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64
METROPOLIS WATER SUPPLY.
The Bill promoted by the Executive Committee of Vestries and
District Boards for the purchase of the Water Companies' undertakings,
towards the promotion of which this Vestry contributed the sum of £150,
did not, unfortunately, meet with the approval of the Select Committee
of the House of Commons, to which, as mentioned in the last annual
report, it had been referred. It is not necessaiy here to refer to the
evidence given before the Committee on behalf of the various bodies
interested, but it is a matter much to be regretted, having regard to the
importance of a final settlement of the water question being effected
without delay, that some understanding should not have been arrived at
by which such clauses in the bill as were deemed impracticable might
have been amended and the main principle of the bill, viz., that of
placing the water supply of London in the hands of some public
authority, adopted and passed into law.
ALEXANDRA PALACE AND GROUNDS.
The question of dealing with this important open space is one which
is under consideration by the public bodies interested in securing to the
north of London and that part of Middlesex in which the Alexandra
Park is situate so valuable and important an acquisition. The initial
step towards attaining this object has been taken by the Middlesex
County Council, the Vestry having received in December last a communication
from the Chairman (Mr. Littler, Q.C.) enclosing particulars of
a scheme for the acquisition of the Palace and grounds for the use of
the public. The Palace and grounds at present belong to the London
Financial Association, who, it will be remembered, have lately been
trying to relieve themselves of their statutory inability to sell some 130
out of the 414 acres which constitute the Park. The scheme before
mentioned proposed that the whole of the estate of the London Financial
Association at Muswell Hill should be purchased, including the Palace
and racecourse, glass-house, boating lake, &c., &c., in all about 414 acres,
at an estimated cost of £300,000. As regards control it proposes