[Click through to the site to listen to the audio]

See also: this previous post, again inspired by an item on You And Yours¹, on Birkenhead Park, complete with lively debate in the comments about its claim to be the first public park in the world.

1. Yeah, I listen to You And Yours quite a lot: proof, if proof be need be, that my Radio 4 addiction is completely out of hand. Just be thankful that I’m not posting excerpts from The Archers (which has been quite exciting lately, what with Owen’s rape trial).↩

I’m a big fan of municipal public parks, if only because there is something fundamentally decent about the state providing areas for recreation and reflection. The fact that these spaces are transformed at nightfall into arenas for anonymous sex acts, violent muggings and underage drinking adds a frisson to the more legitimate daylight activities of frisbee throwing, dog-walking and, well, underage drinking.

Birkenhead Park was the first municipal public park in the world, opening its gates on the 5th of April 1847. Designed by Sir Joseph Paxton (better known as architect of the Crystal Palace) the Park is an artificial countryside of meadows, man-made hills and valleys, lakes shaped to look like rivers, and occasional follies - a Swiss Bridge, an Italian Lodge - dotted about the landscape. It set the template for public parks, too, notably Central Park in New York, designed by F.L. Olmsted, who incorporated many of Birkenhead’s features in his plans after visiting in 1850.

So, why did a backwater¹ like the Wirral end up as the site for the world’s first public park? It seems to be down to a quirk of geography. The Wirral, you see, is a penninsula, and the River Mersey served as a barrier to encroaching industrialisation - while Liverpool grew fat on the proceeds of shipping, and cemented its position as a hub of trade between Europe and the Americas, Birkenhead and the rest of the Wirral stayed stuck in the agrarian past. The steam ferry service, which opened in 1820 and runs to this day (albeit tainted by the warblings of Gerry Marsden) changed all that, and Birkenhead’s population rocketed from a few hundred souls to two and a half thousand, within a decade of the first ferry ‘cross the Mersey. This slight delay in industrialisation turned out to be a boon, for park-lovers at least - Birkenhead’s rise matched the growth in reform movements, spurred by the terrible living and working conditions in established industrial towns and cities and dedicated to improving the lot of the working classes. The Parks Movement in particular was gathering steam in the mid-1800s, based on the principle that a nice bit of open space does wonders for the well-being of the workforce, both for their benefit, and in the interests of maximising profits, ideas close to those that underpinnned the work of, say, Joseph Rowntree.

I find this brand of 19th Century largesse, with it’s unlikely forms of wealth redistribution, fascinating. Consider this post the first in a mini-series on the subject, liable to take in workers’ villages like Port Sunlight and Bourneville, the odd relationship between non-conformist Christianity, sweet manufacturing and philanthropy, and Joseph Williamson’ssubterranean New Deal.

1. A comment in defence of the borough from my Dad is inevitable, but The Wirral is a backwater.