Birkenhead Park is More Significant Than You Realise #Liverpool
Liverpool itself has a decent number of green spaces dotted around for the use of visitors and locals alike. If you want to explore some places slightly further afield, you might well find yourself crossing the River Mersey in order to spend some time on the Wirral Peninsula.
Whilst there, one of the best-known areas that you can head to is Birkenhead Park, which lies in the head of the town and is worth visiting if you’re the sort of person who likes both open space and history.
That is thanks to the fact that there are numerous listed buildings within the park, as well as good facilities to use.
The History of Birkenhead Park
It was in 1841 that an improvement commission from the local government of Birkenhead suggested the building of a municipal park. The Birkenhead Extension Act 1843 allowed for the use of public money to buy 226 acres of land to the west of the town, making it one of the world’s first publicly funded civic parks.
The plan was designed by Joseph Paxton, whilst the supervision of the building was carried out by Edward Kemp, the pair having previously worked on the redesign of the gardens at Chatsworth House. Lewis Hornblower and John Robertson designed structures such as the gateways and lodges of the park.
Building took five years, officially opening on the fifth of April 1847, seeing around 10,000 people turn up for it. Rather than a neatly arranged urban garden style, Birkenhead Park was much more informal, with Paxton placing trees and shrubs in unexpected places to surprise visitors as they wandered the land.
In the First World War, part of the park was used as an area to train the third Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment, whilst bombs and a Spitfire crash caused damage to it in the Second World War. Towards the end of the 20th century, the park became run down and neglected.
Birkenhead Park & New York’s Central Park
It is something of a local folklore that Birkenhead Park is just a miniature version of Central Park in New York. Whilst that is not entirely true, it is the case that it influenced Central Park’s designer. In 1850, Frederick Law Olmstead, an American landscape architect, visited Birkenhead Park as well as numerous other public gardens in the northwest. He thought that Birkenhead was a ‘model town’, so when he and Calvert Vaux won a competition to design a new park for New York, he bore several of Paxton’s design choices in mind. Speaking about it, Olmstead said:
“I cannot undertake to describe the effect of so much taste and skill as had evidently been employed; I will only tell you that we passed by winding paths, over acres and acres, with a constant varying surface, where on all sides were growing every variety of shrubs and flowers, with more than natural grace, all set in borders of the greenest, closest turf, and all kept with consummate neatness.”
Although not a direct replica, it is certainly true that Olmstead used numerous different aspects of Birkenhead Park when he went through the process of designing Central Park. If you were to visit one location after another, you would see countless things in New York that you will also have seen in Birkenhead.
The Wirral park was also later used as a template for Sefton Park in Liverpool. Whilst obviously not boasting the same sort of grandeur as a park in one of America’s most loved cities, it is still a tip of the hat to Paxton that his park was seen as such a replica-worthy offering.
The Modern Day Park
If you were to head along to Birkenhead Park today, there are still numerous things of interest that you would be able to spend your time having a look at. The Grand Entrance first opened in 1847 and is considered to be a Listed building.
The Swiss Bridge, which opened in the same year, is the only covered bridge in England that has a traditional construction. From the Cricket Pavilion to the Roman Boathouse via the Jackson Memorial Drinking Fountain, the park has a wealth of different things for you to view that offer a glimpse into what it must have been like to spend time there more than 100 years ago.
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There are also numerous modern installations at the park, such as the visitor centre that also has a café. If you like your sport, then there are several different places that you can head to in order to enjoy yourself. There are two different cricket clubs, for example, as well as bowling greens and football pitches.
The Birkenhead parkrun takes place weekly, seeing people enjoy a timed 5k run, whilst social climbing events are also popular. If you want to get there easily, Birkenhead Park Station is on the Merseyrail line that runs from Liverpool over to the Wirral and back again.
The post Birkenhead Park is More Significant Than You Realise first appeared on Scouse Not English.
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