The Walks, Kings Lynn has been designated by English Heritage a Grade two historic park and is ‘the only surviving 18th century town walk in Norfolk’ (quote from the homepage of the Friends of the Walks website). The 42 acre site has benefitted recently from a thorough restoration funded by the Heritage Lottery.
The western part of the Park (nearest the town centre) was until the early 19th century a cultivated area between the beginning to expand town and the surviving (then) town defences. These took the form of an elongated rampart (earthen bank) interrupted by three entrance ‘gates’, South Gate, a castellated square-block tower through which traffic still travels, survives, as does Gannock Gate (see poor image above) with late medieval brick and car-stone and briefly taken down in the early 19th century but then rebuilt to create a ‘picturesque’ folly near the centre of The Walks. Such features have parallels on Humberside as Beverley also had earthen ramparts broken by seven built gates, North Bar surviving and through which traffic still flows. Barton also had earthen ramparts but no evidence of built gates while Hollar’s ‘birds eye’ view of Hull dated 1641 shows fields between the then town and its 14th century brick walls incorporating four large brick-built gates (s.p.b.).
Daniel Defoe wrote in his Tour through the Eastern Counties, published 1722, that Kings Lynn’s ramparts (these massive earthworks had been heightened by Parliamentary forces during the English Civil Wars of the 1640s) were still in-tact as was Cannock Gate.
The eastern section of the Park between Cannock Gate and Tennyson Avenue (B1144) was still mostly wetland in the parish of Gaywood in the 1840s. In the 19th century the main promenades were extended across this land bordered by alternating lime and horse chestnut trees.
A more thorough historical perspective on The Walks may be read from the Friends of the Walks website.