The story of the Bethnal Green Gardens is very different. Although it was only in 1891 that the present arrangements with regard to keeping up the Gardens were established, the 15.5 acres of which they form part has a long history. As far back as 1667 the land was purchased by a group of residents, who collectively suscribed �200, and by a trust-deed dated 1690 conveyed the land to trustees, to be administered for the benefit of the poor. It had been purchased and enclosed, the deed specified, "for the prevention of any new building thereon." Of this ground 9 acres form the present Garden; on part of the remainder St. John's Church was built, and in 1872 the Bethnal Green Museum, an offshoot from South Kensington, was opened on another section. The most exhaustive work on Municipal Parks says that when the land "came into the possession of the London County Council" it "consisted of orchard, paddock, kitchen garden, and pleasure grounds, all in a rough and neglected condition." Under the levelling hand of the London County Council it has been made to look exactly like every other public garden, with "ornamental wrought-iron enclosing fences, broad walks, shrubberies," and so on, at a cost of over �5000, and was opened in 1895. There is no trace of its former condition, nothing to point to its antiquity or any difference in its appearance from the most modern acquisition. Perhaps after all it is as well, for among the thousands of that poor and crowded district that use and enjoy it, there is not one to whom a passing thought of the old weavers who were settled there when the land was given, or to whom the legend of pretty Bessee the Blind Beggar's daughter of Bethnal Green would occur. Though the design is prosaic, the gardens are made cheerful and gay, and if they add a gleam of brightness to the lives of toil of those living near them, they must be said to fulfil their purpose.
