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Another feature of late-Victorian parks was the bandstand. Despite having a similarity with market crosses such as the one in Beverley Saturday Market Place purpose-built bandstands have a relatively short history, the first, allegedly, built in the Royal Horticultural Gardens, South Kensington in 1861. By the late 19th century, however, bandstands were an almost indispensable […]

In Hull park-keeper’s/cemetery-man’s houses survive at Pearson Park (see above), West Park (beside Anlaby Road, just into the Park near the base of the Road’s flyover), East Park (near the main gate off Holderness Road), Pickering Park (near the main gate beside Hessle High Road), Western Cemetery (near the main entrance off Chanterlands Avenue), Hedon Road

The picture above shows the original main entrance to the civil cemetery at Barton on Humber, it shows three elements of early civil cemetery design ornate wrought iron gates and fencing, the cemetery-man’s house and a preference for ‘exotic’ tree species in the lay-out plan. All three elements could just as well apply to Victorian municipal

To continue blog 18’s theme of pathways/carriageways and benches. The rapid rise in car ownership after the Great War and the continuing popularity of visits to public parks resulted in the carriageways of parks becoming increasingly swamped by parked cars or stationary cars with the passengers just taking-in the view and people watching. This problem

With the development of civic public parks and cemeteries in towns around the country in the second half of the 19th century certain elements of such places became common, some, but by no means all, remaining so today. Access paths (this including carriageways whereby those with private horse-drawn vehicles might enjoy the park without having

In 1845 Joseph Paxton was commissioned by the local authority in Coventry (west Midlands) to design (a lay-out plan) for their London Road Cemetery. Initially (presumably) a commercial venture, most public cemeteries post-dating the initial Burial Acts of the 1850s, this early example of a burial site beyond local churchyards remains reasonably well maintained unlike many