As with many public parks around the country created in the mid-to-late 19th century, at Pearson Park, Hull the intention was to sell-off plots of land around the perimeter of the land allocated to the park for ‘villa development’, often envisaged for relatively large detached (although terraces/semis survive beside Pearson Park) period houses and where proximity to the park would further add to their value. Such plots were sold-off around Pearson Park and some of the original properties thus created survive (the picture above shows one such example although the delicate ironwork of the verandah and the large paned glass of the vertical sash windows suggests a possible ‘arts-and-crafts’ influence this making it a later example on such a site).
This means of recouping relatively quickly at least some of the capital outlay required in creating the public park seems to have been fairly standard practice at the time. Certainly in the creation of West Park, Hull in the 1880s the intention to sell-off plots of land alongside Walton Street for ‘villa development’ is documented, however for whatever reason this plan was never followed-through and later the same area of land was given over to the establishment of three bowling greens, one with a clubhouse on site, these still in evidence today.
As East Park, Hull was being developed in the same decade there are hints in the Minutes (s.p.b.) that the same was planned here, certainly along its eastern side. Here again these ‘villas’ were never built but the speculative development along what became East Park and Westminster Avenues may have served the same purpose.
I am yet to discover whether the same development was planned for Pickering Park in the early 20th century, but if so they also were clearly never built.