BIRDCAGE WALK

Northern Advocate, 9 July 1938, Page 12

BIRDCAGE WALK

THERE aro today no cages in Birdcage Walk. London. There are are no cocks on Cock Pit Steps, no peacocks in Peacock Street, no ploughs in Plough Court. It would be strange to pick plums in Plum Lane, or to find loaves of bread lining the kerb in Bread Alley. The names, boa mg so little relationship to the surroundings, suggest nothing. No one stops at the corner to wonder why peacocks and ploughs and plums are associated with the old places; no one, that is, but a curious loiterer, who has time on his hands and a thirst for knowledge. With Birdcage Walk, however, it is rather different. On each side lies the Park beloved of birds, on the other old houses with gracious bow windows and an atmosphere of elegant ease suggestive of gilt cages. At one end rise the high, gilded bars of Buckingham Palace, at the other a great gate cuts the Walk off from Parliament Square and the heated actions of political life. It is a select quarter, refusing to lose its identity, where the sun shines warmly on the well-cut grass and flower beds. Moreover, there is a 'wide, quiet path for pedestrians, shaded by the leaves of plane trees, and graced at one time by royalty only; a place in which a merry monarch might have indulged his whims and fancies to his heart’s content.

It was a curious idea (says a cor-, respondent in the “Christian Science Monitor”) which led King Charles• 11. to line the Walk with aviaries; but the King had unusual tastes and caged birds afforded him mucr. diversion, Sp many feathered pets did he possess that an official was appointed “Keeper of the King’s Birds,” Master Edward Storey by name, who ft is said, lived in a house on the spqt where Storey’s Gate now stands. Tfip collection included ducks and other wild fowl from all parts of the world, which were given the freedom of the Park with its stretch of water apd little island. There the King would sit on a bench, playing with his pets for hours at a time, and laughing ait the way they fought for the crumbs he tossed to them. ,

The ducks —or rather, their descendants —still frequent the Park, resting' on the sunny banks, flying after oneanother round the bird sanctuary, div- 1 ing for food, and affording the public ■ endless amusement. The Walk is still ? a restful place, not exclusively royal as it was until a hundred years ago, but consciously bathed in the atmosphere of palaces. The old names are there, the songbirds are there, too, singing among the lilac bushes and the snow-white blossom of the cherry trees. Only the cages have gone.