History
It was on the Rye in the 1760s that the artist William Blake claimed to have seen visions, including one of "a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars. " The novel The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark is based around this area. The park in the 50's - 70s was the site for a yearly fair.
The land for Peckham Rye Park was purchased by the London County Council for £51,000 and declared open on 14 May 1894. At that time the park was 54 acres (220,000 m2), 13 acres being occupied by Homestall Farm. One of the first features of the new park, an ornamental 'Old English Garden' was created. It was later renamed the 'Sexby Garden' after Colonel J.J.Sexby the London County Council's first Chief Officer of Parks. It was re-developed in 1936 and the paths re-laid with york stone paving.
During World War II, part of the Common became a Prisoner of War camp for Italian prisoners of war.
Read more about this topic: Peckham Rye
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (1735–1826)
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)