BEAUTIFUL BERMONDSEY.

Hokitika Guardian, 25 February 1920, Page 3

BEAUTIFUL BERMONDSEY.

i.A I>OUR COUNCIL’S GARDEN IDEAL. LONDON, December 30.

"Beautiful Bermondsey’’ is an ideal which the new Labour borough council intends to carry out. The ‘•Beautification Committee” will hold its first meeting this week. At present Bermondsey is a district ol glue and size works, jam factories, tanneries, and cottage slums built early in the 19th. century.

Dr gaiter, the Labour alderman, confessed on Saturday that there are spots in Bermondsey, which look hopeless—courts and alleys of cottages where liv-ing-rooms open on the muddy thoroughfare, every cottage housing two and three families. But oven in these places he hopes, to do something with rock gardens and window boxes.

“There are derelict spaces now repositories for rubbish, which must lie cleaned and turned into beauty spots,” he said.' “Our chief hope is our housing plans. We shall slowly pull down the old cottages and build again not more than 12 houses to the acre. That will give us opportunity for garden work.”

“To my mind,” said an old resident, “the council ought to start beautifying IRermond.sey by getting rid of the smells and’ the rats. As for rats, it costs me pounds to clear this yard, and they’re all hack again in three weeks, the fattest and healthiest rats in Lon-

don.” The cost of beautifying Bermondsey will be met out of the rates. This does not worry Dr .Suiter. “London rates everywhere must go to 20s in the £,” he said. “Its the fault of our system of taxation, which is hundreds of years out of date.”