Gardeners and the democratisation of urban parks

ABSTRACT

The creation of municipal parks was the most significant development in gardening in the nineteeth century. More than 2,000 parks were made between 1840 and 1914, all financed from the public purse. This paper will explore the genesis of the parks’ movement from the community of gardeners, assisted by an underswell of support from the working-class population. It will show how the radical policies of the main progenitors, John Claudius Loudon and Joseph Paxton, helped to ensure that public parks were of the same high quality as the landed estates of the elite and that they provided not only the health benefits which were essential in overcrowded urban areas, but also suitable recreational facilities. A cadre of gardeners, led by Paxton and the Chatsworth School, with the requisite landscaping and engineering skills acquired whilst working on landed estates, designed and built the first municipal parks. The parks which they created fulfilled their ideals of benefiting the working classes by being universally free of access and providing amenities tailored to their needs, including sporting facilities which formed the crucible for the nascent Football Association. The parks were of particular benefit in providing safe spaces for women and children, and venues for gatherings such as shows, fetes, children’s events, and political meetings. Head gardeners with the necessary horticultural and management competency were appointed to maintain and supervise the parks once built. Gardeners succeeded in capturing control of the parks’ movement creating for themselves more employment opportunities, with greater responsibilities and enhanced job security. In doing so they freed themselves from the remnants of servility, becoming the masters.

KEYWORDS:

• Garden history
• landscape history
• urban parks
• municipal parks
• John Claudius Loudon
• Joseph Paxton
• Frederick Law Olmsted
• Edwin Chadwick
• the Chatsworth School
• gardeners
• landscape development

HISTORIC PUBLIC PARKS: AN OVERVIEW OF THEIR NUMBER, COST AND LOCATION

Five minutes of admiration, and a few more spent in studying the manner in which art had been employed to obtain from nature so much beauty, and I was ready to admit that in democratic America there was nothing to be thought of as comparable with this People’s Garden (Olmsted 1852, p. 79). Frederick Law Olmsted on visiting Birkenhead Park in 1852.

Public parks are the great survivors of the Victorian age. Although they occupy prime city or town centre locations the temptation to sell them off for building land has been resisted and they remain for the most part intact. A comprehensive economic and social history of public parks has yet to be written (Floud 2019, pp. 36–46; Crompton 2020, pp. 43–64) and their number is unknown. There is no register of public parks, but following a survey of 475 local authorities in 2001 it was estimated that in England and Wales there were 2,177 historic parks, nearly all of which were made before 1914, covering an area of 37,903 hectares, of which 169 are listed by Historic England. The parks receive 300–400 million visits annually and it is a sign of how much they are valued today that they have been supported with nearly a billion pounds of lottery funding (Urban Parks Forum 2001).

This paper examines the origins and development of the parks movement, asking why the parks emerged at the time they did and in the form they did. More specifically, it asks how a group of gardeners who were motivated by the ideal of creating gardens for the working classes were able to fulfil their ambitions and, in the process, create a new market for their talents.

There is a paucity of information on the cost of building the parks, but Table 1 gives an analysis of twelve parks for which information is available (Crompton 2020, pp. 43–64). It shows that (excluding the two unusually expensive outliers) the average build cost per acre was just under £451,000 taking modern values using the Earnings Index formula (Floud 2019, pp. 5, 9–13, 286, and p. 304, n. 7).

TABLE 1. ANALYSIS OF THE COST OF BUILDING TWELVE PARKS

Applying this figure to the 93,660 acres (37,903 ha) of historic public parks indicates a total development cost of £42.24 billion spent over seventy-five years. This may be an overestimate, as many of the later parks were built on a smaller scale, but as these figures cover only the cost of development and not the cost of the purchase of the land or the ongoing costs of upkeep, it is clear that this had a significant economic impact, all paid for from the public purse (Table 1).

Although public parks can be found today in every town and city, those of historic interest are concentrated in industrial areas. Of the 169 which are listed by Historic England forty-three (25 per cent) are in Lancashire, twenty-four (14 per cent) in Yorkshire and twenty-one (12 per cent) in the industrial Midlands (tabulated from Historic England’s National Heritage List of Public Parks).

THE ORIGINS OF THE DRIVE FOR URBAN PARKS

The drive to provide public parks began in the 1830s when the lack of access to green open spaces in urban areas first became a matter of public concern. Before urbanisation there had been an inalienable right for the inhabitants of a parish to use village and town greens and associated common land for their pastimes. When parishioners in the village of Steeple Bumpstead were prosecuted in 1795 for playing ‘a certain game called cricket’ the court held that they had the ‘liberty and privilege of exercising and playing at all kinds of lawful games and pastimes at all seasonable times of the year at their free will and pleasure’ (Blackstone 1837, p. 393). These rights disappeared when the common lands were built over.

The primary argument in favour of urban green spaces was that they provided ‘lungs’, a clean and smoke-free area which would be free of the ‘miasma’ which was thought to be the progenitor of disease. A secondary reason was that they would provide a source of ‘rational recreation’ for the working classes — in other words an alternative to the ale house or gambling den (O’Reilly 2019, pp. 23–4). There were also concerns that if nothing was done to ameliorate the conditions of the urban poor there would be a serious danger of unrest. In 1831, shortly after Nottingham Castle had been burned down by rioters, William Barron (1805–1891), who later designed several public parks, vividly described how as head gardener for the Earl of Harrington at Elvaston Castle (which was only ten miles from Nottingham Castle), he took charge of guarding the castle from a mob of 200, putting out fires before help arrived and being credited with saving it from destruction (Gardeners’ Chronicle 1891, p. 522).

The first tentative step towards the partial restoration of the right to access to open space was taken with the setting up in 1833 of the Select Committee on Public Walks, which examined their desirability and the measures which should be taken to enable their provision. The term ‘Public Walks’ suggested a rather limited provision for perambulation rather than a wider range of activities, and continued to be used in the tentative legislation which followed, even as late as the Public Health Act 1875 (Pettigrew 1937, p. 2). Indeed, the first endeavours in park provision tended to follow that model. The Royal Victoria Park in Bath, which opened in 1830, was modest in scale and ornament, with a layout described by Conway as ‘extremely simple’ (Conway 1991, p. 15; Whalley 1994, p. 148). Moor Park in Preston, which was the first park to be created in an industrial town, in 1833, was similarly laid out as a series of unsophisticated walks and drives, with areas set aside for recreation (Conway 1991, p. 18). Norfolk Park in Sheffield, which opened in 1841, followed a similar pattern (ibid., p. 39). These parks satisfied the requirement to provide ‘breathing spaces’ in an urban area together with recreational facilities in an economical way and it might have been expected, at a time when local authorities were severely restricted in their spending capacity, that they would provide the model for future developments. In fact, a much more elaborate template was adopted, providing a far greater range of facilities than was originally envisaged and on a more extravagant scale — one which was to hold sway throughout the Victorian and Edwardian periods. This development resulted from the campaigns pursued by John Claudius Loudon (1783–1843) and Joseph Paxton (1803–1865) and their acolytes, all of whom were gardeners.

THE CAMPAIGNS FOR REFORM LED BY LOUDON AND PAXTON

Loudon and Paxton were radical in their views and did not hesitate to state them. In a letter to the editor of the Morning Advertiser, Loudon wrote:

The Great Objects to be obtained by Reform: Nothing will satisfy me short of Fair Representation of the people. Election by Ballot; the gradual but entire Appropriation by Government of the Revenues of the National Church, of the Woods and Forests; and of other Crown Lands; entire Freedom of Trade, and the abolition of all Monopolies; a National Education Establishment substituted for the National Church Establishment; the abolition of the law of Primogeniture and of Hereditary Titles; the pensioning off of all the branches of the Royal Family one and forever, and a fixed income set apart for the king, or by whatever name or title the chief magistrate of the country may be distinguished (Turner 2020).

These unequivocal, and decidedly radical, republican and anti-clerical opinions formed the background to everything which Loudon wrote, not only in a voluminous correspondence, but also in the three journals which he edited, the four encyclopaedias which he compiled and his numerous articles and books. In the movement to improve the social conditions of the working class, epitomised by Edwin Chadwick’s campaigns for clean water and improved sanitation, Loudon has been recognised as the first, and most prominent, campaigner for urban green spaces in crowded cities. Loudon’s article in the Literary Journal in 1803 in which he promoted open spaces in London as ‘being of the greatest consequence to the health of its inhabitants’ pre-dated the parliamentary campaign by thirty years (Loudon 1803, p. 739). It was followed in 1811 by his ‘Hints for a National Garden’, an address which he gave to the Linnaean Society. His 1829 proposal for a series of ‘breathing spaces and country zones’ encircling London (Fig. 1) has been identified as the direct precursor of Ebenezer Howard’s proposals for a green belt in 1898 (Turner 2020; Bowie 2018).

Fig. 1. Loudon’s Design for ‘Breathing Spaces and Country Zones’ around London 1829 (Gardener’s Magazine, 1829).

In the 1830s, Loudon, as the foremost promoter of public parks received three commissions to design them, the plans for which he published in his Gardener’s Magazine, together with detailed descriptions, drawings and explanations of his design principles in pursuance of his policy to share all knowledge and to ensure that it was placed in the public domain. The first was the Birmingham Botanical Garden, in 1832, a semi-public project, followed by a park in Gravesend in 1835 for which he published not only the design but also a complete list of all the trees and shrubs (505 varieties in all) which he used, together with their costings (Loudon 1836, pp. 13–26). In 1835, in a 25-page article, he set out in detail his design principles for public parks (Loudon 1835, pp. 644–69). His most important commission was the Derby Arboretum in 1839. Loudon’s detailed report upon this scheme was reproduced, together with several drawings, in the Westminster Review in 1841, and a lengthy extract was attached as an appendix to Edwin Chadwick’s Parliamentary Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Classes in 1842 in support of Chadwick’s recommendation that the provision of public parks should be greatly extended (Simo 1989, p. 194). The same report also included Loudon’s recommendations for model cottages, which reflects an association which had begun when Chadwick was secretary to Loudon’s friend and mentor, Jeremy Bentham (ibid., pp. 395–9).

The Derby Arboretum was not initially a truly public park as, because of the need to raise revenue for upkeep, a charge was made for entry. But Loudon insisted that the public should be allowed in free on two days of the week, one of which was Sunday — a significant concession, as Sabbatarians successfully prevented Sunday opening in many cases, even though this was the only free day for working-class families. Within a few years the days of free entry had been extended to five. The intention that the park should be for the benefit of all the people of Derby was shown by dedicating the second of three opening days of ceremony to working people. After the first day, which was reserved for 1,500 invited guests, 9,000 of the workers of the town had their own celebration, followed on the third day by a ‘children’s day’ attended by a further 6,000 visitors.

After Loudon’s death in 1843, Paxton took over the mantle as the leading spokesman for the gardening community, taking an equally radical if perhaps less outspoken stance. Like Loudon, he believed in sharing his knowledge and he did so through his own journals, firstly the Horticultural Register which ran in direct opposition to Loudon’s Gardener’s Magazine, from 1831–1836. Secondly there was Paxton’s Magazine of Botany (1833–48) and then the Gardeners’ Chronicle, founded in 1840, which became the principal gardening magazine for the rest of the century. Paxton also co-founded, in 1845, a regular newspaper, The Daily News, intended as a liberal rival to The Times, and with Charles Dickens, who shared Paxton’s social reforming zeal, as the first editor at a salary of £2,000 (£1.6 million). Dickens wrote the prospectus, stating that the paper would be devoted ‘to the advocacy of rational social welfare and issues concerning the rights of man’ (Colquhoun 2006, pp. 140–1). Paxton enlisted the help of John Gibson, his principal gardening assistant at Chatsworth, in launching the paper (ibid.). In 1854 Paxton became the MP for Coventry, being described as an ‘extreme liberal’ (Journal of Horticulture 1865, p. 449). In his vote of thanks after his election he said: ‘To the working classes especially I would say that every measure calculated to promote their prosperity, and to elevate them morally, socially and intellectually shall have my most cordial support’ (Leader 1854, p. 1160).

Paxton had radical proposals for municipal gardens, which he described in his journals. In the early days of the Horticultural Register, he published an article proposing a series of subscription gardens for the new industrial towns, at least three per town, ‘for the different classes of society’. He proposed that just as most towns had gas and water companies they could have garden companies, and that the gardens could be organised to provide kitchen garden produce for the subscribers as well as the amenities of a park (Paxton 1832, pp. 58–9). And Fig. 2 shows Paxton’s proposal in diagrammatic form, with amenity parkland and a lake surrounded by a series of allotments. In the days before municipal authorities were permitted to raise revenue for parks the subscription model was the only viable alternative. Paxton followed this up with a proposal for a National Garden, again publishing a plan, which anticipated his work at Birkenhead (Fig. 3) (ibid.).

Fig. 2. Plan for forming subscription gardens by Joseph Paxton (Paxton’s Magazine of Botany, 1834).

Fig. 3. Paxton’s ‘National Garden’ (The Horticultural Register, 1832).

Paxton collaborated with Edwin Chadwick on a number of issues relating to sanitation. Chadwick was impressed with Paxton’s laying out of a cemetery in Coventry and worked closely with him on the proposal for a Necropolis before the legislation was defeated, proposing that Paxton should assist the Board of Health (Chadwick 1874, GB 803 WRO/2/019; Chadwick 1961, p. 204). The question of the healthy arrangement of cemeteries had been a preoccupation of Loudon’s, and Chadwick attributed Loudon’s early demise to his inhalation of polluted air when they inspected a vault together (Chadwick 1874, GB 803 WRO/2/019). It was in relation to the subject of polluted air that Chadwick, in evidence to the Board of Health on the subject of ‘the Drainage of Parks and Suburban Land’, singled out Paxton’s work at Birkenhead Park in making sanitary an area which previously had been subject to thick mists and fogs (Chadwick 1874, GB 803 WRO/2/019). Paxton tried to emulate Loudon with his own proposal for a girdle around London, The Great Victorian Way, which he called ‘a magnificent promenade – a new source of comfort and enjoyment’ but which, although fully costed, failed to gain traction (Chadwick 1966, p. 208).

As an MP, Paxton achieved success in securing clean water for the quarter of a million people who used the Serpentine in Hyde Park as their only place to bathe, in the complete absence of domestic bathing facilities. A plan had been put in place by the Commissioner of Works for a filtration system, which Paxton could see was inadequate, so he campaigned for a Select Committee to be appointed, on which he sat, which led to Paxton’s own scheme, of pumping fresh well water into the lake, being adopted (Chadwick 1966, p. 215). Paxton achieved a second success in campaigning for a select committee to consider the proposal for an embankment which would carry low-level sewage and create a new thoroughfare along the Thames. Paxton chaired the committee, whose recommendations led to the Thames Embankment Act, which came into law in 1862. Work began in 1864 and the Victoria Embankment was in use by 1870, with gardens created by Alexander McKenzie (1827–1892), now listed Grade 2*. It was designated at the time as ‘The finest thoroughfare in Europe’ (Dean 1870, pp. 530–2).

GARDENERS IN WAITING — THEIR DESIGN AND LANDSCAPING COMPETENCE

Paxton and Loudon wrote in the certain knowledge that the skills were available to design, build and maintain the gardens which they envisaged. Gardeners on the large estates acquired this knowledge as part of their training. William Barron (1805–1891) became head gardener of the Elvaston estate for Lord Harrington in 1830 at the age of 24 and built the garden from scratch to his own design, employing eighty men continuously over twenty years and creating one of the most famous and influential gardens of the period (Elliott 2010; Elliott et al. 2007, pp. 129–8). William Aiton (1766–1849), whilst head gardener at Kew, landscaped 40 acres at Buckingham Palace, creating the lake and supervising many extensive alterations at Windsor. He also assisted John Nash with the planting schemes for St James’ Palace (Mabberley 2008). Andrew Pettigrew (1833–1903), after being appointed head gardener at the age of 29 to Charles Meekin at Richings Park in Buckinghamshire, gained the post of head gardener to the Marquess of Bute in 1867, at the age of 34. In 1873 he was moved by the Marquess to Cardiff Castle, where he developed the grounds from open fields creating some of the most celebrated gardens of the time. During his thirty-year tenure at Cardiff Castle he assisted in the design and laying out of several other gardens in the region (Gardeners’ Chronicle 1893, p. 296; Pearson 1903, p. 287). At a time when gardens and their adjoining parkland were constantly being extended, altered and remodelled, landscaping skills were essential for the head gardeners of estates of any size. When the demand for municipal parks arose there was thus a large body of men with the right skills ready to supply the required expertise.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF PAXTON TO THE CREATION OF PUBLIC PARKS

Paxton had first become well known as the head gardener at Chatsworth who had enthused the Duke of Devonshire with a love of gardening. Paxton indulged this passion with a series of hugely expensive developments at Chatsworth, including the creation of the Emperor Fountain, the Great Conservatory and a monumental rockery, all of which were the largest in the world at the time. He showed an extraordinary skill at architecture, engineering and landscape design even though, like all his contemporaries, he had had no formal training in these disciplines but had learned his skills through self-tuition and in his day-to-day work. The Duke permitted him in 1841 to accept an invitation to design and build a new park, to be called Princes Park, as part of a private housing development in Liverpool. Paxton appointed his former apprentice, Edward Milner (1819–1884), to lay out the park and upon its completion Milner became its superintendent. The c. 28 ha park which Paxton and Milner created is described by Historic England in its Grade II* listing as ‘providing … an arcadian idyll within an urban context’ (HE 1986). On the successful completion of this project Paxton was commissioned to design Birkenhead Park which is recognised as the first public park to be established at public expense and is now designated Grade 1 by Historic England (1986). Paxton employed another of his former assistants, Edward Kemp (1817–1891), to supervise the laying out of the gardens. The modern map (Fig. 4) shows the main details of the c. 90-hectare site with its two lakes, the sinuous circulation paths and drives, the recreation areas, and its distinctive architectural features.

Fig. 4. Map of Birkenhead Park (© Alexandre Gravis (cc-asa/4.0).

In creating Birkenhead Park from open pastureland and badly drained commons Paxton showed the same exuberance and extravagance that he had in building projects for his employer at Chatsworth, in some cases more so. The entrance gates (Pl. I) are more magnificent than at any country estate (Mowl & Earnshaw 1985). The lakes are decorated with fine architectural features such as the boat house (Pl. II). When the work was completed, Kemp was put in charge of the gardens and was given an ornate Italianate villa within the grounds (Pl. III) to reflect his status as curator, a post which he was to hold for forty-two years.

Plate I. Entrance Gate at Birkenhead Park (© Rept0n1x (cc-asa/2.0).

Plate II. The Boat House, Birkenhead Park (© Rodhullandemu (cc-asa/4.0).

Plate III. The Italian Lodge – Edward Kemp’s House in Birkenhead Park (© Tony Beyga).

Following the success of Birkenhead Park, Paxton was given several more commissions to design and build public parks, most notably Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow (1853); Pavilion Park, Buxton (1854); Queen’s Park Glasgow (1857); The People’s Park, Halifax (1857); Baxter Park, Dundee (1863); and The Public Park, Dunfermline (1864) (Chadwick 1966, pp. 89–90)

The most substantial public garden built by Paxton and the one which, as Conway has averred, was to have the most influence on the design of municipal parks, was the garden he created for the Crystal Palace when it was moved to Sydenham in 1852 from its place in Hyde Park, as the venue for the Great Exhibition (Conway 1991, p. 77). Paxton, as a director and shareholder of the Crystal Palace Company, was given the role of Director of the Winter Garden, Park and Conservatory, but he also assumed the role of Director of Works (Chadwick 1966, p. 144). The entire cost of the project was £1.3m (£1.1 billion) of which £340,231 (£286.2m) was allocated to the park and external works, £80,085 (£67.4m) to the hydraulics and £123,532 (£103.9m) to the towers, wings, tunnel, and heating. Thus £543,848 (£457.6m) was spent on the gardens, or about £3,000 (£2.5m) per acre. The 283 ft-high water towers (designed by Brunel) and the hydraulics were required for a series of fountains in which 11,788 jets were played, using 120,000 gallons a minute (ibid., p. 153). Paxton’s aim in designing these fountains was to make them more magnificent than those at Versailles, in which he succeeded (Pl. IV). Once again, Paxton employed Milner to supervise the works. The Crystal Palace gardens were built on a scale and at a cost which far exceeded the gardens at Chatsworth, or of any private garden in England. They were not strictly speaking a public garden, as an admission fee was payable for entry, and they were, at least initially, closed on Sundays. Nevertheless, the enterprise, now known as ‘The Palace of the People’ soon became the most popular attraction in Britain, receiving 1,322,000 visitors in its first year of opening and a total of 60 million visitors in the period up to 1886, the numbers being boosted when Sunday opening was permitted after 1860 (Piggott 2004, p. 61).

Plate IV. Crystal Palace Gardens and Fountains (Royal Collection Trust).

The Crystal Palace gardens were important in the development of municipal gardens because they showed what could be achieved in respect of floral decoration, garden architecture, recreational facilities, and visitor attractions — which in this case was in the form of a dinosaur park.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CHATSWORTH SCHOOL TO THE CREATION OF PUBLIC PARKS

As has been observed by O’Reilly (2017, p. 66) it was a characteristic of municipal park development that it continued regardless of which political party was in power and irrespective of the economic climate at the time. It became a matter of civic pride for a town or city to have at least one park, but in many cases several, the only limiting factor being the legal restrictions on local authorities being able to borrow or tax to pay for them, constraints which were gradually lifted during the nineteenth century. Civic pride determined that the very high standard set initially by Paxton became the minimum standard acceptable to local dignitaries. Paxton’s work was continued by what may be termed the ‘Chatsworth School’ — those who had been trained by him at Chatsworth and who had subsequently worked with him on his projects and were now able to continue the same work on their own account. Kemp, whilst retaining his post as superintendent of the Birkenhead Park, built Hesketh Park in Southport in 1864, Newsham and Stanley Parks in Liverpool in 1868 and Saltwell Park in Gateshead in 1876 (Waymark 2009). Kemp became a leading landscape gardener, influencing others, such as Thomas Hayton Mawson (1861–1933), who designed several parks in the late Victorian and Edwardian period — his design of Hanley Park in Stoke on Trent in 1897 can be seen to have followed the shaping of Birkenhead fifty years earlier (ibid.). Kemp’s book, Landscape Gardening: How to Lay Out a Garden, first published in 1858 ran to many editions over fifty years and became a leading text (ibid.).

After a long period working as Paxton’s principal assistant, Edward Milner also became a professional landscape gardener. In 1852 he was appointed by Paxton as superintendent of works for the laying out of the new gardens for the Crystal Palace after which he assisted Paxton in creating the People’s Park in Halifax. He then worked principally as a landscape gardener on his own account, accepting private commissions including that of creating Joseph Chamberlain’s garden at Highbury Hall in Birmingham which was in due course to become a public park (HE 1982). In 1862 he accepted a commission from the town of Preston to landscape Moor Park, which had been crudely laid out in 1832, and to create two new parks — Miller Park and Avenham Park. In 1881 he became the principal of the Crystal Palace School of Gardening, whose first female pupil was Fanny Wilkinson (1855–1951), who was to lay out more than seventy parks in London for the Kyrle Society and the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association before herself becoming the first female principal of Swanley Horticultural College (Crawford 2008). The Chatsworth school thereby had an abiding influence.

Paxton himself had little to do with the development of London Parks, but another of his Chatsworth apprentices, John Gibson (1815–1875), was to play a major role. After two years plant hunting in India, during which time he built a new garden in West Bengal for Lord Aukland (Coats 1970, p. 155), Gibson rose to the position of foreman of the exotic plant department at Chatsworth under Paxton (Gardeners’ Chronicle 1872, p. 865). In 1849 he accepted the post of superintendent of Victoria Park in east London, then being laid out to the design of James Pennethorne ‘Architect to the Commissioners of Woods and Forests’, who had worked with Paxton on Princes Park in Liverpool. Gibson substantially improved upon Pennethorne’s design — in the words of Chadwick, he made the park ‘come alive’ (Chadwick 1966, p. 47). In 1850 he also became superintendent of Greenwich Park. Gibson’s main contribution to London park design was at Battersea Park, where he is credited with the first displays of ‘sub-tropical’ gardening, where the use of bold foliage took the place of brightly coloured summer bedding (Elliott 2010; Gardeners’ Chronicle 1872, p. 865). William Robinson (1838–1935) gave support to the fashion with the publication of his book Subtropical Gardening in 1870, the same year that he published Wild Gardening, but which at the time had much greater impact. Subtropical gardening became a staple not only of municipal parks but of private gardens thereafter. As Gibson’s reputation grew, he was also given charge of Kennington Park, the grounds of Chelsea Hospital and those of the Royal Military Asylum. In 1871 he was made superintendent of all the Royal Parks in central London — St James’ Park, Green Park, Hyde Park, and Kensington Gardens (Gardeners’ Chronicle 1872, p. 865).

The fourth member of the Chatsworth School was George Eyles (1815–1887), who had risen to be the superintendent of the Crystal Palace Park, after initial training at Chatsworth. He was then appointed to supervise the construction of the new gardens in Kensington for the Royal Horticultural Society, using profits generated from the Great Exhibition in a project promoted by Prince Albert who had become President of the RHS in 1858. A 22-acre site was chosen in what was to be known as ‘Albertopolis’ and £100,000 (£76.5m) allocated for the garden’s construction — half as much again per acre as had been spent on the Crystal Palace gardens. Paxton’s name was put forward as the garden’s designer but was rejected as it was thought that he was not sympathetic to the rigorously Italianate style which the Prince preferred and, in any event, it was thought that he would want to take sole control. The design brief was given to a non-gardener, William Andrews Nesfield, but Eyles, who was also made superintendent of the garden, was able to exercise his influence over the design, particularly in the addition of water in the form of canals (Pl. V). When the gardens opened in 1861 the magnificence of Versailles was again invoked:

Plate V. The RHS Gardens at South Kensington (Murray’s Book of the RHS, 1863).

… [In] these successions of terraces, in these artificial canals, in these highly ornamental flower-walks we have something of the taste and splendour of Louis Quatorze. It was of such a garden as this that Bacon must have dreamt (Figure 11) (Gardens Trust 2020).

In 1857, another Chatsworth gardener, Joseph Smith (fl. 1850s), designed and laid out, together with Mr Lawson, the head gardener to Lord Londonderry, the People’s Park (later renamed Mowbray Park) in Sunderland (HE 1994). The extent of the influence of Paxton and the Chatsworth school can be seen from the fact that of the forty-two parks which are designated Grade 1 or Grade 2* in the English Heritage register they designed and built seventeen of them — 40 per cent of the total (tabulated by the author from Historic England).

GARDENERS AS PARK DESIGNERS AND SUPERINTENDENTS

Other eminent gardeners followed in the path which had been created by Paxton and the Chatsworth school, most notably William Barron who has been described as being second only to Paxton in forming the image of a landscape gardener as an heroic figure (Elliott et al. 2007, p. 29). He had created one of the greatest gardens of the early Victorian period at Elvaston Castle and he subsequently laid out, latterly in partnership with his son, West Park, Macclesfield; Locke Park, Barnsley (formerly The People’s Park); Abbey Park Leicester; the People’s Park, Grimsby; Queen’s Park Chesterfield; Brunswick Park, Sandwell; Victoria Park, Tipton; and Bedford Park (ibid., p. 143).

It became commonplace for the park superintendents to be asked to design new parks, as was the case in Glasgow. In 1853, shortly after Glasgow City Corporation had asked Joseph Paxton to lay out Kelvingrove as a public park, Duncan McLellan (c. 1814–1897), who had worked as a gardener on several estates in Scotland, was appointed as the City’s Parks Superintendent, a post which he was to hold for forty years. The Corporation consulted Paxton on the design of Queen’s Park in 1856, but after that time they entrusted all the new park development work to McLellan. He designed and laid out Alexandra Park, which opened in 1870, and Maxwell Park (1890), and by the time he retired in 1893 he was in charge of 699 acres of parkland (Devoniensis 1897, p. 687). McLellan’s place was taken by James Whitton (1851–1925), who had held the post of head gardener to the Earl of Strathmore at Glamis Castle for five years. During his thirty years in the post, he oversaw a great expansion in the number of parks, again being responsible for all the design and construction work, so that by 1914 there were fifteen parks and a further sixteen minor open spaces, extending to 1,562 acres, plus the Ardgoil woodland estate of 14,650 acres where he carried out a programme of afforestation (Garden:Visitor 1901, p. 287; Maver 1998, p. 341; Whitton, https://crwhitton).

Park superintendents were nearly always former head gardeners from country estates. The one exception was John Sexby, a former army officer who was appointed as the first Chief Officer for the London Parks in 1892, to vociferous protests from the gardening establishment. He was responsible for 5,000 acres of parks and employed a staff of 1,000, which included 503 trained gardeners and 302 park keepers (Jordan 1994, p. 111). William Morter (1869–1937) was for twelve years the head gardener for Lord Avebury, Darwin’s neighbour and close friend, at High Elms, Downe, in Kent, an estate of 250 acres. His experience there qualified him for the role of superintendent of Birmingham City parks, a post which he assumed in 1903. There, he had charge of 650 acres, comprising twelve large parks and eight smaller parks and open spaces, plus 3,500 street trees (Gardeners’ Magazine 1908, p. 450). The scale of operations was much greater than in any private garden. For the spring bedding he used more than half a million daffodils, plus large quantities of tulips, hyacinths, crocuses and snowdrops. In summer the large parks all had displays of summer bedding, plus carpet bedding and ‘a good deal of sub-tropical work’ (Wilcox 1908, p. 443). The scope of activity was similar at Nottingham, where William Parker (1870–1952) became superintendent in 1907, after working in the well-known private gardens of Trentham Hall, Eaton Hall and Blenheim Palace. He had charge of sixteen parks with a total of 600 acres, plus all of the city’s cemeteries and the street trees. As well as the usual floral displays, for which he had a dedicated nursery, Parker was in charge of an unusually large number of sporting facilities, which included fortyfour cricket match grounds (which he said had to be ‘kept like county grounds’), which were used by eighty-five clubs, who played 705 matches in the 1913 season. In addition, there were eleven football match grounds, eleven bowling greens and two golf courses (Wilcox 1914, p. 107).

It was a feature of most public gardens that they had extravagant bedding displays, which first of all mimicked those in large private gardens and later excelled them, on account of their popularity with the visiting public. George Fleming (1809–1876), the head gardener at Trentham, is credited with popularising the bedding system (Elliott 1986, p. 90) although John Caie (1811–1879), the head gardener at Bedford Lodge for the Dowager Duchess of Bedford, also has a claim to be the originator, together with the Duchess herself. Fleming and Donald Beaton (1802–1865), the head gardener at Shrublands, vied with each other in their experimentation and were responsible for two innovations — the ribbon border and shading (for which Beaton gave Lady Middleton the credit for the invention), which reached its apogee under George Eyles at the Crystal Palace park. In the 1860s a second Fleming, the head gardener at Cliveden, John Fleming (1822/3–1883), introduced carpet bedding with a bed in the form of the monogram of his employer, the Duchess of Sutherland (Elliott 1986, p. 155). As the displays in public gardens became more and more extravagant, as one park competed with another, three-dimensional bedding emerged, of which the most flamboyant, and long lasting, was the floral clock, first developed by John M’Hattie (1858–1923), who had become superintendent of parks in Edinburgh after being head gardener at Stratsfieldsaye for the Duke of Wellington (ibid., p. 211). William Pettigrew (1867–1947), the superintendent of the public parks in Manchester, wrote that whilst floral clocks always attracted large crowds, he regarded them with a ‘distaste almost amounting to abhorrence’ but that carpet bedding, ‘when tastefully designed and artistically carried out’, would always provide an interesting feature in a public garden (Pettigrew 1937, p. 173).

Before taking charge of the parks and gardens of Brighton in 1891, George Ward (1851–1922) had worked in seven private gardens, including Spye Park in Wiltshire and Castle Ashby in Northamptonshire, whose 35 acre gardens include a cricket ground. At Brighton he had charge of six main parks with 396 acres, plus twelve others of less than 5 acres, the street trees, four sets of allotment gardens and 200 acres of small-holdings. His average staff numbered between seventy and eighty, plus about fifty of the unemployed. Carpet bedding was employed in all the main parks, for which in 1910 he used a total of 116,627 plants, all of them grown in the parks’ nurseries (Wilcox 1912, p. 41).

PARKS FOR THE PEOPLE

When the first municipal parks were opened, they were acclaimed as ‘Parks for the People’, as indeed was the intention of their promotors. From the start the parks were open to all classes and no attempt was made by means of restrictive rules or regulations to deny access to members of the labouring class. In his record of his visit to Birkenhead Park in 1850 Frederick Law Olmsted observed that a large proportion of the visitors were evidently the wives and children of ‘very humble labourers’ and he concluded: ‘This magnificent pleasure ground is entirely, unreservedly and forever the people’s own. The poorest British peasant is as free to enjoy it in all its parts as the British Queen’ (Olmsted 1852, cited in Chadwick 1966, p. 71). Birkenhead Park became popularly known as ‘The People’s Park’, and this became the official name of many parks opened in its wake — notably in Halifax (designed by Paxton), Dublin (N. Niven), Glasgow (Barron), Grimsby (Paxton), Rotherham (Albiston), Sunderland (Smith), Baildon (Gay), Darlington (Barron), Scarborough (Paxton), Barnsley (Barron), and Hull (J. C. Niven) (compiled by the author from the Historic England website). A notice erected in Kemp’s Peel Park, Salford, read ‘This Park was purchased by the People, was made for the People, and is given to the People, for their protection’ (Wyborn 1995, p. 12). On the opening of Stanley Park, Liverpool (also by Kemp), in 1870 it was asserted ‘the park is for the people — the people should use it without let or hindrance; and the only conditions imposed on those who enter should be propriety of behaviour. The beggar and the Prince should be free to use it on this condition’ (Layton-Jones & Lee 2015, p. 17).

The enthusiasm of the general public for the new parks can be seen from the huge crowds which attended their inaugurations. William Gladstone, when Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1864, opened Farnworth Park, Bolton, before a crowd of 100,000. In his address to the crowd, he observed ‘The presentation of this park … is happily not an isolated act; it is part of a great system, part of a great movement’ (HE 2001: Cunliffe 1865, p. 26). Queen Victoria reputedly drew a crowd of 500,000 at the inauguration of Aston Park in Birmingham (Chinn n.d., p. 9) and 200,000 at an event at Norfolk Park, Sheffield in 1897 (HE 2013). The parks were an instant success and were well patronised. At Victoria Park, London, it was estimated that 118,000 visitors attended on one June day in the year of its opening. Also, at Victoria Park it was recorded that every morning, before 8 a.m., 25,000 people bathed in the open-air lakes (Nicholson-Lord 1987, p. 27). In relation to the Manchester parks the Literary Times observed ‘The parks are crowded. No more beautiful scenes could be desired by man than such as are presented on the holiday time of Saturday in any one of these cheerful places of resort’ (Brooks 2011, p. 179). The Times observed, in reference to Birmingham parks, that they were ‘places for ablution, fresh air and recreation’ referencing the primary use of park lakes in the early years of their existence (Lasdun 1991, p. 156).

THE ROLE OF THE WORKING CLASSES IN PROMOTING PUBLIC PARKS

Working people were by no means passive bystanders in the campaigns to establish public parks and they sometimes played a crucial role in their acquisition. The radical pressure group, the East London Democratic Association, which drew its members from the poorest sections of the community, was formed in 1838 with the prime objective of forcing through the purchase of land in Hackney for a public park, which was at first called Tower Hamlets Park, and which later become Victoria Park (Clark 1973, p. 33). Working people played a prominent part in the Manchester campaign for public parks in the 1840s. Following the public meeting in 1844, working men’s committees were established to draw support from businesses and tradesmen, enabling the target of £30,000 (£25.7m) to be met and for a government grant of £3,000 (£2.6m) to be drawn down (Conway 1991, pp. 81–4). The Manchester Guardian commented on the fact that so many members of the working class ‘contributed singly sums which would be considered liberal for shopkeepers’ (Manchester Guardian 1846, p. 9). In Macclesfield, when the idea of creating a public park to commemorate Sir Robert Peel was first mooted in 1850, £300 (£251,600) was speedily collected from the town’s working population. This provided the catalyst for the creation of the park, which was designed by William Barron, then head gardener to Lord Harrington, who provided his services to the town (HE 2001). Birmingham’s first park, Saltley Park, opened in 1856 with support from the Working Men’s Park Association, who managed the park until 1862, when the Council agreed to take it over, at which time its name was changed to Adderley Park. At the opening, it was stated that the fundamental rules upon which the park was opened were first that no profit whatever would be derived from it, and secondly, that there would be no charge for admission (Cox 1892, p. 51). Working men also played a crucial role in the purchase of Aston Hall and Park, also in Birmingham, in 1857. The Working Men’s Committee amalgamated with the languishing original committee, became the interim managers and succeeded in placing a deposit for the purchase of the Hall and Park. The Queen was invited to the opening ceremony, marking her first visit to Birmingham. The mayor, who the Queen knighted during the ceremony, acknowledged that a ‘very large proportion of the money required for the purchase has been subscribed by the working classes’ and the Queen recognised ‘with pleasure the labour you have undertaken in providing thus worthily for the physical and intellectual improvement of the working classes’ (Chinn n.d., p. 9). The £6,000 (£3.1m) cost of the first public park in the potteries, Queen’s Park, Longton, which opened in 1888, was met mostly by public subscription, described by the Reverend Salt as ‘the best practical solution to the problem between the landed aristocracy and socialism’ (HE 2013). In Bristol the campaign for the public provision of a park was inaugurated in 1871 with the publication of a letter from sixteen working men of the city to sixteen aldermen entitled ‘The Cry of the Poor’, calling for urgent action in the provision of a ‘People’s Park’ (Young 1998, p. 179).

The role of women in this process has been less well documented but can nevertheless be seen to have been significant. During the great fund-raising campaign for the first Manchester public parks, it was reported that women formed a substantial part of the crowd at the initial rally and that they ‘evinced their zeal for the cause by their donations. Even families of young people gave their pocket money’ (Manchester Guardian 1846, p. 9). Women’s committees were often at the forefront of fundraising campaigns — this was the case at Adderley Park, Birmingham, in 1856 when a ladies group raised £1,000 (£760,500) (Cox 1892, p. 51) for the park’s buildings, and at Prince’s Park, Liverpool (Pl. VI), where the success of the Ladies Bazaar was noted (Layton-Jones & Lee 2015, p. 18).

Plate VI. Grand Fancy Fair or Philanthropic Festival at Prince’s Park (© Science Museum / Science & Society Picture Library – All rights reserved).

RECREATION FOR THE PEOPLE AND THE BIRTH OF ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL

The recreational facilities which were provided reflected the wish to cater for working-class needs. Provision was made for games which had long been played by the working classes in streets and ale houses, such as skittles, quoits and pitch and toss (Wyborn 1995, p. 12). Joshua Major (1786–1866) described how he had facilities for ‘archery, quoit alley, skittle ground, bowling green, climbing poles, gymnasium, marbles, see-saws, etc., for males and see-saws, balls, skipping rope, the Graces, etc., for females’ (Chadwick 1966, p. 99).

In terms of regulations, because the intention was to attract families, there were almost invariably rules against profanity and drunkenness and the parks were usually locked up during hours of darkness. But the general policy was to keep rules to a minimum, so as to give the maximum encouragement to the ordinary person to make use of the facilities. H. B. Witty (1864–1937), the superintendent of the public parks at Kingston upon Hull, took pride in the fact that there were no restrictive notices, not even ‘Keep off the grass’. He encouraged the public to walk and play on the grass, stating that ‘this is all in line with the policy of getting people into the open air’. Witty, who had trained at Kew, was in charge of four parks with a total of 192 acres, all the town cemeteries, three hospital grounds, 500 acres of allotments and all the street trees (Chittenden 1922, p. 136). He held the post from 1888 until after the First World War. In order to instil a sense of security he stationed a nurse and an ambulance at each of the recreation grounds to deal with the injuries which would inevitably occur. He provided a pool for boys under the age of 14 where they could bathe ‘without restriction as to costume’, and beyond this a wading pool for girls under the supervision of a female attendant. He added ‘we look after the children and do all we can to prevent molestation for which purpose we also have plain clothes policemen’. Football was encouraged with the provision of free grounds for fifty clubs.

The encouragement of the game of football, which was to become synonymous with workingclass entertainment, was a feature of municipal parks from the start, even though the game was then in an embryonic state. The development of the parks ran in tandem with the development of the game. It was part of the brief in the competition to design Peel Park in Manchester that space should be provided for as many games as possible and 12 acres of land were set aside for a variety of games, including cricket (then the national sport) and football (Chadwick 1966, p. 99). When the game took on an organised form with common rules and league tables the parks played a seminal role in its development. Crystal Palace Football Club, which was formed by the Crystal Palace Company in 1861, has a claim to be the country’s oldest professional football club. It became a founder member of the Football Association in 1863 and took part in the first FA Cup competition in 1871–72 (Manning 2018, p. 210). Spectators to the games had first to pay the 1 shilling entrance fee to the park. Crystal Palace subsequently became the home of the leading ground in England, after a lake in the park was filled in, and fountains removed, to create a stadium with a capacity of more than 60,000. This became the venue for the FA Cup final from 1895 until the First World War, by which time the capacity had been increased to 112,000, by far England’s largest (ibid., p. 253).

The football pitches at Battersea Park under John Gibson also played a part in the development of the game, when they hosted the first exhibition game under the rules of the newly formed Football Association on 9 January 1864. Battersea Park was also host to the game between London and Sheffield, played on 31 March 1866, which has been described as the ‘first match of any importance under the auspices of the Football Association’ (Editorial Team n.d.).

Several football clubs began their existence in public parks. Everton played its first games in Stanley Park, Liverpool, where 50–60 per cent of the land had been reserved by Kemp as sporting ground. The football pitches at Wanderers Avenue, Phoenix Park, Wolverhampton, were the home of Wolverhampton Wanderers until 1889. The Nottingham Forest football team, founded in 1865 and who vie with Crystal Palace for the distinction of being the oldest professional club in the English league, obtained their name, not from Sherwood Forest, as is commonly believed, but from Forest Recreation ground, where they first played. The parks under the control of William Parker, the Nottingham Parks superintendent, contained eleven match grounds, which in the 1913 season were used by twenty-five clubs who played 338 matches on them (Wilcox 1914, p. 107).

THE PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN

One of the most important aspects of the inclusivity of public parks related to the facilities offered to women and children. When Trevelyan wrote that one of the chief contributions made by the Victorians to real civilisation was their ‘enlarged sympathy with children’ he did so in the context of the legislation which was designed to limit their exploitation in the workplace, by either preventing their employment at too young an age, restricting their hours of work or prohibiting their engagement in certain dangerous occupations (Chadwick 1966; p. 315; Trevelyan 1942, p. 522). Before the advent of compulsory, state-funded education the development of municipal parks with facilities directed at children was one of the first examples of public expenditure specifically on their behalf, outside of the poor law legislation. Children were part of the rhetoric for public parks from the start. Public parks would, it was said, ‘secure a pleasant playground for town children’ (Jordan 1994, p. 86). In 1844 at the first public meeting in Manchester which was held to gain public support for Manchester’s first parks, the audience of 5–6,000 which included a high proportion of women, were told that the parks would be for ‘every woman who finds her children’s sports restricted by the smallness of her house’. Joshua Major, after winning the contract to build the parks, wrote, ‘we took advantage of every nook or recess which was to spare for the different playgrounds’ (Chadwick 1966, p. 99). Paxton and Kemp had set the precedent at Birkenhead Park, which opened in 1847. Olmsted, on his first visit in 1852, noted how he was met at the entrance gate by ‘a herd of donkeys, some saddled and bridled for ladies and children to ride’. Next to the cricket ground there was a field where ‘girls and women with children were playing’ (ibid., p. 70). Following the example of Birkenhead Park, it became routine for parks to have children’s playgrounds, invariably separated by gender, as otherwise the boys would hog the swings and rides. Bathing was another popular activity for children, initially in the lake, later in bathing pools. Lakes were also important in two other respects: first, for the provision of boating facilities and, secondly, as habitats for ducks, which were ubiquitous and being irresistible to young children proved to be a great attraction.

Crystal Palace started a second trend, that of educational attractions for children. Their display of thirty dinosaurs and other extinct prehistoric creatures became the first theme park, albeit with a didactic intent, and are now listed Grade 1 by Historic England. Elliott has described the influence of the Crystal Palace attractions as ‘immense’; ‘In every city from the 1860s onwards aviaries, zoos and conservatories for the display of exotic vegetation multiplied’ (Elliott 1986, p. 121).

The modicum of equality which girls enjoyed with boys on the playground did not extend after puberty, when the vast majority of sports, such as cricket, football and archery, were devoted to boys. In later years girls were able to make use of cycle tracks and tennis courts, but the sporting options for them were relatively limited. However, parks were transformative for women of all ages as places to walk and meet. They were a safe sanctuary away from home and moreover contained refreshment rooms and other covered spaces, so that they could be used in all weathers. Private gardens, as an extension of the domestic domain, were essentially a female sphere and so likewise in an urban setting the parks as places to promenade and meet were predominantly used by women, as is evident from contemporary illustrations and photographs (O’Reilly 2019, pp. 50–1). As such, they were immensely liberating for women and their children.

Summer houses, temples and gazebos in country estates had a dual purpose. First, they were aesthetically pleasing highlights in the landscape and secondly, they were places for discreet liaisons away from the servants and other inquisitive eyes, becoming a familiar trope in romantic fiction. One of the reasons that public parks became so popular is that they also provided opportunities for people to meet privately and discreetly, away from the crowded tenements where privacy was at a premium. The extent to which this freedom was enjoyed can be discerned from a censorious letter published in the Liverpool Citizen, with reference to Sefton Park, where the writer said that the park after dark was a disgrace to the city as ‘a number of shop girls, servant girls and nondescript young wanderers are enticed into the place for the lowest motives … at present it is a hot bed of iniquity instead of a healthy breathing space for the community’ (Layton-Jones & Lee 2015, p. 42). Similar letters appeared at intervals, suggesting that little was done to curtail the new freedoms which were so widely enjoyed.

GATHERINGS IN PUBLIC PARKS

One of the civic duties routinely carried out by the owners of landed estates was to host the local horticultural show. This also became a feature of the annual calendar of public parks, in some cases to their great financial advantage. Bruce Findlay (1835–1896), the curator of the Manchester Botanic gardens, inaugurated a flower show at Whitsuntide, to coincide with the principal annual holiday in Lancashire, offering a prize schedule of £1,000 (£.451m) (Garden 1896, p. 496) with great success. This, combined with a number of smaller shows for Daffodils in April, Roses in July, Carnations in August and Chrysanthemums in November brought in substantial revenue and enabled the park to open free of charge to the public on several days a week. In 1903 the then curator, Patrick Weathers (c.1870–1943), a former Kew gardener, estimated that in forty years the garden had expended £100,000 (£41.1m) in prize monies, excluding the carnation show, where the exhibitors contributed the prize money (Wilcox 1903, p. 354).

The landed estates also hosted fairs and fetes, particularly for philanthropic purposes. In July 1856 Aston Hall in Birmingham held a fete to raise money for a local hospital, which was attended by 50,000 people, paying a 1 shilling entrance fee. The event raised £2,329 (£1.8m). A similar, equally successful, fair was held in September of the same year, to raise money for a second Birmingham hospital. This tradition continued at Aston Hall after it became a municipal park. Fairs and fetes became regular fixtures in the public parks. Every Easter Avenham Park in Preston hosted an annual egg-rolling competition for children. This was organised by the park’s superintendent George Rowbotham (1834–1898) who, after supervising the construction works at the three Preston parks for Edward Milner, had been appointed in 1866 as superintendent of the parks, a position he was to hold for thirty-three years. In 1895, a crowd of 25,000 attended the event, from all sections of the community, including a group of children from the poor house, who, sadly, were made to wear a uniform. Rowbotham noted with satisfaction that in contrast to some previous years there had been no incidents of drunkenness in that year and that only thirty-five children had been recovered from the ‘Children lost and found’ lodge: as against 100 two years earlier (Preston Herald 1895, p. 4). Shortly after this event the Whitsuntide Fair, held annually to coincide with the local holidays, was held in Avenham Park under Rowbotham’s supervision, again attracting huge attendances.

The RHS garden at South Kensington in 1861, under George Eyles, was the first park to feature a bandstand (Pavilions for Music, n.d.). The origin of bandstands can be traced to the pleasure gardens of the previous century, but they became an institution in the municipal parks with 1,200 being in use by the First World War. In Manchester a musical advisor was appointed in 1899 to oversee public concerts (Pettigrew 1937, p. 119) and the annual expenditure on music in the parks rose from £160 (£73,900) in 1894 to £4,000 (£1.4m) in 1914, with 700 music events taking place every summer (Gilmore & Doyle 2019, p. 141). They were important because they could be enjoyed by all the family, across all generations, as is illustrated by this evocative description by Jack Donaldson of listening to the band music at Myatt’s Fields, Lambeth:

The children danced to it, played ball to it, sang to it and ignored it, the grown-ups, all listening, sat round on their wooden seats or leant against the green railings and were happy (Gilmore & Doyle 2019, p. 141).

The audiences for the brass band concerts could be huge, as was the case when gramophone concerts, playing recordings of Enrico Caruso, began in Heaton Park in 1909, where the audiences were estimated at 40,000, a figure which was emulated in other cities (O’Reilly 2019, p. 94; BBC 2005).

Brass bands also regularly featured in public demonstrations and meetings held in public parks. Temperance groups, who had campaigned vigorously against the opening of parks on Sundays, held some of the largest; one in Manchester in June 1908 was attended by an estimated quarter of a million people accompanied by sixty bands (O’Reilly 2019, p. 57). There was a general tolerance of political meetings in parks, although the byelaws usually specified that prior approval had to be given by the relevant parks committee. In Liverpool there was a reluctance to allow meetings held by Catholic or Protestant groups, because of the fear of sectarian violence, and in spite of numerous requests no such meeting were allowed in public parks (ibid., p. 54). Elsewhere, however. political meetings were generally allowed.

The suffragette movement, which had been formed by Emmeline Pankhurst in Manchester in 1903, received approval from the parks committee to hold a series of meeting in Heaton and Alexandra Parks in the summer of 1908. A rally on 11 July in Alexandra Park (Pl. VII) attracted nearly 10,000 people, that at Heaton Park eight days later, 150,000 (O’Reilly 2019, p. 56). These meetings, which were peaceful and widely reported, were heralded at the time as a triumph (Holton 2002, p. 134).

Plate VII. Suffragette Poster (© Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives).

When the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) started a campaign of direct action (O’Reilly 2009), parks were chosen as a target in the knowledge that wanton acts of destruction there would lead to public outrage and generate publicity. The cactus house at Alexandra Park was damaged by a bomb in 1913, causing £200 (£78,900) worth of damage and this was followed by attacks on the orchid house and the tea pavilion at Kew Gardens (Mackay 2018; O’Reilly 2019, p. 56) leading to the complete destruction of the tea room (Pl. VIII). and a loss of £900 (£.355m) (The Times, 1913). An arson attack was also made upon the tea pavilion at Cannon Hill Park in Birmingham in 1914 where the WSPU left leaflets together with the message ‘stop torturing women’, a reference to the forceful feeding of suffragettes in jail (HE 2001).

Plate VIII. The Tea Pavilion at Kew Gardens after the Suffragette Attack 1913 (© RBG Kew).

CONCLUSION

Put very simply, the narrative is as follows. In the 1830s members of the gardening community, most notably Loudon and Paxton, began a campaign for public parks to be provided in industrial areas. This campaign was supported by working-class activists. Paxton obtained the commission for the first public park, at Birkenhead, which contained the features common to the best country estates, creating a rus in urbe, together with separate recreational areas. This style, with a high standard of horticultural excellence and extravagantly rich architectural ornamentation became the model on which future parks were based, whose design and construction in the early years was dominated by Paxton and his acolytes in the Chatsworth school. Certain principles were established from the start. First, that the design and the quality of the construction should be equal to that of the best landscape parks and, secondly, that the parks would be open to all and would be free to enter. Care was taken to provide recreational facilities which catered to working class tastes and needs. The parks were proclaimed as ‘Parks for the People’, and very often named as such. They were opened to great acclaim and enthusiastic support from all sections of the community. With few exceptions the gardens were designed by working gardeners, or by gardeners who had set themselves up as landscape designers. They were also managed by gardeners, who came from the large estates to become their superintendents and who were selected as only they had the degree of skill which was required to maintain the horticultural excellence which was required. Once the first public parks had been built, it became a matter of local pride for municipal authorities to have a park which was the equal or better than that of their neighbour. Their popularity was such that the newly created seaside resorts invariably built public parks, even though the initial imperative of providing ‘breathing spaces’ for overcrowded areas did not have any relevance there.

The gardening community thereby created a new demand for their services, a demand which they were able to satisfy from their ranks and which gave their profession not only enhanced career opportunities but also greater status and in some cases wealth. By 1914 at least 2,000 gardening superintendents were in charge of the municipal parks, as against 7,500 head gardeners at private estates. The superintendents controlled many thousands of under-gardeners and parkkeepers — this represented a huge expansion in the overall numbers employed as gardeners and in ancillary gardening roles. They also created a form of employment which was superior to that which they had enjoyed as head gardeners on country estates. In parks they were no longer domestic servants subject to the whims of their masters, but were in reality the masters themselves. When Paxton installed Kemp as superintendent of Birkenhead Park, he was given the Italian Lodge (Pll. III) to live in on the basis that it was ‘the almost invariable custom to allow head gardeners a free residence in The Place, it’s advantages being so very manifest’ (Lee 2018). Most park superintendents who followed were also given their own residence in their park. The difference was that there was no mansion to account to, to defer to and to take orders from. Such was Kemp’s status that he moved out of the Italian Lodge having built a house for himself on the other side of the park (marked ‘Kemp’s House’ on the map in Fig. 4) where his neighbours were merchants and manufacturers (ibid.).

It may be said that gardeners not only created but captured this market and in assessing their achievement it is relevant to consider the counterfactuals. It was by no means inevitable that municipal parks would take the form they did and several other models existed. First, there was the simpler form of park, as was originally envisaged, and as was constructed in Bath, Preston and Sheffield in the 1830s, consisting of walkways and recreational areas, but without a lake or any significant ornamentation. Secondly, there was the botanical garden model where the park was paid for by a group of subscribers and entry to the garden was upon payment of a fee. Thirdly, there was the property investment model, as in Regents’ Park and Princes Park, where the development costs were paid for by selling plots of land around the perimeter of the park and entry was only free to subscribers. Finally, there was the ‘municipal corporations’ model, as originally mooted by Paxton, where the park would be financed on a similar basis to the early gas companies. If the first of these models had gained traction, the parks would have been simple and inexpensive and would have performed their function of providing ‘breathing spaces’ and recreational facilities but would have been a very pale shadow of what eventually emerged. If any, or a mixture, of the other models had prevailed the parks would have excluded the working classes because of the necessity to make a charge for entry and would have become enclaves for the middle classes.

There are two explanations for the fact that the parks emerged in the form which they did. First, the very raison d’être for the parks, as espoused by Loudon and Paxton, was to help those who were trapped in urban areas without access to green spaces. It was absolutely fundamental to their proposals that the parks should be in places which would benefit the working classes and that they should be free to all. The second explanation can be attributed to the extraordinary strength of character, one might say chutzpah, of Paxton, who in building Birkenhead Park established the precedent that the working man was entitled to something which was the equal of, or better than, the very best country estate. Once that exemplar had been established it became the standard for every municipality, who competed with their neighbours for horticultural distinction, which in turn strengthened the importance of the gardeners in charge. The very excellence of Paxton’s design may also be the explanation as to why the parks have survived until today, adapted it is true to take account of changes in fashion, particularly as to recreation, but largely in their original form. Because they were so well designed and catered so well for the needs of the urban population, they have become well loved and impervious to radical change.

After creating Central Park in New York, Olmsted wrote: ‘It is of great importance as the first real park made in this country — a democratic development of the highest significance’ (Clark 1973). By democratic, Olmsted meant that it was a place where every citizen had the right to participate. Central Park contained the same elements as Birkenhead Park, but both were developments of the parks created by Brown a century earlier, whose origins can themselves be traced to classical times. In 1776 Mrs Lybbe Powys had written: ‘The rage for laying out grounds makes every nobleman and gentleman a copier of their neighbour, till every fine place throughout England is comparatively, at least, alike’ (Mowl 2000). Two hundred years later, Frank Clark, in assessing nineteenth-century public parks, commented ‘The styles of each designer are hardly distinguishable’ (Clark 1973). Both sets of styles relied on the serpentine lake, the winding walks, the mounds, the clumps of trees and the expansive lawns — a design which was found to be universally pleasing and was recognised around the world as quintessentially English. The essential difference between the private estate and the public park was that the one catered for the recreational needs of the owning family and the other for the public in general.

It is fitting in a democratic age that it is the municipal parks which have survived. A minority of the great estates of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries still exist, in greatly truncated form, as heritage sites with high prices of admission, aptly described as the bourgeoisie at leisure. The public parks remain free and they have become a cherished institution. In the present day the work of maintaining the parks has been taken over by contractors, rather than gardeners employed directly by the local authority, but the vision created by Loudon, Paxton and the Chatsworth school has been kept alive and the parks may truly be said to be the working gardeners’ greatest legacy.