Our idea of a park today is quite different from what it was in the 1860s. John Claudius Loudon, a prominent landscape gardener of the first half of the eighteenth century, defined a park as "‘varied by wood, water, rocks, building, and other objects.’ They were interspersed by roads and walks , grazed by sheep, deer and cattle, and ‘without flowers or shrubs."’5
The idea of what a park looked like and how it should function resulted from its roots as a ‘Commons.’ A common was a plot of land that:
originated as wastelands of the manor. In the course of time adjoining landowners and their tenants acquired rights such as digging turf, cutting gorse and bracken, and grazing cattle and sheep. Commoners’ rights could not be used for sale or profit and because ownership was not absolute , these rights prevented the lord of the manor from selling, enclosing, cultivating or building on the land unless he applied to do so by an Act of Parliament. 6
This lead a German landscape gardener to comment that English parks were, "inferior to those on the Continent and intended more for the grazing of cattle that the enjoyment of people!" 7
When the land at Beacon Hill was set aside residents of Victoria intuitively assumed the right to let their cattle graze in the Park. This, however, interfered with the Cricket playing in the Park. In 1864 the United Victoria Cricket Club wrote the Governor:
For permission to fence in temporarily a portion of Beacon Hill for the use of the Club not exceeding Fifty square yards; the fencing to consist of moveable arm or wooden hurdle which will be removed whilst playing and put up when the ground is not being played upon in order to keep off Cattle, Horses, etc.8
Two years later the Victoria Cricket Club asked to fence in 165 yards square, "which would certainly be destroyed during the winter months by the inroads of pigs and cattle." 9
The Victorian concept of land and its uses went beyond using the Park as a grazing ground. A letter from the Sheriff to the Governor in 1859 mentions that people were cutting wood from trees in Beacon Hill Park. Sheriff Heaton suggested that fines should "be inflicted on persons convicted of damaging trees removing wood or any other infraction of the Forest laws." 10 Three years later a newspaper report lamented the loss of trees in Beacon Hill Park. 11 As long as people neede fuel to heat their homes and cook their meals there would be no end to the cutting of trees in Beacon Hill Park.