Читать книгу Walking in London. Park, heath and waterside - 25 walks in London's green spaces онлайн

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All around Victorian London there were great natural spaces held as common land. From Tudor times, and gathering great force from the 18th century, tracts of land which were once open for all to use – for grazing, say – became enclosed by a landowner and the collective rights withdrawn. Although the city had grown in part through the use of enclosure for housing and commercial development, areas right across the capital from Tooting Common to Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest were still held in common. In 1864 the proposed enclosure of much of one of the largest of the commons – Wimbledon – proved a spur to campaigners, who feared that if Wimbledon went, no other common in the capital would be safe. Meanwhile, in Epping Forest, enclosures by a local vicar were opposed by the direct action (and ensuing imprisonment) of his parishioners.

Within a year a Commons Preservation Society was set up, its aim ‘to save London commons for the enjoyment and recreation of the public’. It had early success, with an act of 1866 that in essence barred further enclosure of London Commons. Not that the war was quite over; as an example, in 1896 a golf club sought to ban locals from One Tree Hill (Walk 22), only for mass demonstrations of first 15,000 then over 50,000 to assert their rights. However, we must thank the 1866 act and its successors for the retention of common land across the city, which provides much relatively untampered, relatively wild land to retain its natural aspect, and with it a refuge for many species that would otherwise be lost.