The regenerative power of parks and green spaces is more important than ever, in these times where you never know what you will face in the morning news!
A park is a place to retreat, gather your thoughts, get some exercise, meet with friends, walk the dog and find some enjoyment in life.
However, did you know that prior to the 1840s, there seems to have been no public parks at all in England?
Hyde Park from the air (Thomas Nugent)
The Victorian Ideal
In Victorian times, parks were often created, rather paternalistically, in order to provide the ‘lower classes’ leisure opportunities which were an alternative to drinking and gambling.
The Victorian park was held to be a formal and peaceful space amidst the squalor and disorder of the surrounding city, given the rapid and unplanned spread of urban dwellings. Public health was a key objective. As it evolved, the Victorian park was treated as purely a green space, which would serve as the “lungs” of the city. It was municipally funded, and free from commercial activity.
Amenities such as bandstands and teahouses were constructed. There was a great increase in interest in plants in this era, as innovations in the way plants could be transported from abroad meant that botanists could experiment with specimens from all over the world.
And as it was a place where different classes and groups could relax and mix together – well, that threw up a plethora of rules, regulations and byelaws.
Some parks from the past
- Derby Arboretum is held to be Britain’s first public park, opened in 1840, deliberately planned as a place of public recreation and enjoyment within a city. Subsequently parks proliferated:
- Thomas Mawson created fine parks in Hanley and Burslem, Stoke on Trent, in the 1890s;
- Princes Park in Liverpool, funded by Richard Vaughan Yates, and designed by Joseph Paxton, opened in 1842
- Birkenhead park opened in 1847.
- Stamford park in Altrincham was opened in 1879.
Parks in the future?
Heaton Moor Park is a good example of this Victorian aesthetic of rus in urbe; it is organized, rational and civilized. Like many another Victorian park. It has a valuable role in the local community. It is quintessentially a public good. And its uses have changed over the decades from its creation in the 1890’s
The legacy of the Victorian ideal of a public park endures, but the future of parks also calls for exploration.
A parliamentary inquiry into the future of public parks in 2017 gives many examples and looks at future challenges: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmcomloc/45/45.pdf