Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2012
This article argues that the Edwardian municipal park represents a significant transition from the highly regulated and formal space of the Victorian park. It takes as a case-study Heaton Park in Manchester purchased in late 1901 and suggests that this park represented a transition from a Victorian people's park to an Edwardian citizen's park in which each visitor accessed facilities and amenities appropriate to their individual or group leisure interests. It addresses the comparative neglect of the Edwardian park by urban historians and suggests the importance of the emerging concepts of citizenship and social responsibility.
1 Beaven, B. and Griffiths, J., ‘Creating the exemplary citizen: the changing notion of citizenship in Britain 1870–1939’, Contemporary British History, 22 (2008), 209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Cannadine, D., Lords and Landlords: The Aristocracy and the Towns 1774–1967 (Leicester, 1980), 59.Google Scholar
3 Rotenberg, R., Landscape and Power in Vienna (Baltimore, 1995)Google Scholar; Prendergast, C., Paris and the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar; Rosenzweig, R. and Blackmar, E., The Park and the People: A History of Central Park (New York, 1992)Google Scholar.
4 Prendergast, Paris and the Nineteenth Century, 174.
5 Latimer, C., Parks for the People: Manchester and its Parks (Manchester, 1987), 9.Google Scholar
6 Fraser, D., ‘The Edwardian city’, in Read, D. (ed.), Edwardian England (London, 1982), 56–74.Google ScholarBillinge, M., ‘A time and a place for everything: an essay on recreation, re-creation and the Victorians’, Journal of Historical Geography, 22 (1996), 451CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Conway, H., People's Parks: The Design and Development of Victorian Parks in Britain (Cambridge, 1991), 5.Google Scholar
8 Sullivan, J.J., Illustrated Handbook of the Manchester City Parks and Recreation Grounds (Manchester, 1915), 6.Google Scholar
9 Ruff, A.R., The Biography of Philips Park, Manchester 1846–1996 (Manchester, 2000), 1.Google Scholar
10 Conway, People's Parks, 47.
11 Twist, C., A History of the Liverpool Parks (Southport, 2000), 24.Google Scholar
12 Nicholls, R., Trafford Park: The First Hundred Years (Chichester, 1996), 14–15.Google Scholar
13 Marne, P., ‘Whose public space was it anyway? Class, gender and ethnicity in the creation of the Sefton and Stanley Parks, Liverpool: 1858–1872’, Social and Cultural Geography, 2 (2001), 424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 Manchester Courier, Municipal Enterprise, 25 Sep. 1902, 10.
15 Stobart, J., ‘Identity, competition and place promotion in the Five Towns’, Urban History, 30 (2003), 167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 Beaven and Griffiths, ‘Creating the exemplary citizen’, 210.
17 G.S. Law, ‘Manchester politics 1885–1906’, unpublished University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. thesis, 1975, 295–6.
18 C. O'Reilly, ‘Aristocratic fortunes and civic aspiration: issues in the passage of aristocratic land to municipal ownership in later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Manchester with particular reference to the Sale of Heaton Park’, unpublished Manchester Metropolitan University Ph.D. thesis, 2009, 222.
19 Manchester City News, Two Great Private Parks in the Market, 25 Apr. 1896, 5.
20 Gunn, S., The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class: Ritual and Authority in the English Industrial City 1840–1914 (Manchester, 2000), 76.Google Scholar
21 Wyborn, T., ‘Parks for the people: the development of public parks in Manchester’, Manchester Region History Review, 9 (1995), 4.Google Scholar
22 Ibid., 4.
23 Manchester Guardian, In Heaton Park: A Great Holiday Throng, 27 Jun. 1902, 6; Manchester Guardian, More Visitors to Heaton Park, 28 Jun. 1902, 5.
24 Manchester Archives, Parks and Cemeteries minutes (42), 148.
25 Greater Manchester Police Archives, City of Manchester Watch Committee, Statistical Returns of the Police, Fire Brigade and Weights and Measures departments (Manchester, 1904, 1909, 1911), 7–8.
26 Manchester Archives, Parks and Cemeteries minutes (38), 188.
27 Lambert, D., The Park Keeper (London, 2005), 11.Google Scholar
28 Manchester Archives, Parks and Cemeteries minutes (25), 146.
29 Ibid., 145.
30 Conway, People's Parks, 131.
31 Sullivan, Illustrated Handbook, 33.
32 Cranz, G., ‘Women in urban parks’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 5 (1980), 86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
33 Beaven, B., Leisure, Citizenship and Working-Class Men in Britain 1850–1945 (Manchester and New York, 2005), 16.Google Scholar
34 Bailey, P., Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian City (Cambridge, 1998), 25.Google Scholar
35 Manchester Guardian, Municipal Contest, 1 Nov. 1906, 4.
36 Marne, ‘Whose public space was it anyway?’ 437.
37 Rodrick, A., Self-Help and Civic Culture: Citizenship in Victorian Birmingham (Aldershot, 2004), 424.Google Scholar
38 Joyce, P., Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class 1840–1914 (Cambridge, 1991), 191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
39 Manchester Evening News, City Playgrounds, 8 Jul. 1907, 5.
40 Manchester Guardian, Playgrounds for Children, 31 Oct. 1913, 3.
41 Manchester Archives, Parks and Cemeteries minutes (28), 134, and (36), 8.
42 City of Manchester Municipal Handbook, 1914, 65.
43 Latimer, Parks for the People, 11.
44 Anonymous, The Big White Elephant (Leeds, 1879), 3.
45 Manchester Guardian, letters, 22 Jul. 1908, 5.
46 Wyborn, ‘Parks for the people’, 8.
47 Gurney, P., ‘The politics of public space in Manchester, 1896–1919’, Manchester Region History Review, 11 (1997), 17.Google Scholar
48 Meller, H.E., Leisure and the Changing City (London, 1976), 203.Google Scholar
49 Manchester Archives, Parks and Cemeteries minutes (27), 157.
50 Rodrick, Self-Help, 67.
51 Stedman, M., Manchester Pals (Barnsley, 2004), 27.Google Scholar
52 McCrone, K., Sport and the Physical Emancipation of English Women 1870–1914 (London, 1988), 13.Google Scholar
53 Manchester Evening Chronicle, editorial, 25 Sep. 1902, 2.
54 Cranz, ‘Women in urban parks’, 82.
55 Sullivan, Illustrated Handbook, 23.
56 Manchester Courier, Municipal Golf, 8 Sep. 1911, 10.
57 Ibid., 3.
58 Manchester Guardian, editorial, Golf Charges, 8 Sep. 1911, 6.
59 Manchester Guardian, letters, 12 Sep. 1911, 4.
60 Manchester Evening News, editorial, 24 Sep. 1902, 2.
61 Lowerson, J., ‘Golf’, in Mason, A (ed.), Sport in Britain; A Social History (Cambridge, 1989), 189.Google Scholar
62 Cunningham, H., Leisure in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1980), 132.Google Scholar
63 Manchester City News, Manchester, Salford and District News, 22 Mar. 1913, 7.
64 Manchester Courier, Heaton Park Lake, 18 Mar. 1913, 12.
65 Service, A., Edwardian Architecture: A Handbook to Building Design in Britain 1890–1914 (London, 1977), 144.Google Scholar
66 Turner, F., The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (London and New Haven, 1981), 11.Google Scholar
67 Ibid., 11.
68 Stobart, ‘Identity, competition and place promotion’, 168.
69 Lomax, J., ‘The first and second earls of Wilton and the creation of Heaton Hall’, Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, 82 (1983), 62.Google Scholar
70 Sullivan, Illustrated Handbook, 57.
71 Lowenthal, D., The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, 1985), 44.Google Scholar
72 Manchester Courier, Concilio et Labore, 16 May 1912, 6.
73 Waterson, M., The National Trust: The First Hundred Years (London, 1994), 37.Google Scholar
74 Lowenthal, The Past, 245.
75 Manchester Guardian, letters, 31 Oct. 1913, 3; Manchester Archives, Parks and Cemeteries minutes (35), 201.
76 Hennock, E.P., ‘The measurement of urban poverty: from the metropolis to the nation 1880–1920’, Economic History Review, n.s., 40 (1987), 214.Google Scholar
77 Searle, G.R., The Quest for National Efficiency: A Study in British Politics and Political Thought 1899–1914 (London, 1971), 60.Google Scholar
78 Rodrick, Self-Help, 15.
79 Meacham, S., ‘Raymond Unwin 1863–1940: designing for democracy in Edwardian England’, in Pedersen, S. and Mandler, P. (eds.), After the Victorians: Private Conscience and Public Duty in Modern Britain (London and New York, 1994), 79.Google Scholar
80 Ibid., 93.
81 Fraser, D., Power and Authority in the Victorian City (Oxford, 1979), 170.Google Scholar
82 Manchester City News, Garden City movement, 27 Apr. 1912, 5.
83 Harris, J., Private Lives, Public Spirit: A Social History of Britain (Oxford, 1993), 193.Google Scholar
84 Ibid., 250.
85 Fraser, Power and Authority, 159.
86 Warren, A., ‘Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the Scout Movement and citizen training in Great Britain 1900–1920’, English Historical Review, 101 (1986), 392.Google Scholar
87 Manchester Archives, Parks and Cemeteries minutes (40), 94.
88 Fraser, Power and Authority, 168.
89 Manchester Physical Health Culture Society pamphlet (Manchester, 1902), 1.
90 Dagger, R., ‘Metropolis, memory and citizenship’, American Journal of Political Science, 25 (1981), 717.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
91 Pettigrew, W.W., Municipal Parks: Layout, Management and Administration (London, 1937), 101.Google Scholar
92 Latimer, Parks for the People, 36.
93 O'Reilly, ‘Aristocratic fortunes’, 422–3.
94 Sullivan, Illustrated Handbook, 79.
95 Redford, A., The History of Local Government in Manchester, vol. III (London, 1940), 37.Google Scholar
96 Prince, H., Parks in England (Shalfleet Manor, 1967).Google Scholar
97 Taylor, H.A., Age and Order: The Public Park as a Metaphor for a Civilised Society (London and Gloucester, 1994), 17.Google Scholar
98 Offer, A., Property and Politics 1870–1914 (Cambridge, 1981), 221.Google Scholar
99 Beaven and Griffiths, ‘Creating the exemplary citizen’, 209–10.