Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1883 — London Suburbs. [ARTICLE]

London Suburbs.

The suburbs of the metropolis, all of them full of historical and interesting tftssociations, and most of them, within the memory of living men, full of historical mansions, are fast losing, with their fields and woods, the old and distinctive flavor. Kensington has long since been built over; there are no longer fields at Notting Hill; Shepherd’s Bush, in whose thickets the footpads used to lie in wait for those who bad escaped the highwaymen from Hounslow Heath, is a labyrinth of mean streets and “jerry-built” houses. On the south side London has’.spread itself out for fifteen miles across the Surrey hills; there is little left of .the sweet rusticity of Dulwich; Clapham and Win.bledon have their commons still, but they are now great towns; Forest Hill has lost its forest, and JPenge its hanging woods. On the west there are houses a*s far as Brentford, Kew and Richmond; on the east the old village of Stratford-on-the-Bow has become a great town of 60,000 inhabitants, and the leafy, little, secluded villages which stand upon the. southern edge of Epping Forest are united by rowc of moan, hideous, monotonous terraces and villas. The way in which new suburbs spring up is like the dreams of a Western speculator whose imagination is let loose upon a plotting paper, and month after month the green fields and still villages become more distant from St. Paul’s. The tavern which to-day stands imjtspwn grounds* up in ivy and masses Of flowers, .whjgre we* may escape the noise of the ci|y 4 m rural privacy, may soon be transformed into a vulgar “public,” serving pots of washy ale oyer counter, and the bowers around it to be svrept away to make room for shops and cottages. At ope outpost in London is an Elizabethan mansion—real Elizabethan and real mansion—which has a dignity and genuineness about' its grandeur not common in these days of yeneer and affectation in buildings and nomenclature. It has been the manor for generations, and up to last year .it held a position of lofty isolation in its park, w here -the hawthorns and limes almost hid it from the outside world. But in twelve months it has become an anomaly. New homes, new shops and a railway have surrounded it. What was country a year ago is now an integral part of the city, and the old manorhouse, with its glory unimpaired, has suddenly become an anachronism. — W. H. JRideing, in Harper’s Magazine.