The story of the Bethnal Green Gardens is very different. Although it was only in 1891 that the present arrangements with regard to keeping up the Gardens were established, the 15½ acres of which they form part has a long history. As far back as 1667 the land was purchased by a group of residents, who collectively subscribed £200, and by a trust-deed dated 1690 conveyed the land to trustees, to be administered for the benefit of the poor. It had been purchased and enclosed, the deed specified, “for the prevention of any new building thereon.” Of this ground 9 acres form the present Garden; on part of the remainder St. John’s Church was built, and in 1872 the Bethnal Green Museum, an offshoot from South Kensington, was opened on another section. The most exhaustive work on Municipal Parks says that when the land “came into the possession of the London County Council” it “consisted of orchard, paddock, kitchen garden, and pleasure grounds, all in a rough and neglected condition.” Under the levelling hand of the London County Council it has been made to look exactly like every other public garden, with “ornamental wrought-iron enclosing fences, broad walks, shrubberies,” and so on, at a cost of over £5000, and was opened in 1895. There is no trace of its former condition, nothing to point to its antiquity or any difference in its appearance from the most modern acquisition. Perhaps after all it is as well, for among the thousands of that poor and crowded district that use and enjoy it, there is not one to whom a passing thought of the old weavers who were settled there when the land was given, or to whom the legend of pretty Bessee the Blind Beggar’s daughter of Bethnal Green would occur. Though the design is prosaic, the gardens are made cheerful and gay, and if they add a gleam of brightness to the lives of toil of those living near them, they must be said to fulfil their purpose. VICTORIA PARK Victoria Park was the first of the modern Parks to be laid out, and it is the largest. When the advantage of an East End Park was admitted, the work of forming one was carried out by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. An Act passed in 1840 enabled them to sell York House to the Duke of Sutherland (hence it became Stafford House), for £72,000, and to purchase about 290 acres of land in the East End in the parishes of Hackney, Bethnal Green, and Bow. Part of this was reserved for building improved dwellings, and 193 acres formed Victoria Park, the laying out of which began in 1842. Thirty years later, when some of the land adjoining was about to be built on, the Metropolitan Board of Works bought some 24 acres to add to the Park, the whole of which, including the new part, was under the Office of Works. Other additions have been made from time to time, chiefly with a view to opening entrances to the Park, so as to make it as easy of access as possible from the crowded districts in the direction of Limehouse and the docks, and round Mile End Road.