Author name: Richard Clarke

With Pearson Park, established in 1860, being Hull’s first public park, when West and East Parks were being established in the 1880s it was referred to as ‘The Park’ in the minutes of the Parks and Recreation Grounds Committee which may be viewed in the reference room of Hull History Centre. Many features of Hull’s later […]

Oak Road Playing Fields (see picture above) is one of my favourite areas in Hull and leads me into my final ‘features’ of public parks section, that being Recreation Grounds/Playing Fields. It must be stated at the outset that the southern end of the site has been, and still is, one of intense police activity

Thomas Hayton Mawson (s.p.b.) published his autobiography in 1927 (by which time he was suffering from Parkinsons Disease), this cataloguing his 50 year career as a garden, park and town designer. The book was entitled The Life and Work of an English Landscape Architect. This self-taught gardener was, in 1923, to become the first President of

The picture above shows the ‘Tea House’ at Belle Vue Park, Newport, S. Wales. It reflects the Park’s designer’s fondness for rustic structures in public parks, the designer being Thomas Hayton Mawson, 1861-1933. Mawson became a well-respected park designer (despite having left school in Lancashire at the age of 12) 50 years after Loudon (s.p.b.s)

The picture above shows part of the ornamental pond located in Pearson Park, Hull with the Victorian conservatory in the background, closed now for a long time and without the sub tropical plants it once housed although, hopefully, it may be restored to its former glory if the park authorities can achieve funding for an up-grading

The bandstand (s.p.b.) at People’s Park, Grimsby stands to the right off the above picture. Travis Elborough in his book A Walk in the Park (s.p.b.s) is of the opinion that ‘the common park bandstand’ was inspired by ‘the raised-platform kiosks seen in Turkey and across the Ottoman Empire’, these being encountered by British diplomats and