography of this part of the metropolitan area, South London really comprises two districts differing somewhat in character.

Taking London to mean the whole of the area built upon and the outer public open s.p.a.ces that touch or abut on streets, or rows of houses, we find that South London, from east to west, exceeds North London in length, the distance from Plumstead and Bostell to Kew and Old Deer Park being about nineteen miles as the crow flies. Not, however, as the London crow flies when travelling up and down river between these two points, as his custom is: following the Thames in its windings, his journey each way would not be a less distance than twenty-seven to twenty-eight miles. At the eastern end of South London we find that the open s.p.a.ces, from Bostell to Greenwich, lie near the river; that from Greenwich the line of open s.p.a.ces diverges wide from the river, and, skirting the densely populated districts, extends southwards through a hilly country to Brockwell and Sydenham. On the west side, or the other half of South London (the South-west district), the open s.p.a.ces are, roughly speaking, ranged in a similar way; but they are more numerous, larger, and extend for a much greater distance along the river--in fact, from Richmond and Kew to Battersea Park. There the line ends, the other open s.p.a.ces being scattered about at a considerable distance from the river. Thus we have, between the river on one side and the retreating frontier line of open s.p.a.ces on the other, a large densely-populated district, containing few and small breathing-s.p.a.ces, but not quite so badly off in this respect as the most crowded portion of East London.

The Post-Office line dividing the Southern districts cuts through this populous part of South London, and has a hilly country on the left side of the line and a comparatively flat country on the right or west side.

The west side is the district of large commons; on the east side the open s.p.a.ces are not so many nor, as a rule, so large, but in many ways they are more interesting.

All that follows in this chapter will relate to the open s.p.a.ces on the east side of the line.

The most densely populated portion of South-east London lies between Greenwich and Kennington Oval, a distance of about four miles and a half. This crowded part contains about twelve square miles of streets and houses, and there are in it three open s.p.a.ces called 'parks,'

but quite insignificant in size considering the needs of so vast a population. These three s.p.a.ces are Deptford Park, a small s.p.a.ce of 17 acres opened in 1897, Southwark Park, Kennington Park, and Myatt's Fields; the last a small open s.p.a.ce of fourteen acres, a gift of Mr.

William Minet to the public; formerly the property of one Myatt, a fruit-grower, and the first to introduce and cultivate the now familiar rhubarb in this country.

Southwark Park (63 acres) is the only comparatively large breathing-place easily accessible to the working-cla.s.s population inhabiting Deptford, Rotherhithe, and Bermondsey.