FRANCESCA WADE
In hisTribune column of 4 August 1944, George Orwell noted that the railings – removed at the outbreak of war for scrap iron – were returning to London squares, so that ‘the lawful denizens of the squares can make use of their treasured keys again, and the children of the poor can be kept out’. Their destruction, he argued, had served as a ‘democratic gesture’: the gardens had acquired a ‘friendly, almost rural look’, since visitors were no longer ‘hounded out at closing times by grim-faced keepers’, but could enjoy the green spaces at leisure. The article attracted lively debate, including one stiff response which suggested that Orwell, in proposing that square gardens remain open to the public in perpetuity, was advocating the theft of private property. Orwell replied:
If giving the land of England back to the people of England is theft, I am quite happy to call it theft […] Except for the few surviving commons, the high roads, the lands of the National Trust, a certain number of parks, and the sea shore below high-tide mark, every square inch of England is ‘owned’ by a few thousand families. These people are just about as useful as so many tapeworms […] For three years or so the squares lay open, and their sacred turf was trodden by the feet of working-class children, a sight to make dividend-drawers gnash their false teeth. If that is theft, all I can say is, so much the better for theft.1
The story of London’s garden squares is full of such disputes. For centuries, their railed enclosures have stood as symbols of both the best and worst of the city: the charm and satisfaction of stumbling upon a tranquil green oasis in the midst of polluted streets, all too often tempered by the frustration of finding its iron gates lo
