London and green space, 1850–2000: an introduction

In a recent photographic celebration of the diversity of green London, the authors point out that the metropolis has ‘an astonishing sixty seven square miles of parks, commons, community gardens, garden squares, nature reserves and churchyards to be enjoyed’.1 Such an extent and variety of green space is the product of a long evolutionary process whose main components are discussed in the two chapters that follow covering the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It may be helpful first, however, to outline the characteristic features of different phases, although periodising developments over such a long period of time is problematical.