Britain's Park Story

We all love a park.

They conjure up memories of lazy, sunny, summer days,

of autumnal landscapes, of boating on the ornamental lake.

They're bits of the countryside embedded in the city, places of entertainment.

They're amongst our greatest cultural legacies.

In this programme, I'll be travelling all across the country

to celebrate the rich history of some of our greatest public parks.

They've brought us pleasure for generations...

We use to fish over the railings in the duck pond, and I think we used to catch gudgeon, mainly.

..and have influenced the development of parks throughout the world...

from the opulent royal parks in London to the Victorian municipal parks in the northwest

run by the people for the people

to revolutionary new urban parks carved out of our inner city landscapes.

Along the way, I'll be finding out about some

of the iconic features that give each park its unique character...

-When this opened in 1884, there was 10,000 people.

-10,000?

-10,000.

..meeting the experts who are revitalising traditional skills...

It's not too bad, is it?

HE LAUGHS

..and I'll be discovering what a cherished role public parks continue to play in our lives today.

For most of us, parks formed a very potent part of our childhood.

I remember I used to love to play in the bushes, places where one

could escape adult supervision, places where the imagination could run wild.

Now I come to Victoria Park in London, my local park,

and I love it for the very reasons for which it was created.

It offers a sense of space, light and greenery and beauty in a very crowded part of the city.

These oases of green away from the stresses of daily life

were designed for everyone, young and old, lovers and families, people of all income ranges.

They are a great British invention.

Most of us tend to take our local parks for granted.

We assume that they've always been here and always will be here,

free for all to use, very much people's parks.

But it wasn't always so.

I'm starting my journey here in London, home to eight royal parks

and probably the best-known examples of public parks in Britain.

Together, they contain around 150,000 trees,

280 historic statues and monuments and acres of green space for every kind of sport or leisure activity.

The royal parks were opened to the nation by our monarchs.

But when they were first created, these parks weren't public spaces at all.

Set up by the monarchs of the day as royal hunting grounds, they were the domains of the privileged few,

where only the foolish or reckless would dare to trespass.

As time went on, they became part of the recreational life of Londoners,

but predominantly just for the upper classes.

The public had no legal right to use them.

They were there at the grace and favour of the crown.

Hyde Park was the first and, indeed, for many years the only royal park open to the public.

From the 1630s, gentlefolk were allowed in here to enjoy its sweeping magnificence.

It now covers around 340 acres and started life as a royal deer park, a hunting reserve.

I've come to Rotten Row in Hyde Park to meet equestrian historian Joyce Bellamy to talk about the vital role

horses have always played in the history of the park.

I've been thinking about the origins of Hyde Park and, indeed, Kensington Gardens.

It was originally, I guess, a royal hunting ground - deer and so on?

Yes, it was a deer park after Henry VIII confiscated it

-from the monastery, yes.

-Yes.

-That's what he used it for himself.

And that use continued until it became surrounded by the suburbs,

when it took on a lot of its present character.

How long have horses played such a vital role in the life of Hyde Park?

Ever since it became a public recreation area.

As London grew around the park, more and more people used it for riding.

But riding in the 18th and 19th century is interesting to me.

I mean, it's exercise. I suppose it's like going to the gym now, isn't it,

in that people get on a horse and keep their body in shape?

Yes, they said it blew away the heat and faintness of the ballroom!

And people carried on riding to an advanced age.

So riding as exercise also to acquire sort of the necessary skills of life, I suppose.

Indeed, yes, because it was as important as learning to drive is today.

And young people were encouraged to learn to ride, so that if

they went into the Army, they would be able to cope from day one.

Right. And the Army would have used Rotten Row for various cavalry arrangement, I suppose.

Oh, yes, there were very, very many regiments based near the park,

-and that is why the row was doubled in width.

-Into the tress over there.

-Beyond the trees, yes.

But now the maintained area of the row is the original width.

But Rotten Row now, of course, is in splendid condition, isn't it?

-It's beautifully maintained.

-And restored.

-Yes. Yes,

-with sand, and it's raked regularly.

-Yes.

And it's used, of course, by the Army.

On that note, and on with the moment, I intend to ride myself on Rotten Row.

I have said hello several times. He seems very understanding.

Oh! Ah, hat. Health and safety!

-And the chin strap done up.

-Yes, I can do that.

Look, he's getting excited. He can see the hat going on.

Wow, that's good. Don't ask me to do it again.

I won't!

The first parks that were truly egalitarian,

where anyone was granted admission for the price of a ticket regardless of class, were the pleasure gardens.

They began to appear all over the country after the Restoration of 1660

and reached the height of their popularity in the mid-18th century.

Pleasure gardens really were the nightclubs of their age, where you would go to see celebrities

and, indeed, to be seen, where aristocrats would mix with harlots amongst fantastical decorations.

They were the backdrop for all manner of amazing events -

concerts, dances, dining, fireworks and occasionally the ascent of hot-air balloons.

Sadly, today there are very few traces left of such an important part of our history.

Vauxhall Gardens, started in 1661, was London's first and most famous pleasure gardens.

Indeed, they stimulated the growth of pleasure gardens throughout Britain.

Vauxhall Gardens flourished mostly in the 18th century, but by the mid 19th century, times had changed.

The gardens closed and their grounds were built upon.

Terraced houses stood where people had once paraded, but those houses in their turn

were bombed in the Second World War, and this park, Spring Gardens in Lambeth,

commemorates the site of the wondrous and now almost forgotten Vauxhall Gardens.

-Can I ask you a question?

-Yeah.

Have you ever heard of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens?

-No.

-Oh! OK, they were very popular in the 18th century.

Can I ask you a question? Oh. A simple question. No. That's a no.

-So, have you ever heard of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens?

-Er, no, I've not.

OK. Thank you very much.

I work in Vauxhall. Let me tell you, it's an important pleasure in Vauxhall, is this!

There is something called Exotic Dancers over there. That's a sort of pleasure, I suppose.

Have you ever heard of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens?

-Yes.

-Oh, excellent! Does it move you?

-Erm, it's not what it used to be!

-This is true.

To find out what Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens were really like at the height of their fame,

I've come to meet author Sarah Jane Downing.

Vauxhall Gardens was the earliest, I suppose, and the most famous of London's pleasure gardens.

-Can you tell me about it?

-Oh, yes! It really was an absolute phenomenon.

I mean, it began very much at the time of the Restoration...

That was 1660-something.

-Yes, about 1661.

-Right.

..and over centuries attracted everybody who was anybody, anyone who wanted to be fashionable,

who wanted to be seen to be fashionable and who wanted to mix with the most glamorous people.

They were very sort of democratic places, a strange terrain outside the constraints of normal society

where anyone with the money or the right clothes could get in and be what they wanted to be.

Very much so. Price prohibited poorer people coming, but that was the only thing,

-so that was really unusual at that point in time.

-Yeah.

The idea that someone could buy the clothes for gentlemen and appear to be one and no-one would know,

that sort of thing really, I think, added a frisson.

Right, this is a very interesting image. It seems to show...

Well, this is an aerial view... a bird's eye view, rather?

Yes. They would come in from this direction and walk down along into the grove. And all of these are...

-You see the little tables?

-Yes.

-They're all little supper booths, and so...

-Absolutely charming.

But here we see them in some detail.

-So we see the band, then also we see people sitting dining in lovely Gothic...

-Absolutely.

By the end of its life, Vauxhall was becoming more egalitarian -

tradesmen getting in, cheaper to get in, more popular.

I mean, in a sense it really was one of the first sort of public parks.

Yes. I think as numbers were falling in the evenings, they thought,

"Well, there's a new crowd of people who want to have family entertainments,"

you know, certainly lots of ladies.

-Yeah.

-And, indeed, ladies' maids complained because there were too many tradesmen's wives.

-I see.

It was definitely getting run down, but I suppose its end was inevitable.

The world had changed and it represented things which the people in the 1840s, '50s

found they wanted to escape from the associations of vice, I suppose, and excess,

-and so it almost had to be sacrificed to the changing fashions and taste of the time.

-It's so sad.

I mean, after being such a beautiful sort of huge element of London's society for all those years,

there's so little of any of them left!

By the mid-19th century, pleasure gardens were coming under increasing pressure from urban expansion

and many Victorian reformers thought the time was right to create a very different type of public park.

Cities were becoming more overcrowded, and the only recreational spaces available

to the lower classes on Sundays were those that encouraged debauchery, bawdy theatres and public houses.

With industrial expansion reaching new heights in early 19th-century Britain,

philanthropists and politicians increasingly recognised the need

for green, open spaces in the country's ever-expanding, polluted and crowded industrial towns.

Park campaigners argued quite simply that parks would bring health

by offering opportunities for sport, recreation, exercise and, of course, fresh air.

But parks would also, they said,

bring a civilising and calming influence to bear on the working population.

Park campaigners wanted the park to be a truly egalitarian public space

where people from all classes could mix freely.

And in 1833, Parliament's splendidly named Select Committee on Public Walks was formed to look into

providing public spaces for the growing cities across the land.

At the time, the only parks in London were the royal parks,

but there was nothing to be found south of the Thames and in the East End.

Alarmed by the poor state of health of the people of Bethnal Green in the 1840s,

where the average life expectancy was little over 30 years,

reformers such as Dr Hector Gavin came here to explore and document the area.

He was absolutely appalled by what he discovered.

Hare Street now known as Cheshire Street, Gavin found abominably dirty and foul.

The road was covered with rubbish and the yard behind the crowded houses

contained cesspits that were overflowing and stinking.

In number 79, that stood just about here, Gavin found

the whole household ill with fever, and the stench was appalling.

It was in this dismal setting that the paradise of Victoria Park was to be created.

The idea of an East End park was hailed with great enthusiasm.

A 30,000-signature petition from the local people

was sent to Queen Victoria lobbying for a green space for deprived Eastenders.

The Queen gave her approval, and funds for a royal park by the name of Victoria Park,

were made available from a royal grant.

Victoria Park was built bordering Bethnal Green, Hackney and Bow.

The park was never officially opened.

It was taken over immediately by the local people in 1845.

Never before had they seen such open spaces, beautiful trees and flowers.

From the start, the community was involved in how its park developed.

A year after opening, it was decided the park to be given an ornamental lake.

In fact, two were soon created and filled with water free of charge by the East London Water Company.

But there were no birds. What was to be done?

Well, the park supervisor decided he would try and persuade local people

to form the Victoria Park Ornithological Society.

That was done, and it raised ten shillings to buy flocks of geese and of ducks.

They were installed, and the local people came here to enjoy their new acquisitions.

Soon after, another lake, known as a bathing lake,

was developed in the centre of the park, away from prying eyes.

It was open from four to eight on summer mornings for men and boys only.

Two boatmen were always on duty in case of emergencies.

Whilst Victoria Park in London was a step in the right direction for park reformers,

it was in the major cities in the northwest of England that the park movement was at its strongest.

I've come to Manchester, the first major industrial city

in which municipal parks were paid for by the people of the city.

The enthusiasm for the project was so strong that Manchester opened

no less than three new parks in 1846, Queens Park, Peel Park, Salford, and Philips Park.

Funding for the three parks was raised partly from a grant,

but also by subscription from the local community.

At the time, there was a big campaign in the Manchester press

calling for people's parks like Victoria Park in east London.

It was all a question of money.

This is what one Manchester newspaper had to say.

The parks have been well named the "lungs of London".

They have saved thousands of lives.

Dusty, smoky, toiling Manchester has no lungs.

The rich and influential are asked to extend

the boon of breathing the fresh air uncharged with dust and smoke.

What's interesting about the Manchester campaign is that

the whole community was asked to give funds towards the parks,

and, mostly, they did, including the heart-toiling mill workers, who gave what they could.

All three Manchester parks were designed by Joshua Major, a landscape designer

with a specific aim in mind, to cope with the promenading of large numbers of people.

His designs included an area of open grass where people could walk or play sports

as well as flower and rose gardens, where people could stroll or sit in peace.

When Philips Park opened here in east Manchester in August 1846, it was a huge success.

The people of the city had raised £6,200 for its creation.

That's around £30 million pounds in today's money.

Banners in the crowd read "Park bought by the people for the enjoyment of the people".

Playgrounds for children were included in parks from the off.

In Philips Park, separate boys' and girls' play areas were set up.

Philips Park had seesaws, swings and a very curious piece of equipment called the "giant stride",

which was really a massive maypole with ropes attached from which children swung. Very popular!

But curiously, from the very start, the parks committee banned football,

because it believed that the sight of perspiring boys would overexcite the boisterous mill girls.

And quite right, too!

Philips Park opened without keepers or signs, but immediately the parks committee realised their mistake.

I've come to meet local historian Alan Ruff to discover the difficulties.

Now, public parks were a very new idea in the 1840s.

I mean, did people know how to how to behave, how to react to this great gift?

Well, not really because, as you say, it was a new phenomenon.

When it was opened, the mayor stood somewhere over there and declared that,

"We've now finished with the park and we hand it over to you for protection."

Fascinating. So the people had collected money, helped to collect the money to create the park.

They felt it was theirs. They could pluck flowers or have picnics, if they liked.

Well, there was this general feeling that it was their park,

-and one could just imagine that these are young children - and they WERE young.

-Yeah.

Of course, they were working in the mills, coming into this park and seeing these flowers,

the temptation must be enormous to go and pick a bunch of flowers.

The mayor was particularly worried, and he wrote out what became a set of bylaws,

which were then written out and posted on notices around the park,

telling people not to pick flowers, not to throw stones at the swans.

Yes. Or to eat the swans or ducks!

To have laws, one has to be able to enforce them, and that often means having some sort of constabulary.

That then presumes the idea of a park keeper emerges?

Well, no, in actual fact, the head gardener was the keeper.

-What power did he have? Could he arrest people?

-Oh, yes, he could.

-Could he?

Oh, yes, he could lock people up overnight.

-Really?

-They were sworn in as special constables...

-Good heavens!

-..and, depending on the degree of the misdemeanour, they could lock people up.

I know Philips Park has something very important

and very rare, because the first head keeper here, Jeremiah Harrison, kept a day book, a sort of journal.

I think that's the only one that survives in Britain.

Oh, as far as I know, yes, it is.

We have it in front of us here, a wonderful-looking document.

It is a remarkable document. It describes all of the activities.

-It says, "The young men and boys still intrude on the girls' playgrounds."

-Yes.

"I may safely say that I have had more abusive language and insolence shown to me

"since the swings was put up this spring than the whole time I have been in the parks before."

So the boys tried to get into the girls playground.

-Nothing changes, does it?

-Nothing changes. Nothing changes.

Manchester and London's pioneering achievements

soon led to other industrial cities planning their slice of park life.

The next leg of my tour has brought me to Birkenhead Park on The Wirral.

Birkenhead was the first town to apply to Parliament

for powers to use public funds to create a municipal park.

It was designed explicitly and solely for public use.

It was also the most important park designed by Joseph Paxton,

later famed as the architect of the Crystal Palace in London.

Here, he pioneered the series of design principles that were

to be developed to determine the design of parks around the world for generations to come.

To find out which key elements of Paxton's design can still be seen in the park today,

I've come to talk to park manager Adam King.

-So, what sort of park was Paxton trying to create here?

-Well, it was a park for the people,

-and it was to recreate sort of pastoral England.

-Yeah.

So you've got the lovely open spaces on the outside surrounded by trees,

so a natural landscape.

It's like the ground to a ministry. People couldn't go abroad,

but the world's brought here for them to contemplate.

Yes, indeed, and in fact, the great journey to Italy and northern European landscapes

are all brought together for the local people.

So how did Paxton achieve this incredible visual power of the park?

We're here now in the heart of the park, and it's quite a sort of secluded, hidden area.

We've got the lakes and the bridge and the boathouse, but you can get a little glimpse across there,

through a gap in the mounds, to the open park,

which is the naturalistic, rolling countryside.

Yeah, but even here, of course,

this gap is quite a vista. I can see no city.

He's very cleverly screened the city so the place feels much bigger than it actually is.

-A very clever sort of illusion has been created.

-Yeah, there's three systems.

There's the external road network, which is for the commercial traffic that Britain had.

And then there was a two-mile carriage drive around the periphery of the centre of the park.

Yeah. Promenading in your carriage, that was the middle class. People drive round the park.

And for the rest of us it would be these small paths,

which went around the lakes and across the open sort of grassy land.

Was there some sort of social engineering going on here?

They're trying to get the classes to mix and get to understand each other a bit better?

Yes, I mean, they'd meet walking around the park or driving around in their carriages,

but also they'd meet through the railings,

because the majority of people would be living in the terraced houses down near the docks.

But the more well-off people would perhaps live in the houses,

the terraces and the villas around the park.

So both classes could actually watch each other,

and the working classes could see what could be achieved, perhaps,

with endeavour and hard work, if they were so fortunate!

That was the Victorian way of things, wasn't it?

"Emulate your betters." That's right, yes.

I must say, standing here now in this evening light, an autumn day,

one can see that the beauty of the park is absolutely apparent,

the light changing, the animals and ducks coming and going,

nature itself, of course changing, I suppose, week by week now. It's very, very wonderful.

It absolutely reminds me of how perfect and wonderful Britain's parks are.

When Birkenhead opened on the 5th April 1847, 10,000 people gathered

to enjoy the bands, the bell ringers and the rural sports.

The park would become the new town's main attraction and would even go on

to serve as the model for one of the most famous parks in the world.

When Central Park opened in 1859 in New York,

it incorporated many of the design features found in Birkenhead.

The introduction of statutory holidays from the mid-19th century

also increased the need for public parks, as people began to have more and more leisure time.

If people were going to spend lengthy periods at a park,

fresh drinking water was essential, especially for children.

This played right into the hands of the Victorian temperance movement.

They'd longed preached against the evils of alcohol

and had lobbied unsuccessfully to get pubs closed on a Sunday.

Now they turned their attentions to the drinking fountains and public parks.

That gave them an opportunity to provoke temperance and to promote the virtues of drinking water.

The provision of fresh, clear water for public drinking was at the forefront of a moral crusade

that extended well beyond the mere quenching of thirst.

Many reformers believed that a drinking fountain

could also be a work of art which could improve the working-class mind.

I've come to Sefton Park in Liverpool,

another one of the parks which still has its original drinking fountain intact.

Here, the neo-Gothic drinking fountain was placed

close to the boathouse on one of the main walking routes along the lake.

Sefton, a former deer park, was donated to the city of Liverpool

by the affluent Earl of Sefton and designed by French landscape architect Edouard Andre.

Andre had helped to transform the Bois de Boulogne in Paris

from hunting forest to park, and he set about designing this park in the formal French style.

Sefton Park, on the wealthy southern edge of Liverpool, was the most

elaborate and ornamental of the city's parks.

Andre laid out a series of sweeping, curving boulevards and drives

that responded to - indeed, enhanced - the natural landscape.

The strong water theme was reflected by the presence

of pools, waterfalls, stepping stones and fountains.

Early visitors were amazed to discover that the elaborate rockwork

and a huge grotto were not natural features.

The park was opened to the people in 1872 as the perfect place

to see some of the buildings and attractions that were to become

familiar sites in late Victorian parks and can still be seen today.

One building particularly popular with visitors to Sefton was the exotic palm house.

By the late Victorian period, palm houses were beginning to make

a significant appearance in municipal parks all around the country.

The palm house at Sefton was donated by Henry Yates Thompson in 1896

in order to, "delight the eye, interest a student and generally make life brighter."

It's recently undergone major restoration,

and I've come to meet Christine Wray, who's worked with the Palm House Trust on this project.

Christine, when did palm houses first start to appear in the British landscape?

In the late Victorian times, when the technology had advanced

to such a stage to enable

these kind of large-scale iron structures and glass to be built.

Yes, of course, it's a very strong shape, isn't it?

One should say, it's symmetrical, octagonal-plan, a wonderful dome with these bays round

about so it has a kind of vaguely sort of ecclesiastical feel, with your nave and aisle and crossing...

-Yes, yes.

-..which is very appropriate.

But at any rate, plants absolutely!

The palm house was unfortunately bomb damaged in the War.

It was then restored in the 1950s, but through neglect fell into disrepair again.

It did become dangerous. The panes of glass are only secured at the side, not at the bottom.

-So they'd slip out easily?

-So they've started to slip out...

-Right. Golly!

-..which wasn't so bad in the lower ones, but when the ones

from the top started to slip out, they were falling through.

-Where we are now, basically!

-Yes!

-So when that started happening, the building was closed to the public.

-Right.

The whole building was taken apart, apart from the structural elements,

so in fact I was worried that people would say...

"Where's our building?"

Yes, "Where's the palm house gone?"

I guess it plays a very important role in the life of Sefton Park.

-It pulls people in, doesn't it?

-Yes. Well, it's a focal point to the park.

Often, when you say to people, "What's your favourite building in Liverpool", they say the palm house.

It's really close to people's affections.

By the late 19th century, public parks like Sefton

were no longer just about providing green, open space for the common people.

They were also about providing recreation and entertainment.

And nothing symbolised that change better than the introduction of the bandstand.

Indeed, very soon, no park could be without one.

One of the most glorious examples of bandstands

can be found in the east of England, in the arboretum in Lincoln.

I've come here to meet bandstand enthusiast Paul Rabbitts to find out more.

So, when did bandstands first appear in public parks?

Well, bandstands really started appearing about 1860 onwards,

-and music was really popular in parks, anyway.

-From the start?

-Right from the start. If you go back to where parks came from originally, from the pleasure gardens...

-Yeah.

..if you look at, say, Vauxhall Gardens,

the pleasure gardens in Vauxhall, there was a bandstand or a band house/pavilion...

-Yeah.

-..where there was bands playing there on a regular basis, so it was very popular.

But tell me about who played and the sort of music that was played for the crowds.

It was mainly brass bands, silver bands, a lot of military bands,

-and the kind of music they would play was very classical.

-Yeah.

-Also very militaristic-type music.

-Patriotic, stirring stuff.

Oh, very patriotic, so anything from Wagner, Strauss, Rossini, Faust,

-that kind of stuff where you've got this natural amphitheatre...

-Yes.

-..it'd sound fantastic.

-It really would.

-I've noticed before me there's a great deal of technology with a nice bit of music.

-Shall we try it?

-Why not? What are we listening to?

We've got a great song.

We've got Victory, and it's a waltz

by the Victory Band, and the music's by Faust.

Oh, right, so this is a real typical example?

It is, yeah, it is.

LIVELY WALTZ PLAYS

It's great.

The thing about the music is it wasn't just for entertainment and inspiration,

but it had a social purpose, didn't it?

It was meant to offer, I suppose, a vision of civilisation for the working classes.

It was wonderful music and it elevated people's spirits, listening to classical music.

Yeah, it was part of the moral crusade at the time, as the parks movement was,

and it was classed as very acceptable,

it was a correct leisure to actually have music playing in the park.

Obviously, you've got a spectacle, hence these colours, like escapism.

They'd come from the mill or toiling

in the factory or living in quite humble conditions,

you'd come here to escape, escape into the music and also into the architecture.

They were very ornate, you can see here.

There was architectural flamboyance about them,

and extremely colourful and superb pieces on their own.

It's weird, isn't it? Often, we're rather patronising about the Victorians,

to see their sentimentality and so on, but in this sense, it did work, didn't it?

People listened to better music, it improved them, and the working people liked it.

-They were inspired.

-But also, if you look at the amount of people that used to come and listen,

for instance when this opened in 1884, there was 10,000 people.

-10,000?

-10,000.

They compare to pop concerts today, the numbers of people that came to listen to classical music

in bandstands like this round the country? It's astonishing.

-Absolutely thousands, yeah.

-In this park?

-In this park.

'As well as bandstands, for many visitors to parks,

'plants and flowers have always been one of the main attractions.'

And it was only from the mid-Victorian period onwards

that public parks really started to include floral displays.

And one of the innovations that became popular in the late Victorian, early Edwardian period

was carpet bedding, used to describe closely planted and intricately patterned displays.

Soon, head gardeners all over the country were vying with each other

to come up with the most outrageous designs,

from three-dimensional staircases

to elaborate rolls of carpet and working floral clocks.

I'm stopping off at Alexandra Park in Oldham to find out exactly how this technique works.

This park was built in 1865 by unemployed cotton workers

and nowadays rates as one of the great success stories

in the revival of the traditional public park.

It's been instrumental in re-introducing apprenticeship schemes

and teaching young gardeners these traditional skills.

Ah, Paul, hello.

Hi.

Good to see you.

Now, this looks amazing, but tell me, what actually is carpet bedding?

I suppose the simplest way to describe carpet bedding

is basically a picture made from plants.

OK, so like a carpet where you can weave a pattern with plants.

-This is the pattern you're working to?

-This is the plan.

Here they are, and so these'll be sort of full blocks of colour here.

Full blocks of colour, depicting the Pennines.

And it's commemorating the mayor of Oldham.

Brilliant. And of course, carpet bedding was incredibly popular, wasn't it, in the 19th century?

It was. It was, yeah. It's very, very labour intensive, very costly...

How long will it take two or three of you, I suppose, for this sort of design? How long?

The best part of a week for three apprentices to be on this.

-It's been a lost art, hasn't it, the last decade?

-It has, yeah.

-It's been phased out due to cost, time...

-Yeah.

-Changing popular tastes?

-I think so.

-People forgot about it, I suppose.

-It's great that it's bringing back...

-A lost art.

-Yeah, yeah.

It's passing on skills to the apprentices, who can then pass them onto future generations,

-and hopefully we'll never lose the skill.

-Yeah.

-I mean, it'd be great to have a go at doing this.

-Of course you can.

I've never done carpet bedding. I've done lots of things round the world, but never this,

so it's great to say carpet bedding in Oldham. Fantastic. I gather you need a trowel?

-Dig a trench.

-So this is just sort of a...

-This is just to mark it out.

-OK, the sand marks the pattern first. I see.

Now you just get the little plants, but I guess the spacing is very important.

They need to be really close.

Really close?

-You can just do it with this.

-Oh, right.

Just make like a circle, like that.

-Like that?

-Yeah, so it's deep enough, and then you just...

-So that's for the roots to be happy, I guess, is it?

-Yeah.

-And then I push it back again.

-And push the plant down.

-Right.

Not too hard, but quite firmly?

-Yeah, and then push it in.

-And then, basically, one just goes on?

-Yeah.

-When is all this going to be unveiled, this work of art?

Hopefully, for the end of May, beginning of June.

Have a look at that.

That's not too bad, is it?

It's not bad...for a beginner!

Untrained. It's got a curve.

Yeah.

Thank you!

'But whilst some delighted in the frivolous floral designs,

'others were putting their local parks to far more radical uses -

'to preach, demonstrate and to campaign.'

On the next leg of my tour, I'm heading up to Glasgow Green,

Scotland's oldest park.

Whereas religious and political meetings were banned in many urban parks for centuries,

Glasgow Green has always been a focus for public events,

ranging from the annual Glasgow Fair to public hangings.

Glasgow Green is Scotland's very own Speakers' Corner.

It's the birthplace of trade unions in Scotland, a centre for the temperance movement,

and it's here that the city's Suffragettes met in their campaign to get votes for women.

It was also home to two very particular Glasgow institutions -

the communal laundry and the Rangers Football Club.

For centuries, Glasgow Green was at the heart of a poor, working-class neighbourhood.

Women were literally washing their dirty linen in public,

rinsing their clothes in the River Clyde and leaving them to dry on Glasgow Green.

This is the drying green, and it was from posts like these

that the clothes were indeed hung out to dry.

Interestingly, this traditional activity even inspired some local writers.

For example, John Wilson, known as the Laureate of the Clyde, wrote this poem in the 1840s.

"Here barefoot beauties lightly trip along

"Their snowy labours all the verger throng

"The linen some with rosy fingers rub

"And the white foam o'erflows the smoking tub."

While women were washing, men were getting dirty on the football pitch.

Football's always been a passion on Glasgow Green

and has featured in one form or another for hundreds of years.

And in 1872, a group of teenagers decided their love of the game

justified establishing a team, and Rangers Football Club was born.

Well, can you tell me about Glasgow Green and football?

This part of the green we are standing on

is known as Flesher's Haugh, and it was here,

-in May 1872, that Rangers played their first ever game of football.

-Right here?

Right here, on this very spot.

It was formed by two 15-year-olds, a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old -

Brothers Moses and Peter McNeil and their friends Peter Campbell and William McBeath

decided, effectively, to form a boys' club

to take advantage of this new craze of association football.

When did Rangers stop playing on Glasgow Green?

They played here for their first three years, before moving back up to the West End.

And, although we are surrounded here by lush, green football pitches, it wasn't always like this.

It was a red or a black clinker, almost like an ash, on which the people played football,

so it could be quite an unforgiving environment.

And what also must be remembered is that one of the founding fathers, the Gallant Pioneers,

as Rangers fans refer to the boys who formed the club, was Peter McNeil.

Peter McNeil came to this spot at 12.00 every Saturday afternoon

and would literally stake out the area on which his team would play.

And there were times, possibly even literally, when he had to fight for this pitch

on which his team-mates could come along a couple of hours later and play.

Do you feel a bit of a tremble standing here?

I think you do, and I think as you get older,

because like myself, like many Glaswegians of my era and beyond,

we played football here and we never thought of

just the great part that it played in the history of Scottish football.

And I think as you hear the winds whispering in the trees,

they seem to be telling you of a story of 130, 140, 150 years ago,

and it's a great story.

At the beginning of the 20th century,

public parks in Britain reached the peak of their popularity,

as did, arguably, the national passion for sport, health and exercise.

And this caused sort of headaches for many park authorities.

For example, here at Glasgow Green, there are no fewer than 18 football pitches.

And after the First World War, this emphasis on physical health continued,

as did the range of sporting activities on offer in parks.

By the 1920s, more and more parks were being designed specifically

as sporting and recreational facilities,

and many of these were being built in the newly created suburbs.

For the next leg of my journey, I've come to Eaton Park in Norwich,

a superb example of this.

Opened in 1928, the park had huge sport facilities -

tennis courts, cricket squares, football pitches and bowling greens -

all balanced by fine gardens.

There was even a model yacht club, which still exists today.

Eaton Park was designed by Captain Sandys-Winsch,

a former First-World-War fighter pilot with a real talent for horticulture.

Indeed, in 1925, Norwich Corporation made him their first park superintendent.

And this is his greatest creation.

It took him three-and-a-half years to create this park,

and it was obviously a major artistic mission for him,

but also a social mission, because making the park gave him a chance

to employ First World War veterans who'd been out of work,

and this gave them something to do and a way of, I suppose, retaining some dignity.

To find out more about Captain Sandys-Winsch and his work here at Eaton Park,

I've come to meet local historian, Andy Anderson.

I suppose this creation of geometrical beauty, harmony,

was, in a way, a response to the chaos and the horrors of the First World War.

He wanted to make something that was beautiful.

Mm, and perhaps this classical style

and the strong geometry that one finds in the park

was a response to that, but I've never been too convinced by that.

It makes sense to me, wanting to create order, having seen chaos.

And in the process of realising this vision, he found employment for ex-soldiers.

He created work for them by building this,

He was indeed. I think there was about 100 men who were employed here for three-and-a-half years.

-Yeah.

-In fact, contemporary photographs - I've got one here -

show men at work.

Here are little railway tracks laid over these flat Norfolk grounds,

-and these chaps pushing buckets. Fascinating.

-Very much pre-JCB!

-Yes!

Ah, lovely! Here you see where we are, the colonnade.

-That's right.

-So here, the concrete columns going up.

The columns were made with three concrete drums, but pre-cast.

It's important to remember what the world was like when this park was conceived in the early '20s -

a very different place, wasn't it?

And it would have been an amazing acquisition for the people of the city

to have such a taste of public beauty, but also, I presume, one of the points of this park

wasn't so much providing just recreation or entertainment, but sports facilities...

Well, you can see today what is now easily maintained grass.

-Yeah.

-There was a multitude of football pitches and tennis being played all over the place.

And of course, the bowling greens would be in use.

It's very beautiful, the park, isn't it?

The architecture does sort of fulfil every function.

It contains space, it creates these vistas,

and of course, it contains the functional uses of the park.

The architecture is directly related to sports, integrated into the vision, aren't they?

-These are changing rooms for the football teams...

-That's right.

..that is the boating pavilion at the end,

-so to make the changing rooms' architecture ornamental and grand is rather clever.

-Yeah.

'And Eaton Park also has one extra feature that few parks can offer -

'its own railway station.'

Ah! You've arrived. Excellent.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-Diesel engine?

-Yes.

-Not steam?

-Oh, well, we'll have to make do.

-That'll do.

-Shall I climb aboard?

-You may.

-Thank you.

-There you go.

Sitting comfortably.

-Toot, toot!

-Yeah, we're off.

Oh, we're off. Lovely. Ah.

Well, how long has the railway been in the park?

We've had a railway in the park since the early '60s.

Early 1960s, OK.

But it's extensive. I didn't realise you've got tracks everywhere!

-Yes. Yeah, we've got nearly half a mile.

-Half a mile?

Yes.

-But how spectacular! Back to the station.

-Back to the station, yes.

-TRAIN HORN TOOTS That's it.

-That's nice.

By the 1930s, Britain's public parks had evolved to such an extent

they had become an integral part of our domestic and social life,

and I'm off to meet an actor who has some very fond memories of 1930s park life.

So, what's your first memory of a park?

I think it would have to be either Waterhead Park in Oldham

or Alexandra Park, and Alexandra Park was the one I remember particularly,

-but I do remember there was a statue of a bell ringer.

-Yes, that's right.

-Is he still there?

-The statue is still there.

-Blind Joe, something like that?

-That's right.

It's all in 19th-century clothes. It obviously goes back a bit.

-Yes, a top hat.

-That's right.

-I do remember that.

We used to fish over the railings in the duck pond,

-and we used to catch gudgeon, mainly.

-Presumably without permission.

-No permission at all, no.

-You were a mischievous child in the park.

No, one of you kept a lookout the whole time for somebody.

The somebody was usually a very large policeman called Bobby Finney.

He was the bobby. "Hey, lads, hey, caught you!" All that shouting going on.

If he whacked you with his cape, gave you one of those...

-Do you remember the very heavy capes?

-With the hooks, yeah.

-It would knock you over.

-What fun.

-No, I mean, all the kids did that, all the boys, didn't they?

You were told off, you'd let it die down for a bit and then you'd go back again.

Climbing trees, bylaws against that. Conker gathering's OK, I suppose?

I never did conkers at all. No, I don't think we had conkers in Oldham.

-No, weren't allowed. Lethal weapons.

-Yes.

-We'd have used them in our catapults.

-HE LAUGHS

-Of course!

SIRENS WAIL

With the outbreak of war in 1939,

recreation was no longer top of the agenda,

and parks across Britain had an important defensive role to play in most of the major cities.

Trenches were dug, air-raid shelters built and barrage balloons anchored.

Huge areas of parkland were dug up for allotments.

Regent's Park in London was one of them.

Now, we're in Regent's Park, and this area of grass around us was,

-in the Second World War, given over to allotments.

-It was.

There were over 100 allotments in this space alone,

and then over by the boating lake

there were another 100 or so. But it's not just here.

Throughout the London parks, just in London, there were about 6,000 allotments.

It's very exciting all this standing here, because we are standing on a part of the war effort.

-We know how they were laid out.

-Right, right.

Oh, of course, we have this aerial photograph. This is taken, what...

-1946, and it just shows exactly...

-..where we are.

-And if we orientate to the zoo over there...

-This with the playground is roughly where...

-Just about there.

-..these two avenues meet, with the trees.

We should be just about, I think, here.

I must say, they look rather large, like fields. Have I got the scale wrong?

No, they're traditional. They're ten-pole plots, which is about,

roughly speaking, about 95 to 100 foot long by 25 to 30 foot wide.

-Right.

-They vary depending on whether you've got paths or not.

So, when did allotments first sort of appear in London's parks?

Well, the announcement for the Dig For Victory campaign came within the first week of the War,

but it took a while, as you might imagine, to organise that the public parks and then the royal parks

would actually start digging up the pasture areas.

How does someone get an allotment back in the beginning of the War, '39, '40?

They fairly soon had allotment associations starting up,

and you could apply to the local council or the allotments association for one.

They were very keen to encourage women, particularly after 1942,

when conscription really hit hard.

So, what do people grow here in 1940, '41?

If you look at a list, the Government was recommending what you should put in your allotment,

literally vegetable by vegetable.

Cucumbers were banned, as were asparagus, because they...

-No nutrition or something?

-Yeah, not enough nutrition, waste of space, too much time.

-Yeah.

They were very much part of the war effort, like making munitions.

Yes, and all the same phraseology.

You were a member of the allotment army and you did things like you grew

beans as bullets in the munitions campaign - wonderful phrases, "cloches against Hitler."

You know cloches - these great things,

you grow vegetables, longer season.

And how did the whole thing come to an end at the end of the War?

In the vast majority of places, there was going to be something like 12 months after the end of the War

and then you would have to vacate and it would be put back like this.

Allotments may have done much to help boost wartime production, but the War greatly damaged our parks.

Railings were removed, palm houses and other buildings bombed.

After the War, public parks were no longer the only green spaces

where people could go to escape from the city.

Families began to travel further afield by car and rail for their days out.

And in the 1950s and '60s, the creation of national parks and country parks

gave the public access to even more green spaces in the open country.

Despite a resurgence during the long, hot summer of 1976,

things got really bad in the 1980s, when parks went into a spiral of decline all over the country.

Under Margaret Thatcher's Tory government, rates were capped,

full-time park keepers were removed and standards of maintenance fell.

Vandalism and crime grew to such an extent that many parks became bleak no-go areas,

even dark and dangerous places.

But over the last ten years, British parks have actually enjoyed a huge revival,

thanks in part to a big boost from the Heritage Lottery Fund,

who have been funding restoration projects in parks all over the country.

Parks are now being used more than ever.

It's estimated there are about four billion visits to parks per year.

Everybody wants a slice of park life, and a civic pride that started with the Victorians is back.

And as the demand for open, green spaces grows in urban areas,

derelict industrial wastelands are also being transformed into parks and gardens of the future.

I'm walking next to the Regent's Canal in Mile End, East London.

The area behind me had been covered with a network of Victorian streets and houses,

much bomb-damaged and neglected.

They've been replaced by this rather astonishing park, a green oasis

in an area that had become an urban wasteland.

The park is divided by roads, railways, waterways

and an iconic green bridge that carries the park across the busy Mile End Road.

It's a fascinating example of an ecological park in an inner-city area.

So what is the ethos? What's special about this park?

It's obviously special in terms of being cut through a bit of city,

but in terms of plants and animals and so on?

It's fabulous, because it's such an inner-city park, it really is,

even at its best, this was just short grass,

and now we've got great habitats.

That's increasing our insect population, which increases the bat and bird populations and so on.

-It's important because lots of children in the area, 82-83% of them, live in high-rise flats.

-Right.

This is their taste of the countryside.

Victorian parks were created on the edge of cities, but this is a park carved out of a city -

bomb-damaged sites and houses, but some obviously surviving.

Is this a model for urban parks of the future?

Yeah. I think certainly it is one model, if maybe not THE model.

I think, perhaps more importantly, it's the idea of a successful park appeals to a wide range of people.

I like Mile End Park as it offers something to absolutely everybody,

from people walking their dogs or who like nature, who like art....

The children over there are obviously dipping away for creepy-crawlies.

-Aquatic creepy-crawlies, yes.

-In this pond here, yes, yes.

-I'll maybe go across and see what they've caught.

-Good idea.

-Yeah.

What's that, a little fish?

A couple of sticklebacks.

On this journey, I've visited a number of very different parks

and I've discovered what an important role they've played

in people's lives for hundreds of years.

It's been a gripping tale of class, civic pride

and changing fashions in design, sport and entertainment.

Parks are special because they occupy a cherished place in all our memories,

and we use parks much as the Victorians did.

Some come to look at the buildings or the plants,

others to exercise or to survey the beautiful scene.

They refresh the body and allow the spirit, the imagination, to soar.

BRASS BAND PLAYS

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