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

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