![\"QE](\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/olympic_village_IMG_71051.jpg\")
<\/a>QE Park Olympic Village: the charming lane with its rustic cottages<\/p><\/div> Making an Olympic Village in the Lea Valley’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park was a delightful idea. I love to stroll along a village high street. At dawn one hears the cocks crow and sees the milkmaids setting off for work. The crooked old streets have banks of wild flowers. On a summer’s eve the children […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,16,28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10558"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMaking an Olympic Village in the Lea Valley’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park<\/a> was a delightful idea. I love to stroll along a village high street. At dawn one hears the cocks crow and sees the milkmaids setting off for work. The crooked old streets have banks of wild flowers. On a summer’s eve the children play and God, one thinks, must have been in a very good mood when he made this place. Poetry fills one’s heart as one rushes to put down a deposit.
\nStands the Church clock at ten to three?
\nAnd is there honey still for tea? <\/em>
\n[Rupert Brooke]
\n***
\nNestling amid the trees we see the manor-house, the
\nabode of the squire, an ancient dwelling-place of Tudor or
\nJacobean design, surrounded by a moat, with a good terrace-
\nwalk in front, and a formal garden with fountain and sun-
\ndial and beds in arabesque. It seems to look down upon
\nthe village with a sort of protecting air. Near at hand are
\nsome old farm-houses, nobly built, with no vain pretension
\nabout them. Carefully thatched ricks and barns and stables
\nand cow-sheds stand around them<\/em>.
\n[Peter Hampson Ditchfield]
\n***
\nSweet Olympic! loveliest village of the plain,
\nWhere health and plenty cheer’d the labouring swain,
\nWhere smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
\nAnd parting summer’s lingering blooms delay’d:
\nDear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
\nSeats of my youth, when every sport could please,
\nHow often have I loiter’d o’er thy green,
\nWhere humble happiness endear’d each scene!
\nHow often have I paus’d on every charm,
\nThe shelter’d cot, the cultivated farm,
\nThe never-failing brook, the busy mill,
\nThe decent church that topt the neighbouring hill,
\nThe hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
\nFor talking age and whisp’ring lovers made!<\/em>
\n[Oliver Goldsmith]
\n***
\nThe Village Life, and every care that reigns
\nO’er youthful peasants and declining swains;
\nWhat labour yields, and what, that labour past,
\nAge, in its hour of languor, finds at last;
\nWhat form the real Picture of the Poor,
\nDemand a song–the Muse can give no more.<\/em>
\n[George Crabbe]
\nWonderful too that our present Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Right Honourable George Osborne MP, wants to give us our first Garden City for a hundred years at Ebbsfleet in Kent<\/a> – so long famed as The Garden of England. I expect it will be just as wonderful as the Olympic Village – and maybe even as wonderful as the Ajman Garden City<\/a> itself.
\nThe British government loves villages so much that it wants to expand them all into towns and then into cities. The reason for this is that ‘expanding existing settlements’ is seen as better than ‘building new towns’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"