SURREY HILLS TO THE FRONT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6820, 26 September 1883, Page 6

SURREY HILLS TO THE FRONT.

TO THE EDITOR. I Sir, —We are a mo3t susceptible community. The fact, communicated by the Health Officer, is undeniable that the Dorio on the brain, which prevailed last week, has been succeeded this week by Surrey Hills on the brain. The attack of the epidemic has been as sharp, as widespread, and at the present moment rages beyond all power of confining it within reasonable bounds. You, Sir, are well aware from whence the epidemic has arisen. You sowed it broadcast by the dissemination of yonr. contagious sheets of the day before yesterday, and upon you rests the serious responsibility of having within eight and forty hours infected, the whole community. And most effectually you have done so ; but permit me to say not altogether in a justifiable manner, although you have the excuse of having been led away ! in a most justifiable cause when you allowed youself to pen such severe sentences as — k"The apportionment of the land appears to i have been made. solely with the object of | squeezing the "utmost possible farthing out of the land, and in heartless disregard of the health and interests of the public," and ." we trust that in very shame the promoters of this thing will , withdraw it .' in its . present • form." I- agree with; you -in your opinion that the owners of the Surrey Hills have made a great financial mistake in having subdivided the whole property in the manner they have done. We are now sufficiently advanced in : civilization not only to appreciate, but pay for, decently sized allotments, a;id be secured against rabbit-warren rookeries as surroundings, But you overstretch fair criticism when you; would make us infer that these, to you, objectionable rights-of-way were laid off" to " squeeze the utmost possible farthing out <?f the land." The proprietors, or rather read the surveyor, I will undertake to say, never dreamt, for one moment, that these back entrance lanes would be converted into streets, and peopled with "the artizan and labouring classes," who you say "areJ not" so . stupid as. as they are thought"to. .1 be, and don't like being, packedas": close'as herrings in a barrel." These back entrance ways, as the whole plan of the estate unmistakably points out, have been , everywhere msKle, solely for the convenience of the occupiers. •In all cases, , main , handsome- streets are laid off—the principal ones, a hundred , feet wide, and in no'cases , under ;sixty-six feet. Now it must,be, a. fact patent to everyone who desires- to have a comfortable, arid: in every way presentable town'residence, that suchVcannot be attained without a separate back entrance, /Imagine for a moment every house /requiring : to make its own side cutting across the pavement t> get to the stables at'the rear. One would suppose it was an unknown thing, " the mews" at the'back' of; every good ..street in every city at home. Why, houses would remain unlet without having such.And in a new ■colony and young city, it is a much .more urgent necessity to be able to get a back entrance to our premises', for the applianees as - yet.. do not exist to deliver to us all ' our wants in a spick-span tidiness at our front doors. . -Exemption granted—the house occupies whole frontage of tho lot—a load of firewood arrives—it has all to; be carried through the house to the depot-at' the, back-; 'ab uno "disce o mnes ! I ■cannot he!p'be:ug thoroughly impressed with' the conviction that those most necessary back-entrance-ways were most undoubtedly.;and.most expressly.made with the one only object;: the disinterested one of securing a great, inconvenience to the future possessors of these .buildin« sites. That the use of such may bp peryerted in the manner yon so warmly is no doubt quite;.possible, and if such can be prevented, ought to be. And it can .be.j-.in the simplest of manners;' inVso far as,the proprietors of Surrey Hills are concerned—to the detriment- of" the purchasers of. lots, and 'not to the owners of the estate. Just run all the lots' back to back, and so obliterate, ajl these rights-of-way. This, according to your showing, will increase the .value of the property,' "as securing it against .back rookeries. , but : 'it; will be so secured at the cost of a great' comfort .to the- ' future The question ..therefore,? is,how can both ends be attained-fthe;., convenience of this back entrance, and the' impossibility of these—to. use your . own 1 ' strong language— "becoming a-moral pollution"of the public 'for all time." The solution of the'difficulty is very simple, and will be accepted by ah save'- those 'who deem a freehold is not a freehold unless it can be dealt with for more than one thousand yt-ars. Make the title a leasehold for 999 years, and then it can be hedged in with whatever restrictions may be required to secure the end, against " these wretched back slums, intended (nof by the owners of Surrey Hills) to be a swarm of thousands of unfortunate being 3," as you put it. A simple clause; '"Only one dwell-

ing house shall be^reoted]" do the-whole thing, vide the Albert *P®\ villas, and how beautiful, are they ? Pa £ i conclusion, I beg to nay I have nnM.-* 0 Surrey Hiu *. && N.8.-I fail to P C which havo only a frontage to the way; none such exist. There arT three plots of ground not subdivided JS? are reached only by the • dently reserves for some purposes *i remark that between four'and five feet of saleable frontage is lost fc v 1? 4 . ' absorbed in giving these back entrance tangible item at twenty to forty shiUinnj sfyj* ■