QUEENS PARK (from the Loughborough Echo)

VERY often when we look at the history of our town we look at the buildings and perhaps ignore the open spaces that form an essential part of the historical make-up of the town. One of the most important open spaces in Loughborough is Queen’s Park, an attractive and popular open space covering an area of about 10 acres close to the town centre.

The Park began life as a small Victorian Park in 1899, having now just celebrated its centenary, and by 1928 the basic structure of the present Queen’s Park was complete. There are also a number of important buildings which whilst not part of the Park are closely associated with it. In the north west corner of the Park is Queen’s Hall, which was originally built as the public baths and is now the Charnwood Museum, and the Drill Hall was situated in the north east corner of the Park, although this has now been demolished and replaced by a car park.

The creation of a people’s park in the town centre was prompted by Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in June 1897. To celebrate the Jubilee, the town had been promised a new swimming baths by Joseph Griggs, the first Mayor of the borough, and subscriptions had been raised for the erection of the Drill Hall. Within two years £1,500 had been raised by public subscriptions, this was sufficient to purchase four acres of land forming the gardens to Island House, a private house which stood on the site of the present library.

The formal opening ceremony of the new park took place on June 22, 1899, two years after the Diamond Jubilee. The ceremony included the planting of an English oak sapling by the Mayoress, Mrs Huram Coltman. The Loughborough Monitor and News of Thursday, June 24, 1899, noted that this was a hurriedly arranged ceremony as the sapling had been presented only a few days earlier by a local florist who had grown it from an acorn planted in September 1888 to mark the incorporation of the borough of Loughborough. There is no indication as to where this tree was planted, but there is only one oak tree within the whole park located close to the Granby Street entrance. Although this is unlikely to be the original oak tree, it may mark the position of that first tree.

The original Park was laid out in an informal, picturesque manner having a fairly simple tree-lined figure-of-eight walk with a serpentine, ornamental pool crossed by a wooden rustic bridge leading to the entrance of the Queen’s Hall.

One of the aims behind the development of Victorian parks was the improvement of the education and morals of the working classes. This particular social context was clearly evident in the opening speech made by Coun Hanford who was reported as saying that the special advantage of the park would fall to the artisan people of Loughborough, the working classes. They would gain a larger advantage if they got the park, there would be a wide walk around it and a good number of seats. As commemorative projects they would have in Loughborough public baths so that they could wash and be clean, a drill hall where young people could be drilled and be strong and healthy and a public park in which the strong might find recreation and those who were convalescent take their ease.

Music was also seen as an important moral influence on the working classes and bandstands were introduced into parks to enhance their reforming potential. Queen’s Park was presented with a bandstand by Coun W H Whootton to mark the coronation of Edward VII in August 1902. Pictorial evidence from September 1904 shows an ornate bandstand made of cast and wrought iron, situated in the centre of the original Park, somewhere between the present maze and Granby Street. An early picture of the Carnegie Free Library, which was opened in June 1905, taken from within the Park shows decorative iron railings and gates to Granby Street, these railings and gates are still in place today.

Sometime between 1905 and 1907, the original Park was extended following the purchase of six acres of land from an adjoining dye works. The Park extension was also laid out in an informal picturesque manner having a rough figure-of-eight circuit of paths lined by trees. The extension of the Park included the digging out of a second ornamental lake, with a small island in the centre. The soil from the lake was then used to create a raised table for a bowling green. The original iron railings are still in place around the bowling green. The bandstand was also moved at this time from the front of the Park to the large circular open space it still occupies.

The last significant change to the basic structure of the Park was the construction of the Carillon War Memorial, the foundation stone for which was laid on January 22, 1922 and the building opened on July 27, 1923. Four straight pathways were constructed radiating out from each side of the tower, this more formal, classical arrangement was in contrast with the informal layout of the original Park. The formality of the new layout was further increased by the construction of a new gateway onto New Street at the end of the longest path from the Carillon and the planting of an avenue trees on either side of this path. In 1928, a stone balustrade was erected around the stone platform surrounding the tower and the original wooden bridges were placed by new ornamental stone bridges to match the stone balustrade around the Carillon.

Since 1928, there have been very few significant changes to the basic structure of the Park. Recent changes have included the creation of the children’s play areas; the diagonal pathway constructed from the Browns Lane entrance to the south of the Carillon Tower and the new maze on the site of an earlier aviary. However, perhaps the most important change, in this the Park’s centenary year, is the refurbishment of the Queen’s Hall and the opening of the Charnwood Museum, an excellent local facility that will undoubtedly attract more people into the Park.