The turn of the tide

In his book, The Park and the Town, George Chadwick attempts to identify the point at which the development of landscape changes, with the division from ‘formal style and the seemingly artless work of the gardeners’. The interpolation as Chadwick describes, of a single formal element – a terrace or a geometrical garden – in a public park gradually began to be superseded by a more thoroughgoing organisation on formal lines; not that the English public park ever became completely formal, but a tendency towards a more axial and geometrical organisation is nonetheless evident in such examples already described, including Abbey Park, Leicester, West Park, Wolverhampton, and Queen's Park in Crewe. The influence of Mawson in the early part of the 20th century was significant. Mawson embraced the gardenesque style unlike any other landscape designer of the time, wholly inspired by both Kemp and Milner. Mawson accepted the combination of both formal and informal in his designs, which he referred to as the composite style, and this is reflected in many of his later designs in the early part of the 20th century.

Mawson identified four different styles of landscape design. First, the completely geometrical plan; second, the formal, ‘a development of the architectural garden adapted to larger spaces, generally … associated with monumental buildings’ and also ‘to be preferred when designing small recreation parks and gardens, as it secures the largest provision for games within a given area where land is expensive and permits of better control’. Next was the English landscape style, by which Mawson was clearly referring to the more restrained gardenesque of Kemp or Paxton, and including ‘the perfectly logical development’ of the composite, ‘especially where a park must serve all the purposes required of it in this country, where the necessarily formal recreation grounds have to be associated with the preservation of natural beauty. The proportion of the formal to the purely landscape depends upon the nature and contours of the site, the purpose of the park is to serve, and the designer's preferences.’ Lastly, there was the ‘natural’ style, the object being to copy or retain natural features. Mawson and his firm eventually moved into the sphere of civic design with Sir William Lever, later Lord Leverhulme, a considerable supporter of Mawson's work in this area.

The lodge by the main entrance gates, with the park regulations displayed prominently nearby, is often the first building to greet the park visitor. This was the home of the superintendent responsible for seeing that order was kept in the park and for opening and closing the main gates, morning and evening. The importance of the role of the park superintendent could be emphasised by the scale of the lodge and this in turn reinforced the significance of the park as a place apart. Pennethorne clearly recognised this when he recommended that the main lodge at Victoria Park, erected in 1847, ought ‘to contain more conveniences and to be more important in appearance than the other lodges’. Elizabethan in character, and built of brick with stone dressings, this was a substantial and imposing building. A decade later, three more lodges were erected at the other park entrances, but even the largest of these was less imposing than the main lodge.

Park buildings fall into three main categories: those needed for maintenance, those intended for the park users, and commemorative buildings and structures, which will be the subject of Chapter 7. The prototype of most park buildings lay elsewhere, for lodges, shelters, boathouses and pagodas had been a feature of the private parks of the 18th century and earlier, while palm houses and conservatories had developed in the early decades of the 19th century. The one building that became so closely identified with public parks that it came almost to signify them, was the bandstand, although it too was built elsewhere. Refreshment rooms, toilets, drinking fountains and shelters made it practicable to spend considerable time in the parks, which would otherwise have been impossible, but the need for such facilities had not always been recognised. C H J Smith, the Scottish theorist and practitioner of landscape gardening, who was writing on public parks in 1852, was evidently not concerned with the comfort of the park users, nor with the question of bad weather. He thought that a superintendent's house, cottages for the gate-keepers and a greenhouse for the propagation and protection of plants would suffice.

Siting buildings

In the early stages of the park movement, the design and siting of park buildings were the subject of two virtually opposing principles.

‘To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment’, said Fanny, the heroine of Mansfield Park, and her feelings strike a chord of recognition, particularly among urban dwellers. Nowadays we visit the country to find verdure, or we walk in our local park, but at the time that Jane Austen was writing, and indeed for the greater part of the 19th century, such ‘perfect refreshment’ was unavailable to the majority of people living in Britain's industrial centres. Today (1991) almost every town of any size has a number of open spaces, parks, commons and recreation grounds, which vary in size from several hundred acres to less than one. Their designs range from the simple to the very sophisticated, and they contribute green space to built-up areas and form an important part of the urban environment, whether they be large or small, simple or complex.

My interest in parks generally and municipal parks in particular grew out of my researches in landscape design, my studies of Victorian architecture, and my good fortune in having lived much of my life near public parks. The local park plays an important role in many people's lives, even today when there are many other choices of activity and many other places to go to. Municipal parks were brought into being via many complex factors, which in turn influenced their design and use. This is a very rich subject, involving as it does social, economic and political history, recreation, landscape design, architecture, sculpture and the urban environment. There have been many detailed studies of aspects of the Victorian city: working-class housing, suburbanisation, the development of transport, railway stations, public houses, town halls and the activities of the building industry have all had their historians. Municipal parks have by comparison received far less attention, although individual parks have been studied, and there is a wealth of information on the royal parks. It is my hope that this book will make a useful contribution to this area. Perhaps one reason for the lack of attention paid by landscape historians to municipal parks lies in the term ‘municipal’ itself. By the 1870s ‘municipal’ had become synonymous with lively pride in local powers and their ability to effect positive change.

The Park rose in terraces from the railway station to a street of small villas almost on the ridge of the hill. From its gilded gates to its smallest geranium-slips it was brand-new, and most of it was red. The keeper's house, the bandstand, the kiosks, the balustrades, the shelters – all of these assailed the eye with a uniform redness of brick and tile which nullified the pallid greens of the turf and the frail trees. The immense crowd in order to circulate, moved along in tight processions, inspecting one after another the various features of which they had read full descriptions in the Staffordshire Signal – waterfall, grotto, lake, swans, boat, seats, faience, statues – and scanning with interest the names of the donors so clearly inscribed on such objects of art and craft as from diverse motives had been presented to the town by its citizens … The town was proud of its achievement, and it had the right to be; for, though this narrow pleasance was in itself unlovely, it symbolised the first renaissance of the longing for beauty in a district long given up to unredeemed ugliness.

The creation of the municipal park has been seen as a prime example of the Victorian ‘aptitude for passionate reform’ and as an attempt to improve the physical, moral and spiritual condition of the urban dweller. Protected from the realities of its city surroundings by gates and railings, it represented an ideal landscape in which the air was clean, the spirit was refreshed by contact with nature, and the body was renewed by exercise. Yet such a view is necessarily an incomplete one, for it does not identify the nature of the improvements, nor how they were viewed by the improvers and the beneficiaries, nor does it tell us how they would be achieved. While the municipal park represented a landscape, it was at the same time a real landscape set in an urban environment and used by local people in various ways.

Municipal parks are public parks, but these were not always as accessible to the public as their name would imply. In order to identify municipal parks to which there was free access, it is important to distinguish between the various forms of public park, but in practice it is not always easy to do so. Landscape gardeners used particular terms precisely, but the park promoters did not.

In the decade following the SCPW Report a number of parks were created but few of them owed a specific debt to the SCPW, and it was not until c 1845 that the park movement became recognisable as such (Appendix 2). In this pioneering period of 1833–45, initiatives important to the developing park movement came from central and local government, from benefactors and from the community. Parliament took certain rather minimal steps to promote parks generally and it also took action to create parks in London. To promote park development, the SCPW had recommended stimulating ‘the liberality of individuals’, but before legislation could be introduced to do so, the first benefactors came forward to donate parks in Derby and Sheffield. Norfolk Park, Sheffield (1841), donated by the Duke of Norfolk, was laid out very simply with open spaces for cricket and football and a shady peripheral walk with regularly placed seats and avenues of lime trees and turkey oaks, but Derby's design and designer proved more influential. This period saw the successful financial lessons of park development, illustrated at Regent's Park, applied by the speculative developer in Liverpool and by the local authority at Birkenhead. These ventures gave Joseph Paxton his first opportunities for public park design. This period also saw the involvement of the community in park development, and Manchester became the first of the major industrial centres to acquire parks, through the ‘local exertion and munificence’ of its citizens, while the Amicable Society of Woolsorters of Bradford began developing their pleasure gardens and baths.

Parliamentary action

The reaction of Parliament to the SCPW Report was influenced by both individuals and groups. James Silk Buckingham, elected MP for Sheffield in 1832, was among those actively concerned with open space for recreation, and for three years in succession he introduced bills to establish walks, playgrounds and public baths. Although none was passed, his continued pressure was important. In 1833 the influence of the utilitarians and J A Roebuck was much greater than their actual numbers, and Roebuck grasped the opportunity presented by the SCPW Report. ‘At last, we are getting support for our open spaces and trees. I have promises from more than 20 today … soon our towns will blossom and the air will be pure.’

The aim of the Report of the Select Committee on Public Walks (SCPW), 1831, was to establish what open space was available for public use in the major towns and to recommend local and national action to ensure adequate provision in the future. Although economic factors had provided the main impetus for the development of the early 19th-century parks, they were not stressed in the report. Its main emphasis was on the physical need for open space and the ‘problem’ of working-class recreation. The report was chaired by R A Slaney and it was the only one, of all those produced during the century, to focus solely on public walks. Slaney's contribution to the promotion of parks was probably one of the most sustained and effective of all those who were working in this area. Not only did he bring the problem to Parliament's attention in 1833, but some 25 years later he was also responsible for promoting the Recreation Grounds Act 1859, an important piece of legislation aimed at stimulating the provision of parks. Slaney had entered Parliament in 1826 as Member for Shrewsbury and had earlier given some indication of where his interests lay in An Essay on the Beneficial Direction of Rural Expenditure. This included sections on places of amusement ‘for the labouring classes’, and on the advantages of public walks and gardens, but was directed at rural rather than urban conditions.

The physical need

Until towns had grown considerably there was little physical need to set aside open space specifically for recreation. The existing open spaces of the town square, the marketplace and the churchyards remained from medieval times, and most towns were small enough for adjacent spaces such as commons and wasteland to be accessible. In the mid-18th century, approximately one person in five lived in a town of any size, and the population of England and Wales was of the order of six million. By the beginning of the 19th century London was the largest city, with a population of over one million, and other urban centres were growing rapidly. Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Bristol all had, by 1801, populations of over 60,000. Fifty years later the figures for Manchester and Liverpool had reached nearly 400,000, Birmingham was well over 200,000, and 1851 marks the point when the population became equally divided between town and country dwellers (Table 2.1).

The word ‘keeper’ has been used for centuries in connection with managed green spaces. The Oxford English Dictionary quotes John Heywood's use of the word in 1530, referring to ‘rangers and keepers of certayne places as forests, parkes, purlewes and chasys’, and aligns the word in this context with others signifying a position of primary responsibility, analogous to the Keeper of the Privy Seal. It was a technical and managerial role associated with maintenance of a park and its stock.

With the development of public parks in the mid-19th century the term was adopted to new use. By 1855 ‘park keeper’ could be used merely to signify someone who manned the gates. During the initial period of public park development, the term was used alongside others with various nuances of seniority and responsibility. As W W Pettigrew, parks superintendent in Manchester (1914–32), put it in his 1937 book, Municipal Parks: Layout, Management and Administration:

Divergence between local authorities is nothing new, but this inconsistency, viewed from the early 20th century, also reflects the development of public parks management. There were simply no management models or structures available in the early period: nothing like free public access to high-quality horticulture had ever been attempted before.

The potential difficulties were little understood. Within a month of the opening of Manchester's first three public parks in 1846, the public parks committee was hastily assembling regulations, signage and additional staff, the need for which had not been foreseen. Incredibly, ‘no one had been made responsible for the management of the parks and the necessity for such action seems to have taken the committee by surprise’.

In the years following the Second Report on the State of Large Towns and Populous Districts, the park movement in Britain was affected by local, national and international developments. Parks in turn had a part to play in urban and suburban development, but it was only in the last decades of the 19th century that the problems of town planning and of park location were confronted. The legislation governing the actions permitted to local authorities provided the framework within which they could develop parks. The weak state of local government persisted for much of the century and it was not until 1875 that local authorities gained full powers to develop and manage parks. Of the 187 incorporated towns in 1845, only 29 town councils had exclusive powers to act on matters of drainage, cleansing and paving. In 62 towns neither the councils nor the commissioners exercised such powers; consequently these towns were left without the means for improving their sanitation, streets or water. A further weakness came from the problem that as towns expanded, local government areas did not keep pace with them. Consequently, many growing urban districts did not come within any corporation, and their administration fell to parish authorities and county justices with their even weaker powers. It was only gradually that the full machinery of local government came into being, and with it came an increasing sense of civic consciousness that showed itself in magnificent town halls, libraries, concert halls and parks. It is against this difficult background that the park movement must be placed.

One of the first actions of Parliament in the early years of the park movement was to pass the General Enclosure Act 1845. Ostensibly, this was intended to safeguard open space near towns, for if commons were within certain distances of large towns, a proportion of the enclosed land had to be set aside for recreation (see Appendix 1). The effects of the Act, however, proved more detrimental than the previous practice of enclosure under private Acts, and less land, proportionally, was set aside for recreation. Another important piece of legislation passed in this period was the Towns Improvement Clauses Act 1847, which consolidated within one Act provisions usually contained in local Acts for town improvements.

As we have seen, the public park movement began in the 1830s, and sprang primarily out of a desire to improve the health in the overcrowded conditions of the rapidly growing industrial towns. More public parks were opened between 1885 and 1914 than either before or after this period. This chapter, originally written by Harriet Jordan in 1994, looks at the development of the movement during these years.

The need for open space

By the 1880s most towns had been provided with one or more park or recreation ground, often on the town's outskirts or at a short distance from it. The provision of parks within existing built-up areas and in the expanding suburbs arose primarily out of concerns for the health of the population. Parks were seen to be ‘as much of a necessity in town development as a proper drainage scheme’.

Parks were commonly referred to as the ‘lungs’ of the town or city, and it was considered of particular value to increase the number of open spaces, however small, actually within the crowded residential areas of towns. In Middlesbrough, it was at the instigation of the town's first mayor and MP, Henry Bolckow, that an idea of a public park for the residents of the town was first mooted. Dubbed the ‘People's Park’ in its conception, Bolckow was particularly conscious of the need to provide an ostensible ‘green lung’ to ease the plight of the burgeoning industrial population of a town which was granted its charter of incorporation in 1853. Albert Park eventually opened in 1868.

Further amendments to the Open Spaces Act of 1877, in 1881, 1887 and 1890, and amendments to the Disused Burial Grounds Act of 1884, gave the necessary power to the local bodies to carry out such improvements, and many towns adopted a policy of increasing inner-city space. This could prove a costly exercise, but ‘the most expensive plot of land converted into this purpose cannot but be a good speculation, for the health of the toilers in great cities and Large towns is one of the utmost importance’. The perceived benefits of open spaces were not restricted to improving the nation's physical health; they were thought to increase moral health too. The provision of parks in theory made the people happier and therefore better citizens.

The development of garden cities

The earliest attempts to design the perfect city go all the way back to ancient times and eventually led to the concept of the ideal city of the Renaissance world. The dominant factor of the time, however, was the need to defend towns and cities. Requirements were for defensive systems which meant that geometric order was the overriding factor in planning cities. Well-arranged defensive emplacements determined the internal order of cities. Later utopian ideas were to eventually emerge centred around the vision of an ideal society based on a set of principles. These included, in the 16th century, Thomas More (1477–1535) who described his principles in his book, Utopia, published in 1516. More envisioned cities dominated by craft and agriculture with commerce condemned, with markets and common dining halls serving the communities. Hospitals and abattoirs were located outside the city wall.

Charles Fourier (1772–1837) was a French utopian socialist who presented his vision as his City of Garantism. His system was described as a series of three rings which were separated by hedges. Commerce was located in the centre, industry surrounded it, and to the outside was located agriculture. Fourier believed organising work to be the guarantee of economic growth.

It was, though, the emergence of industry that led to the change and distortion of historic cities across the country. Towns and cities experienced an unprecedented pace of growth. With such advances of industry, society was transformed and the opportunities of life and living conditions changed completely, leading to the creation of slums in many cities. As a result, cholera epidemics were common and mortality rates were high. In 1842, Edwin Chadwick had published his report made to the Poor Law Commission, The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain.

It was not only existing towns and cities that were transformed. New settlements appeared where water and raw materials were available to accommodate the new labour force that was required. With a number of these newly built communities, opportunities for social reforms presented themselves. The most spectacular of these developments were primarily due to industrialists whose philanthropic nature aided the realisation of their schemes. Nagy and Szelenyi cited the need to create ‘a sound basis for production and the improvement of living conditions of workers which became part of the concept of modernity and technical innovation’.

In 1878, when the opportunity of acquiring a 7-hectare site for a park occurred in Liverpool, there was fierce discussion on the merits of the proposal. The Liverpool Argus was adamant that ‘we do not want ornamental waters and dirty swans. We want open spaces where our little ragamuffins can exercise their limbs and fashion themselves into healthy Englishmen.’ Most of the major urban centres had, by the end of the 1870s, acquired parks, but if the area of open space was compared with the population figures, the achievement seemed less significant. Birmingham had a chain of seven parks on its outskirts, Liverpool had its ring of five parks, Manchester had three parks, but in terms of hectares of open space per head of population, Bradford with its five large parks ‘is our model city’. Bradford had ‘one acre of open space for every 755 of its inhabitants’, whereas in Liverpool the figure was ‘one acre per 1,011 people, in Birmingham it was 1,665, in Sheffield 3,665 and Wolverhampton had no open space at all’. A comparison with American parks seemed to indicate that achievement there was more substantial. Philadelphia's Fairmont Park was 7 miles long, and Central Park, New York, was larger than both Regent's Park and Hyde Park together.

The open spaces movements of the last quarter of the 19th century had two main aims: the creation of open space in densely populated districts, and the preservation of the countryside. Although geographically distinct, these targets were interlinked by the organisations and the individuals involved in them. These additional pressures for open space occurred at that time when the park movement itself had received enormous impetus from the passing of the Public Health Act 1875 and the question of accessibility was beginning to be confronted. From virtually the beginning of the park movement it had been recognised that the most densely populated districts had most need of open space for recreation, but large parks alone could not fulfil that need. Victoria Park in London had only been in use for a couple of years when, in 1847, The Builder criticised it for not being near enough to meet the needs of the poor.