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Opened in 1847 the Birkenhead Park is usually cited as the first English public park (s.p.b.s), this because it was commissioned by the then local authority and because, once completed, it was open to all citizens. In fact the local authority were dragooned by a wealthy local industrialist of modest origins Sir William Jackson, Bt. (whether […]

So, in pursuit of a considered answer to the question as to which was Britain’s first public park Victoria Park in the ‘East End’ of London deserves due consideration. Opened to the public in 1845 and designed by J. Pennethorne (s.p.b.) Victoria Park is now administered by the London Borough of Hackney. Its nickname later in

By the 1840s it had been decided that two factors would improve life in the squalid East End of London, the creation of  a public park and the creation of main roads driven straight through the overcrowded area. The latter now seems strange given that roads are now seen as a threat to health and

Two early contenders for the title of first public park were the Royal Victoria Park, Bath and Victoria Park (Vicky Park), Bethnal Green, East London (see the aerial photo above, taken from the internet). By the 1830s J.C. Loudon’s (s.p.b.) campaigning for public ‘walks’ was reaching a wide audience, particularly through his articles in the

The picture above shows the entrance Lodge to Derby’s Arboretum built in the 1840s. An inevitable question arises in this study ‘Where was England’s first public park’? As is often the case the answer is not simple, although for ‘pub quiz purposes’ the usual answer is the park created at Birkenhead (Merseyside) in the 1850s.

A very significant figure in the evolution of public parks was John Claudius Loudon, the etching reproduced above is from the frontispiece of An Encyclopaedia of Agriculture, 1844 (compiled by Loudon) and scanned from Travis Elborough’s A Walk in the Park, p.64. Loudon was the pioneer of a number of horticultural publications in particular as editor of the