Bonner Gate - the entrance to Victoria Park

Image: © Marathon Taken: 27 Nov 2013

Victoria Park was created following a public petition from 30,000 people to Queen Victoria asking that "the comfort and healthful recreation of all classes of the inhabitants shall be adequately shall be adequately provided for, on a scale commensurate with that of the other Metropolitan Parks". The desire to relieve the squalor and pollution of the East End came not just from local people, but also from inhabitants of the West End, who feared the spread of contagious diseases. The park was financed by the sale of Lancaster house (then York House) in St James's, and required a special Act of Parliament to establish it. It was laid out in the vicinity of Bonner's Fields, where heretics had once been burnt. It was designed by Sir James Pennethorne who complained that the land was "dead flat, without variations of any kind, except excavations for sand and gravel". The purchase of land and development of the park was so slow that by 1845, the public, exasperated by the delays, simply began using it. This is Bonner Gate seen from Sewardstone Road. This is probably the most impressive of all the entrances to the park. Just beyond is Bonner Bridge across the Regent's Canal - see http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3764946

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