About this ebook
When it was officially opened on Easter Monday, 5 April 1847, Birkenhead Park became the first municipally funded park in Britain. It was a pioneer in the development of urban public parks, designed for use by everyone, irrespective of social class, ethnicity or age. In terms of town planning, it demonstrated the importance of including green infrastructure in urban development as a vital contribution to public health and well-being. Paxton’s design for the park was heralded as ‘a masterpiece of human creative genius’: it served as a vehicle for the global transmission of the English landscape school and led to the creation of numerous public parks everywhere, most famously Central Park, New York, incorporating many of Paxton’s design features. This book addresses a long-standing gap in the Park’s historiography. Regarded as ‘one of the greatest wonders of the age’, the Park is an important contribution to nineteenth-century landscape history with a local focus, but of international significance. The book also seeks to interpret the Park’s development until 1914 within a political and cultural context, drawing on economic and social history, as a means of explaining why it was not until the late nineteenth century that it finally became a focal point for recreation and public health.
About the author
Robert Lee is Emeritus Professor at the Department of History, University of Liverpool.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
