Author name: Richard Clarke

Having, for some months now, discussed the issue of cemeteries as places of resort, as well as municipal parks and recreation grounds, it seems reasonable to discuss churchyards in the same context. By places of resort we mean places where some detachment from the home and the hustle and bustle of the street can be […]

As far as I know the only remaining formal flower beds still maintained by the Hull Council Parks Dept. are at the western end of Queen’s Gardens in the town centre (see above). Bedding plants are regularly planted or replaced, these, I am sure, propagated by the Parks Dept. In the early days of Hull’s

When considering birdsong a distinction needs to be made between ‘song’ and ‘call’. The former is more complex and often has melody, whereas the latter is usually more strident and monotonous, an alarm signal warning of an approaching threat. Blackbirds have a particularly loud alarm call which, in my experience, is recognised as such by other

The cuckoo’s distinctive call as a harbinger of spring is welcomed by those persons visiting parks, recreation grounds and cemeteries especially now as apparently migrating numbers have declined greatly, the call then being evidence that some still exist. Although this positive aspect to the cuckoo’s life cycle is most welcome, a negative aspect was always that it

An interesting idea was followed-up in an article in the latest edition of Landscape History (Vol. 40, 2019, Issue 1), the Journal of the Society for Landscape Studies, in an article entitled ‘Sound in the Landscape’. In fact this is the first of three articles with the sub-heading ‘A Study of the Historical Literature’ so

A minute of the Parks Committee of Hull Municipal Corporation in 1906 refers to a plan to upgrade the Cannon Street Recreation Ground with perimeter planting and fence and further improvements to ‘meet by-laws’. These improvements were still being discussed in December of that year. Such references evidence an important point, which is that the Municipal