In my
junior historical novel, set in Victorian times, the young hero arrives alone
in Victorian London. Needing a safe space for the night, he considers climbing
over the railings into one of the garden squares. Those
green spaces were private gardens for the key-holders, the residents of
the big houses nearby, and acted as distinct social spaces where children could
play, infants be “aired” in perambulators and a variety of respectable adults
could greet each other while strolling about.
Most of
London’s squares and gardens are open to the public by day, and locked every
evening to deter vagrants, although not always successfully. Returning to my
hotel in Mecklenburgh Square
around 11pm recently, I saw a young man hoist himself up over a set of spiked
railings, drop down on the other side and disappear into an overgrown corner of
the Coram Fields grounds for the night, just as I had imagined my own Victorian
runaway doing in a fictional garden setting.
As
cities grew larger and more congested, the private parklands surrounding an
industrialist’s mansion or a wealthy landowner’s now-unwanted residence might
be converted into a public space, such as the small park created around Bruce
Grove Castle, although surely altruism was only one strand in the
creation of such places.
These
green parkland spaces were seen as a way of refreshing the polluted, miasmic
city air and also as a way of improving the health, education and social mores
of the urban population. Titus Salt, the Yorkshire textile manufacturer and
temperance enthusiast, made sure his model village at Saltaire provided a park for
his mill-hands, although he provided them with rules about how to behave within
his park too.
Gradually,
as the middle-classes increased and workers were granted half-days and holidays,
parks became even more a social venue. The expected expanse of trees and lawns might
include impressive botanical gardens, floral displays, bandstands and room for sporting
activities as well as the obligatory swings, slides and see-saws of children’s
playground area.
In Harrogate, the old Bogs Field where spa visitors had
once walked off the effects of the Spa purges, changed character during Victorian times. As part of town
improvements, the area became the genteel Valley Gardens,
intended to attract high-class visitors to the town, which it still does.
The open grass acres of The Stray, where horse-races
were once held, is still used by many groups and individuals during
the week and weekends. They, and others, recently signed a forceful petition against some councillors wish
to “improve” The Stray further by increasing the number of paying events planned for the
much-valued open spaces. The local newspaper claimed the people's petition had won. It has, so far.
The city
of Leeds has generous parklands too and one - Roundhay
Park - offers another reason
for the tone of my post here today. A private leisure company, providing healthy outdoor
activities for children, had been in negotiations with the city council about taking
over an area of park and woodland for their own exciting proposal. Local residents pointedly
pointed out that at £25.00 per family visit, the new facility would not available
to the families who currently use the park daily and weekly. Furthermore,
the plans would cause significant damage to a much-loved natural habitat. Fortunately, the council
took note and Roundhay
Park still remains a public space. Yet the pattern of commercial encroachment seems worrying right now.
Moreover
- and less noisily – many parks are facing deeper threats. Intense cuts in public
funding mean that trained gardeners are often the staff of the past. The gardens in
parks are now a facility that can be maintained, like libraries, by groups of keen
volunteers. Alongside this pattern comes the additional matter of developers
spying out prime land for housing and new planning regulations and I find
myself worrying about the role of parks in the future.
Why were
the parks created? Surely the increasing density of the urban populations will
need open spaces just as much as the urban workforce of the past? Or will public
parks, in this continuing age of austerity, be necessarily absorbed into the ticketed-leisure
industry and recreated for a different ideology? In fact, will the provision
and upkeep of public parks in Britain
become, to all intents and purposes, history?
ps. I hope, by my next post, to have my eyes and words more firmly on the past.
Penny
Dolan
.
3 comments:
Good to hear about the success at Roundhay Park. And I love the old names - Titus Salt, The Stray, Bogs Field, Coram Fields - makes you want to write about them right away!
I read recently about what the Japanese call, I think, 'forest bathing'. The idea is that trees are physically good for you, and are tremendously important in cities - as, of course, are parks. https://qz.com/804022/health-benefits-japanese-forest-bathing/
You are right, Penny. We must guard our parks and open places which still give urban city dwellers (living in bed sits and flat now but still lacking outdoor spaces) access to somewhere to sit, stroll, jog, practice ti chi and yoga, walk the dog, picnic, sunbathe or just enjoy being outside on a sunny day.
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