Parks
With increasing urbanisation of London, some of these were preserved as freely accessible open space and became public parks with the introduction of the Crown Lands Act, 1851. There are today eight parks formally described by this name and they cover almost 2,000 hectares (4,900 acres) of land in Greater London.
- Bushy Park, 445 hectares (1,100 acres)
- Green Park, 19 hectares (47 acres)
- Greenwich Park, 74 hectares (180 acres)
- Hyde Park, 142 hectares (350 acres)
- Kensington Gardens, 111 hectares (270 acres)
- Regent's Park, 166 hectares (410 acres)
- Richmond Park, 955 hectares (2,360 acres (9.6 km2))
- St. James's Park, 23 hectares (57 acres)
Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens (which are adjacent), Green Park, Regent's Park and St James's Park are the largest green spaces in central London. Bushy Park, Greenwich Park and Richmond Park are in the suburbs. The Royal Parks agency also manages Brompton Cemetery, Grosvenor Square Gardens, Victoria Tower Gardens and the gardens of 10, 11 and 12 Downing Street.
Read more about this topic: Royal Parks Of London
Famous quotes containing the word parks:
“Towns are full of people, houses full of tenants, hotels full of guests, trains full of travelers, cafés full of customers, parks full of promenaders, consulting-rooms of famous doctors full of patients, theatres full of spectators, and beaches full of bathers. What previously was, in general, no problem, now begins to be an everyday one, namely, to find room.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)